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The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity
In seminal works ranging from Sources of the Self to A Secular Age, Charles Taylor has shown how we create possible ways of being, both as individuals and as a society. In his new book setting forth decades of thought, he demonstrates that language is at the center of this generative process.
For centuries, philosophers have been divided on the nature of language. Those in the rational empiricist tradition Hobbes, Locke, Condillac, and their heirs assert that language is a tool that human beings developed to encode and communicate information. In The Language Animal, Taylor explains that this view neglects the crucial role language plays in shaping the very thought it purports to express. Language does not merely describe; it constitutes meaning and fundamentally shapes human experience. The human linguistic capacity is not something we innately possess. We first learn language from others, and, inducted into the shared practice of speech, our individual selves emerge out of the conversation.
Taylor expands the thinking of the German Romantics Hamann, Herder, and Humboldt into a theory of linguistic holism. Language is intellectual, but it is also enacted in artistic portrayals, gestures, tones of voice, metaphors, and the shifts of emphasis and attitude that accompany speech. Human language recognizes no boundary between mind and body. In illuminating the full capacity of the language animal, Taylor sheds light on the very question of what it is to be a human being.
For centuries, philosophers have been divided on the nature of language. Those in the rational empiricist tradition Hobbes, Locke, Condillac, and their heirs assert that language is a tool that human beings developed to encode and communicate information. In The Language Animal, Taylor explains that this view neglects the crucial role language plays in shaping the very thought it purports to express. Language does not merely describe; it constitutes meaning and fundamentally shapes human experience. The human linguistic capacity is not something we innately possess. We first learn language from others, and, inducted into the shared practice of speech, our individual selves emerge out of the conversation.
Taylor expands the thinking of the German Romantics Hamann, Herder, and Humboldt into a theory of linguistic holism. Language is intellectual, but it is also enacted in artistic portrayals, gestures, tones of voice, metaphors, and the shifts of emphasis and attitude that accompany speech. Human language recognizes no boundary between mind and body. In illuminating the full capacity of the language animal, Taylor sheds light on the very question of what it is to be a human being.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2016
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About the author
Charles Margrave Taylor
152 books661 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.
Other authors with this name:
Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor, Journalist, Film critic
Charles Margrave Taylor CC GOQ FBA FRSC is a Canadian philosopher, and professor emeritus at McGill University. He is best known for his contributions to political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, history of philosophy and intellectual history. This work has earned him the prestigious Kyoto Prize, the Templeton Prize, the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy, and the John W. Kluge Prize, in addition to widespread esteem among philosophers. (Source: Wikipedia)
Other authors with this name:
Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor, Journalist, Film critic
Charles Margrave Taylor CC GOQ FBA FRSC is a Canadian philosopher, and professor emeritus at McGill University. He is best known for his contributions to political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, history of philosophy and intellectual history. This work has earned him the prestigious Kyoto Prize, the Templeton Prize, the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy, and the John W. Kluge Prize, in addition to widespread esteem among philosophers. (Source: Wikipedia)
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May 17, 2022
The Demonic Divinity
Birds sing to each other, lions roar at enemies, cats purr with their owners. These are all communications. But none of these communications involves language. It’s easy to miss the fundamental character of language and presume that it emerged from some more primitive form of communication, that some ancient hominid species progressively developed a vocabulary of sounds and gestures which at some point became recognisable as what we call a language.
Didn’t happen. Birds and lions and cats don’t use a form of proto-language which in the course of evolution turned into human speech and writing. No one knows when human language began (or for that matter the precise hominid remains that we might designate as human). But whenever it happened, it was abrupt, decisive, and representative of an entirely distinct and unique mode of being: animal being certainly but not as had been previously known.
This is not to say that language appeared in its entirety - vocabulary, grammar, and pragmatic uses - in some sudden linguistic Big Bang. Language developed and evolved as any other cultural trait. But language-ability, the realisation that words (or sounds, or symbols, or gestures) exist independently of the things which they refer to, is an evolutionary singularity. A species does not ‘ease into’ a language. It either has it or it does not. The line is sharp and it is decisive. Once it is crossed, the entire species is effectively absorbed into language and has no way out, no return to a garden of oneness with nature for example. The biblical story of exile is profound.
Two twentieth century philosophers, Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein, are the most well-known thinkers about language. Heidegger called language the ‘house of being’ of mankind. We live solely within it, both protected and trapped by its existence. Wittgenstein showed how language exists only as a whole and can only be employed in relation to itself not in terms of its relation with what is not-language. He famously called these uses ‘language games,’ not in the sense that they lack seriousness but because they are governed by rules of deployment and context into which we are indoctrinated.
Charles Taylor’s thesis is that Heidegger and Wittgenstein are the intellectual descendants and heirs of the German Romantic philosophers of the early nineteenth century, particularly Herder, Hamann, and Humboldt. In a typically Taylorian move, he sets up a dialectic in order to establish the point. This is an interesting and creative move in that he avoids the tired old argument between Rationalists and Empiricists. He understands the next stage in intellectual development to be the opposition between the mighty Kant, who as far as Taylor is concerned synthesised a solution to that historical debate, and this new group of philosophers who took Kant one step further.
Kant, in Taylor’s view, understood that the empiricism of thinkers like Hume and Condillac had a fatal flaw: the ‘atomisation’ of perception. Perceptions are never isolated, they are always in a context of myriad other perceptions both contemporary and historical. Kant also showed the fault in the idea of Cartesian rationality with its mind/body distinction. The ‘laws’ of reason are not something to be discovered in ‘nature.’ They are constructed and imposed upon the world by human beings. What Kant didn’t recognise about his own philosophy was that he atomised language in the same way that the Empiricists had atomised perception. His focus on the ‘epistemological’ connection between words and things the Romantics considered an intellectual dead end.
And indeed, it has so turned out: after more than two centuries of thought and analysis, no one has been able to suggest a credible way to judge the correctness of the connection between a word and the ‘thing in itself’ (thus implying that our entire species is delusional). And it was the German Romantics who first understand why. Kant took language to be solely a human tool. The Romantics recognised language as having its own power, which it quietly exercised over those who thought they were using it. Eventually this recognition emerged as Heidegger’s pithy dictum: ‘Language speaks Man.’ Words are defined not in terms of what are not-words but only in terms of other words. Whatever we do with words is always about other words, however much we pretend to be talking about the ‘real world.’ The only world there is is the world of language. And every word in a language implicitly refers to every other word.
The clue which prompted this insight by the Romantics is indeed rather romantic, namely that the the world within language is much bigger than the world without it. Language is the cosmic Tardis of Dr. Who. It looks small and restrictive from the outside, even in the 20 volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary. But the space which language opens up is potentially infinite viewed from the inside. Certainly no individual has ever been more constrained rather than less in perceptions of places, people, and times by language. Language, just language, can evoke tears and laughter. And yet there is nothing ‘objective’ that is sad or comic. Language is what allows me to know about black holes and Bognor Regis although I have been to neither. I have no doubt that both are real because of the way both are used in scientific and everyday discussion. The language game, one might say, vouches for them. I don’t need to visit. A blessing.
The Romantics also intuited that there were things beyond language. Not just in terms of missing words or expressions, but more importantly that those things that were not-language were, as Kant concluded, not knowable in a fundamental sense. Language may mask its character by pretending that it is merely an intermediary between the thing-in-itself and us. But this is only an expression of its absolute power over us. We aren’t able to escape from it. It is a cage as well as a house. It shapes our perceptions as much as it expresses them. It is therefore convenient to mistake linguistic truth for reality. Convenient because language allows us to manipulate words into plausible self-justification for just about anything we do from fraud to fratricide.
I must admit that I always suspect Taylor of hidden religious objectives in whatever he writes. It’s when he discusses that which is beyond language that I begin to detect his attempt to make philosophical room for God, particularly the God of the Christianity. In this regard it is notable that he chooses not to mention at all one of the most influential of the early 19th century Romantics, Friedrich Schleiermacher, a theologian concerned with reconciling Protestant Christianity and Enlightenment philosophy. Schleiermacher developed the idea of God as a sentiment in the human heart, literally a word to which emotions attached. This was certainly a romantic if decidedly heretical concept. Yet it became a central tenet of so-called Liberal Protestantism during the 19th century and of the fundamentalist reaction against this movement in the 20th.
So, the battle over words continues apace. Largely because there is nothing other than words to fight about. Language does seem to be malignantly mischievous from time to time. Perhaps demonically divine is the most apt description.
For more on Heidegger’s Language as The House of Being: https://ibb.co/F6JdxHN
Birds sing to each other, lions roar at enemies, cats purr with their owners. These are all communications. But none of these communications involves language. It’s easy to miss the fundamental character of language and presume that it emerged from some more primitive form of communication, that some ancient hominid species progressively developed a vocabulary of sounds and gestures which at some point became recognisable as what we call a language.
Didn’t happen. Birds and lions and cats don’t use a form of proto-language which in the course of evolution turned into human speech and writing. No one knows when human language began (or for that matter the precise hominid remains that we might designate as human). But whenever it happened, it was abrupt, decisive, and representative of an entirely distinct and unique mode of being: animal being certainly but not as had been previously known.
This is not to say that language appeared in its entirety - vocabulary, grammar, and pragmatic uses - in some sudden linguistic Big Bang. Language developed and evolved as any other cultural trait. But language-ability, the realisation that words (or sounds, or symbols, or gestures) exist independently of the things which they refer to, is an evolutionary singularity. A species does not ‘ease into’ a language. It either has it or it does not. The line is sharp and it is decisive. Once it is crossed, the entire species is effectively absorbed into language and has no way out, no return to a garden of oneness with nature for example. The biblical story of exile is profound.
Two twentieth century philosophers, Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein, are the most well-known thinkers about language. Heidegger called language the ‘house of being’ of mankind. We live solely within it, both protected and trapped by its existence. Wittgenstein showed how language exists only as a whole and can only be employed in relation to itself not in terms of its relation with what is not-language. He famously called these uses ‘language games,’ not in the sense that they lack seriousness but because they are governed by rules of deployment and context into which we are indoctrinated.
Charles Taylor’s thesis is that Heidegger and Wittgenstein are the intellectual descendants and heirs of the German Romantic philosophers of the early nineteenth century, particularly Herder, Hamann, and Humboldt. In a typically Taylorian move, he sets up a dialectic in order to establish the point. This is an interesting and creative move in that he avoids the tired old argument between Rationalists and Empiricists. He understands the next stage in intellectual development to be the opposition between the mighty Kant, who as far as Taylor is concerned synthesised a solution to that historical debate, and this new group of philosophers who took Kant one step further.
Kant, in Taylor’s view, understood that the empiricism of thinkers like Hume and Condillac had a fatal flaw: the ‘atomisation’ of perception. Perceptions are never isolated, they are always in a context of myriad other perceptions both contemporary and historical. Kant also showed the fault in the idea of Cartesian rationality with its mind/body distinction. The ‘laws’ of reason are not something to be discovered in ‘nature.’ They are constructed and imposed upon the world by human beings. What Kant didn’t recognise about his own philosophy was that he atomised language in the same way that the Empiricists had atomised perception. His focus on the ‘epistemological’ connection between words and things the Romantics considered an intellectual dead end.
And indeed, it has so turned out: after more than two centuries of thought and analysis, no one has been able to suggest a credible way to judge the correctness of the connection between a word and the ‘thing in itself’ (thus implying that our entire species is delusional). And it was the German Romantics who first understand why. Kant took language to be solely a human tool. The Romantics recognised language as having its own power, which it quietly exercised over those who thought they were using it. Eventually this recognition emerged as Heidegger’s pithy dictum: ‘Language speaks Man.’ Words are defined not in terms of what are not-words but only in terms of other words. Whatever we do with words is always about other words, however much we pretend to be talking about the ‘real world.’ The only world there is is the world of language. And every word in a language implicitly refers to every other word.
The clue which prompted this insight by the Romantics is indeed rather romantic, namely that the the world within language is much bigger than the world without it. Language is the cosmic Tardis of Dr. Who. It looks small and restrictive from the outside, even in the 20 volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary. But the space which language opens up is potentially infinite viewed from the inside. Certainly no individual has ever been more constrained rather than less in perceptions of places, people, and times by language. Language, just language, can evoke tears and laughter. And yet there is nothing ‘objective’ that is sad or comic. Language is what allows me to know about black holes and Bognor Regis although I have been to neither. I have no doubt that both are real because of the way both are used in scientific and everyday discussion. The language game, one might say, vouches for them. I don’t need to visit. A blessing.
