Constitutive Good Continued

According to Taylor, sources of the good tend to vary from (a) those solely external to the self, to (b) those both internal and external, to (c) those totally internal. As he notes, at one time, the good was wholly external to the self as it was perceived in Plato’s moral ontology; the good was endemic to the structure of reality. The Stoics also saw things this way. Taylor notes the big transition in moral sources in the last four centuries:

Moving from an epoch in which people could find it plausible to see the order of the cosmos as a moral source, to one in which a very common view presents us a universe which is very neutral, and finds the moral sources in human capacities. (1994, p. 215)

He takes Plato as his representative of the first. “The cosmos, ordered by the good, set standards of goodness for human beings, and is properly the object of moral awe and admiration, inspiring us to act rightly” (Taylor, 1994). This is, however, an important distinction: Taylor himself is a moral realist, but not a neo-Platonist: the view that the good is part of the metaphysical structure of the world. Platonic moral realism has been discredited because it leans too heavily on the idea of an ontic logos, a meaningful order. Nor is Taylor, on the other hand, a radical subjectivist. His view of realism lies somewhere between the Romantic subjectivist Rilke, and the Platonic objectivist. He wants to champion both the subjective and objective dimensions of the moral self, and maintain that there are sources outside as well as inside the self. Read More…

Moral Sources: the Vital Constitutive Good

One vital dimension of the quality of the will in Taylor’s moral ontology is the constitutive good (Taylor, 1989, pp. 91-107). I had to grapple with this concept for years before I grasped it. This breakthrough insight has powerful cultural  impact. The moral framework operates at two levels. At one level, there are the general life goods, those that are valued by the individual self. The life goods are things that make life worth living or the virtues they advocate: such as reason, piety, courage, freedom, moderation, respect, all features of human life that possess intrinsic worth. At another, motivational level, Taylor reveals the important category of the constitutive good; this good he also calls the moral source. With this emphasis, Taylor wants to recover the category of moral motivation for the self.  Read More…