Alle radici di «Sources of the Self»: per quale storia dell’identità moderna?

This article is intended to be a first step within a long term project dedicated to Charles Taylor’s volume Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity(1989). In particular I focus on the method adopted by Taylor in his studies concerning the making of modern identity. In order to reach this aim I consider in particular two essays: Philosophy and its History (1984) and Modernity and the Rise of the Public Sphere (1993). From this analysis (which also focuses on Taylor’s concept of practices) it emerges that according to Taylor, in order to write a history of modern identity, a constant reference to moral sources, to the visions of the good articulated during that time cannot be avoided.