'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.

In this book the author sets out to define the modern identity by tracing its genesis. This definition is then taken as the starting point for a renewed understanding of modernity. He concludes that modern identity is richer in moral sources than its detractors allow.

Preface Part I. Identity and the Good: 1. Inescapable frameworks; 2. The self in moral space; 3. Ethics of inarticulacy; 4. Moral sources; Part II: Inwardness: 5. Moral topography; 6. Plato's self-mastery; 7. 'In Interiore Homine'; 8. Descartes's disengaged reason; 9. Locke's punctual self; 10. Exploring 'l'Humaine Condition'; 11. Inner nature; 12. A digression on historical explanation; Part III. The Affirmation of Ordinary Life: 13. 'God Loveth Adverbs'; 14. Rationalised Christianity; 15. Moral sentiments; 16. The providential order; 17. The culture of modernity; Part IV. The Voice of Nature: 18. Fractured horizons; 19. Radical enlightenment; 20. Nature as source; 21. The Expressivist turn; Part V. Subtler Languages: 22. Our Victorian contemporaries 23. Visions of the post-romantic age; 24. Epiphanies of modernism; 25. Conclusion: the conflicts of modernity; Notes; Index.