The Romantics also intuited that there were things beyond language. Not just in terms of missing words or expressions, but more importantly that those things that were not-language were, as Kant concluded, not knowable in a fundamental sense. Language may mask its character by pretending that it is merely an intermediary between the thing-in-itself and us. But this is only an expression of its absolute power over us. We aren’t able to escape from it. It is a cage as well as a house. It shapes our perceptions as much as it expresses them. It is therefore convenient to mistake linguistic truth for reality. Convenient because language allows us to manipulate words into plausible self-justification for just about anything we do from fraud to fratricide.
I must admit that I always suspect Taylor of hidden religious objectives in whatever he writes. It’s when he discusses that which is beyond language that I begin to detect his attempt to make philosophical room for God, particularly the God of the Christianity. In this regard it is notable that he chooses not to mention at all one of the most influential of the early 19th century Romantics, Friedrich Schleiermacher, a theologian concerned with reconciling Protestant Christianity and Enlightenment philosophy. Schleiermacher developed the idea of God as a sentiment in the human heart, literally a word to which emotions attached. This was certainly a romantic if decidedly heretical concept. Yet it became a central tenet of so-called Liberal Protestantism during the 19th century and of the fundamentalist reaction against this movement in the 20th.
So, the battle over words continues apace. Largely because there is nothing other than words to fight about. Language does seem to be malignantly mischievous from time to time. Perhaps demonically divine is the most apt description.
For more on Heidegger’s Language as The House of Being: https://ibb.co/F6JdxHN
April 8, 2025
Charles Taylor, Language, And Philosophy
The works of the Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor, are inspiring for their broad learning, understanding of history, and thoughtful effort to explore difficult issues in modern life, particularly those issues involving religion and the search for meaning. I have learned a great deal from two of Taylor's earlier books, "Sources of the Self" and "A Secular Age". In 2007, Taylor received the Templeton Prize, awarded for his "exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works." In 2016, Taylor received the first Bergguen Prize for Philosophy for his contributions that have "fundamentally shaped public discussion of the nature of multiculturalism, secularism, and contemporary religious life." These are high honors indeed for a philosopher.
Taylor's most recent book, "The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity" (2016) explores the nature of human language to develop themes similar to those of "Sources of the Self" and "A Secular Age." Language has been at the center of philosophy since the beginning of the 20th Century. The philosophy taught in the United States and Great Britain, which I studied in the 1960's is known as analytic philosophy which tries to use careful use of language and distinctions to clarify or resolve philosophical problems. Continental philosophy and other rivals to analytic philosophy use language in a different, hermeneutical way, focusing on the nature of interpretation. Taylor shows great familiarity with both types of contemporary philosophy. With his considerable analytical skill, his sympathies clearly are with the latter. Taylor sees this book as the first of a two-volume study, with the second volume to explore the Romantic theory of language he develops through a study of post-Romantic poetry.
Just as Taylor explored differences between secular and religious views of life in "A Secular Age", in "The Language Animal" he develops two competing views on the nature of human language. He calls the first the "designative" view , which he finds derived from Hobbes, Locke, and Condillac ((HLC). He also calls this view the "enframing" theory under which language is used to point to or describe pre-linguistic objects separate from language, such as dogs and cats. In this theory, "the attempt is made to understand language within the framework of a picture of human life, behavior, purposes, or mental functioning, which is itself described and defined, without reference to language. Language is seen as arising in this framework, which can be variously conceived as we shall see,, and fulfilling some function within it, but the framework itself precedes, or at least can be characterized independently of language."
The second theory of language Taylor calls "constitutive" because it emphasizes language's role in the formation of reality. Taylor finds this theory first articulated in the works of the German romantics Hamann, Herder, and Humbolt (HHH) as a response to the designative theory of language. The constitutive theory, for Taylor, "gives us a picture of language as making possible new purposes, new levels of behavior, new meanings, and hence as not explicable within a framework picture of human life conceived without language. "
In his study, Taylor develops both the designative and constitutive theories in depth and shows how each leads to separate, diverging views of language and reality on a number of important issues. He describes the designative theory as "instrumental" -- using language as a tool to get things done and the constitutive theory as "expressive" -- emeshed in meaning and in ways of life. "Besides this", Taylor writes, "they even end up differing on the contours of what they are trying to explain, viz. language; as well as on the validity of atomistic versus holistic modes of explanation. They belong, in fact, to very different understandings of human life."
In the opening chapters of the book, Taylor parses out the history and development of both views. He finds the designative theory suited to post-Galilean science in that it seeks to identify and describe the properties of objects independent of the mind. He finds this theory carried through, with some important modifications, in contemporary analytic philosophy with the modifications of the Hobbes-Locke-Condillac view in the work of Frege, whose work became of seminal importance to modern logic.
The burden of Taylor's argument is to show the incomplete, inadequate character of the designative theory. He views the theory from a variety of perspectives and finds it inadequate to account for the origins of human language or for the differences between humans and the higher animals in communication. He agrees with the German romantics that language use is communal and holistic and shapes thought rather than merely designating a prelinguistic reality. He finds an almost mystical or "Cratylan" (after Plato's dialogue "Cratylus") quality to language use in its search for rightness or fittingness that cannot be explained by a theory which has its strongest paradigm in a scientific context. Taylor offers striking examples of what he sees as the "expressivist" character of language to shape reality in a way that goes beyond the designative theory. For example, he refers throughout to the macho young male motorcyclist who in his posture, gait, and language "expresses" who he is or who he is trying to be in a way "designation" cannot capture.
In the latter chapters of his book, Taylor broadens his approach to show how the nature of language use influences the way different people and cultures see matters of ethics and morality and of fitting human behavior in ways that are not mere designations. Some of the best sections of the book involve language and the arts where Taylor's position is at its most appealing. Scientific does not constitute the only meaningful form of language use. Taylor develops his position through discussions of works such as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Mann's "The Magic Mountain" and Dostoevsky's "Devils". The short of the discussion is that there is a mystery and a wholeness to human life and language use that is suggested by ethics, art, and religion that a purely scientific, designative view of language fails to cover.
Taylor's book is suggestive if not always convincing in detail. At times the two basic positions become stretched and ill-defined. On one side, a more sympathetic, broader treatment of the "designative" position would be welcome. The account of the "constitutive" position contains many obscurities. On another side, Taylor is committed to a position of philosophical realism which, I think, supports the "designative" position. He claims that science and ordinary common sense study independently existing objects such as cats, dogs, and atoms that exist outside any self. The constitutive position in the German romantics and elsewhere generally is part of a more idealistic position in which reality is mind-dependent. I am not sure how Taylor squares his romanticism and support for the constitutive position with his metaphysical realism.
The book is difficult, erudite and sometimes obscure. But it may be read with benefit by readers who are not professional philosophers. I have read a review of this book in the "Notre Dame Philosophical Review" an online source of academic philosophical reviews. Professor Michael Forster, a scholar of German romanticism at the University of Bonn, offered a long, detailed analysis of Taylor's book in his September 12, 2016, review. Forster concluded: "Taylor's book is a richly informative and admirable attempt to delineate "the full shape of the human linguistic capacity" (as its subtitle has it). More than that, it affords a model of what it is to be a genuine philosopher: at an age when most philosophers have either given up altogether or else fallen into dogmatically repeating views that they have long since held, Taylor continues an open-minded search for the right answers, drawing not only on the older literature from philosophy and several other disciplines that he has long since mastered but also on a wealth of newer literature from an equally wide range of sources."
Taylor has written a provocative, inspiring book which reminded me of why I have had a lifelong interest in the study of philosophy. Readers with a serious interest in philosophy will enjoy this work.
Robin Friedman
The works of the Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor, are inspiring for their broad learning, understanding of history, and thoughtful effort to explore difficult issues in modern life, particularly those issues involving religion and the search for meaning. I have learned a great deal from two of Taylor's earlier books, "Sources of the Self" and "A Secular Age". In 2007, Taylor received the Templeton Prize, awarded for his "exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works." In 2016, Taylor received the first Bergguen Prize for Philosophy for his contributions that have "fundamentally shaped public discussion of the nature of multiculturalism, secularism, and contemporary religious life." These are high honors indeed for a philosopher.
Taylor's most recent book, "The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity" (2016) explores the nature of human language to develop themes similar to those of "Sources of the Self" and "A Secular Age." Language has been at the center of philosophy since the beginning of the 20th Century. The philosophy taught in the United States and Great Britain, which I studied in the 1960's is known as analytic philosophy which tries to use careful use of language and distinctions to clarify or resolve philosophical problems. Continental philosophy and other rivals to analytic philosophy use language in a different, hermeneutical way, focusing on the nature of interpretation. Taylor shows great familiarity with both types of contemporary philosophy. With his considerable analytical skill, his sympathies clearly are with the latter. Taylor sees this book as the first of a two-volume study, with the second volume to explore the Romantic theory of language he develops through a study of post-Romantic poetry.
Just as Taylor explored differences between secular and religious views of life in "A Secular Age", in "The Language Animal" he develops two competing views on the nature of human language. He calls the first the "designative" view , which he finds derived from Hobbes, Locke, and Condillac ((HLC). He also calls this view the "enframing" theory under which language is used to point to or describe pre-linguistic objects separate from language, such as dogs and cats. In this theory, "the attempt is made to understand language within the framework of a picture of human life, behavior, purposes, or mental functioning, which is itself described and defined, without reference to language. Language is seen as arising in this framework, which can be variously conceived as we shall see,, and fulfilling some function within it, but the framework itself precedes, or at least can be characterized independently of language."
The second theory of language Taylor calls "constitutive" because it emphasizes language's role in the formation of reality. Taylor finds this theory first articulated in the works of the German romantics Hamann, Herder, and Humbolt (HHH) as a response to the designative theory of language. The constitutive theory, for Taylor, "gives us a picture of language as making possible new purposes, new levels of behavior, new meanings, and hence as not explicable within a framework picture of human life conceived without language. "
In his study, Taylor develops both the designative and constitutive theories in depth and shows how each leads to separate, diverging views of language and reality on a number of important issues. He describes the designative theory as "instrumental" -- using language as a tool to get things done and the constitutive theory as "expressive" -- emeshed in meaning and in ways of life. "Besides this", Taylor writes, "they even end up differing on the contours of what they are trying to explain, viz. language; as well as on the validity of atomistic versus holistic modes of explanation. They belong, in fact, to very different understandings of human life."
In the opening chapters of the book, Taylor parses out the history and development of both views. He finds the designative theory suited to post-Galilean science in that it seeks to identify and describe the properties of objects independent of the mind. He finds this theory carried through, with some important modifications, in contemporary analytic philosophy with the modifications of the Hobbes-Locke-Condillac view in the work of Frege, whose work became of seminal importance to modern logic.
The burden of Taylor's argument is to show the incomplete, inadequate character of the designative theory. He views the theory from a variety of perspectives and finds it inadequate to account for the origins of human language or for the differences between humans and the higher animals in communication. He agrees with the German romantics that language use is communal and holistic and shapes thought rather than merely designating a prelinguistic reality. He finds an almost mystical or "Cratylan" (after Plato's dialogue "Cratylus") quality to language use in its search for rightness or fittingness that cannot be explained by a theory which has its strongest paradigm in a scientific context. Taylor offers striking examples of what he sees as the "expressivist" character of language to shape reality in a way that goes beyond the designative theory. For example, he refers throughout to the macho young male motorcyclist who in his posture, gait, and language "expresses" who he is or who he is trying to be in a way "designation" cannot capture.
In the latter chapters of his book, Taylor broadens his approach to show how the nature of language use influences the way different people and cultures see matters of ethics and morality and of fitting human behavior in ways that are not mere designations. Some of the best sections of the book involve language and the arts where Taylor's position is at its most appealing. Scientific does not constitute the only meaningful form of language use. Taylor develops his position through discussions of works such as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Mann's "The Magic Mountain" and Dostoevsky's "Devils". The short of the discussion is that there is a mystery and a wholeness to human life and language use that is suggested by ethics, art, and religion that a purely scientific, designative view of language fails to cover.
