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While a philanthropy based on exclusive humanism can slide into trivial or dangerous regimes, self-giving reciprocity is one way to build a bond of love of neighbor. 

"In various places throughout his immensely important body of work—including Sources of the Self (1990) and Dilemmas and Connections (2011)—the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor provides a historically informed, sympathetic, yet critical account of the sources, spirit, and limitations of philanthropy. The account provided by Taylor in his celebrated A Secular Age (2007) offers a good example of Taylor’s argument that while the philanthropic turn constitutes a welcome development in the West’s moral consciousness, in and of itself it is insufficient to secure its own goals. It is an argument worth attending to in light of HistPhil’s charity-vs-philanthropy forum.

"In A Secular Age, Taylor proposes that modern Western societies are best understood as being secular in that within them belief in God is optional, debatable. Belief is always shadowed by unbelief."--Jeremy Beer, HistPhil.org


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