Professor Charles Taylor, “Is Democracy in danger?”
At University of King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, November, 2012 In a public lecture entitled Is Democracy in danger?, eminent Canadian Philosopher Charles Taylor spoke of democracy as amongst the key civilizational human accomplishments yet one that is also recurrently remade and refashioned across the ages. While we have codified and embedded it into our constitutional, legal and cultural practices in Canada, Professor Taylor spoke of the contemporary sense we still feel of falling back on its ideals. For Professor Taylor, democratic societies require not only shared and acceptable procedures to… Read More
CBC Massey Lecture Event: “Belonging: The Paradox of Citizenship”
Right and Honorable Adrienne Clarkson, Rebecca Cohn Auditorium – Dalhousie Arts Centre The Right and Honorable Adrienne Clarkson will be delivering her second CBC Massey lecture Belonging: The Paradox of Citizenship on Tuesday, October 14th, 2014 at 7pm. The lecture is titled “The Glory that was Greece”. In the presentation, the former Governor General of Canada will trace the concept of citizenship from the classical worlds of Aristotle and the Ancient Greeks in the reflections about the intellectual democratic heritage available to us in understanding contemporary questions of diversity and modern societies…. Read More
Professor Charles Taylor and Rev. Robert P. Imbelli: A conversation with Charles Taylor
Boston College, 2011 Click here for the video. In the following interview, Philosopher Charles Taylor discusses the insights that can be gained by understanding the historical and cultural frameworks of Western secular modernity as contexts in which discussions or the content of religion have not only in some sense occurred, been inherited and must now occur and be justified in new settings but also distinguishes it as one kind of modernity amongst many other emerging modernities in the world. When thinking about the role of Christian thought in the North-American and European… Read More
Professor Charles Taylor On the Templeton Prize (2007) & Gifford Lectures (1998-99 and 2009)
British Academy, 2012 Click here for the video. In the following interview for the Templeton Prize Laureate series, Professor Charles Taylor speaks about his work in Secular Age and its thesis that there isn’t just one modernity but multiple ones emerging from different cultures and different forms. Trying to understand why modernities can emerge so differently across the world, Professor Taylor argues that we need to turn to what has been called the “Axial Age” — an expression introduced by Karl Jaspers referring to the beginning of a period in which radical changes occurred across civilizations… Read More
Professor Richard Tuck on Democratic Sovereignty and Democratic Government
Harvard University, Faculti — An Online Media Platform for Ideas Click here for the video. In this brief interview, Professor Richard Tuck speaks about his work in tracing the historical role of referendums and plebiscites in the formation of early-modern democratic states. While these processes have remained under theorized in the last 100 years, he argues that they are surprisingly relevant in how we tend to think about the changes undergoing modern politics today. In particular in light of their recent revival in response to the stresses emerging from the European Union… Read More
