Charles Taylor.

Biography

Charles Taylor (born in Montreal in 1931) is a Canadian philosopher and professor emeritus at McGill University whose work has influenced moral and political philosophy, hermeneutics and the understanding of modernity. He studied at McGill and the University of Oxford, where he completed his doctorate in 1961. His thought examines the historical constitution of personal identity, recognition and the relationship between moral frameworks and collective forms of life.

In Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989), Taylor reconstructed the philosophical and cultural sources of the modern conception of the self. His major books include Hegel (1975), The Malaise of Modernity (1991), Modern Social Imaginaries (2004), A Secular Age (2007) and The Language Animal (2016). His treatment of secularisation rejects its reduction to the simple decline of religion and attends to transformations in the contemporary conditions of belief.

Beyond his academic career, he has participated in Canadian public life and debates on pluralism and cultural recognition. Together with Gérard Bouchard, he co-chaired a consultation commission on accommodation practices relating to cultural differences in Quebec. His distinctions include the Templeton Prize (2007), the Kyoto Prize (2008) and the Kluge Prize (2015).