- Lived:
- Born November 5, 1931 · Montreal, Canada — still thinking and writing there in his mid-nineties
- Tradition:
- Canadian philosophy of the self and modernity; heir to Hegel and Herder in an analytic age; communitarian critic of liberal neutrality (a label he politely declines)
- The Big Idea:
- You did not make your self alone. Human beings are self-interpreting animals whose identities are formed in language and dialogue with others — which is why recognition matters, why modern identity has a history, and why living in a secular age changes what belief itself feels like.
- In their words:
- "One is a self only among other selves."
- If you remember one thing:
- The child of a French Catholic mother and an English Protestant father spent ninety years showing that who you are is something worked out between people — and that misrecognizing someone is not rudeness but real harm.