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Baltimore, Maryland, USA, 2009.
Stephen Shields has posted about Charles Taylor and my suggestions for reading him. I’d like to add a few other resources for those who may be interested and want to engage further with his work.
- Philosophy in the Age of Pluralism: the Philosophy of Charles Taylor in Question, ed. James Tully - perhaps the single best overall scholarly engagement with Taylor’s work in one place
- Charles Taylor (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus), Ruth Abbey - a sketch of Taylor’s work by a former graduate student
- Charles Taylor: Meaning, Morals and Modernity, Nicholas Smith
- I have a set of links about Taylor on my Delicious page
This week Stephen Shields and I made another stop on our Baltimore diner tour. Yes, this time I had some Scrapple, and next to other breakfast meats it was ok. Silver Moon Diner itself was good, including the ever-present unique Baltimore service.
From the burlap sack this past week…
From the burlap sack this past week…
From the burlap sack this past week…
From the burlap sack this past week…
From the burlap sack this past week…
“There is no history which is not many-sided, and no reading to which there are not alternatives.” p. ix
J. G. A. Pocock (2005), The Discovery of Islands: Essays in British History.
From the brulap sack this past week:
Over the coming days I’m hoping to post something on John Ralston Saul’s latest book, A Fair Country: Telling Truths about Canada. For now I thought I’d post the provocative opener, to which I will return:
“To insist on describing ourselves as something we are not is to embrace existential illiteracy. We are not a civilization of British or French or European inspiration. We never have been. Our society is not an expression of peace, order and good government. It never was.”
Margaret Sommerville has a short, pithy article up at Globe and Mail:
“They are correct that “we can be good without God.” But can we get our shared values across so powerfully or well if we exclude religious voices? In particular, these voices may be needed to activate all our human ways of knowing, not just reason, which the secularists see as the only valid way. In short, we need a conjunctive, not disjunctive, approach - we need both religion and secularism, and must build bridges between them.”
On a couple of occassions Matt Yglessias has suggested that Canada needs to reclaim its two party system - eureka! you mean to tell me the solution to Canadian political woes lies in adopting an American style system?! - in order to ensure political stability generally, and in particular because of the presence of Quebec nationalism.
In response, I would like suggest that the USA reclaim its multi-party heritage, sans “know nothing” xenophobia. Wait, I forgot about the Libertarians…
From the burlap sack this past week…
Christianity Today has a post up about the various a/theist bus media campaigns and a perhaps surprising remark about their (lack of?) effectiveness:
“These kinds of ads are not effective — for Christians or for non-Christians,” said Krish Kandiah, executive director of Churches in Mission for the Evangelical Alliance U.K. “The best these ads can do is signpost people to have a conversation.”
Over at Beleifnet, Jesus Creed has consistently posted articles on religion and science. A recent post - Can Darwin be Saved? - reminded me very much of research I’m currently engaged in on early modern atheism. In many of the texts I’m reading chance and fortune are descried as incompatible with Christianity and the Being of a First Mover. While the terms of the debate have shifted, we are nonetheless still engaged in an enterprise that seeks to understand how faith and fortune might be integrated with reason and religion.
What, if anything, is the difference between atheists, non-believers, and unbelievers? While these are categories which lie along an overlapping spectrum, there are important differences, even today, and perhaps even more historically. It was an interesting and I think significant choice by President Obama in his inauguration speech to use “non-believers”.
An article in today’s Edmonton Journal suggests that Canada’s Obama would be Aboriginal. It’s an interesting suggestion:
“This is about truth and reconciliation, but it’s also about making tough decisions, now, about the best possible social policies to alleviate poverty, poor health care, high suicide rates, crime, unemployment, substance abuse, high incarceration rates and low education levels.
Piles of money won’t do it. Apologies won’t do it. Maybe even leadership won’t do it, but as we’ve seen with Barack Obama, leadership can inspire dramatic action.”
All the more interesting in light of John Ralston Saul’s new book, A Fair Country, part of which argues strongly that Canada is a Metis nation and that our continued success in the future depends on retrieving this understanding.
My friend Stephen Shields has written a retrospective of the emerging church for Next Wave ezine called “Ten Years Out“. For those interested in the movement it provides a nice, short summary introduction through the voices of prominent participants like Brian McLaren, Scot McKnight, Dan Kimball, and Tony Jones.
In the latest round of public skirmishes surrounding religion, the Globe and Mail reports that the atheism bus tour, of London, is hoping to make its way to Toronto:
“The Toronto-based Freethought Association of Canada, inspired by a campaign that has plastered British buses with the phrase, has contacted the private firm that handles ads on the Toronto Transit Commission to see if the message would violate any rules. Organizers plan to launch a fundraising page on the website atheistbus.ca in the next few days.”
Contrast this form of social engagement with that undertaken recently by Gerard Bouchard and Charles Taylor on cultural accommodation and difference for the government of Quebec.