Charles Taylor is, by his own admission, a hedgehog. Though the essays in these two volumes range over a variety of topics - the concept of a person, meaning, the value of cognitive psychology, sexuality as a mode of political control - they all argue for one basic idea: that the conceptions of objectivity and scientific method which we have inherited from the 17th century are unable to give us an account of ourselves.

LRB 19 September 1985 | PDF Download