Sources of the Self

I've been thinking about abandoning this blog and going back to written notebooks, but there would be a break in continuity and the problem of storing the contents of the blog for easy reference. There's just too much material despite my infrequent entries. So I feel stuck with it and might as well carry on even if even more scrappily.

Basically I wanted to use this medium as a notebook for odd ideas and observations. The format seems to encourage longer essay-type entries, but I shall try to avoid them in future.

I've been wading through Sources of the Self by Charles Taylor. I have a lot of respect for him; I think he has deep insights into the human condition, though I find him hard to follow. I believe it's worth trying to understand his mainly historical account of the processes leading to the modern view of selfhood, as one's sense of ones self strongly determines how one approaches life, and relations with other people. The self does not define itself sui generis on a blank page. Some dispositions are innate, others are shaped within a milieu of material and social circumstances. I wonder if, living within the current culture of narcissism (cf. Christopher Lasch) it's possible to examine oneself objectively, and further, to change. This is one reason I'm keen to follow Taylor to the end, as he appears to be quite autonomous in his thought, but fully aware of where it is situated in the historical pantheon of thought.