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Jan 9, 2025 | 
canadiandimension.com | Charles Taylor
The following is a digitized version of an article from Canadian Dimension’s print archive, which is now available for the first time through the University of Manitoba Digital Collections. It originally appeared in the March-April 1967 edition of CD (Volume 4, Number 3). To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, we do not alter, edit or update them. It is distressing to see how Canada is facing the fatefulset of choices which are now opening.
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Oct 11, 2024 | 
lawliberty.org | Charles Taylor |Graham McAleer |John O. McGinnis |J. R. Gage
In the Poetics, Aristotle argues that we are by nature imitators. Poetry, as a type of imitation, gives pleasure because by it, says Aristotle, we “come to understand and work out what each thing is.” Charles Taylor—one of the preeminent living philosophers—does not think Aristotle’s poetics viable in modernity, an age of self-creation. The 92-year-old Canadian is a specialist in hefty books.
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Sep 13, 2024 | 
barnesandnoble.com | Charles Taylor
Share Share this page on Facebook Share this page on Twitter Lyndon Baines Johnson is the only Shakespearean president of our time. In the last hundred years, who else is there? There have been periodic attempts to claim this mantle for Nixon.
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Aug 2, 2024 | 
thelampmagazine.com | Charles Taylor
What is human life all about? What are the ends of life? What is the good life for human beings? Or, what is the meaning of life? For the poets and writers of the nineteenth century, it came to be that this question could be put on two levels: On one hand, what is the good life for human beings in general? On the other hand, one can also ask: What is a good and fulfilling life for me, this individual being which I am? A few reflections on this period can help explain why this second question arose.
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Aug 1, 2024 | 
thelampmagazine.com | J. Vance |Peter Hitchens |Nic Rowan |Charles Taylor
My earliest memories of the beach are not prepossessing. Every May, starting around my seventh year, we would hike from the genteel suburbs of Anne Arundel County through the wild wastes of Delmarva to Ocean City for Maryland’s annual Knights of Columbus convention. The Atlantic coast in May is, almost invariably, cold and rainy.
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Jul 26, 2024 | 
thelampmagazine.com | J. Vance |Peter Hitchens |Charles Taylor |Nic Rowan
When I was in fifth grade, I had a teacher who was famous for giving the same speech at the beginning of each school year. He would introduce himself, outline our curriculum, and lay out class rules. I’ve forgotten it all now, except that at one point he told us that we were allowed to carry a weapon—and then yanked out of his pocket a metal Rosary. A number of students were quite taken with the performance.
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Jul 18, 2024 | 
thelampmagazine.com | J. Vance |Peter Hitchens |Charles Taylor |Nic Rowan
I have bought a minivan, and, by thunder, it is splendid. It is ten years old and was made in Japan, or by a Japanese company, anyway. It is the color of dust, and it goes much faster than I’d have guessed. I love everything about it, except, perhaps, that a round trip from Baltimore consumes roughly a third of a tank of gas.
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Jul 17, 2024 | 
thelampmagazine.com | J. Vance |Peter Hitchens |Charles Taylor |Nic Rowan
Ktaadn is in the United States of America, but it acknowledges no authority other than its own. It rises alone for thousands of feet over the surrounding Maine lakes and woods in its distinctive shape, a trapezoid with a wide, flat plane at the top. Its summit marks the end of the Appalachian Trail, and because of the way the trail loops back and forth, Ktaadn is visible for miles and miles to those completing their journey.
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Jul 15, 2024 | 
thelampmagazine.com | Peter Hitchens |Charles Taylor |Nic Rowan |Jude Russo
A few miles south of Oxford stands my favorite railway station in the world. It is called Culham, though it is not very near the village of that name. It lies on one of those mysterious weather boundaries, perhaps something to do with the course of the nearby River Thames. I was once standing there on a cold, dry winter’s afternoon when a train from the south came in, entirely covered with fresh snow as if it had arrived from Siberia. I seldom if ever get off there, and the trains are few.
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Jul 15, 2024 | 
thelampmagazine.com | Peter Hitchens |Charles Taylor |Nic Rowan |Jude Russo
William Dodd, the so-called “Macaroni Parson,” was born in 1729, the son of a vicar in Lincolnshire. Upon taking his degree with first-class honors at Cambridge in 1749, he moved to London, intent upon a career in literature.
