In this inquiry into the sources of modern selfhood, Charles Taylor shows that the modern turn inward is not disastrous but is in fact the result of our long efforts to define and reach the good. At the heart of this definition he finds what he calls the affirmation of ordinary life, a value that has decisively if not completely replaced an older conception of reason as connected to a hierarchy based on birth and wealth.

Preface PART I Identity and the Good 1. Inescapable Frameworks 2. The Self in Moral Space 3. Ethics of Inarticulacy 4. Moral Sources PART II Inwardness 5. Moral Topography 6. Plato's Self-Mastery 7. "In Interiore Homine" 8. Descartes's Disengaged Reason 9. Locke's Punctual Self 10. Exploring "l'Humaine Condition" 11. Inner Nature 12. A Digression on Historical Explanation PART III The Affirmation of Ordinary Life 13. "God Loveth Adverbs" 14. Rationalized Christianity 15. Moral Sentiments 16. The Providential Order 17. The Culture of Modernity PART IV The Voice of Nature 18. Fractured Horizons 19. Radical Enlightenment 20. Nature as Source 21. The Expressivist Turn PART V Subtler Languages 22. Our Victorian Contemporaries 23. Visions of the Post-Romantic Age 24. Epiphanies of Modernism 25. Conclusion: The Conflicts of Modernity Notes Index