One of the most influential philosophers in the English-speaking world, Charles Taylor is internationally renowned for his contributions to political and moral theory, particularly to debates about identity formation, multiculturalism, secularism, and modernity. In "Modern Social Imaginaries", Taylor continues his recent reflections on the theme of multiple modernities. To account for the differences among modernities, Taylor sets out his idea of the social imaginary, a broad understanding of the way a given people imagine their collective social life.Re-telling the history of Western modernity, Taylor traces the development of a distinct social imaginary. Animated by the idea of a moral order based on the mutual benefit of equal participants, the Western social imaginary is characterized by three key cultural forms - the economy, the public sphere, and self-governance. Taylor's account of these cultural formations provides a fresh perspective on how to read the specifics of Western modernity: how we came to imagine society primarily as an economy for exchanging goods and services to promote mutual prosperity, how we began to imagine the public sphere as a metaphorical place for deliberation and discussion among strangers on issues of mutual concern, and how we invented the idea of a self-governing people capable of secular "founding" acts without recourse to transcendent principles.Accessible in length and style, "Modern Social Imaginaries" offers a clear and concise framework for understanding the structure of modern life in the West and the different forms modernity has taken around the world.

加拿大哲學傢，晚近英語哲學的關鍵人物之一，社群主義的主將，現任加拿大麥基爾大學哲學與政治科學教授。20世紀70年代以來，泰勒以其對黑格爾哲學的再解讀、對原子主義式的消極自由的批評、對社會價值的強調、對西方文化中自我認同觀念發展的梳理，以及對文化多元論的論證，強烈影響著西方思想界。