Charles Taylor
Story Stream
Lost in the Forest of Symbols October 30, 2024
AMONG A SMALL BUT VOCAL SUBSET of readers, the arrival of a new doorstopper on poetry and philosophy by Canadian thinker Charles Taylor is liable to induce swooning.For at least fifteen years, other thinkers have been describing him as an “elder stat...
The Disenchanted Charles Taylor October 15, 2024
In the Poetics, Aristotle argues that we are by nature imitators. Poetry, as a type of imitation, gives pleasure because by it, says Aristotle, we “come to understand and work out what each thing is.” Charles Taylor—one of the preeminent living philo...
From Couplets to the Cosmos July 17, 2024
Poetry moves me, possibly too much. As a teenager, I memorized the poems I loved most, and by 28 I had “MORE POETRY!!!” (exclamation points included) tattooed on my left forearm. There are still poems today that I can’t hear a line of without whisper...
How Charles Taylor Would Heal the Ills of Modernity June 20, 2024
Lyric poets and mathematicians, by general agreement, do their best work young, while composers and conductors are evergreen, doing their best work, or more work of the same kind, as they age. Philosophers seem to be a more mixed bag: some shine earl...
