Modern Social Imaginations

Charles Taylor is known for his books that underline the aspects of modernity that have permeated our lives to the extent that they are considered "natural" today, and in doing so, reveal the styles of making sense of the world that surround the modern individual and the history of these styles.
Here, by trying to go beyond the classical idealism-materialism debates in philosophy, he develops an important concept: the concept of "social imaginations" that every human community resorts to while collectively constructing social life and that gives direction and meaning to these "human" efforts. In this book, he tries to explain the history of Western modernity through the changes in its social imagination. Starting from the assumption that there are many different experiences of modernity, Taylor directs a serious criticism to the identification of this experience with the West. He argues that there are three cultural forms in the Western social imagination, animated by the idea of a moral order based on the mutual interests of equal participants: the economy, the public sphere, and popular self-government. It explains how these three cultural forms developed interconnectedly in minds and in practice, and focuses on understanding and coming to terms with various aspects of modernity and secularism as a crucial component of it, whether in the West or other parts of the world.
It shows that the "modernity" debate is not an outdated "fashion" and that there is much to talk about, understand and deepen. Charles Taylor: Today, in Turkey, we stand in the heart of the problems pointed out by this debate.



Number of Pages: 184

Year of Printing: 2006


Language: Turkish
Publisher: Metis Publishing

First Printing Year: 2006

Number of Pages: 184

Language Turkish