Taylor's book is suggestive if not always convincing in detail. At times the two basic positions become stretched and ill-defined. On one side, a more sympathetic, broader treatment of the "designative" position would be welcome. The account of the "constitutive" position contains many obscurities. On another side, Taylor is committed to a position of philosophical realism which, I think, supports the "designative" position. He claims that science and ordinary common sense study independently existing objects such as cats, dogs, and atoms that exist outside any self. The constitutive position in the German romantics and elsewhere generally is part of a more idealistic position in which reality is mind-dependent. I am not sure how Taylor squares his romanticism and support for the constitutive position with his metaphysical realism.
The book is difficult, erudite and sometimes obscure. But it may be read with benefit by readers who are not professional philosophers. I have read a review of this book in the "Notre Dame Philosophical Review" an online source of academic philosophical reviews. Professor Michael Forster, a scholar of German romanticism at the University of Bonn, offered a long, detailed analysis of Taylor's book in his September 12, 2016, review. Forster concluded: "Taylor's book is a richly informative and admirable attempt to delineate "the full shape of the human linguistic capacity" (as its subtitle has it). More than that, it affords a model of what it is to be a genuine philosopher: at an age when most philosophers have either given up altogether or else fallen into dogmatically repeating views that they have long since held, Taylor continues an open-minded search for the right answers, drawing not only on the older literature from philosophy and several other disciplines that he has long since mastered but also on a wealth of newer literature from an equally wide range of sources."
Taylor has written a provocative, inspiring book which reminded me of why I have had a lifelong interest in the study of philosophy. Readers with a serious interest in philosophy will enjoy this work.
Robin Friedman
need-to-reread
July 29, 202015/08/2016
I have read this, finishing it a few months ago. I found many places that I disagreed with Taylor. This cannot be.
Charles Taylor is one of a few great, living philosophers. His books, especially 'Sources of the Self' and 'The Secular Age', have had a greater effect on my view of philosophy and my own philosophic understanding than anything else that I have read (his Christian views aside).
I can only believe that my understanding of this book, as well, perhaps, of other philosophers, is somewhat askew. That being the case I shall undertake some pre-reading of works cited by Taylor and rereading of other philosophers Taylor has referenced in terms different from those in which I have understood them. Then I'll reread 'The Language Animal" with greater confidence.
i.e. I didn't get it and will reread when I'm ready.
I have read this, finishing it a few months ago. I found many places that I disagreed with Taylor. This cannot be.
Charles Taylor is one of a few great, living philosophers. His books, especially 'Sources of the Self' and 'The Secular Age', have had a greater effect on my view of philosophy and my own philosophic understanding than anything else that I have read (his Christian views aside).
I can only believe that my understanding of this book, as well, perhaps, of other philosophers, is somewhat askew. That being the case I shall undertake some pre-reading of works cited by Taylor and rereading of other philosophers Taylor has referenced in terms different from those in which I have understood them. Then I'll reread 'The Language Animal" with greater confidence.
i.e. I didn't get it and will reread when I'm ready.
January 20, 2025
Since I’m fairly new to philosophy I don’t really know how good the book is. Taylor’s thought made a lot of sense to me and are fairly close to how I understood the late Wittgenstein (and how Anscombe understood him, which maybe has something to do with both being Catholics). Even though Taylor loves to use numbers, lists and stark contrasts (e.g., between designative (Hobbes, Locke, Condillac) and constitutive (Herder, Hamann, Humboldt) modells of Language) this is not a systematic treatment of one topic. It’s more like an open-ended exploration of the hermeneutics of human life, i.e., how we make sense of human experience and our biographies by means of language, intuition, and reason. It’s definitely fun and interesting to read and in the end one has the felt intuition (Taylor loves this term) that the author is onto something even if one does not agree with every explicit argument.
Chapter 6 was by far the most interesting to me: Metabiological terms (such as ‘meaningful’ or ‘joy’ (in contrast to ‘undifferentiated positive condition’) do not simply name independent realities that are already present. They constitute and open up meaning for the first time. The clarity gained through articulation changes me in the process. But this process of clarification (which is distinctly linguistic) is never terminated. It is the continuous hermeneutical task to make sense of our lives and for Taylor there are objectively better and worse (even right and wrong) perceptions of the meaning of life. The rivals visions of the good life are not all equal, some give us a better grasp of reality, history and external order. The hermeneutical struggle to make the best sense of anthropology and history needs to take both individual actions (part) and diachronic life (whole) into account and, as religious conversions, cultural shifts, and political agendas show, the conflict of interpretations has far-reaching implications.
But this grasping of reality is an existential struggle that the cold descriptive language of post-Galilean science cannot come to terms with appropriately. We need to move back and forth between enactment (body-language), verbal articulations (descriptions) and etiological narratives (myths). We need to be drawn in by symbols (art), portrayals (music), rituals with the hope of finding confirmation through felt intuition that we’re truly on the right track. Only a reductionist account will assume that basic reactions (Hume?) or descriptive terms (Hobbes?) alone can make sense of social, ethical, political action and human meanings. Instead, we need an ongoing mixed discourse (Ricoeur?) in the linguistic dimension, “where the uses of either words or symbols, or expressive actions, is guided by a sense of rightness, which cannot be made simply a function of success in some (nonlinguistic) task.”
Chapter 6 was by far the most interesting to me: Metabiological terms (such as ‘meaningful’ or ‘joy’ (in contrast to ‘undifferentiated positive condition’) do not simply name independent realities that are already present. They constitute and open up meaning for the first time. The clarity gained through articulation changes me in the process. But this process of clarification (which is distinctly linguistic) is never terminated. It is the continuous hermeneutical task to make sense of our lives and for Taylor there are objectively better and worse (even right and wrong) perceptions of the meaning of life. The rivals visions of the good life are not all equal, some give us a better grasp of reality, history and external order. The hermeneutical struggle to make the best sense of anthropology and history needs to take both individual actions (part) and diachronic life (whole) into account and, as religious conversions, cultural shifts, and political agendas show, the conflict of interpretations has far-reaching implications.
But this grasping of reality is an existential struggle that the cold descriptive language of post-Galilean science cannot come to terms with appropriately. We need to move back and forth between enactment (body-language), verbal articulations (descriptions) and etiological narratives (myths). We need to be drawn in by symbols (art), portrayals (music), rituals with the hope of finding confirmation through felt intuition that we’re truly on the right track. Only a reductionist account will assume that basic reactions (Hume?) or descriptive terms (Hobbes?) alone can make sense of social, ethical, political action and human meanings. Instead, we need an ongoing mixed discourse (Ricoeur?) in the linguistic dimension, “where the uses of either words or symbols, or expressive actions, is guided by a sense of rightness, which cannot be made simply a function of success in some (nonlinguistic) task.”
April 18, 2025
Difficult to follow. It’s possible I’m just not quite educated enough to get it, but this felt like the type of philosophical work that gives philosophy a bad name. There were some punctuated bits that were clear and useful, but >80% felt scattered and unclear.
April 8, 2016
Against a reductive philosophy, whose signature gesture is the humiliation of naive consciousness, You think this flower is beautiful, well guess what, you moron, it's just a weed that grows in feces... there' s the possibility, or hope, of a properly critical philosophy that nonetheless seeks to restore the fullness of meaning.
Would such a philosophy necessarily lead to turning one's back on modernity, rejecting the success of science and the achievements of post-enlightenment society? Another way to ask might be, Is there an alternative to instrumental reason that doesn't entail capitulating to unreason or some form of religious dogmatism?
I would say it's an open question, or even a struggle that has to be re-commenced over and over again. In my eyes the tradition of twentieth century phenomenology and hermeneutics is invaluable for its ability to address these porblems. It's a tradition I associate with the names Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and Ricoeur. Charles Taylor is maybe these thinkers' greatest living interlocutor (or at least the greatest writing in English). His own writing often serves as introduction to theirs, but it's also more than that. He writes to keep this tradition alive and extend it to new domains. With Taylor the stakes are much higher than just accurate textual explication. For all his gentle humanism, he has a keen sense of philosophy as mortal combat.
Taylor's latest is the The Language Animal. It's an imperfect book, at times rambling and unfocused. Taylor's subject is so broad that he can justify talking about virtually anything, and so what's included and what's left out can feel arbitrary (why no extended engagement with Chomsky, for instance?). I thought this was also true of his mammoth A Secular Age. Taylor's intelligence may be best served by the more compact form of the essay.
Nonetheless, I do strongly recommend this book, both to philosophical neophytes and those already familiar with these ideas. Actually, that distinction isn't very useful, as philosophy makes us all into perpetual beginners. Taylor has both the simple grace and intellectual sophistication to renew our sense of wonder.
Would such a philosophy necessarily lead to turning one's back on modernity, rejecting the success of science and the achievements of post-enlightenment society? Another way to ask might be, Is there an alternative to instrumental reason that doesn't entail capitulating to unreason or some form of religious dogmatism?
I would say it's an open question, or even a struggle that has to be re-commenced over and over again. In my eyes the tradition of twentieth century phenomenology and hermeneutics is invaluable for its ability to address these porblems. It's a tradition I associate with the names Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and Ricoeur. Charles Taylor is maybe these thinkers' greatest living interlocutor (or at least the greatest writing in English). His own writing often serves as introduction to theirs, but it's also more than that. He writes to keep this tradition alive and extend it to new domains. With Taylor the stakes are much higher than just accurate textual explication. For all his gentle humanism, he has a keen sense of philosophy as mortal combat.
Taylor's latest is the The Language Animal. It's an imperfect book, at times rambling and unfocused. Taylor's subject is so broad that he can justify talking about virtually anything, and so what's included and what's left out can feel arbitrary (why no extended engagement with Chomsky, for instance?). I thought this was also true of his mammoth A Secular Age. Taylor's intelligence may be best served by the more compact form of the essay.
Nonetheless, I do strongly recommend this book, both to philosophical neophytes and those already familiar with these ideas. Actually, that distinction isn't very useful, as philosophy makes us all into perpetual beginners. Taylor has both the simple grace and intellectual sophistication to renew our sense of wonder.
October 13, 2017
This is a phenomenal book that ought to be read by anyone curious about those things that make human beings distinctly human. It is a sophisticated, challenging read, drawing on a huge range of influences from linguistics, social science, and multiple big streams of philosophical thought. But it is well worth wrestling with.
Few people have so deep an understanding of *both* the analytic (that is, English speaking) tradition of logic and language in philosophy, *and* the continental one, and the various debates within each. Taylor in fact goes back further, showing the origins of the divide in the controversy between Romantic era theorists on the one hand, and followers of Hobbes, Locke, and Condillac on the other, on the nature of language.
Beyond getting a better sense of the broad reach of our linguistic sense, I felt he addressed many questions that, as a reader of F. A. Hayek or other proponents of tacit, in-practice knowledge, I have long struggled to get my head around. In particular, the relationship between unarticulated, ground-level knowledge on the one hand, and various forms of articulated theory on the other. Taylor shatters this simple schema in favor of several more useful ones, painting the most rich and subtle picture of how this plays out that I have ever read.
Few people have so deep an understanding of *both* the analytic (that is, English speaking) tradition of logic and language in philosophy, *and* the continental one, and the various debates within each. Taylor in fact goes back further, showing the origins of the divide in the controversy between Romantic era theorists on the one hand, and followers of Hobbes, Locke, and Condillac on the other, on the nature of language.
Beyond getting a better sense of the broad reach of our linguistic sense, I felt he addressed many questions that, as a reader of F. A. Hayek or other proponents of tacit, in-practice knowledge, I have long struggled to get my head around. In particular, the relationship between unarticulated, ground-level knowledge on the one hand, and various forms of articulated theory on the other. Taylor shatters this simple schema in favor of several more useful ones, painting the most rich and subtle picture of how this plays out that I have ever read.
i-want-money
March 25, 2016Reviewed at Prospect ::
"How words shape our world: There is gold in Charles Taylor's new work on language—a pity it's so hard to find" by Julian Baggini
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/art...
"How words shape our world: There is gold in Charles Taylor's new work on language—a pity it's so hard to find" by Julian Baggini
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/art...
