Short Biography
Charles Taylor (1931, Montreal) is Professor em. of Philosophy at McGill University, Montreal, and a Permanent Fellow at the IWM, Vienna. He studied History at McGill University and continued his studies at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Isaiah Berlin and G. E. M. Anscombe, where he received his PhD in 1961.
He succeeded John Plamenatz as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford and became a Fellow of All Souls College. For many years he was Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he is now Professor Emeritus. Beyond that, he was a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Oxford, Princeton, Berkeley, Frankfurt a. M., and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Amongst other awards and honorary degrees, he received the 2007 Templeton Prize and the 2008 Kyoto Prize, one of the world’s leading awards for lifetime achievements in the social sciences and humanities. In 2015, Charles Taylor has been awarded the prestigious $1.5 million John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity granted by the Library of Congress.
Fields of Research:
- Religion and Secularism
- Philosophy of Action
- Philosophy of Social Science
- Political Theory
- Greek Political Thought
- Moral Philosophy
- Culture of Western Modernity
- Philosophy of Language
- Theories of Meaning
- Language and Politics
- German Idealism
Recent Publications:
Degenerations of Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022 (with Craig Calhoun and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar).
"Charles Taylor and Jeffrey C. Alexander on Secularity and the Sacred." American Journal of Cultural Sociology 9, no. 1-2, 2021 (with Jeffrey C. Alexander and Samuel Nelson).
Reconstructing Democracy: How Citizens are Building from the Ground Up. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020 (with Madeline Beaubein Taylor and Patrizia Nanz).
Avenues of Faith: Conversations with Jonathan Guilbault. Translated by Yanette Shalter. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2020 (with Jonathan Guilbault).
"Romantic Poetics." Revue De Métaphysique Et De Morale 108 (2020): 461–495.
"Freedom & Equality Aren’t enough: A Primer on ‘Fratelli Tutti’." Commonweal 147, no. 11, (2020).
"The Ethical Implications of Resonance Theory." In Resonanz. Im Interdisziplinären Gespräch mit Hartmut Rosa edited by Jean-Pierre Wils, 71–85. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2019.
"Ethical Journeys." The Immanent Frame, 2018. https://tif.ssrc.org/2018/01/16/ethical-journeys/
"Resonance and the Romantic Era: A Comment on Rosa’s Conception of the Good Life." In The Good Life Beyond Growth, edited by Hartmut Rosa and Christoph Henning. London: Routledge, 2017.
[ Complete List of Publications ]
Former Affiliations at the IWM:
Vice-Chairman of the IWM Advisory Board
2001 Visiting Fellow
2000 Visiting Fellow
1995 Visiting Fellow
1994 Visiting Fellow
Institute for Human Sciences
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Phone +43 1 313 58 0
For further information, please contact library@iwm.at
Research at IWM
Religion and Secularism
The goal of this research focus is to explore the ways in which globalization impacts the relationship between religion and secularism, thus intertwining the perspectives of different cultures, religions and theoretical backgrounds. The research is structured around five main topics: first, an examination of contemporary forms of belief and, second, of forms of disbelief; third, a study of different secular regimes; fourth, religion’s potential to mobilize people to violence, and, finally, the role of religion in creating social cohesion across gaps of income, ethnicity and nationality.
