Take a photo of a barcode or cover
mattdube 's review for:
The Ethics of Authenticity
by Charles Taylor
I heard of this book when I was reading Hua Hsu's Stay True, where it lights up one of Hsu's college classes. It sounded really cool to me, and I was looking for something to help me conceptualize authenticity more clearly for a class I'm about to teach. I'm not sure it was super-helpful in that regard; I pulled out one quote that I'll probably need to unpack with my students, which is the opposite of what I wanted:)
Nonetheless, I really liked this, a patient effort to engage with some of the cultural currents of the late 80s and early 90s which seemed, at the time, pointed at denigrating Gen X kids. Now, looking from a couple generations later, it feels like a charge laid on youth more generally, that they are feckless and not worth much. But Taylor also feels really prescient; some of the ideas about self-branding and hyper-capitalism he seems to introduce feel more relevant today.
In short, this is a smart book exploring the way we do and could organize our society. I don't think he quite gets what feels liberating about Foucault and Derrida, and I think maybe the book sputters to an end instead of fully working out his ideas. But throughout, the writing is clear without being too jargony. He presents the possibility of a culture where meaning is at the center but not in a way that limits what that meaning might be. Or at least, not too limited. It's good stuff, an act of ethical recovery that I think still has a lot of potential.
Nonetheless, I really liked this, a patient effort to engage with some of the cultural currents of the late 80s and early 90s which seemed, at the time, pointed at denigrating Gen X kids. Now, looking from a couple generations later, it feels like a charge laid on youth more generally, that they are feckless and not worth much. But Taylor also feels really prescient; some of the ideas about self-branding and hyper-capitalism he seems to introduce feel more relevant today.
In short, this is a smart book exploring the way we do and could organize our society. I don't think he quite gets what feels liberating about Foucault and Derrida, and I think maybe the book sputters to an end instead of fully working out his ideas. But throughout, the writing is clear without being too jargony. He presents the possibility of a culture where meaning is at the center but not in a way that limits what that meaning might be. Or at least, not too limited. It's good stuff, an act of ethical recovery that I think still has a lot of potential.