The purpose of this thesis is to delineate Taylor¡¦s reasoning on the concept of freedom. I start by explicating Taylor¡¦s thesis of philosophical anthropology to illustrate how he answers the question: ¡§what is human agency?¡¨ Based on this ontological condition, Charles Taylor begins his discussion of the predicament of modern freedom by tracing the transformation of moral and epistemological ideals since the seventeenth century. By picturing the trajectories of moral sources in Western modernity, he believes, it enables us to meaningfully reflect upon personal freedom in an age of pluralism. Taylor demonstrates how the Enlightenment and Romanticism have jointly shape the background understanding of modern freedom.
Based on his diagnosis of the ambivalent nature of modern freedom, Taylor contends classic liberalism for its universalist and atomist understanding of freedom. He proposes a ¡§complex liberalism¡¨ that recognizes the ¡§embededness¡¨ of freedom, on the one hand, and acknowledges the fact that the moral ideal of being free has its intrinsic worth, on the other hand. The ideal of freedom, therefore, must be understood as a distinctively modern phenomenon that is constitutive of modern self-identity, rather than a freestanding principle independent of any substantial conceptions of the good.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0827107-134125 |
| Date | 27 August 2007 |
| Creators | Liu, Chih-yang |
| Contributors | Chao-Sen Yao, K. S. Roy Tseng, Man-To Leung |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | Cholon |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0827107-134125 |
| Rights | unrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive |
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