Wolin, modernism and Charles Taylor

Richard Wolin cites Charles Taylor on "strong evaluation" at the close of Heidegger's Children.

It is my reading of Taylor (for whom I had an exaggerated respect from the early seventies through to the late 80's) that he is another Catholic crypto-Heideggerian.

Taylor has impeccable political credentials from many viewpoints, but where he is suspect - at least to me - is in his inobvious Catholicism (and perhaps also that I find him not at all likeable in person - and found myself so very alone in that response at McGill among his admirers.)

Taylor strikes me as someone who never got past the Eliot of his schooldays.  It is only an impression.  My opinion of his later great tomes is that they were in need of a critical editor.  Whether he his a windbag or no, he did receive 1.5 million dollars to explore "spiritual realities" as a Templeton Prize.  Is there a comparable prize awaiting the atheist Colin McGinn?

The issue, however, is what water is to be carried by Taylor's notion of "strong evaluation" - which I would like to consider in parallel with Margalit on our "thick relations".

To dissociate Taylor on "telos" from the Catholic background of the philospher is to ignore his own teachings (though he is apt to insist that certain of his theses must stand or fall on their own - one suspects that he will set aside a line of argument for "telos" but not "the reality of telos" for we are not seeking to clarify a concept but to adumbrate a lived reality - but within certain preferred categories.)

Is it ad hominem to renouce an argument with a fideist?  What is it that is missing in the background of Steven Weinberg or Colin McGinn?  Or is it something lacking in them as men?

By converting the categories of a faith to the background, Taylor deftly shifts the burden from the shoulders of the theist to this most intangible of supports.

I wonder if Taylor simple took Anscombe at her word that Wittgenstein was a covert Catholic?

See: prominent Anglicans in Canada: Bob Ray and Adrienne Clarkson.
See: Heidegger on the South German Catholic way of life

Three topics

Stephen A. Erickson opens his "Language and Being" with three questions.

I propose 3 topics, each with an exemplar:

1. The elephant and her fallen calf (Q: does she later avoid that spot?)
2. The macaque "aunties" and the fallen "old alpha" (Q: what was their behavior when the young tyrant died?)
3. The bottle-nose dolphin and the camouflaged cuttlefish (Q: Do the dolphins look for "coral" which is not coral?  Do they co-ordiante this search (lead and wingman) to detect cuttlefish fleeing/escaping the "deceived" predator? )

Additional topic: we are not the "naked ape" but the hominid who hides his pigment markings under mats and hides.  Pigmented marks on the skin are the beginning of the human.

These topics seem to be more in the spirit of Jaspers and science than Heidegger and oracular obscurantism.

The fundamental question in instance 1) is whether we have only an observed object (the calf) and mere causally explained behavior (and not an emotion of distress and then loss and grief.)

The fundamental question in 2) is whether we are looking into an evolutionary appendix, a mere dead-end, and not a stage on the way towards culture.

The fundamental question in 3) is whether dolphins understand that some coral is in fact a cuttlefish disguised as coral (and only secondarily whether they are noting a mental representation of coral by the unlucky cephalopod - or if they are observing an inadequate misrepresentation - or if they are merely forming a belief - or merely handling inputs and producing output behavior?  Can our understanding complement a causal explanation without undermining the marine science? [this as a response to Heidegger on the merely clever heliocentrism of the few astronomers]