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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
Foucault appears now and again in the work of Charles Taylor, but fleetingly, almost hauntingly. This is not surprising because Taylor and Foucault share many ideas and yet remain starkly opposed. This is especially true of Taylor's most recent work, his monumental Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. In it he is characteristically brilliant, in the sense that he attempts to illuminate a great many things all at once. Foucault is mentioned here and there in that work, along with a great many others. However, I would claim that Foucault's presence is much more sustained than the index would have us believe. In fact, one might say that Foucault is the shadow cast by Taylor's brilliance.
1 Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).Google Scholar
2 Taylor, Charles, “Foucault on Freedom and Truth,” in Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 152–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Ibid., p. 167.
4 Connolly, W., “Foucault and Otherness,” Political Theory (August 1985), p. 367.Google Scholar
5 For a discussion of this notion, see Foucault's essay “What is Enlightenment?” in The Foucault Reader, edited by Rabinow, Paul (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), pp. 32–50.Google Scholar
6 Taylor, “Foucault on Freedom and Truth,” p. 173.
7 Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish, translated by Sheridan, A. (New York: Pantheon, 1977).Google Scholar
8 For the views of these historians on the changing practice of history, see: Veyne, Paul, Writing History: Essay on Epistemology, translated by Moore-Rinvolcri, Mina (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1984);Google ScholarDuby, Georges, L'histoire continue (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1991);Google ScholarGoff, Jacques Le, History and Memory, translated by Rendall, Stephen and Claman, Elizabeth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992);Google Scholar and Goff, Jacques Le and Nora, Pierre, eds., Faire de l'histoire, 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1986).Google Scholar
9 For the distinction, see Furet, François, L'atelier de l'histoire (Paris: Flammarion, 1982), p. 77.Google Scholar English translation by Mandelbaum, Jonathan, In the Workshop of History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984).Google Scholar
10 Duby, Georges, Dimanches des Bouvines (Paris: Gallimard, 1973).Google Scholar English translation by Tihanyi, C., The Legend of Bouvines (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990).Google Scholar
11 Goff, Jacques Le, The Birth of Purgatory, translated by Goldhammer, Arthur (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984).Google Scholar
12 Cf. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 30–31.
13 Taylor, “Foucault on Freedom and Truth,” p. 169.
14 Ibid., p. 171.
15 Ibid., p. 182.
16 Paul, Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination, translated by Wissing, Paula (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 120.Google Scholar
17 Taylor, “Foucault on Freedom and Truth,” p. 182.
18 Foucault, Michel, The Use of Pleasure, translated by Hurley, R. (New York: Pantheon, 1985)Google Scholar and Foucault, Michel, The Care of the Self, translated by Hurley, R. (New York: Pantheon, 1986).Google Scholar
19 Connolly, “Foucault and Otherness,” p. 367.
20 Taylor, Sources of the Self, p. 63.
21 Ibid., p. 71.
22 The flip side of the modern self that Taylor defends is the atomistic individualism he denounces in so much of his work. Cf. his Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).Google Scholar In a recent work, he reminds us that “the dark side of individualism is a centering on the self, which both flattens and narrows our lives, makes them poorer in meaning, and less concerned with others or society” (Taylor, Charles, The Malaise of Modernity [Concord, ON: House of Anansi Press, 1991], p. 4).Google Scholar
23 Goff, Jacques Le, Histoire et mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), pp. 170–71.Google Scholar
24 Ibid., pp. 172–73. My translation.
25 For Foucault's pride of place amongst the new historians, cf. Le Goff, Histoire et mémoire, pp. 294–96.
26 Taylor, Sources of the Self, p. 27.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., p. 99.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid., p. 31.
32 Ibid., p. 32.
33 Ibid., p. 103.
34 “[C]ar l'humanité bouge sans cesse, si bien que chaque solution actuelle révèle bientôt qu'elle aussi comporte des dangers; toute solution est bientät imparfaite, et il en sera toujours ainsi: un philosophe est celui qui, à chaque nouvelle actualite, diagnostique le nouveau danger et montre une nouvelle issue.”(Veyne, Paul, “Le dernier Foucault et sa morale,” Critique, 43 [1986], p. 932).Google Scholar
