Charles Taylor's 1989 Book Sources of the Self, and Walter J. Ong's Thought

Abstract

In my 3,700-word review essay "Charles Taylor's 1989 Book Sources of the Self, and Walter J. Ong's Thought," I highlight certain aspects of the Canadian Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor's discussion of Christian theology in his 1989 book Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Harvard University Press). But what Taylor refers to in his subtitle as "the Modern Identity" emerged in the early modern and modern periods in Western culture, after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in Europe in the mid-1450s. Consequently, it strikes me that the mature thought of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) about print culture is more pertinent to understanding the Western "Modern Identity" than Taylor allows.