Sublime

this so-called factual description might have made sense back in the days of Locke, Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson,

There is no inherent identity: who someone is, whether good or bad, depends largely on their environment. If many people have nowadays lost their bearings, this says something about our environment.

Taylor, who affirms the genius of Durkheim but turns him against himself, shows with this triad how the social function of religion adds to the opaqueness of divine action.

This “although [x] not [y] but [z]” is particularly fit for addressing the cross-pressure of Secular 3. As Taylor has explained, the cross-pressure of Secular 3 means that no process of faith formation can ever move someone from doubt to certainty; never can all our questions be solved.

“It tells what happens to an intelligent Negro who discovers that he has, within American society, no future,” observed the Times review. “And it tells in the most powerful and precise terms what this really means—the systematized destruction of Negro self-esteem as an almost automatic function of white society.”

At most

Sturm und Drang,

A new ethic was needed to usher in a new age. The age of authenticity dawned through a new ethic and a new sense of what made for a good life (and what is good).12 This is the ethic of authenticity that Taylor has famously and lucidly described.13 This ethic asserts that every human being has the right to define for himself or herself what it means