May 30, 2025
The internationally recognized Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor made his mark thirty years ago with his Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity. In this influential study, he traces the origins over the past three or four centuries of the distinctive traits of modern man’s identity: inwardness, freedom, individuality and embeddedness in nature, and defends these against critics who would dismiss everything modern as but a corruption. Out of the curriculum vitae of a long career, it will suffice to point out his monumental monograph from 2007, A Secular Age, which sums up his life’s work and examines the process of secularization over the course of modernity with a view to what it must mean, spiritually, to those who set it in motion and well as to us, who inherit its denouement. Taylor’s characteristic terms of art such as the ‘cosmic imaginary’, ‘buffered identity’, ‘immanent frame’ and ‘supernova’ are introduced and discussed here.
With such an illustrious academic reputation backing him, the emeritus scholar can demand our respectful attention when he ventures into what for him is a new field, namely, linguistics. His The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity appeared in 2016 from Harvard University’s Belknap Press. Taylor intends his book as a salvo against some pretty big fish, the twentieth-century analytic philosophers who are responsible for the so-called ‘linguistic turn’, without, in Taylor’s estimation, possessing anything like an adequate understanding of what language is.
The primary contrast running throughout is between what Taylor calls the constitutive expressive theory of language, which he attributes to Hamann, Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt [HHH for short] versus the designative instrumental of Hobbes, Locke and Condillac [HLC]. Let us start with the latter, as they remained dominant in the twentieth century and still are today, with some modifications. It could also be termed an enframing approach, in that it postulates an already established societal framework in light of which linguistic terms gain their meaning; that is, the human participants have a prior understanding of what they wish to express by means of language when they take the step of inventing it. The proponents of this school regale us with just-so stories of how language could have arisen. Condillac, its most consequential representative, does distinguish between the natural sign (found in animals) versus the instituted sign, which only human beings are capable of. Thus, the picture is one in which early men reached a stage when the natural signs at their disposal became inadequate to their purposes of communication and they therefore began to institute conventional signs of their own, the beginning of language.
The problem with all this, as Taylor explains, lies in the implicit presupposition of an already prevailing order of society that could give meaning to the signs thus instituted; clearly, this is too naïve. A primary thrust of Herder’s criticism is that reflective consciousness [Besonnenheit] is itself first enabled by language. Prior to the introduction language, the first men could not have been capable of entertaining concepts that could only be expressed linguistically; the preestablished conditions giving meaning to Condillac’s instituted term are but a mirage. Hence, the need for what Taylor calls the constitutive approach, in which the development of society must proceed hand-in-hand with that of its language.
Another key point, going back to Humboldt, is holism, as in this quotation from the penultimate paragraph on p. 22: ‘But my principal point here is not that these words for roles, relations, activities, spheres, allow each of these severally to be part of our world, but rather the holistic point that our language for them situates them in relation to each other, as contrasting or alternating, or partially interpenetrating. To grasp them in language is to have some sense of how they relate. This relationality may be more or less articulate in one or other of its aspects, may be more of less clearly defined. But some sense of it is always present in human life qua linguistic’.
Thus, Locke and Condillac, who suppose a preexisting order from which linguistic terms draw their content, entirely miss the creative dimension of linguistic expression. Taylor embarks on a further exploration in chapter two on how language grows, which aims to set right a certain inadequacy Taylor discerns in Herder on his own terms. This involves a retelling of the process of language acquisition in children and focusing on its social setting, which supplies an emotional bond, exchange between child and parent and a sense of rightness to patterns of behavior in the child. A linguistic term cannot make sense to a child until he is aware of the ‘way it should be’. The constitution of self emerges from a shared take on the world, expressed through mimesis and conforming enactment (not just the same thing for Taylor).
In chapter three, Taylor goes beyond the information-encoding view of language advanced by HLC. Their view has a surface plausibility to it only because of their too-narrow focus on the uses of language; it can’t account for the ability to generate descriptive vocabulary; words are not just instruments but a medium in which we enjoy our social existence carrying with it a sense of the whole. For Taylor, the post-Fregean successors of HLC are still beholden to a Cartesian epistemology. He buttresses claims such as this with a close discussion of Frege, Davidson, Dummett and Brandom’s combinatorial approach.
But it’s not enough to criticize. Chapter five counters HLC with an exposition of the figuring dimension of language. HLC think we can build up language one term at a time and that the terms must have fixed meaning once introduced. Saussure’s field of differences and an insistence on arbitrariness of the conventional linguistic sign constitute the main trend of contemporary linguistic theory. This all may be sufficient for a scientific protocol language such as Carnap and with him the Vienna circle envisioned but not for human communication. For the latter, we would need what Taylor goes on to discuss in detail: structural templates, a penumbra of meanings, metaphor and symbol. Taylor’s instincts are on the right track here but, regrettably, he is no Cassirer! In addition to a rather weak treatment of symbolism, Taylor’s faults on display here include the following: his presentation is largely reactive [nachträglich] to positions advanced by others in the existing literature, not synthetic at all, and most of his critical points are taken from papers of others. His treatment of the linguistic problem in the present work may be useful enough as a recapitulation and refinement to a certain degree of their ideas, but this is not by any means what original thought looks like. More below.
Chapters 6-7 contain a detailed account of constitution, or the articulation of meanings. This lies at the heart of the constitutive view, for it will answer the central question, where does language as we know it come from? For Herder, we have a sense of what we want to say and are driven to invent linguistic means with which to articulate our inchoate meaning [Gefühl, daß es etwas gibt, das die Sprache nicht unmittelbar enthält, sondern der Geist, von ihr angeregt, ergänzen muß, und den Trieb, wiederum alles, was die Seele empfindet, mit dem Laut zu verknüpfen]. Humboldt, too, speaks of employing finite means to an infinite end. Taylor elaborates on this theme and kicks around the literature a bit, but what goes missing in this chapter is any coherent analytical framework or theory of the faculties of the mind into which to fit an integrated understanding of the phenomenon under discussion. Here, we can see how Taylor operates at a distinctly lower intellectual level than that of the great classic German philosophers with whom he is dealing, closer to that of the for the most part mediocre scholars whom he cites. Again, chapter eight is devoted to an account of how narrative makes meanings. A similar criticism of Taylor’s modus operandi applies to this chapter, as well.
Lastly, chapter nine advances a critique of the famous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (to the effect that one’s ability to think about the world is conditioned by the language one speaks), which admittedly has the reputation of being a rather dim star among linguists today but to which Taylor is willing to give a hearing. Roughly: the predominant dismissive view may be right about low-level constructs, but not about what really matters, the view of the world and human existence implicit within the community speaking a given language, or high-order constructs. A good point, to this reviewer. As far as he can tell, though, this is the sole original point of any substance that Taylor makes in his entire book.
Does the concluding chapter really get anywhere? For starters, the inadequacy of HLC is pretty evident anyway to one who has read HHH; does Taylor have anything of his own to add in the present work? Not really, not enough to make it worth the effort of reading. An outcome such as this turns out not to be so surprising, once we take a second look at Taylor’s overall oeuvre. Sources of the Self is structured similarly to the present work, dedicated mainly to erudite dilations on the primary and secondary literature; i.e., it does not pretend to be anything more than itself a contribution to the secondary literature. The interesting Ethics of Authenticity adopts a comparable approach to Nietzsche, Allan Bloom and Foucault; any original observations Taylor may make here are subordinate to his handling of others’ works. Only in A Secular Age do we find an historical vision of the centuries-long process of secularization of Taylor’s own contriving. Thus, it indeed represents the high point of his career, a peak that stands by itself.
An original thinker ought to have a commanding view of the existing literature and put forward an incisive critique of it based on new concepts of his own devising, not just what he gets from others, then assemble them into a grand synthesis. Taylor does nothing at all of the sort. If he had nothing really substantive and new to contribute but just wanted to convey his erudite views to a large audience, he should have written a review paper perhaps a tenth or a fifth as long as the present book. Indeed, there is somewhat of a gain of perspective upon reading his work; Taylor himself has assimilated and thought about a lot of later literature, and it would be surprising if he did not win a deeper understanding of it thereby, but his takes on HLC are for the most part nearly obvious and his critiques of HHH, where he does engage them, are superficial. Anyone reasonably intelligent can shoot off a few trivial points, here and there, upon reading something. A good graduate student could have written everything found here; it scarcely amounts to an enterprising foray of a first-class thinker at the height of his powers. The test: could a moderately educated and knowledgeable reader come to much the same realizations after reading HHH, without relying on Taylor? The present reviewer judges so. Analogy: patent examiners will award a patent only to an invention that embodies inventive concepts that are novel, useful and non-obvious to a practitioner knowledgeable in the state of the art. In other words, it’s not sufficient to delineate a few isolated observations that, technically speaking, are novel; to merit intellectual property protection, they have to go far enough beyond what anyone else could easily come up with himself. If Taylor were an inventor seeking intellectual property protection, the patent examiners would flunk this present work as unpatentable.
Final impression: if Taylor wants to make a convincing case that modernity is not quite as bad as it is cracked up to be among cultural reactionaries, why doesn’t he avail himself of his mild modern sensibilities to produce a great work of art, such as Dante does with respect to his time and medieval milieu in the Divine Comedy? After witnessing such a lackluster performance on Taylor’s part, this reviewer finds it remarkable that someone as unoriginal as Taylor could have won the Templeton prize in the first place (or is it so very remarkable after all, considering other recipients of the prize?).
So much for Charles Taylor. Let us amplify our negative judgment on the present work by a contrast with HHH. For this reviewer, Johann Georg Hamann, ever stronger as a critic than as a system-builder, is too obscure and he may be overrated by those who would rehabilitate him nowadays. Yet it can be granted that for many in our day raised on shallow Anglo-American analytic philosophical drivel, an encounter with Hamann’s profound ideas could provoke an epiphany. Johann Gottfried Herder, on the other hand, impresses this reviewer more and more with time. His groundbreaking Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit show the range to which his philosophical speculations can extend; he sets forth a systematic vision of mankind and its history that would only mount in influence during the historicist nineteenth century. This is the kind of piece that a man like Taylor can only write about, not himself produce. As for his writings on language proper, Herder’s early prize-winning treatise on the origin of language of 1772 demonstrates his promise as a speculative thinker of rank, with its concept of reflective consciousness [Besonnenheit] and analysis of the internal spiritual workings of the soul, stimulated by Plato’s dialogue, the Cratylus. But Herder reaches a summit in his late work, Eine Metakritik zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft of 1799. Here, he develops a transcendental aesthetic that seeks to explicate the spatio-temporal process through which mankind arrives at self-knowledge by means of language, via a categorial analysis of the phenomenon reminiscent of what Kant does in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft – with this difference, that Herder is keen to fasten upon the questionable assumptions implicit in Kant’s own transcendental idealist position. This is not the place to enter into a review of Herder’s philosophical position in his late phase, merely to point to how it transcends the speculative capacity [Anlage] of a limited and derivative thinker such as Taylor. Herder thought of himself as a sculptor of ideas [Bildhauer], and this would be a fair characterization. About Wilhelm von Humboldt now, this reviewer can’t say anything, not having read his writings on language as yet. To close, we must promise forthcoming reviews of Herder and Humboldt’s striking writings on language, to compensate for Taylor’s non-showing.
With such an illustrious academic reputation backing him, the emeritus scholar can demand our respectful attention when he ventures into what for him is a new field, namely, linguistics. His The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity appeared in 2016 from Harvard University’s Belknap Press. Taylor intends his book as a salvo against some pretty big fish, the twentieth-century analytic philosophers who are responsible for the so-called ‘linguistic turn’, without, in Taylor’s estimation, possessing anything like an adequate understanding of what language is.
The primary contrast running throughout is between what Taylor calls the constitutive expressive theory of language, which he attributes to Hamann, Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt [HHH for short] versus the designative instrumental of Hobbes, Locke and Condillac [HLC]. Let us start with the latter, as they remained dominant in the twentieth century and still are today, with some modifications. It could also be termed an enframing approach, in that it postulates an already established societal framework in light of which linguistic terms gain their meaning; that is, the human participants have a prior understanding of what they wish to express by means of language when they take the step of inventing it. The proponents of this school regale us with just-so stories of how language could have arisen. Condillac, its most consequential representative, does distinguish between the natural sign (found in animals) versus the instituted sign, which only human beings are capable of. Thus, the picture is one in which early men reached a stage when the natural signs at their disposal became inadequate to their purposes of communication and they therefore began to institute conventional signs of their own, the beginning of language.
