Chapter 3: The Sources of Authenticity

• What is "disengaged rationality"?

• What is the "new form of inwardness" which comes about with the modern age?

• What is "self-determining freedom"?

• How did Jean-Jacques Rousseau contribute to the evolving ideal of authenticity?

• What contribution does Johann Gottfried von Herder make?

• Why does Taylor think that one doesn't "reason from the ground up"?

• Why does no one acquire the languages needed for self-definition on his or her own?

• What does Taylor mean by "identity"?

• Why does Taylor think that the more self-centered modes of contemporary culture are "manifestly inadequate"?

• Why does soft relativism self-destruct?

• Why can't authenticity be defended in ways that collapse horizons of significance?