Charles Taylor is considered one of the most important philosophers of our time. His many publications have had a far-reaching impact on our understanding of humanity in the modern and postmodern eras. His subject matter is the great dilemmas of our culture. In his 1989 book, The Sources of the Self, for example, he examined the emergence of modern individualism. How could a separate, isolated self emerge that has become one of the causes of today’s ecological, social, and spiritual crises?

Taylor describes the modern form of individuality as the “buffered” self, in which we cut ourselves off from the world and suffer from alienation. He sees another reason for this alienation in the process of secularization, which he traces in another major work, A Secular Age, published in 2007. Here he shows how liberal societies have unsuccessfully attempted to rid themselves of religion. For Taylor, the process of secularization also has many positive aspects, such as the emergence of democratic societies. But he rejects the thesis that religions no longer play or should play a role in open, democratic societies.

Language and Consciousness

In a late major work,The Language Animal, published in 2017, he explored the significance of our language formation. In doing so, he referred to the ideas of German Romanticism, in particular Humboldt, Herder, and Hamann, whose web of ideas he refers to as HHH. He contrasts their romantic idea of language with the rationalist-empiricist conception of language as formulated by Hobbes, Locke, and Condillac, which he summarizes as HLC. One difference between these two understandings of language is that HLC assumes that individual words are formed first, from which languages then emerge. HHH, on the other hand, assumes a holism of language, which develops as a fabric. Here, it is the connected whole of language that is primary, not the separate parts (words).

Taylor writes in The Language Animal: “The HLC theory is thoroughly monological. On the other hand, the primacy of communication, of dialogue, must be recognized. Proponents of HHH theory consistently see conversation as the primary locus of language. Language does not simply develop within individuals and only then grow into communication with others. Rather, it always develops in the intermediate realm of shared attention, of communion.”

A fundamental idea in Taylor’s understanding of language is that through language we do not simply name the things we find in the world, but always help to shape them through language:

“In higher, poetic language, we experience the attempt to express something that eludes us and that involuntarily makes us search for a more apt expression because we sense that this word hits the mark or does not yet hit the mark. The metaphors we find are alive in a way; they unfold. They bring forth something that moves precisely between a purely subjective projection and a completely independent objective reality.”

As Taylor points out, poetry is a form of language that particularly emphasizes and explores this creative dimension of our human language. Taylor devotes himself to it in a new, comprehensive work that he has been working on for the past 30 years. He sees it as an “application” of the ideas in his book, The Language Animal. This book, entitled Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment, was published last year.

Beyond Separateness

Taylor’s basic thesis in this book is that we have lost access to experiences of connectedness. But it is these experiences that bring us into relationship with the world, that can give us the sense of belonging and responsibility from which meaning and ethical behaviour arise: “When encountering nature, whether it be the Rocky Mountains, the Himalayas, the Saale River, or the Pacific Ocean, people suddenly feel that they are part of a living context that cannot be understood through reason alone.”

Following on from his earlier works on the emergence of the modern individual, he sees Romanticism as a form of thinking and living in which the modern free, independent subject emerges. “It is only with Romanticism that the world of subjects opens up,” Taylor explains. “Around 1800, a revolution in sensitivity took place in Europe that changed everything and is still effective today.” At the same time, early Romanticism critically questioned the separation and constriction that can arise from “buffering” the self, and explored ways of experiencing, thinking about, and creatively expressing experiences of cosmic connectedness. Taylor is clear that we need new forms of expression or descriptions of this connectedness today:

“Cosmos is an old word for the order of the universe, of which we as humans are a part. But it is not outdated; the nature of connectedness has simply changed constantly. Today, we tend to talk about the natural environment from which we have become alienated because we treat it as a mere instrument for our own purposes. My work is about the relationship between humans and the living nature that surrounds us and means something to us. This cosmic connection is a source of strength and meaning that nourishes the modern self.”

