Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Chapter 7: La Lotta Continua
What does "La Lotta Continua" mean?
What is Taylor's view of the culture of authenticity?
What is "a work of persuasion"?
Why does Taylor think that the struggle between Modernity's boosters and knockers is itself a mistake?
What should both sides be fighting over? How is that different?
What does Taylor think we should be trying to accomplish? What assumptions are involved in this task?
Do you agree with Taylor that the ideal of authenticity "speaks for itself"? Why or why not?
Why does authenticity open an "age of responsibilization"?
Why does Taylor think it appropriate for a "genuinely free society" to take on the slogan "la lotta continua"?
Chapter 8: Subtler Languages
What is the difference between the "manner" and the "matter" of authenticity?
Why does Taylor think that confusing these two notions is "catastrophic"?
Why do the "publicly available reference points" (allusions found in literature or in art) no longer hold for us?
Explain Shelley's use of the term "subtler languages." (pp. 84-85)
What is the "ineradicably personal dimension" to which authors like T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, or Marcel Proust invite Taylor?
What is the "something beyond the self" which modern poets have been attempting to articulate?
How does Taylor use the issue of response to potential ecological disaster to illustrate both the inadequacy of anthropocentrism and the possibility of subtler languages?