The problem with all this, as Taylor explains, lies in the implicit presupposition of an already prevailing order of society that could give meaning to the signs thus instituted; clearly, this is too naïve. A primary thrust of Herder’s criticism is that reflective consciousness [Besonnenheit] is itself first enabled by language. Prior to the introduction language, the first men could not have been capable of entertaining concepts that could only be expressed linguistically; the preestablished conditions giving meaning to Condillac’s instituted term are but a mirage. Hence, the need for what Taylor calls the constitutive approach, in which the development of society must proceed hand-in-hand with that of its language.
Another key point, going back to Humboldt, is holism, as in this quotation from the penultimate paragraph on p. 22: ‘But my principal point here is not that these words for roles, relations, activities, spheres, allow each of these severally to be part of our world, but rather the holistic point that our language for them situates them in relation to each other, as contrasting or alternating, or partially interpenetrating. To grasp them in language is to have some sense of how they relate. This relationality may be more or less articulate in one or other of its aspects, may be more of less clearly defined. But some sense of it is always present in human life qua linguistic’.
Thus, Locke and Condillac, who suppose a preexisting order from which linguistic terms draw their content, entirely miss the creative dimension of linguistic expression. Taylor embarks on a further exploration in chapter two on how language grows, which aims to set right a certain inadequacy Taylor discerns in Herder on his own terms. This involves a retelling of the process of language acquisition in children and focusing on its social setting, which supplies an emotional bond, exchange between child and parent and a sense of rightness to patterns of behavior in the child. A linguistic term cannot make sense to a child until he is aware of the ‘way it should be’. The constitution of self emerges from a shared take on the world, expressed through mimesis and conforming enactment (not just the same thing for Taylor).
In chapter three, Taylor goes beyond the information-encoding view of language advanced by HLC. Their view has a surface plausibility to it only because of their too-narrow focus on the uses of language; it can’t account for the ability to generate descriptive vocabulary; words are not just instruments but a medium in which we enjoy our social existence carrying with it a sense of the whole. For Taylor, the post-Fregean successors of HLC are still beholden to a Cartesian epistemology. He buttresses claims such as this with a close discussion of Frege, Davidson, Dummett and Brandom’s combinatorial approach.
But it’s not enough to criticize. Chapter five counters HLC with an exposition of the figuring dimension of language. HLC think we can build up language one term at a time and that the terms must have fixed meaning once introduced. Saussure’s field of differences and an insistence on arbitrariness of the conventional linguistic sign constitute the main trend of contemporary linguistic theory. This all may be sufficient for a scientific protocol language such as Carnap and with him the Vienna circle envisioned but not for human communication. For the latter, we would need what Taylor goes on to discuss in detail: structural templates, a penumbra of meanings, metaphor and symbol. Taylor’s instincts are on the right track here but, regrettably, he is no Cassirer! In addition to a rather weak treatment of symbolism, Taylor’s faults on display here include the following: his presentation is largely reactive [nachträglich] to positions advanced by others in the existing literature, not synthetic at all, and most of his critical points are taken from papers of others. His treatment of the linguistic problem in the present work may be useful enough as a recapitulation and refinement to a certain degree of their ideas, but this is not by any means what original thought looks like. More below.
Chapters 6-7 contain a detailed account of constitution, or the articulation of meanings. This lies at the heart of the constitutive view, for it will answer the central question, where does language as we know it come from? For Herder, we have a sense of what we want to say and are driven to invent linguistic means with which to articulate our inchoate meaning [Gefühl, daß es etwas gibt, das die Sprache nicht unmittelbar enthält, sondern der Geist, von ihr angeregt, ergänzen muß, und den Trieb, wiederum alles, was die Seele empfindet, mit dem Laut zu verknüpfen]. Humboldt, too, speaks of employing finite means to an infinite end. Taylor elaborates on this theme and kicks around the literature a bit, but what goes missing in this chapter is any coherent analytical framework or theory of the faculties of the mind into which to fit an integrated understanding of the phenomenon under discussion. Here, we can see how Taylor operates at a distinctly lower intellectual level than that of the great classic German philosophers with whom he is dealing, closer to that of the for the most part mediocre scholars whom he cites. Again, chapter eight is devoted to an account of how narrative makes meanings. A similar criticism of Taylor’s modus operandi applies to this chapter, as well.
Lastly, chapter nine advances a critique of the famous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (to the effect that one’s ability to think about the world is conditioned by the language one speaks), which admittedly has the reputation of being a rather dim star among linguists today but to which Taylor is willing to give a hearing. Roughly: the predominant dismissive view may be right about low-level constructs, but not about what really matters, the view of the world and human existence implicit within the community speaking a given language, or high-order constructs. A good point, to this reviewer. As far as he can tell, though, this is the sole original point of any substance that Taylor makes in his entire book.
Does the concluding chapter really get anywhere? For starters, the inadequacy of HLC is pretty evident anyway to one who has read HHH; does Taylor have anything of his own to add in the present work? Not really, not enough to make it worth the effort of reading. An outcome such as this turns out not to be so surprising, once we take a second look at Taylor’s overall oeuvre. Sources of the Self is structured similarly to the present work, dedicated mainly to erudite dilations on the primary and secondary literature; i.e., it does not pretend to be anything more than itself a contribution to the secondary literature. The interesting Ethics of Authenticity adopts a comparable approach to Nietzsche, Allan Bloom and Foucault; any original observations Taylor may make here are subordinate to his handling of others’ works. Only in A Secular Age do we find an historical vision of the centuries-long process of secularization of Taylor’s own contriving. Thus, it indeed represents the high point of his career, a peak that stands by itself.
An original thinker ought to have a commanding view of the existing literature and put forward an incisive critique of it based on new concepts of his own devising, not just what he gets from others, then assemble them into a grand synthesis. Taylor does nothing at all of the sort. If he had nothing really substantive and new to contribute but just wanted to convey his erudite views to a large audience, he should have written a review paper perhaps a tenth or a fifth as long as the present book. Indeed, there is somewhat of a gain of perspective upon reading his work; Taylor himself has assimilated and thought about a lot of later literature, and it would be surprising if he did not win a deeper understanding of it thereby, but his takes on HLC are for the most part nearly obvious and his critiques of HHH, where he does engage them, are superficial. Anyone reasonably intelligent can shoot off a few trivial points, here and there, upon reading something. A good graduate student could have written everything found here; it scarcely amounts to an enterprising foray of a first-class thinker at the height of his powers. The test: could a moderately educated and knowledgeable reader come to much the same realizations after reading HHH, without relying on Taylor? The present reviewer judges so. Analogy: patent examiners will award a patent only to an invention that embodies inventive concepts that are novel, useful and non-obvious to a practitioner knowledgeable in the state of the art. In other words, it’s not sufficient to delineate a few isolated observations that, technically speaking, are novel; to merit intellectual property protection, they have to go far enough beyond what anyone else could easily come up with himself. If Taylor were an inventor seeking intellectual property protection, the patent examiners would flunk this present work as unpatentable.
Final impression: if Taylor wants to make a convincing case that modernity is not quite as bad as it is cracked up to be among cultural reactionaries, why doesn’t he avail himself of his mild modern sensibilities to produce a great work of art, such as Dante does with respect to his time and medieval milieu in the Divine Comedy? After witnessing such a lackluster performance on Taylor’s part, this reviewer finds it remarkable that someone as unoriginal as Taylor could have won the Templeton prize in the first place (or is it so very remarkable after all, considering other recipients of the prize?).
So much for Charles Taylor. Let us amplify our negative judgment on the present work by a contrast with HHH. For this reviewer, Johann Georg Hamann, ever stronger as a critic than as a system-builder, is too obscure and he may be overrated by those who would rehabilitate him nowadays. Yet it can be granted that for many in our day raised on shallow Anglo-American analytic philosophical drivel, an encounter with Hamann’s profound ideas could provoke an epiphany. Johann Gottfried Herder, on the other hand, impresses this reviewer more and more with time. His groundbreaking Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit show the range to which his philosophical speculations can extend; he sets forth a systematic vision of mankind and its history that would only mount in influence during the historicist nineteenth century. This is the kind of piece that a man like Taylor can only write about, not himself produce. As for his writings on language proper, Herder’s early prize-winning treatise on the origin of language of 1772 demonstrates his promise as a speculative thinker of rank, with its concept of reflective consciousness [Besonnenheit] and analysis of the internal spiritual workings of the soul, stimulated by Plato’s dialogue, the Cratylus. But Herder reaches a summit in his late work, Eine Metakritik zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft of 1799. Here, he develops a transcendental aesthetic that seeks to explicate the spatio-temporal process through which mankind arrives at self-knowledge by means of language, via a categorial analysis of the phenomenon reminiscent of what Kant does in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft – with this difference, that Herder is keen to fasten upon the questionable assumptions implicit in Kant’s own transcendental idealist position. This is not the place to enter into a review of Herder’s philosophical position in his late phase, merely to point to how it transcends the speculative capacity [Anlage] of a limited and derivative thinker such as Taylor. Herder thought of himself as a sculptor of ideas [Bildhauer], and this would be a fair characterization. About Wilhelm von Humboldt now, this reviewer can’t say anything, not having read his writings on language as yet. To close, we must promise forthcoming reviews of Herder and Humboldt’s striking writings on language, to compensate for Taylor’s non-showing.
July 31, 2016
This is not a good book. Or an enjoyable one.
I am giving two stars, not one, because I only made it through the first 200 pages + the conclusion. There is a small chance there is some redeeming quality in the other 150 pages, but I doubt it.
Taylor's stubborn refusal to understand or meaningfully engage with any "lit theory" thinker is obvious and annoying. He entirely dismisses Derrida as an "obsessive," and, with that, doesn't bother arguing anything. He seemingly has no conception of Saussure. He dedicates a lot--A LOT--of ink to arguing against the "Saussureian" model of "arbitrariness," but seems to think that arbitrariness is voluntarism. Saussure admits in a few lines what Taylor devotes many pages to--there are levels of arbitrariness. More importantly, he says that Saussure thought of language as "aligning differential signs with differential signifiers." This is not right, and isn't really close. It's an amateur and lazy misreading. He almost never cites Saussure, but constantly keeps a shadow of Saussure around as a strawman.
Oh, also, Taylor loves numbering all of his points and inventing acronyms. Why? Why does he call the "constitutive-designative" theory of language (as if there is such a monolithic theory) the "HHH" theory, as if Herder and friends all endorsed the same thing? Marcuse said people use acronyms to hide things, and he is right. At other times, his "obsessive" numbering of points and subpoints made me think that he forgot to unpack an outline.
If I wrote this book, it wouldn't have been published. No way.
I am giving two stars, not one, because I only made it through the first 200 pages + the conclusion. There is a small chance there is some redeeming quality in the other 150 pages, but I doubt it.
Taylor's stubborn refusal to understand or meaningfully engage with any "lit theory" thinker is obvious and annoying. He entirely dismisses Derrida as an "obsessive," and, with that, doesn't bother arguing anything. He seemingly has no conception of Saussure. He dedicates a lot--A LOT--of ink to arguing against the "Saussureian" model of "arbitrariness," but seems to think that arbitrariness is voluntarism. Saussure admits in a few lines what Taylor devotes many pages to--there are levels of arbitrariness. More importantly, he says that Saussure thought of language as "aligning differential signs with differential signifiers." This is not right, and isn't really close. It's an amateur and lazy misreading. He almost never cites Saussure, but constantly keeps a shadow of Saussure around as a strawman.
Oh, also, Taylor loves numbering all of his points and inventing acronyms. Why? Why does he call the "constitutive-designative" theory of language (as if there is such a monolithic theory) the "HHH" theory, as if Herder and friends all endorsed the same thing? Marcuse said people use acronyms to hide things, and he is right. At other times, his "obsessive" numbering of points and subpoints made me think that he forgot to unpack an outline.
If I wrote this book, it wouldn't have been published. No way.