Romanticism attempts to keep open and explore spaces of experience that connect humans and the world, feelings and reason, science and art. Taylor describes his understanding of Romanticism as follows: “Romantic is the idea of a living nature with which the human soul can communicate because this nature is also at work within us. Romantic is the infinite striving of man for something to come that is unattainable; language and feeling can approach it, and only in this way can our self become more and more realized and self-determined.”

Taylor quotes a passage from a poem by Wordsworth (from “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”) that addresses a romantic mood of connectedness several times in his book:

And I felt

a presence that shook me with the joy

 of lofty thoughts; a sublime feeling

of a far deeper penetration,

whose presence is the light of setting suns,

and the vast ocean and the living air,

and the blue sky and in the recognition of man:

A movement and a spirit,

that drives all thinking things, the contents of all thoughts,

and permeates all things.

The Co-Creation of Translation

To illustrate the poetic use of language, Taylor refers, among other things, to the idea of translation coined by the philosopher and mystic Johann Georg Hamann. In his thinking, the entire world, nature, and creation are a form of communication, in this sense a language. In it, God is a poet, and God’s poetry is revealed in nature and history. Hamann writes: “Every phenomenon of nature was a word—the sign, symbol, and pledge of a new, secret, inexpressible, but all the more intimate union, communication, and communion of divine energies and ideas.” Hamann’s thoughts also inspired the poets of Romanticism, as can be heard in the resonance of Novalis, who writes: “Everything we experience is a communication. Thus, the world is indeed a communication – a revelation of the spirit.”

If creation is a communication, then it is our task to decipher it. This cannot be done directly, but only through translation by means of our creative responses, and co-creation in images and symbols of pictorial thinking. In this co-creation of translation, we can experience an “epiphany,” as Taylor calls it, which connects us to the world and encourages and empowers us to participate in it through our creative expression: “A language of epiphanies gives us the feeling that we are being called: we receive a call. There is something or someone calling us.”

In the Interspace

In his book, Taylor makes it clear how this romantic attitude to life finds expression in poets such as Hölderlin and Novalis, Shelley, Keats, Rilke, Wordsworth, Hopkins, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, T.S. Elliott, and Czeslaw Milosz. He summarizes the romantic practice of connectedness in this way:

• Nature is not just a dead counterpart that we can use, but a living organism with which we are interwoven.
• We can communicate with the living, for example through art.
• This living nature unfolds in a creative, evolutionary process, similar to us as humans, because we too are not static.
• The unfolding of the living world and of humans are not separate. Through our creative work, we help shape the unfolding of the world.
• In the ability to create, humans find the freedom of a self-aware self.
• It is possible therefore, for creative freedom and connectedness with the unfolding cosmos to unite in human beings.
• Such a unity will never be achieved; but remains an ideal and a process. Here Taylor refers to the romantic irony that rejects a new dogma or ideology.

In his book, he uses many examples of poetry to describe how different poets have implemented these ideas. It is important to him that poetry opens up experiences of connectedness that become possible in an “interspace,” an interstice between humans and the living world. Taylor describes the interspace of resonance as follows: “Poetry leaves open spaces of experience and interpretation between the subjective and the physical world, and in this in-between space, what enchants us can arise.”

For Taylor, poetry, music, and art in general, or more broadly, a poetic approach to the world, is a way to inhabit the interspace of resonance, to linger in it: “What remains, however, is the decisive power of poetry, the significance of an interspace—the situation of a person in a given situation, in relation to nature or, more generally, in relation to time and the world—to grasp it in such a way that it encompasses and conveys a strong sense of its significance for our experience of meaning, our fulfillment, or our destiny…the revealing and connecting power of poetry is the common thread I would like to pursue here.”

