APAvar: Weinstock, D.M., Levy, J.T., & Maclure, J. (Eds.). (2020). Interpreting Modernity: Essays on the Work of Charles Taylor. McGill Queen's University Press.
Chapter 3 (pages 49-62): Taylor's Engaged Pluralism RICHARD J. BERNSTEIN
When thinking about this paper on Charles Taylor, a passage from Hannah Arendt kept intruding itself. She wrote:
I have always believed that, no matter how abstract our theories may sound or how consistent our arguments may appear, there are incidents and stories behind them which, at least for ourselves, contain in a nutshell the full meaning of whatever we have to say. Thought itself - to the extent that is more than a technical, logical operation which electronic machines may be better equipped to perform than the human brain - arises out of the actuality of incidents, and incidents of living experience must remain its guideposts by which it takes its bearings if it is not to lose itself in the heights to which thinking soars, or in the depths to which it must descend.'
Taylor might well have written this passage, since it perfectly characterizes how his thinking is grounded in his experience. It makes perfect sense that this celebration of his life and work takes place in Montreal. For despite his intellectual journeys and travels throughout the world - despite the heights to which his thinking has soared and the depths to which it has descended - this is the home to which he has always returned. Taylor is the ideal type of the rooted cosmopolitan, and his roots are here in Quebec. I have been in dialogue with Charles ever since he published his first book The Explanation of Behaviour (1964), and in rereading his work for this conference, I was struck by a theme that runs through all of his writings - what I call "engaged fallibilistic pluralism." Let me explain what I mean.