December 7, 2016
Charles Taylor has always struck me as one of the most genuinely brilliant, curious, and helpful philosophers of our time. While "The Language Animal" is certainly not his best work, you can hardly fault the man when you consider his output, his activity as an international lecturer, and his age (the man has still got it at 85!). In "The Language Animal," Taylor begins the project of proposing (or perhaps merely recovering) what he calls the 'HHH' model of language. He opposes the HHH (standing for Herder, Hamann, and Humboldt) to the 'HLC' model of language (standing for Hobbes, Locke, and Condillac). Essentially, he is proposing a view of language in the HHH model as constitutive of meaning rather than designative. Taylor is interested in articulating an account of language which does not understand language as a system of signs which are affixed to particular datums of meaning and then function as the courier system for moving these datums about. This is what he takes the HLC model to be and he sees most philosophy of language post-Frege as fundamentally accepting this model of language (albeit with more sophistication in that it considers the necessity of lexical and grammatical context rather than mere words on their own). Instead, Taylor sees language as functioning as a means of actually discovering and creating meaning. He's asking the question, How can language actually facilitate the discovery of new meaning? Further, he is exceedingly interested in the bodily and communal aspect of language. He sees language as inextricably bound up in the bodily practices of a community and social webs of meaning. He uses the example of a motorcyclist. The motorcyclist through their bodily and communal practice represents for us a distinct and unique mode of being in the world, but this mode of being did not exist prior to being opened up or proposed within its distinct linguistic community. Thus, language is more than just a sign system, but a way of being in the world and of creating and enacting meaning within a community.
October 20, 2020
To read Charles Taylor is to willingly subject yourself to intense, unyielding vertigo. The distinctions and directions Taylor gives are endless: numbered lists, parentheses, acronyms, references, numbered lists within numbered lists—and so many prepositions. His writing directs the reader everywhere but forward. It was far too easy to lose track of his argument. Maybe this sort of writing is serious, scholarly writing, but maybe not. Maybe it’s just dizzying and lacking clarity. The most disappointing part about reading this though was not wading through the confusion. It was finding his argument unpersuasive and unimpressive after exerting all that energy.
The book attempts to give a full account of the human capacity for language. Humans are distinct among animals because of their capacity for language. All human progress—social, economic, scientific, technological—is made possible by language. It’s a very interesting question, then: what makes human language unique? What even is language? Taylor argues that language is spoken and written, enacted and portrayed. Music and art, metaphor and poetry, all these belong to the realm of language, and they belong just as properly as descriptive words do. Language is not merely the encoding of information by symbols, arbitrarily designating mental concepts; It is creative and formative. Language isn’t a tool that we pick up and put down at our convenience; It is essential to human experience, shaping it and making certain experiences possible.
Taylor lost me about halfway through, and finishing the last quarter took some real perseverance. I became uninterested. I wasn’t convinced that music and art are in fact language. And if they are, it’s merely by defining language to include them. An interesting topic delivered poorly. Anyways, I think Wittgenstein and Heiddeger agree with Taylor—so there’s that.
The book attempts to give a full account of the human capacity for language. Humans are distinct among animals because of their capacity for language. All human progress—social, economic, scientific, technological—is made possible by language. It’s a very interesting question, then: what makes human language unique? What even is language? Taylor argues that language is spoken and written, enacted and portrayed. Music and art, metaphor and poetry, all these belong to the realm of language, and they belong just as properly as descriptive words do. Language is not merely the encoding of information by symbols, arbitrarily designating mental concepts; It is creative and formative. Language isn’t a tool that we pick up and put down at our convenience; It is essential to human experience, shaping it and making certain experiences possible.
Taylor lost me about halfway through, and finishing the last quarter took some real perseverance. I became uninterested. I wasn’t convinced that music and art are in fact language. And if they are, it’s merely by defining language to include them. An interesting topic delivered poorly. Anyways, I think Wittgenstein and Heiddeger agree with Taylor—so there’s that.
Want to read
May 21, 2016Thoughts by Kevin Vanhoozer.
April 22, 2025
This book was jargon-filled, incredibly hard to read, and I ended up skipping some parts of it out of boredom. But I read enough to be persuaded by the author's main argument. Our language can mislead us, but this is more likely in some situations and less likely in others.
Language is more likely to mislead us when we talk about things we don't understand (like a festival in a culture we are unfamiliar with), or if we try to describe our subjective feelings. In these situations, it's hard for us to objectively verify the truth of our statements, so we might be fooled by words that place too much emphasis on one part of a concept, but not others.
I think this concern is relevant to discussions of scientific mysteries like dark matter, consciousness, or time. I also think it's a concern in advertising, where it's very common to see deliberately misleading language ("only $9.99," or "light" cigarettes). We need to beware of vague or manipulative language in these cases, or we will be fooled.
Language is more likely to mislead us when we talk about things we don't understand (like a festival in a culture we are unfamiliar with), or if we try to describe our subjective feelings. In these situations, it's hard for us to objectively verify the truth of our statements, so we might be fooled by words that place too much emphasis on one part of a concept, but not others.
I think this concern is relevant to discussions of scientific mysteries like dark matter, consciousness, or time. I also think it's a concern in advertising, where it's very common to see deliberately misleading language ("only $9.99," or "light" cigarettes). We need to beware of vague or manipulative language in these cases, or we will be fooled.
March 9, 2018
This is a rich and rewarding book. It brings together and develops Taylor's insights concerning language found in a number of his early papers (as well in his Hegel book). What does Taylor accomplish?
According to Taylor language is much more than referring to objects already identifiable in the world. It is first and foremost and means of expressing one's mode of being in the world, one's way of relating to the world and other persons, this creates new 'objects' that can be identified linguistically. Taylor uses the example of a biker whose machismo is first expressed in his gait and way of presenting himself. Out of this mode of being, the biker can describe people and entities in various ways that cannot be said to preexist this mode relating. This way of describing things is constitutive of these entities, so dudes, chicks, and hogs, are not merely given but are only given in terms of this manner of being in the world. Taylor's extended defense of these ideas takes them into a range of different contexts and is unparalleled.
Taylor convincingly shows that Davidson's Tarski-style theory of meaning, where axioms defining truth conditions for a set of sentences serve as the basis for grasping the meaning of any sentence in a given language, is inadequate because of its thin account of metaphor. Davidson's theory fails to account for what Taylor calls 'figuring,' whereby metaphors are used to extend meaning by expressing characteristics of some phenomenon that are not adequately characterized linguistically (at a given point in the development of a language). Davidson's account, Taylor argues, also fails to account for the constitutive function of language whereby norm-governed relationships and statuses are created. In making this second criticism, Taylor is close to MacIntyre, who has argued that Davidson fails to account for incommensurability between different languages. Arguably, Taylor provides a basis for MacIntyre's claims by showing how constitutive notions (statuses, etc.) are expressions of more fundamental ways of being and relating to the world and other persons. Because constitutive notions are expressive of these more fundamental modes of being, Taylor's view seems to be, there may be no way to account for differences of meaning merely in terms of differences in truth conditions. This is the case, particularly, when one moves from discussing objects found in nature, plants, animals, etc, to discussing issues like freedom, democracy, or monarchy. In this case, an understanding of the expressive and constitutive functions of language are needed, Taylor argues, to understand radical differences between language.
Aside from this particular debate with Davidson, Taylor's account is relevant to issues in ethics and the philosophy of action. His defense of narrative also complement's MacIntyre's account in his most recent book. His discussion of the expressive role of music is fascinating.
It would have been very good of Taylor to develop his critique of Davidson's theory of meaning more explicitly. Specifically, it remains unclear whether or to what extent Davidson's account fails to account for the constitutive dimension of language. Similarly, it remains unclear whether Brandom's account (which Taylor also targets at key points in the book) is unable to incorporate Taylor's insights. None of this is to say that Taylor's has not succeeded in providing a novel and compelling account of language that displaces its referential function but more can be said to show to what extent Taylor offers a radical critique of analytic theories of language and to what extent they are unable to account for or incorporate his insights.
According to Taylor language is much more than referring to objects already identifiable in the world. It is first and foremost and means of expressing one's mode of being in the world, one's way of relating to the world and other persons, this creates new 'objects' that can be identified linguistically. Taylor uses the example of a biker whose machismo is first expressed in his gait and way of presenting himself. Out of this mode of being, the biker can describe people and entities in various ways that cannot be said to preexist this mode relating. This way of describing things is constitutive of these entities, so dudes, chicks, and hogs, are not merely given but are only given in terms of this manner of being in the world. Taylor's extended defense of these ideas takes them into a range of different contexts and is unparalleled.
Taylor convincingly shows that Davidson's Tarski-style theory of meaning, where axioms defining truth conditions for a set of sentences serve as the basis for grasping the meaning of any sentence in a given language, is inadequate because of its thin account of metaphor. Davidson's theory fails to account for what Taylor calls 'figuring,' whereby metaphors are used to extend meaning by expressing characteristics of some phenomenon that are not adequately characterized linguistically (at a given point in the development of a language). Davidson's account, Taylor argues, also fails to account for the constitutive function of language whereby norm-governed relationships and statuses are created. In making this second criticism, Taylor is close to MacIntyre, who has argued that Davidson fails to account for incommensurability between different languages. Arguably, Taylor provides a basis for MacIntyre's claims by showing how constitutive notions (statuses, etc.) are expressions of more fundamental ways of being and relating to the world and other persons. Because constitutive notions are expressive of these more fundamental modes of being, Taylor's view seems to be, there may be no way to account for differences of meaning merely in terms of differences in truth conditions. This is the case, particularly, when one moves from discussing objects found in nature, plants, animals, etc, to discussing issues like freedom, democracy, or monarchy. In this case, an understanding of the expressive and constitutive functions of language are needed, Taylor argues, to understand radical differences between language.
Aside from this particular debate with Davidson, Taylor's account is relevant to issues in ethics and the philosophy of action. His defense of narrative also complement's MacIntyre's account in his most recent book. His discussion of the expressive role of music is fascinating.
It would have been very good of Taylor to develop his critique of Davidson's theory of meaning more explicitly. Specifically, it remains unclear whether or to what extent Davidson's account fails to account for the constitutive dimension of language. Similarly, it remains unclear whether Brandom's account (which Taylor also targets at key points in the book) is unable to incorporate Taylor's insights. None of this is to say that Taylor's has not succeeded in providing a novel and compelling account of language that displaces its referential function but more can be said to show to what extent Taylor offers a radical critique of analytic theories of language and to what extent they are unable to account for or incorporate his insights.
February 6, 2018
Charles Taylor, 2016: “The Language animal. The full shape of the human linguistic capacity.” (Belknap Press, Cambridge et al.) is the first of two volumes on this topic and I’m looking forward to the 2nd one, which will go into the positives of the Haman, Herder and Humboldt trilogy (HHH). That of course is much more exiting than this preliminary volume, which addresses adept the fallacies of the other trinity Hobbes, Locke and Condillac (HLC), which was so influential on the reductionist views on language predominant today in “analytic post-Fregean philosophy, as well as some branches of cognitive theory” (Preface). Instead of a signative, utilitarian and pragmatic view, he promotes a performative, hermeneutical and fundamental view of language – the entire business of language - (“Das ganze Ding Sprache” Herder Pg.19), which creates and constitutes a space/room (“Haus des Seins”: Heidegger) for reflection (“Besonnenheit” Herder Pg.6) – verbal, enactive and portrayal (“darstellen” Pg.333), but also flexibility in creativity, particularity, but the terrible option of radical evil. “Language remains in many ways a mysterious thing.” (Pg. 341) Wilhelm von Humboldt touches on this, when he writes in his “Schriften zur Sprache”: “Man kann die Sprache mit einem ungeheuren Gewebe vergleichen in dem jeder Teil mit dem anderen und all mit dem ganzen in mehr oder weniger deutlich erkennbaren Zusammenhange stehen. Der Mensch berührt im sprechen, von welchen Beziehungen man ausgehen mag, immer nur ein abgesonderten Teil des Gewebes, tut dies aber instinktartig immer dergestalt, als wären ihm zugleich alle, mit welchem jener einzelne notwendig in {Übereinstimmung stehen muss, in gleichem Augenblick gegenwärtig.“ (Pg.20)
More than the apt critique of utilitarian reduction, I was fascinated by the allusions and elaborations of the things to come e.g. the examples from Dostojevsky’s “Devils” and “Brothers Karamazov), but also Thomas Mann’s “Zauberberg”. Or his seminal discussion of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro”, the impressive and upsetting film “Clockwork Orange” (Anthony Burgess), but also of the political upheavals gathered on Tahir square. He goes into the creative force of discourse (Pg.264ff) and the ability to express (“ausdrücken”) and experience (“erleben”). Doesn’t ignore the important lessons taught by “hermeneutics of suspicion” (Marx, Nietzsche and Freud Pg. 226), but is not too exclusive as to not mention Pope John Paul II (Pg.222), refer to this or that proverb, priest and bishop too even as he involves Ayn Rand (Pg.220f) and other admirers of the ideologically overrated and hopelessly magnified/glorified “Übermenschen”, who is not our salvation, but rather our nemesis and counterfeit. Still, that get’s the discussion really going and I’m grateful, MT doesn’t sidestep the burning issues. As I mentioned, these relevant questions are on the table for the 2nd volume. MT promises to address Bergson “Time and Free Will: An Essay on the immediate data of consciousness”, Heidegger “Sein und Zeit”, Paul Ricoeur “Temps et Recit”.
