S4E20 Cosmic Connections: A Conversation with Charles Taylor

·51 min·5 clips

Renowned philosopher Charles Taylor discusses his new book on poetry's role in an age of scientific disenchantment.

The frame is literary on purpose. Laura Laurent introduces Charles Taylor through his philosophy, then turns Cosmic Connections toward poetry and human experience. Taylor answers from a wide angle, but he does not make poetry sound decorative. For him, it is a way of being in relation with the world and the cosmos. Disenchantment gives the conversation its pressure. The episode moves through an older enchanted order of magical structures, then asks what modern knowledge loses when it steps back from participation. Taylor is not asking for nostalgia. He is interested in experiences that make gratitude, relation, and receptivity feel intellectually serious again. The politics enters with a harder edge. He contrasts that receptive state of mind with public indifference to climate danger, especially around an election and a candidate dismissing climate change. Laurent keeps coming back to participation. Her reading of the book stresses that poetry does more than know great things from a distance. It puts the reader into relation with them. Annie Dillard becomes one example, a modern writer Laurent uses to clarify the kind of encounter Taylor cares about. The conversation stays composed, even when the subjects get heavy. Climate, disenchantment, and human incapacity all come up, but the exchange remains courteous and explanatory. Cosmic Connections sounds demanding, but not sealed off. Laurent closes by recommending it even to listeners who feel intimidated, suggesting that a page or two may be enough to start. Taylor's argument has a patient reach. Poetry becomes a disciplined way to feel how the world acts on the people trying to understand it.

As heard by us

Charles Taylor considers how poetry might restore a sense of participation in the world.

Charles Taylor treats poetry as a way to recover contact with the world in an age of disenchantment. In conversation with Laura Laurent about Cosmic Connections, he sets poetic experience beside philosophy and scientific detachment.

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You'll hear Charles Taylor connect poetry's power with gratitude, participation, and our relationship to the world in an age of disenchantment.

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