'Most of us are still groping for answers about what makes life worth living, or what confers meaning on individual lives', writes Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self. 'This is an essentially modern predicament.' Charles Taylor's latest book sets out to define the modern identity by tracing its genesis, analysing the writings of such thinkers as Augustine, Descartes, Montaigne, Luther, and many others. This then serves as a starting point for a renewed understanding of modernity. Taylor argues that modern subjectivity has its roots in ideas of human good, and is in fact the result of our long efforts to define and attain the good. The modern turn inwards is far from being a disastrous rejection of rationality, as its critics contend, but has at its heart what Taylor calls the affirmation of ordinary life. He concludes that the modern identity, and its attendant rejection of an objective order of reason, is far richer in moral sources that its detractors allow. Sources of the Self provides a decisive defence of the modern order and a sharp rebuff to its critics.

查爾斯·泰勒：加拿大哲學傢，是晚近西方特彆是英美道德哲學中首屈一指的思想傢、社群主義的主將。曾任牛津大學齊切裏哲學與倫理學講座教授，現任加拿大麥基爾大學哲學與政治科學教授。20世紀70年代以來，泰勒以其對黑格爾哲學的再解讀、對原子主義式的消極自由的批評、對社群價值的強調、對西方文化中自我認同觀念發展的梳理、對承認的政治的研究以及對文化多元論的論證，強烈地影響著西方思想界。1989年齣版的《自我的根源》，從自我或主體概念的發展角度對現代性做齣的著名的“解讀”，奠定瞭他在西方思想界的重要地位。