Friedrich Hölderlin writes in his „Versöhnender, der du nimmergeglaubt“: „Seit ein Gespräch wir sind / und hören voneinander.“ (Pg. 58) So, I’m anticipating to hear again from MT as he addresses the linguistic issues at hand.
More than the apt critique of utilitarian reduction, I was fascinated by the allusions and elaborations of the things to come e.g. the examples from Dostojevsky’s “Devils” and “Brothers Karamazov), but also Thomas Mann’s “Zauberberg”. Or his seminal discussion of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro”, the impressive and upsetting film “Clockwork Orange” (Anthony Burgess), but also of the political upheavals gathered on Tahir square. He goes into the creative force of discourse (Pg.264ff) and the ability to express (“ausdrücken”) and experience (“erleben”). Doesn’t ignore the important lessons taught by “hermeneutics of suspicion” (Marx, Nietzsche and Freud Pg. 226), but is not too exclusive as to not mention Pope John Paul II (Pg.222), refer to this or that proverb, priest and bishop too even as he involves Ayn Rand (Pg.220f) and other admirers of the ideologically overrated and hopelessly magnified/glorified “Übermenschen”, who is not our salvation, but rather our nemesis and counterfeit. Still, that get’s the discussion really going and I’m grateful, MT doesn’t sidestep the burning issues. As I mentioned, these relevant questions are on the table for the 2nd volume. MT promises to address Bergson “Time and Free Will: An Essay on the immediate data of consciousness”, Heidegger “Sein und Zeit”, Paul Ricoeur “Temps et Recit”.
Friedrich Hölderlin writes in his „Versöhnender, der du nimmergeglaubt“: „Seit ein Gespräch wir sind / und hören voneinander.“ (Pg. 58) So, I’m anticipating to hear again from MT as he addresses the linguistic issues at hand.
August 22, 2016
Huge strides forward understanding analytic philosophy in relation to continental philosophy after reading this book. I really anticipate the companion volume Taylor has proposed. This book gave me a better understanding of what I do when I engage enacting language/gestures to constitute further footings for meaning. It heightened my awareness and application for hermeneutics, I understand a bit more what I'm doing when I'm interpreting. The books is a nice sideways introduction to later Heidegger. I feel that I am reading more fully, listening to music more carefully, seeing films in greater depth, understanding that the language I use while engaging the beautiful is not merely depictive but also constitutive of subsequent meaning and experience.
September 4, 2019
This is a more challenging read to understand than The Secular Age or Sources of Self because it is an argument for a view of language based on German Romantic philosophers (HHH in the worker drawing on the works of Hamann, Herder and Humbolt) and against modern epistemological theories (HLC drawing on the works of Hobbes, Locke and Condillac). I don't have a background in these authors and so I felt like I was constantly trying to understand not only his arguments about these proposals but the proposals himself. There are some insightful discussions about language, ritual, art and several other topics and I learned a lot from reading this but I'll also be honest enough to say I'm not sure I fully understood the discussion as well.
July 10, 2024
Charles Taylor hardly needs an introduction or an apology. His work, especially in the nineties and early 2000s (with A Secular Age) is epoch-making, paradigm-shifting. So, when I approached this 2016 book that purportedly explores the human capacity for language, contrasting what Taylor terms the "HLC" (Hobbes, Locke, Condillac) approach with the "HHH" approach (Hamann, Herder, Humboldt), I was fully expecting an original - even monumental - contribution to the philosophy of language. Instead I found a ponderous, repetitive re-hashing of other seminal scholars' work (Gopnik, Sapir, Whorf) with added snippets of insight from Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger. I did not find this to be an engaging work, especially because Taylor has the habit of re-directing his readers to previous/future footnotes and to previous/future chapters all the time, on virtually every page! And he has the habit, in this work at least, of continually hinting at a future "companion study" that will deal with "post-Romantic" views, picking up and developing the HHH view. Finally, the other thing I find annoying in Taylor's writing is his flurry of examples which distract or even obscure more than they elucidate. I eventually got tired of reading about the "macho biker" over and over again.
Now, what Taylor actually does say is certainly important, though not ground-breaking - especially because his point is that so much of contemporary philosophy of language (in his circles, at least) is already found, in embryonic form, in Hamann, Herder, and Humboldt. These three thinkers were geniuses, and they saw - at a time when few others did - that language constitutes our reality, rather than neutrally describing it. This is the main argument in the book; the HHH view is truer to life than the HLC view. The HLC, or classic "Enlightenment" view of language is that it is a useful instrument to define and communicate knowledge (90). The HHH, or more "Romantic" view of language is that it is our human medium; it creates a context in which we live life; it is a feature of what we are (90). Like art and music, language is not a mere "delivery vehicle" for information that could otherwise be given in succinct "bullet points." Rather, art, language, and music are irreducible; any attempt at "translation" from medium to medium ends up losing and reducing (while perhaps also gaining something else). Language is a part of our life-world and helps to build it.
Taylor does not explore the constitutive parts of the HHH (the thinkers: Hamann, Herder, Humboldt) as well as readers might hope for. Indeed, Taylor seems to be most concerned with Herder's particular view of the "reflectiveness" (Besonnenheit) of language, by which he means each word in a given language 'fits' and 'feels right' because it is part of a vast skein or web of other words, terms, expressions, grammar, syntax, and style. One simply cannot reduce a language to individual words that were 'invented' at different times and then put together in combinations. Rather, the part already needs (or assumes) the whole to work. Hamann and the others saw this, though Taylor doesn't really flesh out each man's contribution (and genius) to his thesis. The lumping together and generalizations might be troublesome to readers and scholars.
I'll end with some helpful quotes, to illustrate Taylor's general idea for the book:
"... a term gets its meaning only in the field of its contrasts" (20).
"... words can't be acquired [the way chimps learn simple commands]. A word only makes sense within a whole language; just as our sense of what we can say is always bounded by our recurrent experience of what cannot (yet) be said; and our grasp on particular things and situations exists on a background of the larger whole of which these things and situations are segments. There is a triple holism here, which is quite absent in the signing capacity that chimpanzees master" (87).
"But besides conferring this capacity to create vocabulary, becoming linguistic animals alters our way of being in the world, and with each other. The information-coding view tends to see language as providing immensely useful instruments for defining and communicating knowledge about the world. But language creates a context for human life and action, including speech, which deserves attention in its own right. We rate to this context not only, or even primarily, as to an instrument which we can pick up or lay down. Rather it is the medium we are in; a feature of what we are. It opens for us other dimensions of existence, which we cannot ignore if we want to understand the nature of language and of our existence in language. It is these dimensions that are often overlooked when we focus on description, or coding information, as the central function of language" (90).
"A work of art which was 'allegorical' presented us with some insight or truth which we could also have access to more directly. An allegory of virtue and vice as two animals, say, will tell us something which could also be formulated in propositions about virtue and vice. By contrast a work of art had the value of a symbol when it manifested something which could not be thus 'translated'. It opens access to meanings which cannot be made available in any other way. Each truly great work is in this way sui genesis. It is untranslatable" (234).
"The basic thesis of this book is that language can only be understood if we understand its constitutive role in human life" (261).
Now, what Taylor actually does say is certainly important, though not ground-breaking - especially because his point is that so much of contemporary philosophy of language (in his circles, at least) is already found, in embryonic form, in Hamann, Herder, and Humboldt. These three thinkers were geniuses, and they saw - at a time when few others did - that language constitutes our reality, rather than neutrally describing it. This is the main argument in the book; the HHH view is truer to life than the HLC view. The HLC, or classic "Enlightenment" view of language is that it is a useful instrument to define and communicate knowledge (90). The HHH, or more "Romantic" view of language is that it is our human medium; it creates a context in which we live life; it is a feature of what we are (90). Like art and music, language is not a mere "delivery vehicle" for information that could otherwise be given in succinct "bullet points." Rather, art, language, and music are irreducible; any attempt at "translation" from medium to medium ends up losing and reducing (while perhaps also gaining something else). Language is a part of our life-world and helps to build it.
Taylor does not explore the constitutive parts of the HHH (the thinkers: Hamann, Herder, Humboldt) as well as readers might hope for. Indeed, Taylor seems to be most concerned with Herder's particular view of the "reflectiveness" (Besonnenheit) of language, by which he means each word in a given language 'fits' and 'feels right' because it is part of a vast skein or web of other words, terms, expressions, grammar, syntax, and style. One simply cannot reduce a language to individual words that were 'invented' at different times and then put together in combinations. Rather, the part already needs (or assumes) the whole to work. Hamann and the others saw this, though Taylor doesn't really flesh out each man's contribution (and genius) to his thesis. The lumping together and generalizations might be troublesome to readers and scholars.
I'll end with some helpful quotes, to illustrate Taylor's general idea for the book:
"... a term gets its meaning only in the field of its contrasts" (20).
"... words can't be acquired [the way chimps learn simple commands]. A word only makes sense within a whole language; just as our sense of what we can say is always bounded by our recurrent experience of what cannot (yet) be said; and our grasp on particular things and situations exists on a background of the larger whole of which these things and situations are segments. There is a triple holism here, which is quite absent in the signing capacity that chimpanzees master" (87).
"But besides conferring this capacity to create vocabulary, becoming linguistic animals alters our way of being in the world, and with each other. The information-coding view tends to see language as providing immensely useful instruments for defining and communicating knowledge about the world. But language creates a context for human life and action, including speech, which deserves attention in its own right. We rate to this context not only, or even primarily, as to an instrument which we can pick up or lay down. Rather it is the medium we are in; a feature of what we are. It opens for us other dimensions of existence, which we cannot ignore if we want to understand the nature of language and of our existence in language. It is these dimensions that are often overlooked when we focus on description, or coding information, as the central function of language" (90).
"A work of art which was 'allegorical' presented us with some insight or truth which we could also have access to more directly. An allegory of virtue and vice as two animals, say, will tell us something which could also be formulated in propositions about virtue and vice. By contrast a work of art had the value of a symbol when it manifested something which could not be thus 'translated'. It opens access to meanings which cannot be made available in any other way. Each truly great work is in this way sui genesis. It is untranslatable" (234).
"The basic thesis of this book is that language can only be understood if we understand its constitutive role in human life" (261).
December 25, 2017
Slow reading in much of this book, but many of the Taylor's insights are great. The last chapter (Conclusion) is the best chapter. The book may have been better if the conclusion were read first as it shows exactly what Taylor wants to discuss. The conclusion also indicates why the whole book is important--how do you reconcile the contrary beliefs of different peoples? Not as packed with insight or as fun to read as Sources of the Self or A Secular Age, but perhaps as important.
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Read
May 6, 2016401 T2392 2016
May 24, 2016
This is simply a review of some of the relevant texts on the given theme.
February 8, 2018
This was super interesting at points but god damn it just got too long and too boring. I ended up just skipping the last 150 pages and read the conclusion to finish it out.
January 1, 2020
Taylor argues that language should be understood according to two distinct "logics"; language can describe v. enact/constitute phenomena. The tradition of understanding language as essentially a tool for description is represented by Hobbes, Locke, and Condillac. The tradition of understanding language as also being a medium for experience itself or as a tool for creating new phenomena is represented by Hamann, Herder, and Humbolt. This latter tradition is too often overlooked in the philosophy of language.