Epistemic Retreat

In an epistemological line of thought, Taylor describes the changing approach to the resonance space of interconnectedness as an epistemic retreat, in which we not only seek complete understanding and knowledge, but also leave room for wonder, mystery, and what we do not know: “I am concerned with an epistemic retreat, and that means not always being oriented and fixated on scientific explanation, but also feeling the power of the inexplicable and the unavailable.”

Romanticism was a first step in this retreat, because cosmic connectedness was no longer sought in a predetermined cosmic order, but in an overarching order imagined by the poet himself, such as the “gods” in Hölderlin or the force that permeates all things in Wordsworth.

This retreat can therefore be understood as meaning that the experience of cosmic connectedness continues to fill and touch us, but we are less inclined to draw metaphysical conclusions from it, or to seek certainties. It does not matter whether these certainties come from religious or scientific explanations of the world. The interspace for wonder, mystery, awe, and not-knowing remains open to inquiring questions. This interspace is also the habitat of the poetic.

According to Taylor, the epistemic retreat continues, especially with the discovery of evolution, in which nature and the cosmos reveal themselves not as static but as unfolding events. In this context, science, understood in the sense of Alexander von Humboldt and Goethe, becomes a way of explaining this unfolding living world and connecting with it. As Taylor writes “… the orders and connections that inspired Humboldt, were not produced by poetry, but by scientific observation and experimentation: discoveries can continue to inspire poetry, but they do not arise from it. As Humboldt explained, the scientific vision of nature that he developed was ‘poetic’ from the outset.”

A Shift To Ecological Awareness

This refers to a “poetic science” in the tradition of Goethe and Humboldt, which led to the ecological ideas and activism of Henry Thoreau and John Muir, who advocated reconnecting with the living world and protecting the wilderness. This movement continues in the deep ecology movement, in which the poet and activist Joanna Macy became an influential voice.

One of her most important inspirations is the poetry of Rilke. Goethean research, which stems from Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy, also follows this impulse. This extends to nature writing and new biological research on animals, plants, fungi, and ecosystems, as seen today in the writings of Robin Wall-Kimmerer, Andreas Weber, Merlin Sheldrake, and many others. Many of these ecological texts explicitly refer to a poetic perception of the world and seek and draw on references to poetry.

Taylor describes the shift towards ecological awareness as follows: “What we seek connection with is no longer a cosmos, but nature: that is, the complex, interwoven, and vulnerable order of living beings on our planet. Many of us want to regain a sense of belonging, a sense of participation in this larger order, in order to be nourished by it and to live in solidarity with it, in the face of the terrible destruction that threatens it today.”

Today, poetry is no longer the only, and perhaps not even the most important, form of expressing this connection: “Detailed descriptions or scientific explanations of the underlying causes can also change our perceived relationship with the natural world, perhaps even more effectively than poetry can.”

Poetry and science are then complementary, fruitful ways of addressing a living connection within us that also leads to a change in our relationship and behavior toward the living world. Here one could speak of a “pragmatic romanticism” as described by metamodern thinkers.

Metamodernism: A Culture of In-Between

It seems to me that several resonances can be found in Taylor’s reflections with what is referred to as metamodern thinking. Metamodernism refers to a pluralistic movement of thinkers and activists who, in the broadest sense, are searching for a culture and way of thinking that goes beyond modernity and postmodernism. In contrast to modernity, which Taylor characterized as individualism and secularization, and postmodernity with its critique of Western worldviews, notions of progress, and colonization, metamodern thinking seeks an in-between that transcends both.

The term “metamodern” also refers to the Greek metaxis as the “in-between” and was first coined by cultural scientists. They recognized a quality in new works of art that went beyond postmodern art. It was not only deconstructed, ironically questioned, and nihilistically broken, but the experience of a greater whole, a meaning, a connectedness was addressed. Not as a new theory or explanation of the world, but as an open process.

