In Sources of the Self, Taylor suggests that the ancient Greeks, despite possessing various linguistic devices for reflexive self-reference, did not have a way of making “self” into a noun. This nominalization of the self is, in his view, characteristic of the modern sense of selfhood. In fact, Aristotle does nominalize autos, the intensifier that functions in Greek much as “self” does in English, in three passages in Nichomachean Ethics IX where he describes a friend as another self. Taylor cites one of these passages in a footnote, commenting that “this doesn’t have quite the same force as our present description of human agents as ‘selves’”, but does not elaborate. This chapter considers what force it does have, exploring three senses of self in Aristotle. Two of them are familiar – the social self expounded in the first nine books of the Nicomachean Ethics and the more contemplative self emerging predominantly in EN X and in De Anima III. Much less familiar is the bodily self that can be discerned at various points in the De Anima and Metaphysics, and that is rather prominent in the Generation of Animals. This conception of the self has its source in the intimate connection between a psuchê and the particular body of which it is the form.

On Taylor’s account, Plato addresses the structures of goodness and the nature of the self by an extreme idealism, advocating the philosopher’s escape from the cave away from the banalities of ‘ordinary life’. Taylor draws the conclusion that this gives Plato a strictly externalist account, with no attention paid to the ‘interiority’ of the first-person standpoint. This chapter offers three brief considerations against this view. First, from metaphysics: the framing of the dialogues in the banalities of ordinary life corresponds to a running question about persons which is couched in terms of the persistence and development of selves, notably focused on personal pronouns. Second, from epistemology: Plato’s account of vision and the turning of the soul is much more complex than Taylor suggests, embedding the standpoint of the viewer into a response-dependent account of vision (and relying on the written context of the dialogues). Third, a consideration of virtue: Plato’s account of virtue is answerable both to ordinary life and to the self who leads it. The question ‘who will you become?’ (asked in the Protagoras and followed through in Republic and Euthydemus) is both more interesting and more challenging to Taylor’s conception of modernity than he can allow.

Mary Astell (1666–1731) relies on a Cartesian account of the self to argue that both men and women are essentially thinking things and, hence, that both should perfect their minds or intellects. In offering such an account of the self, Astell might seem to ignore the inescapable fact that we have bodies. This chapter argues that Astell accommodates the self’s embodiment along two main dimensions. First, she tempers her sharp distinction between mind and body by insisting on their union. The mind and body are united in such a way that they exert reciprocal causal influence and form a whole together. Second, she argues that the mind–body union is good, that the union has its own distinctive form of good or perfection, and that the mind should pursue this good alongside its own.

The introduction summarizes the contributions of Charles Taylor’s ambitious work, Sources of the Self, attending particularly to its introductory section “Identity and the Good.” It then highlights the ways in which this volume expands the conversation started by Taylor’s work: in its coverage of multiple disciplines and genres, not just philosophy and philosophical writing; in its attention to non-canonical sources and previously overlooked periods (Taylor passes directly from Augustine to Descartes); and in its development of Taylor’s “webs of interlocution” into consideration of how we – and our sources – might offer accounts of truly embodied selves, situated in ordinary lives. Finally, the introduction offers a summary of the chapters in this volume.

This chapter revisits the question of Renaissance individualism by focusing on the writings of two early propagators of the Italian Renaissance: Petrarch and Boccaccio. Through an analysis of their literary dialogues with central medieval authorities and institutions, it argues that both authors develop a highly personal, earthbound conception of a relational self. In their engagements with figures such as Augustine (for Petrarch) and Dante (for Boccaccio), they challenge traditional structures of order and meaning, questioning their relevance to contemporary experience and thereby opening a space for an individualism that may be described as “modern.” The chapter also demonstrates that these dialogues are not purely agonistic or triumphant, but reveal the costs and contradictions of this emerging individualism – whether in its lack of metaphysical grounding or its destabilizing effects on the social fabric. Rather than simply discarding old authorities, Petrarch and Boccaccio’s representations of the self often seek to reconcile the old with the new, individualism with tradition, and self with others, anticipating Charles Taylor’s emphasis on the relational nature of the self.

Although the main focus of the dialogue is practical deliberation rather than political and legal theory, it has over time provided stimulus to such theorizing. In this dialogue, the bond between citizen and state is portrayed as one of personal commitment. Strikingly, Plato does not invoke natural law, divine law, Kantian generalizations, or consequentialist theories where he might have done.

An analysis of the main deliberative argument of the dialogue, showing how the speech of the laws provides premises needed for that argument. The argument between Socrates and Crito that one must in no circumstances do wrong needs to be completed by establishing that it is wrong to break an agreement and that an agreement exists beween Socrates and the city, and this is what the speech of the laws provides. The dialogue contains a single main argument, a practical deliberation. Socrates’ determination to follow the argument whereever it leads is thus dramatically illustrated by his willingness to die for this principle (which he construes as the path on which the god leads him).

At the end of the discussion with Crito, Socrates invokes the Corybantic ritual, which does not stand for an irrational or emotional force, as shown by careful consideration of the nature of that ritual. As the dialogue ends, Socrates remains open to new arguments, as always, but Crito has none to offer and time has run out.

The introduction provides an overview of the analysis of the dialogue.

This chapter offers a consideration of Crito’s character, based on other information about him from the Phaedo and the Euthydemus.

This chapter argues that the interpretation of the dialogue should not be constrained by its relationship to the Apology, as has often been done, and that its chronological place among the dialogues is uncertain. The dialogue should be interpreted in its own terms.