Charles Taylor compels us to accept that culture profoundly shapes our humanness, and consciousness, itself.
Charles Taylor, the eminently influential Canadian philosopher, has had a profound effect in the field of self-psychology. Through effective criticism and analysis, he has limited the force of behaviorist and cognitivist psychological models that define human nature as fundamentally learning and conditioning. Rather, Taylor asserts that human nature interacts with culture in complex and recursive ways. Through this interaction of self and culture, the self to able to manifest the capacity to create value and meaning.

Resources

Sources of the Self: Making Modern Identity, by Charles Taylor

Ethics and Authenticity, by Charles Taylor

This book explores how we can develop a relationship to the transcendent, even in a post-modern, subjective world.

A Secular Age, by Charles Taylor

Takes a look at various cultural stances toward religion. Taylor asserts that the historical shift in our cultural view of religion reflects a fundamental change in our consciousness.