As in Taylor’s thinking, the opening up of spaces of experience of connectedness is a concern of metamodernism, which can be understood as a continuation of integral thinking as formulated in various ways by Sri Aurobindo, Jean Gebser, and Ken Wilber. In metamodernism, the space between the poles is opened up as a living space for inquiry in an integrative sense. “Metamodernism,” according to cultural scientists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, “oscillates between modern enthusiasm and postmodern irony, between hope and melancholy, between naivety and knowledge, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity.”

The metamodern thought author, Hanzi Freinacht, uses terms such as pragmatic romanticism, pragmatic idealism, informed naivety, magical realism, and ironic sincerity to refer to the flexibly connecting, oscillating quality of metamodern thinking. In metamodernism, irony is used in much the same way as we have seen in Taylor: as a reference to the fact that all our explanations are only temporary and fragmentary. In the skepticism toward overarching explanations of the world, coupled with an appreciation of experiences of connectedness and meaning, I also see a similarity to Taylor’s idea of epistemic retreat.

Hanzi Freinacht explains his concept of “pragmatic romanticism” as follows: “Pragmatic romanticism is the principle of adopting an unreservedly romantic attitude to life, like the passionate painters, poets, and philosophers of Romanticism in the 19th century, and doing so in the most pragmatic way possible.” According to Freinacht, times have changed dramatically, and crises such as the climate catastrophe cannot be solved by enchanting the world alone. But we can find a place in the middle of the tension between romantic enchantment and pragmatic necessities, from which, according to Freinacht, movements can arise “that work from the spirit of romanticism and aim for real solutions.” In this concern, I find a strong resonance with the ideas formulated by Charles Taylor.

Ethics of Connectedness

As in the metamodern convergence of romantic interiority and ethical action, Taylor, as a political philosopher and activist, is not only concerned with an individual openness to experiences of “cosmic connectedness” and “re-enchantment of the world.” Taylor sees important ethical implications in the experiential spaces of our non-separateness from the world. Despite all setbacks, he assumes moral progress: “Ethical growth can only occur through mutual recognition and reconciliation, even if we are currently experiencing setbacks. … History takes the form of a spiral. People are open to the world around them, which has something to say to them and with which they relate in many different ways. Even in the midst of catastrophe, it is not unreasonable to assume this openness.”

This openness puts us as humans in a state of poetic wonder, in which we can listen to the living world. For Taylor, such receptivity is also a source of ethical action: “Both are necessary: politically effective, rational action against ecological destruction and, equally, a way of thinking that perceives us humans as tiny beings in a comprehensive order that can lose its powerful beauty through our actions and has something to say to us in particular. The fight against climate change must be waged by a coalition of these two forces.”

The Soul of An Open Society

An openness to the inexplicable, the unavailable, that which transcends us, is also essential for societies. Perhaps one could say that, with reference to poetry and romanticism, Taylor attempts to ground the openness of open society more deeply than just in laws and rules of coexistence. What is the heart, the soul of an open society in which what connects us as human beings with each other and with the world becomes the creative living space of joint creation? Not as a new dogma, but as an open process in the space between understanding and dialogue.

As an example of the political impact of poetry, Taylor cites the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, who said, “What is poetry if it does not save people or nations?” Milosz’s poems were popular in communist Poland among both the opposition and church circles. He thus played an important role in uniting the left-wing progressive and religious conservative forces of the resistance, which helped to overthrow the regime.

Because poetry opens up an interspace of experience and does not refer to ideological positions, Taylor sees it as something that connects people across all differences. For him, this is also an inspiration for how a society can find common ground despite different perspectives and ways of life. And that seems particularly important today.

In this sense, Charles Taylor, now 94 years old, provides an important impetus for understanding and transforming our culture through the power of a romantic re-enchantment of the world: “Fortunately, we have overcome enchantment in the sense of magic and belief in spirits through the Enlightenment; most people would certainly agree on that. But we miss enchantment in the sense of living meanings and a feeling of cosmic connectedness. We also lack this enchantment as a source of strength to actively solve the problems of our time.”