Introduction to the Book Symposium on The Language Animal by Charles Taylor

Abstract

What it means to be a 'language animal' is a question Charles Taylor first addressed nearly 40 years ago in Language and Human Nature, 1 taking over the phrase from Georg Steiner. 2 The centrality of language for Taylor's thinking, and the longevity of his interest in the topic, is evident to all readers of his oeuvre. Taylor's attention to the subject appears in a variety of contexts and it is possible to discern four sources for his preoccupation with language. First, there is his contestation of behaviourism in The Explanation of Behaviour, in which he contends that a scientific language and the attempt to explain human behaviour in terms of science cannot address the problem "that our self-understanding essentially incorporates our seeing ourselves against a background of what I have called 'strong evaluation.'" 3 Second, there is his interest in the Romantic period, starting with the contextualization of Hegel's oeuvre in the post-Enlightenment and Romantic eras. He describes the romantic period as, essentially, based on the new view on language 4 developed by Johann