There is, Ian Fraser claims, a spectre that “haunts Charles Taylor's conception of the self – the spectre of Marxism” (1). In his early career Taylor was a prominent member of the New Left and indeed one of the founding editorial board members of New Left Review, and he wrote a number of pieces on Marx. Later, of course, he became quite critical of Marx and Marxism. Fraser is puzzled by the lack of attention paid to Taylor's engagement with Marx and his book is an attempt to fill this void in the growing Taylor literature. Through this engagement, Fraser attempts to show the continuing relevance of what he calls the Marxist humanist tradition that Taylor has distanced himself from but has not entirely rejected (3).

Fraser's book is both a critique of Taylor and a defense of a certain humanist genre of Marxism whose proponents include E. P. Thompson, Benjamin, Bloch, Adorno and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. For the bulk of the text Fraser tacks back and forth between these two tasks. The former consists of lobbing critical flack at Taylor's concept of the strongly evaluative self, his understanding of Catholicism, and his limited understandings of transcendence and epiphany. The book's longest chapter engages in a drawn-out, disjointed critique of Taylor's 2004 study Modern Social Imaginaries. Given the limits to Taylor's understanding of the universal features of selfhood and the particular historical manifestations of it at play in late modernity, Fraser concludes Taylor is a thinker who must be transcended. This involves first explicating how Taylor is either aware of problems exposed by Marx (such as the symptoms of self-alienation caused by capitalism) or is initially sympathetic to certain Marxist intellectuals; secondly, pointing out how Taylor's criticisms of Marx, Marxism, and certain Marxists writers are mistaken; and thirdly, showing the continued relevance of concepts like class conflict to historical analysis and the limitations that capitalism places on the development of the spiritually fulfilled self that Taylor yearns for. Not only must Charles Taylor be transcended, but so must capitalism as well. In the final chapter, Fraser peers into the prize that comes with both acts of transcendence: a greater appreciation of the emergence of the aesthetic self, the ideal that everyone should be able to lead the contemplative life (5). This ideal is emerging through the radical democratic actions of the varied members of the global anti-capitalist movement.

The book is at its strongest in showing the roads Taylor briefly illuminates but does not take (Chapters 3, 4, and 5). Here Fraser discusses Bloch's and Benjamin's notions of transcendence, Joyce's notion of epiphany and its contrast with Taylor's, and Taylor's ambivalent but ultimately dismissive attitude to Adorno's work on art. Fraser also makes a number of trenchant criticisms of Taylor's Catholicism (Chapter 2), the most important being Taylor's opinion that unconditional love can flow only from a transcendent moral source. This is problematic because it (a) makes those saintly types who appear to bestow it from above suspicious for having less virtuous sources powering their actions, and (b) makes the objects of such love into means toward fulfillment of the end of serving God; most importantly, (c) this “extreme position” minimizes the relevance of non-theistic sources for effective moral action, thereby unmasking the restrictive theology and the strong ontology of values underlying Taylor's faith and moral reasoning (43–51). Throughout the book, Fraser shows the traits of a fair and well-researched scholar whose criticisms deserve serious attention by all of Taylor's readers.

I do have two perhaps unfair but still pressing concerns. First, Fraser's critique of Taylor's Catholicism seems incomplete given the recent publication of Taylor's opus, A Secular Age. Not only is the latter arguably Taylor's most important work but it also gives a much more complex picture of Taylor's thoughts on faith and secularity than can be found in Sources of the Self, A Catholic Modernity, Varieties of Religious Experience, or Modern Social Imaginaries (the latter two are in fact preliminary parts of A Secular Age and can't be understood outside the context of the entire work). A Secular Age provides a provisional yet systematic mapping of the ethical dimensions of contemporary secularity in which both theists and non-theists attempt to gain their own spiritual bearings. Taylor here seems less concerned with scoring points for Catholicism than with charting the “cross-pressures” of faith/non-faith felt by all thoughtful souls today. Hence it is hard to find Fraser's larger claim that Taylor promotes a restrictive brand of Catholicism convincing, given the seemingly pluralistic vision developed in this seminal work. Fraser might be right but more work is needed.

Second, Fraser's Marxism appears as limiting as Taylor's theism purportedly is. There are many voices out there that identify with elements of the Marxist tradition of critique without subscribing to the goal of transcending capitalism. Fraser, though, like Hardt and Negri, wants to corral this diverse assemblage down a Marxist path many would be hesitant to travel. Fraser tells us that it is “important to recognize that it is the capitalist system that should be the target and its overthrow should be the aim. In that sense, this global movement can best be described as anti-capitalist even if there are many different strategies put forward to overcome such a system. Indeed, the global anti-capitalist movement in its many forms displays the democratization of the aesthetic self by forming new ways of thinking and organizing” (181). Yet why should those Fraser identifies as “members” but who aren't Marxists accept this view? Why for that matter should they seek to transcend capitalism in all its varied forms and practices today? Many could reasonably argue that such a move is overly reductionist, for it fails to account for the possibility that some capitalist practices might create spaces in which individuals can lead a contemplative life. Perhaps the actual realities of twenty-first century global capitalisms make the Marxist humanist tradition relevant as a source for critiques while normative ideals like Fraser's of transcending capitalism have too homogenizing a view of contemporary political economy to be taken seriously.

These concerns point to the fact that Fraser has succeeded at two very crucial tasks, showing the richness of both Taylor's philosophical agenda and the Marxist humanist tradition Fraser identifies with as well as the creative possibilities that can ensue through a critical engagement with both. His book will prove to be quite useful to both Taylor devotees as well as a new generation of progressive students looking to engage mainstream social philosophy.