Charles Taylor

[Journal of Social Sciences, No.10, Faculty of Social Sciences, Waseda University, 09/2007]

Charles Taylor

Akihiko Morita

1. Introduction
Charles Taylor is one of the leading philosophers in the contemporary world. His works range from reflections on artificial intelligence to analyses of contemporary multicultural societies(Ruth Abbey,2000:1). He contributes to wide spectrum of philosophical areas: moral theory, theories of subjectivity, political theory, epistemology, hermeneutics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, aesthetics and religion(Ruth Abbey,2004:1).
However, despite of the variety of the areas and topics of his interest, there is certain intrinsic connection between them.
This paper aims at illustrating this intrinsic connection through scrutinizing his epistemology, moral ontology and political philosophy about multiculturalism, which leads up to his understanding of multiple modernities.
In this connection, it is worth noting at the very outset that it is not Taylor’s position that modernity is a single process of which European model is the paradigm. He holds rather that even though European modernity is the first one in history and has been object of some imitation for the other parts of the world, it is, after all, one of many. From this understanding, Taylor insists that the more they understand own path to modernity in the West, the better equipped they can understand the difference with other cultures(MSI:xii).
No society can develop a modern state and a market economy without some important change. And what come out depends partly on what went into the change. From this point of view, we should speak instead of “alternative modernities”, different way of living the political and economic structures that the contemporary age makes mandatory. How these are worked out in India will not be the same as in Japan, which is in turn different from the North Atlantic region- which in its turn again has much inner diversity(PA:xi-xii).