Abstract

To write a book summarizing and explaining the thought of a wide-ranging and complex philosopher is a hard task, and even more so when the philosopher in question is still writing. Still, it is usually a worthy and often a necessary task. That is certainly so in this case. Charles Taylor is one of the few contemporary philosophers both to be at the forefront of a major philosophical movement and to have comfortably and ably straddled the great divide between analytic and continental philosophy. He is also a philosopher who has had, and continues to have, a significant impact in the difficult and very different world of active politics, namely in his native Quebec.