This enactive function of language can be understood across a range of registers. At an occurrent, personal level, we can use language to express something we have felt or experienced. This act of articulation, while working with pre-existing elements of feeling, also creates new features of the feeling that we experience. Articulation in this kind of case blurs the line between invention and discovery; language is used to express something prior and simultaneously re-constitutes that prior. At a societal level, language can also be used to discover new ways of living, new ways to look at and care about the world. Ethics is all about evaluating how we live and aspiring to higher ways of life; so language has a critical role in discovering/inventing ways of life.
Intrinsic to these two logics are two distinct systems of evaluation. In the descriptive logical mode of language, we assess descriptions on the basis of representational accuracy; binary truth conditions come out from this. In the enactive logical mode, there are no clear criteria of evaluation, although often we assess enactive uses of language on the basis of whether they succeed at the purposes that motivated them. It is also hugely dependent on the particular medium and genre of language use. If we write an allegory, for example, we might assess it on the basis of how well it conveys certain moral messages. If we pronounce two partners as now married, we might assess this linguistic act on the basis of whether it succeeds at transforming the normative structure of their relationship. It is less clear what sorts of criteria of assessment are appropriate to evaluating linguistically based artwork (e.g. poetry).
Taylor sketches out the origins of language in the phylogenetic history of humanity. He traces language back to a more general capacity of mimesis, mimicking previously observed events. Notably, mimesis is usually not aimed at accuracy of representation, but rather is carried forward with social, moral, or political intentions. Taylor compares language with ritual, as in mimetic practices that are performed for the sake of making changes in the world, the natural or social orders. He also compares language with play, understood as the capacities that many mammals have to pretend or act as if they are engaged in some vital activity (e.g., fighting, hunting), but are not engaged in the act in the way in which they would if done seriously or directly.
Such play, according to Taylor, manifest mimetic or representational capacities, which are the phylogenetic predecessors of human language. In this light, our human linguistic capacities should be understood as accounting for not only descriptive and enactive uses of language, but also for our various artistic practices that utilize different media. We can better understand the nature of language by examining music and painting, for example.
This book is sprinkled with many insights. I especially appreciated chapter 6, in which Taylor examines language for its capacities to describe v. enact v. portray; he goes into examining the expressive nature of artwork, from novels to symphonies, to clarify these distinctions. This is a critical point about language; it is a phenomenological fact that confiding in a friend about something, or reading a novel that gives you an epiphany, does not only change how we see the world, but changes the very possibilities of the ways by which the world shows up. These are just extreme examples, and this fact holds for many everyday uses of language.
I think it is wrong, however, for Taylor to out the scientific revolution as the foundation of a descriptive mode of language use, and to hold that this mode is fundamentally different from the mode by which artworks operate. While it is true that scientific descriptions and artistic expressions differ in the kinds of standards of truth that are applicable to each, these two also share deep commonalities. Particularly, they share this enactive function of language that is Taylor's focus; scientific descriptions do not objectively latch onto the world, but also create ways by which the world can appear to us (I am thinking of Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking; it's a beautiful book that captures the dimensions by which artistic and scientific representations are continuous with one another).
I also enjoyed chapter 2, in which Taylor examines myth as it functioned in human society historically; he makes a case about the different epistemological norms that marked that time, according to which myth cannot be understood as fiction or fact. Taylor uses that ancient epistemology as the bedrock from which we should derive norms for assessing enactive uses of language more generally.
Unfortunately, however, Taylor's book is not focused. While I found these to be his important theses about language, he dedicates only two chapters to them. The other 8 chapters discuss (or more like ramble) about a range of phenomena, mostly characterizable as discourse in meta-ethics. Taylor is concerned with the problems of modernity that spring from diverse cultures coming into contact; how should we understand our own value systems in light of foreign ones? How should we treat or evaluate the value systems of other cultures? Taylor is also concerned with problems of modernity that spring of scienticism or secularity. Where does the meaningfulness in our lives come from, in the absence of religion? Given that it is crucial for human flourishing to believe that there are ethically higher ways of life that are worthy of our aspiration, how can we ground or bestow authority to those ways of life, in the absence of religion? While I found these discussions interesting, they did not aid in clarifying or giving substance to Taylor's theses on language.
Since the majority of the book was on these metaethical issues, it felt like Taylor used the theoretical investigation into language as a mere handmaiden to his purpose of advancing certain metaethical positions. This is not in itself objectionable, but I found it a bit deceptive, given that the book's title and description gives the impression that it would focus on the investigation into language. Also, I find Taylor's theses on language very plausible, interesting, and innovative, but he simply does not discuss them in full detail. He gives them shallow treatment and then goes on into these metaethical connections. I would have loved to see a deeper analysis on these theses themselves.
This enactive function of language can be understood across a range of registers. At an occurrent, personal level, we can use language to express something we have felt or experienced. This act of articulation, while working with pre-existing elements of feeling, also creates new features of the feeling that we experience. Articulation in this kind of case blurs the line between invention and discovery; language is used to express something prior and simultaneously re-constitutes that prior. At a societal level, language can also be used to discover new ways of living, new ways to look at and care about the world. Ethics is all about evaluating how we live and aspiring to higher ways of life; so language has a critical role in discovering/inventing ways of life.
Intrinsic to these two logics are two distinct systems of evaluation. In the descriptive logical mode of language, we assess descriptions on the basis of representational accuracy; binary truth conditions come out from this. In the enactive logical mode, there are no clear criteria of evaluation, although often we assess enactive uses of language on the basis of whether they succeed at the purposes that motivated them. It is also hugely dependent on the particular medium and genre of language use. If we write an allegory, for example, we might assess it on the basis of how well it conveys certain moral messages. If we pronounce two partners as now married, we might assess this linguistic act on the basis of whether it succeeds at transforming the normative structure of their relationship. It is less clear what sorts of criteria of assessment are appropriate to evaluating linguistically based artwork (e.g. poetry).
Taylor sketches out the origins of language in the phylogenetic history of humanity. He traces language back to a more general capacity of mimesis, mimicking previously observed events. Notably, mimesis is usually not aimed at accuracy of representation, but rather is carried forward with social, moral, or political intentions. Taylor compares language with ritual, as in mimetic practices that are performed for the sake of making changes in the world, the natural or social orders. He also compares language with play, understood as the capacities that many mammals have to pretend or act as if they are engaged in some vital activity (e.g., fighting, hunting), but are not engaged in the act in the way in which they would if done seriously or directly.
Such play, according to Taylor, manifest mimetic or representational capacities, which are the phylogenetic predecessors of human language. In this light, our human linguistic capacities should be understood as accounting for not only descriptive and enactive uses of language, but also for our various artistic practices that utilize different media. We can better understand the nature of language by examining music and painting, for example.
This book is sprinkled with many insights. I especially appreciated chapter 6, in which Taylor examines language for its capacities to describe v. enact v. portray; he goes into examining the expressive nature of artwork, from novels to symphonies, to clarify these distinctions. This is a critical point about language; it is a phenomenological fact that confiding in a friend about something, or reading a novel that gives you an epiphany, does not only change how we see the world, but changes the very possibilities of the ways by which the world shows up. These are just extreme examples, and this fact holds for many everyday uses of language.
I think it is wrong, however, for Taylor to out the scientific revolution as the foundation of a descriptive mode of language use, and to hold that this mode is fundamentally different from the mode by which artworks operate. While it is true that scientific descriptions and artistic expressions differ in the kinds of standards of truth that are applicable to each, these two also share deep commonalities. Particularly, they share this enactive function of language that is Taylor's focus; scientific descriptions do not objectively latch onto the world, but also create ways by which the world can appear to us (I am thinking of Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking; it's a beautiful book that captures the dimensions by which artistic and scientific representations are continuous with one another).
I also enjoyed chapter 2, in which Taylor examines myth as it functioned in human society historically; he makes a case about the different epistemological norms that marked that time, according to which myth cannot be understood as fiction or fact. Taylor uses that ancient epistemology as the bedrock from which we should derive norms for assessing enactive uses of language more generally.
Unfortunately, however, Taylor's book is not focused. While I found these to be his important theses about language, he dedicates only two chapters to them. The other 8 chapters discuss (or more like ramble) about a range of phenomena, mostly characterizable as discourse in meta-ethics. Taylor is concerned with the problems of modernity that spring from diverse cultures coming into contact; how should we understand our own value systems in light of foreign ones? How should we treat or evaluate the value systems of other cultures? Taylor is also concerned with problems of modernity that spring of scienticism or secularity. Where does the meaningfulness in our lives come from, in the absence of religion? Given that it is crucial for human flourishing to believe that there are ethically higher ways of life that are worthy of our aspiration, how can we ground or bestow authority to those ways of life, in the absence of religion? While I found these discussions interesting, they did not aid in clarifying or giving substance to Taylor's theses on language.
Since the majority of the book was on these metaethical issues, it felt like Taylor used the theoretical investigation into language as a mere handmaiden to his purpose of advancing certain metaethical positions. This is not in itself objectionable, but I found it a bit deceptive, given that the book's title and description gives the impression that it would focus on the investigation into language. Also, I find Taylor's theses on language very plausible, interesting, and innovative, but he simply does not discuss them in full detail. He gives them shallow treatment and then goes on into these metaethical connections. I would have loved to see a deeper analysis on these theses themselves.
March 8, 2023
Se trata de un libro de filosofía del lenguaje que se aparta de la tradición puramente analítica para reflexionar sobre la naturaleza del lenguaje natural y su papel en la configuración del modo de vida humano. Taylor opone dos maneras de concebir el lenguaje, una que lo ve como un instrumento de comunicación (enfoque racionalista) y otra que destaca su carácter constitutivo de la realidad propiamente humana (enfoque romántico). El libro se construye a partir de la oposición entre estas dos visiones, la segunda de la cuales es abrazada por Taylor. Se trata de un libro espléndido, cuya lectura es un gozo de la mente y el espíritu.
This is a book on the philosophy of language that departs from the purely analytical tradition to reflect on the nature of natural language and its role in shaping the human way of life. Taylor opposes two ways of conceiving language, one which sees it as an instrument of communication (the rationalist approach) and the other which emphasizes its constitutive character of the properly human reality (the romantic approach). The book is built on the opposition between these two views, the second of which is embraced by Taylor. It is a splendid book, a joy to read for the mind and spirit
This is a book on the philosophy of language that departs from the purely analytical tradition to reflect on the nature of natural language and its role in shaping the human way of life. Taylor opposes two ways of conceiving language, one which sees it as an instrument of communication (the rationalist approach) and the other which emphasizes its constitutive character of the properly human reality (the romantic approach). The book is built on the opposition between these two views, the second of which is embraced by Taylor. It is a splendid book, a joy to read for the mind and spirit
January 13, 2023
Is language a learned construct or an iatrical part of being human?
Right from the beginning, the author assumes that you are well-versed with many philosophers, and great authors (including German romantics.) If you are familiar with these writings then you may have already concluded that the author Charles Taylor makes much clearer as he compares them to post-Romantic poetry.
This book is a continuation of earlier work and is not the final work; so, we will possibly have to wait for his next book to complete his thought.
The subject or focus of the book takes you from fundamentals to conclusions so anything short of a 500-word review would just mislead you from what you are about to read.
There are two glaringly missing items; this work is missing a separate bibliography and Alfred Korzybski (Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics.)
Right from the beginning, the author assumes that you are well-versed with many philosophers, and great authors (including German romantics.) If you are familiar with these writings then you may have already concluded that the author Charles Taylor makes much clearer as he compares them to post-Romantic poetry.
This book is a continuation of earlier work and is not the final work; so, we will possibly have to wait for his next book to complete his thought.
The subject or focus of the book takes you from fundamentals to conclusions so anything short of a 500-word review would just mislead you from what you are about to read.
There are two glaringly missing items; this work is missing a separate bibliography and Alfred Korzybski (Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics.)
November 12, 2024
Taylor argues for a “constitutive” theory of language by synthesizing the theories of Hamann, Herder, and Humboldt. He contrasts this against the “designative” theory of language he synthesizes from the theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Condillac.
However, he undermines what would be an otherwise compelling argument about language by revealing his own poor understanding of language: the book is both poorly written and edited.
However, he undermines what would be an otherwise compelling argument about language by revealing his own poor understanding of language: the book is both poorly written and edited.
September 24, 2025
Really insightful, literally felt un-edited. Very Taylor. I had a good time.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews