Posted by: gcarkner | July 1, 2024

The Qualities of Freedom of the Will 3/

What is a Moral Horizon?

As you follow this series, you will realize that mature, healthy freedom is not merely liberty to do whatever you want. It involves responsibility for the impact of your actions on others and on creation/the natural world. Once the case is made for qualitative discriminations, Taylor continues to develop the case for moral realism by arguing that one has to make sense of these basic human moral intuitions within some structure. This means that one has to articulate self within a moral framework, in a way that makes sense of that experience. The various goods that vie for attention need to be organized within a defined moral worldview, a big picture of moral thought and action. This process involves the geography metaphor of moral mapping of a landscape, making explicit the existence within the self of a map which can describe, contextualize, and guide one’s moral experience and judgments; it includes a set of moral parameters. Taylor believes that this is very significant for healthy moral consciousness. He sees that this moral horizon is an essential dimension of the self’s moral reality, claiming that all people have such a framework, even if it exists in a fragile state, or if they are entirely unconscious of it. The self is interconnected in dialectical relationship with such a horizon. Inherent in this discourse is a call to a higher version of freedom. Taylor writes:

 I want to defend the strong thesis that doing without moral frameworks is utterly impossible for us; otherwise put, that the horizons within which we live our lives and which make sense of them have to include these strong qualitative discriminations. Moreover, this is not meant just as a contingently true psychological fact about human beings … Rather the claim is that living within such strongly qualified horizons is constitutive of human agency, that stepping outside these limits would be tantamount to stepping outside what we would recognize as integral, that is, undamaged human personhood. (C. Taylor, 1989, 27) 

He comments on the crisis that emerges with the loss of such a horizon as a disorientation of self, the kind of phenomenon that is endemic to nihilism (C. Taylor, 1989, 18-19). He notes that to begin to lose one’s orientation is to be in crisis—both a moral and identity crisis at once—and to lose it utterly is to break down and enter a zone of extreme pathology (C. Taylor, 1989, 27-28). Employing the metaphor of physical space, Taylor claims that the framework orients the self in moral space, a space of moral questions of purpose, conduct, and direction. One’s moral horizon is composed of a series of qualitative discriminations (spoken of in post 2/ in this series), strong evaluations, or judgments about which goods are of higher importance. The moral horizon automatically invokes a hierarchy of goods; it offers structure and guidance concerning how to relate to others, what it is good to be, and what is meaningful, important and rewarding, what one endorses and opposes. Some may lack this orientation, but it is not taken as a situation to be normalized or celebrated as a boon of freedom. Actually, it shows us concern for that individual’s moral and mental health, as a form of confusion. It exhibits a crisis of self.

The qualitative nature of the framework reads as follows:

To think, feel, judge within such a framework is to function with a sense that some action, or mode of life, or mode of feeling is incomparably higher than the others … available to us. Higher means deeper, purer, fuller, more admirable, making an absolute claim …. Higher goods command our respect, awe, admiration—act as a standard. (C. Taylor, 1989, 19-20) 

This reference to incomparably higher speaks of the hypergood, an important aspect of the framework. This topic will be covered in the next post. The framework or horizon is one’s ultimate claim about the nature and contours of the moral world. It is the moral home in which we dwell. It is not held lightly or casually, but taken as real (as one’s moral ontology); it is essential to understanding oneself and one’s human world. Can freedom itself offer such a moral ontology? Let’s see as we examine to parameters of our framework. Importantly, one’s moral map transcends the self, is greater and higher than the self. Examples of such frameworks are found in a theistic religion like Judaism but also in secular viewpoints such as Scientism, Marxism or New Age. Nihilism denies that such a frame exists. One’s horizon contains a disciplined, life-shaping worldview. One’s identity lives in a dynamic relationship with, it is moved deeply–captivated by such a framework. The horizon is composed of strongly-affirmed goods. Inherently, there is a personal resonance of these goods with the self. One’s horizon offers a place to locate the self, and set one’s moral priorities, and build out from there in character and the goal trajectory of one’s life. Taylor takes note of this important distinction about the development of identity. 

My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose … the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand (C. Taylor, 1989, 27). If the human is a self-interpreting animal [both Foucault and Taylor affirm this], the moral framework is deeply endemic to one’s self-interpretation (Taylor, 1989, pp. 34-36). 

In terms of nuances, we learn that there are different moral horizons, different maps, for different people and groups. Taylor recognizes that the orientation in moral space of an anarchist is quite different from that of a Catholic or a feminist. In fact, one could say that various people live in different moral universes: operating with radically different assumptions, drives and concerns (a fundamental insight). Charles Taylor considers that it is quite positive to articulate these differences, rather than hide them philosophically, because it can works towards better understanding as in negotiation between different countries. Dialogue and communication is productive. According to our philosopher, the relationship with one’s framework is dialectical–i.e., the framework is not static. Contrary to Foucault’s assumption, such a framework is not simply something imposed by society, parents, or a ruling elite–part of a power/knowledge regime. It is chosen by adults with clear minds.

Spiritual Quest: I have learned much from Taylor about the link or interface between morality and spirituality. He firmly believes and demonstrates that one’s moral framework also includes a personal spiritual quest or narrative journey (C. Taylor, 1989, 17-18). It is something that is both invented and discovered at once “in virtue of which we make sense of our lives spiritually” (C. Taylor, 1989, 18). It also refers to the search for and discovery of one’s moral calling. The quest is to find a fit for one’s reflective moral experience, and discovering this fit depends on, is interwoven with inventing it. That is complex but very insightful regarding mature freedom. Making sense of life involves framing meaningful expressions which are adequate and carry moral substance and currency (C. Taylor, 1989, 18). Humans are creatively involved in the development and shaping of their moral horizon as they grow and mature. Taylor agrees with Foucault regarding this creative dimension of self-shaping autonomy. 

Taylor uses the term articulate for the process whereby the aspects of the moral world are identified, clarified, and made accessible, so that they can empower moral agents (C. Taylor, 1989, 18). To articulate is in a sense to draw the background picture which makes sense of one’s life morally speaking. It offers to locate the good vis-à-vis the self, and to specify the dynamics of how I am related to the good. He suggests that the self naturally has an urge to articulate (make explicit) this background picture (moral map). It can be a very liberating experience. The articulation produces an awareness of something that is unspoken but presupposed: the tacit becomes explicit. This process reveals itself, especially when there is a moral challenge to one’s framework by another person of significance in one’s life. It can also be triggered by a moral dilemma or a challenging circumstance as in suffering a loss or tragedy. This elicits the ideals that draw the self to a particular moral outlook, empowers the self, and inspires a person to act in accord with their emerging framework. It is also important to realize that one can adopt new goods into one’s moral framework as these are deemed valuable in the process of one’s quest for moral growth throughout one’s life. Human rights language can come later in one’s life and still have a very positive impact.

The Benefits of Articulation:

(a) It deepens one’s understanding of moral goods and responses by showing what underpins them. The process backgrounds and contextualizes the moral self, thought, and action. It helps us break out of our current moral autism where performance and productivity has replaced moral validation (Matthew Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head, 183-85). This can help with what ails modernity.

(b) It heightens and sharpens one’s consciousness/awareness of the complexity of the moral life and the diverse range of goods to which modern individuals adhere. This can be surprising, as it shows us what drives our friend or colleague.

(c) It enhances the rational discussion and evaluation of goods because they are brought to the surface of consciousness. This is one place where Taylor’s moral ontology really stands out: importantly, he believes in the possibility of rational discussion of ethical ideals and convictions. They are not strictly or rightly a private affair. People deserve to know where we are coming from, to avoid manipulation.

If articulacy is to open us, to bring us out of the cramped postures of suppression, this is partly because it will allow us to acknowledge the full range of goods we live by. It is also because it will open us to our moral sources, to release their force in our lives. (Taylor, 1989, 107) 

(d) Finally, articulation provides a correction to the “self-enforced inarticulacy” (C. Taylor, 1989, 53-90) of much modern moral philosophy with respect to these qualitative discriminations. Taylor (C. Taylor, 1989, 84, 90) disagrees with those who want to obscure these frameworks or remain mute about the place of qualitative distinctions in the moral life. That seems quite ingenuous or dishonest, as pragmatic concerns alone are insufficient for human flourishing. It also helps them to seek foundations or sources for their moral convictions, to discern which are shallow and selfish and which are of substance and have longterm applicability.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it tends towards justice.”

Throughout his discussion about frameworks, Taylor recovers/revives an interest in a commitment to the good. In his understanding, development of identity emerges in a way that is closely linked to one’s orientation within a particular moral framework or horizon, that is, where one is positioned with respect to one’s moral map, plus the goods within one’s horizon. This is the defining edge of meaning in one’s life; he claims that a person with depth (a thick self) must be defined in terms of the good: “In order to make minimal sense of our lives, in order to have an identity, we need an orientation to the good, which means some sense of qualitative discrimination, of the incomparably higher” (Taylor, 1989, p. 47). What one calls the good is the most significant defining factor: “What I am as a self, my identity, is essentially defined by the way things have significance for me and how I orient myself to the good” (C. Taylor, 1989, 34). Genuine self-understanding, clarification, moral self-discipline, and education require that the self be identified and articulated within such a moral horizon. It also means that, “one orients oneself in a space which exists independently of one’s success or failure in finding one’s bearings” (C. Taylor, 1989, 30). Good mentorship is often needed to work things through. One is able to grow up into one’s framework and get over intimidation by its complexity and demand. This adds another dimension to the objective pole in his moral ontology: the moral horizon has a status independent of the self, though intimately and dialectically entwined with the self. 

Discerning Between Differing Horizons: There is another important distinction in Taylor’s proposal. He identifies the existence of many different and conflicting horizons that frame an individual’s moral space. Is he merely proposing another sophisticated form of relativism, one of moral frameworks? In this regard, he does clarify an important qualifier about frameworks in a response to critical papers on his work, Philosophy in An Age of Pluralism (J. Tully, Ed., 1994). He strongly denies the arbitrariness of one’s framework, or the equality of all frameworks, in favour of a more critical and thoughtful perspective, where some frameworks actually calculate as being of higher value than others. This is essential to his critical moral realism:

Realism involves ranking (some) schemes and ranking them in terms of their ability to cope with, allow us to know, describe, come to understand reality. Some schemes are better or worse than others …. Moral realism requires one be able to identify certain moral changes as gains or losses, yet it can be sensitive to the complexities of life and of moral choice. (C. Taylor, 1994, 220 and 224) 

This is not exactly the same as scientific critical realism (although there is some overlap) where the forces of nature operate in a certain way whether humans observe them in that way or not, and where the scientist bends her analysis or theory to fit newly discovered data sets from research. The moral goods do not exist actually outside of the human realm; it is human beings only that see significance in a moral good and a particular moral framework–Taylor’s concept of resonance. Moral realism means that some frameworks are truer to authentic human experience and make more sense than others, that is, that they are more plausible, and nobler. This remains an important nuance in his discourse. 

From the average person’s perspective, there are no final criteria for evaluating or judging between different frameworks, except to transparently reveal what they actually claim. Frameworks are evaluated rationally by their highest ideals—hypergoods—and by their personal resonance with the self (sense of fitness). They are deeply connected to one’s self-interpretation, one’s sense of self in the relationship to others. Taylor puts forward an honest appraisal of the actual situation, a critique of the superficial notion of soft relativism.

The point of view from which we might constate that all orders are equally arbitrary, in particular that all moral views are equally so, is just not available to us as humans. It is a form of self-delusion to think that we do not speak from a moral orientation which we take to be right. That is a condition of being a functioning self, not a metaphysical view we can put on or off. (C. Taylor, 1989, 99) 

Significantly, it is not possible for anyone to hold a position where all horizons are created equal, or to hold one’s moral horizon lightly or superficially, because it shapes one’s very identity; it is a serious matter, one with gravitas.

Taylor does offer hope that when one could become dissatisfied with one’s horizon, and that there is a way forward of searching/working through it to a better alternative. This is the way of error reduction or filling the gaps within one’s view. He also emphasizes that one must be able to live consistently and non-ambivalently within one’s horizon: It must have liveability. This is the direction of increased plausibility or resonance. Both subjective and objective dimensions are recognized together in his ethics. Therefore, one can engage in intelligent rational dialogue about horizons, and even across horizons. Horizons are to be respected and not to be feared or shunned as a mere ploy of controlling forces. 

Application: It is highly documented that humans are susceptible to corruption. Sometimes they lack discernment between right and wrong, good and evil. Taylor is no moral relativist as I have argued above. I believe that he would agree with French philosopher Chantal Delsol in her book, Icarus Fallen, that even though Europeans have been shy about language of the good since World War 2, they do want to discern between Good and Evil. I take this definition from my recent publication, Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture (G. Carkner, 2024, 83-84). It can be applied to social justice and harmony across difference–towards societal renewal.

Delsol’s Definition of Evil: The Greek concept of diabolos literally means “he who separates,” he who divides through aversion and hate; he who makes unjust accusations, denigrates, slanders; he who envies, admits his repugnancy. The absolute Evil identified by our contemporaries takes the form of racism, exclusion or totalitarianism. The last in fact appears to be the epitome of separation, since it atomizes societies, functions by means of terror and denouncement, and is determined to destroy human bonds. Apartheid and xenophobia of all varieties are champions of separation. This features the Machiavellian psychological profile.

Delsol’s Definition of the Good: For contemporary man, the notions of solidarity and fraternity, and the different expressions of harmony between classes, age groups, and peoples, are still associated with goodness. The man of our time is similar to the man of any time insofar as he prefers friendship to hate and indifference, social harmony to internal strife, peace to war, and the united family to the fragmented family. In other words, he seeks relationship, union, agreement, and love, and fears distrust, ostracism, contempt, and the destruction of his fellow men. . . . The good has the face of fellowship, no matter what name it is given, be it love, the god of Aristotle, or the God of the Bible.

The certitude of the good finds its guarantee in the attraction it induces. The separation of the diabolos occurs constantly, but one day or another it will be pursued by mortal shame. Thus, progression in areas like human rights moves towards the good of all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyHiUGdWdFc Human Rights in 2066 William Shabas; You Are a Human Rights Person https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG2M05Bd2PU

—Since the time of Paul, Christian thought had been directed to the status and claims of humans as such, quite apart from the roles that they might occupy in a particular society. It is hardly too much to say that Paul’s conception of deity provided the individual with a freehold in reality. It laid a normative foundation for individual conscience and its claims. (L. Siedentop, The Invention of the Individual, 152)

Dr. Gordon E. Carkner PhD Philosophical Theology, University of Wales, Author, Blogger, YouTube Webinar Producer, Meta-Educator UBC Potgraduate Students & Faculty

New Book by Charles Taylor:  Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment

Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 

Delsol, Chantal. Icarus Fallen: The Search for Meaning in an Uncertain World. Translated by Robin Dick. Wilmington, DE: ISIS, 2003

Carkner, G. (2024). Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture: Grounding our Identity in Christ. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishing.

Tully, J. (Ed.) (1994) Philosophy in an Age of Pluralism: The Philosophy of Charles Taylor in Question. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Leave a Comment

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , ,

Posted by: gcarkner | June 19, 2024

The Qualities of Freedom of the Will 2/

Charles Taylor Wagers on (Critical) Falsifiable Moral Realism

Human subjectivity, human freedom is the combination of being (ontology), moral conviction, and action (agency). Indeed, who are we late moderns and where are we headed culturally? Charles Taylor challenges the current superficiality regarding moral convictions with its over-emphasis on living one’s desires on a philosophical trajectory of freedom of choice/self-interest/love of self first. Self is the a priori. Some call this the cult of self or idolatry of self (Augustine). Shouldn’t we aspire to higher ideals? Taylor’s argument for moral realism starts with the following. In terms of moral givens, he argues that certain perennial features of the self are present irrespective of culture or the way they are expressed or understood. He starts his analysis with the question of how humans operate as moral beings in their actual moral experiences in real time and space, and how they actually reflect upon those experiences–the phenomenological dimension. He is interested in praxis (behavioural practices) as well as moral theories. Beginning with humans and the way they experience morality (the moral phenomenon), he claims that the most plausible explanation of morality is one that takes seriously a person’s perception of the independence of moral goods. It has been my privilege to wrestle with Taylor’s engaging ideas for a couple decades. I find him weighty, nuanced, wise, resonating with my personal experience and observations of human behaviour, desires, and needs. There is real depth to his take on morality that avoids many of the traps/conundrums in moral discourse today. It ought to captivate and challenge the best minds and the most genuine hearts in this complex field of ethics, spirituality, and identity.

Taylor does not feel it appropriate to substitute a philosophical abstraction (for example, utilitarianism or personal happiness) for how people live, reflect, and think morally. His first point of departure is that he argues for the ubiquity of moral intuitions and judgments in human experience. News flash: we all judge others and ourselves morally continuously. These are intuitions that transcend basic human desires for survival, sex, or self-realization. They are referred to as second-order desires, strong evaluations or qualitative discriminations. One notes the important reference to the qualitative aspect of the free will. This concept of second-order desires invokes the ancient idea of the good, a concept that goes all the way back to Plato. Taylor has a critical engagement with Plato’s moral ideas, but recognizes his gift to us in the transcendence of the good. The good, for Taylor, is one which, although interwoven with the self, transcends the self in significant ways. It is broader, higher and deeper, so to speak, not reducible to an individual’s being or choice. We are deep into the hermeneutics of the self: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6081klkdqGo

Ruth Abbey (2000, 29), a Taylor scholar, comments that: “He does not suggest that in trying to explain morality we imagine a moral world devoid of humans and attempt to separate its subject-dependent properties from its objective or real properties.” Both are vital to the discussion. He begins by claiming that all humans have certain moral intuitions, and all make moral judgments, including judgments about the behaviour of others. They all have a qualitative sense of their significant moral choices and deliberations; moral agency can never be reduced to mere decision. For example, he points out that respect for human life is one of the deepest and most universally held moral instincts across multiple cultures (C. Taylor, 1989, 8, 11-12), which includes a concern for the Other; it is not merely a characteristic of self-survival, or an obligation to family or tribal survival. For example, “Human beings command respect in all societies; the West articulates this in the language of rights” (C. Taylor, 1989, 11). All societies condemn murder and lesser forms of abuse such as harassment. When this respect is not shown to someone, it is judged negatively–that is, there is strong moral conviction, an intuition about such behaviour. One exercises a moral or qualitative evaluation of the situation, appealing to some moral standard or moral good which transcends the situation and the parties involved. It is instinctual and natural to human society and relationality. One might say that it is inescapable for a healthy, adjusted person.

Our moral reactions have two facets … On the one side, they are almost like instincts, comparable to our love of sweet things, or our aversion to nauseous substances … on the other, they seem to involve claims, implicit or explicit, about the nature and status of human beings. From the second side, a moral reaction is an assent to, an affirmation of a given ontology of the human … The whole way in which we think, reason, argue, and question ourselves about morality supposes that our moral reactions have these two sides: that they are not only ‘gut’ feelings but also implicit acknowledgments of claims concerning the objects. (C. Taylor, 1989, 5 & 7) 

Taylor’s form of critical moral realism means that the emphasis includes both objective and subjective aspects (poles) of self and morality, both a subjective and objective givenness. Humans do not just act, but regularly evaluate, praise and condemn other’s actions and motives, and their own speech and conduct, always appealing to certain objective standards. We always want to justify what we do–appealing to validity. We feel guilt when our desires or behaviour do not measure up to such standards. It is ironic that we can be disgusted with our own actions or thoughts.

According to Taylor, humans are strong evaluators by nature; strong evaluation is an essential feature of identity and a permanent feature of moral life (C. Taylor, 1989, 3-4, 14, 15). He sees this capacity for evaluating or judging desires to be distinctively and universally human. He believes that human beings experience the goods that command their respect in a non-anthropocentric way, that is, as not deriving solely from human will or choice, nor depending only on the fact of individual affirmation of their value. We may indeed ask where they are derived from–at a higher level of reality. He strongly challenges the projectivist hypothesis (C. Taylor, 1989, 342). Human interpretation is always involved (moral convictions are human convictions after all). But there is also an objective element in this evaluation process that Taylor wants to make quite explicit and clear–to underline. Projectivism holds that the world is essentially meaningless and that one must create meaning for life by what one affirms or creates. Foucault affirms something like this in his concept of self-invention. A moral good, under projectivism, would calculate as only a myth or an illusion, even if a myth by which one lives. The bottom line: we all appreciate these goods at some level, because they inspire and protect us from harm, build a community of expectations and security, give hope of a positive future.

Taylor’s term, strong evaluation, comes from Harry Frankfurt’s (1971, 5-20) argument about second order desires, that is, desires one has about one’s desires, evaluative desires (such as respect, rights, or justice) that transcend other desires (sex, safety, food, and survival). These are “standards by which basic desires and choices are judged” (C. Taylor, 1989, 20). Humans experience a range of desires, but do not view them all equally; some are naturally seen as higher or more admirable than others. There is a hierarchy and contrast in human desires (C. Taylor, 1989, 4, 20, 47). Individuals do not see all their values or desires as being of equal worth. One must overpower one kind of desire for the benefit of others–for example to build community and peaceful relations. Strong evaluation is inherently contrastive and hierarchical; it appeals to certain goods that are independent of the self and independent of human choice (C. Taylor, 1989, 58, 68, 74). These goods are always related to the human moral sphere, and are never mere abstract categories. Ruth Abbey sharply captures the nuance of Taylor’s view: 

The best account of morality must be one that incorporates the fact that individuals experience goods as being worthy of their admiration and respect for reasons that do not depend on their choice of them. Beginning with humans and the way they experience morality, Taylor claims that the most plausible explanation of morality is one that takes seriously humans’ perception of the independence of the goods. (R. Abbey, 2000, 28) 

This independence of goods is vital to the debate between Taylor and Foucault; it is a point where they differ sharply. Taylor refuses to reduce morality to a power relations or truth games struggle: a contestation. Those who have brought moral reform to society were often a small minority that appealed to something higher in the human condition (our better angels). The good to which we challenge one another must be transcendent of what we regularly do and how we treat one another. It promotes higher expectations of attitudes and actions–the appeal to something higher and deeper.

Furthermore, as Flanagan (1996, 147) notes in his commentary on Taylor, this concept of strong evaluations is both descriptive of how people are and act, and normative regarding what is required for full personhood. Individuals do make these working moral assumptions, says Taylor, even if they are not conscious about relating to, evaluating, sorting, and ordering goods that impinge upon them. The process is often tacit, unconscious or intuitive, but nevertheless real. Taylor emphasizes this fine distinction to focus on the normativity and hierarchy of moral goods: 

I want to speak of strong evaluations when the goods putatively identified are not seen as constituted as good by the fact that we desire them, but rather are seen as normative for desire. That is, they are seen as goods which we ought to desire, even if we do not, goods such that we show ourselves up as inferior or bad by our not desiring them. (C. Taylor, 1985a, 120)  

Moral realism for Charles Taylor, means that (C. Taylor, 1989, 4, 20) strongly valued goods command the respect of individuals because of their intrinsic value, not one’s choice to value them; they are experienced as making calls or demands upon individuals, rather than being just freely or arbitrarily chosen by them. This means that Taylor takes existential moral experience of the good seriously and imputes ontological significance to it–thus, critical moral realism. He resists the slide towards moral subjectivism/relativism, which suggests that one’s choice among the various goods/values can only be justified according to individual preferences or inclinations–the lazy, selfish person’s ethics. These preferences can be judged objectively, rationally examined, discussed, and debated with the hope of better outcomes in future–towards individual flourishing and social harmony.

Taylor claims that there is an inherent quality (a goodness) in the good that individual selves ought to recognize in their openness and wisdom. The good is the key element in morality that helps an individual self-transcend the animal level of desires for food, sex, and survival. Taylor (1989, 42) offers a key test of a good: Can it be the basis of attitudes of admiration or contempt? It raises questions about “what kind of life is worth living … what would be a rich, meaningful life, as against an empty one?” (C. Taylor, 1989, 20). One can easily discern the difference in the goods appealed to between medical relief work as in Doctors Without Borders and child prostitution/trafficking; peace-making and war mongering invasion of other countries; compassion towards the marginalized and fear-hatred towards the person who is different. Taylor claims that this discernment, this instinct is linked to a second order desire, or qualitative discrimination which is part of who we are as moral beings. The former garners one’s admiration, while the latter draws one’s contempt and even condemnation. Taylor wants us to affirm this capacity for evaluating or judging desires, claiming that there is a capacity within the human person (discernment or wisdom) which can be revived and educated. This is key to cultural renewal. It can help us look critically at our own desires and behaviour in light of the good, with the prospect of moving towards it. He resists the stance of the nihilist, where the good is demoted to subjective choice or group values, or even harmful, belligerent politics. Ethics that emphasizes the will and freedom of choice is too often poorly focused on a Dionysian release of the base desires. Dr. Abigail Favale shows some implications for the discussion of identity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwZAB1CzAcA

Individuals are not always aware of the hierarchy that is in play; it can be held pre-articulately or tacitly as a background to moral understanding. One can also repress these helpful instincts and become less human. The language of strong speaks more about quality than force or power. Taylor believes that all individuals are strong evaluators, but does not believe that they all value the same things strongly. He does, however, believe that some goods do feature in all moral codes and are strongly valued by all cultures: for example, the value of human life, protection of children, the dignity of the person, basic respect and cooperation. Taylor’s voice is vital to contemporary international and national relations. See you in the next post as the momentum of Taylor’s wisdom develops its gravitas.

Gordon E. Carkner, PhD Philosophical Theology, University of Wales, Author, Blogger, YouTube Webinar Producer, Meta-Educator UBC Graduate Students & Faculty

Key Readings for Dialogue with Charles Taylor

  • Taylor, C. (1985c). Connolly, Foucault, and Truth. Political Theory 13 377-85 
  • Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 
  • Abbey, R. (2000). Charles Taylor. Teddington, UK: Acumen.
  • Frankfurt, H. (1971). Freedom of the Will and the Concept of the Person. Journal of Philosophy 68 1 5-20. 
  • Flanagan, O. (1996). Self-Expressions: Mind, morals and the meaning of life. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TmQUo-hqHM Charles Taylor reflects on the self in a secular age at Duke University.

Leave a Comment

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , ,

Posted by: gcarkner | June 13, 2024

The Qualities of Freedom of the Will 1/

Towards the Recovery of Constructive Ethical Dialogue/Discourse

Let’s talk about the glue that holds relationships and society together. Many people today are discouraged and confused by the moral drift in Western society, wondering if they can have any voice or influence in a world with such a strong emphasis on individual choice, subjectivist approach to values, aesthetic taste in ethics and radical, self-defining (self-justifying) concepts of freedom. Freedom currently in the West is often claimed as an ontological position, a reality within which one can justifiably choose one’s own moral parameters and construct or re-invent the self. In his important book, Sources of the Self (1989), followed by A Secular Age (2007), and The Language Animal (2016), eminent Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor attempts to track and understand the moral soul of early and late Western modernity, especially what he calls the North Atlantic viewpoint. The narrative is a complex one, but vital to comprehend if we are to truly understand ourselves and our friends and colleagues. There are many ideological forces at work today and many experiments in promoting an ethics of happiness, or consequence, or situation, one of pleasure or principle. The focus of ethics can be radically varied.

Religiously-oriented  people today can feel powerless and a bit odd, even guilty, for holding any moral convictions at all, that is, besides a consumeristic will that follows its self-interest desires. On this important topic, visiting Notre Dame Early Modern European History scholar Brad S. Gregory has a most profound Chapter 4. “Subjectivizing Morality” in his 2012 publication The Unintended Reformation. Many today feel themselves caving in or abandoning their inherited standards of behaviour under the weight of the cultural slippage–towards nihilistic relativism and radical individualism or autonomy without responsibility. Where can people turn for assistance, discernment, and wisdom on this matter?

McGill University Philosopher Charles Taylor’s first great tome

In the West, is there any basis left for normativity, for accountability, even for responsibility for the Other? Is it all just about my agenda, my choice, my naked will, my career, or my aesthetic self-invention and personal fulfilment? “What is the quality of this choice, this will?” asks Taylor as he retrieves an ancient idea of qualitative discriminations in ethics–the language of the moral good or goods (See especially Part 1. of Sources of the Self). In what is  choice grounded, and how is it guided? We late moderns can be very naive about our Faustian deals when we make expressivism (performativity) an absolute within an ideology of unshackled freedom and self-determination. Post-Romantic philosophers like Michel Foucault offer an Art of Self or an ethics as aesthetics as a morality substitute in an age of nihilism and anomie (transgressive, norm-less existence). Is that our future?

This twelve part blog series on The Qualities of Freedom of the Will  suggests that pre-eminent Canadian philosopher of the self Charles Taylor offers himself as a very strategic interlocutor on this issue of freedom in his discussion of moral frameworks as a source of thick identity. He wants to retrieve a robust moral grounding in order to avoid contemporary solipsism (think Julia Roberts in the movie Eat, Pray Love). He believes that these goods can empower us as moral beings once again. They need not remain buried in contemporary moral discourse beneath the fragmentation of our choices, desires and distractions. Following in the footsteps of one of Oxford’s greatest philosophers, Iris Murdoch, this project (Malaise of Modernity; Sources of the Self) entails a dynamic, adventurous and exciting recovery of the ancient language of the good and a renewal of a fresh social normativity–a renewal of robust moral discourse in the polis.

Taylor is highly skilled in employing an engaging language that a pluralistic audience can understand and grapple with, both at the intellectual and practical moral agency level. He encourages us to think more deeply about the qualities of our freedom. It resonates with many people who feel morally lost in a pertinent way. One has to be willing to think harder and go deeper than much contemporary thought on ethics, ideals, and morals. It impacts our politics as well. I want to attest to the fact that it is worth the effort, and the grappling with unfamiliar vocabulary. It offers fresh hope for Western pluralistic cultures and sub-cultures. This is definitely part of the Western intellectual heritage, The Great Conversation.

The following series outlines his monumental contribution to moral and ethical thinking (the ontology of the good). It reveals a phenomenological aspiration to the good inherent in most humans if they are willing to reflect more circumspectly with Taylor. He proposes an aspiration which can be a robust challenge to the ethical solipsism and Zarathustra will-to-power outlook so common in culture today.

What are the valid and sustainable parameters of our current moral quest, our current quest for freedom, wholeness, identity, happiness? Within our various spiritual journeys, the quest for meaning and identity impacts our lives existentially. How do we map this language of the good in today’s world and put it to work for positive change and for higher meaning and purpose? Taylor as a philosopher is an avid moral geographer. Moral ontology is deeply important and central to all other discussions about the moral self. It offers real insight into the inner landscape (deep structure) of the self. Therefore it remains central to engage the current debates of our day in the midst of a loss of moral consensus, as astutely noted by brilliant philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue). Moral autism (inability to speak and articulate morally) and relativism is not an acceptable or stable place to rest for our future wellbeing. It will lead to bigotry, oppression, and violence, says Bishop Lesslie Newbigin (a formidable UK intellectual).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XC6DK1WkR4  Conversation (2012-06-16) with Charles Taylor rooted in A Secular Age (his Templeton Prize winning tome).

I trust you will enjoy reading and reflecting upon, perhaps debating with me in this series of posts.

Gordon E. Carkner, PhD Philosophical Theology, University of Wales, Meta-Educator with Postgraduate students and faculty at UBC, author of The Great Escape from Nihilism; and Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture, Champion of The Great Conversation.

PhD Dissertation: “A Critical Examination of Michel Foucault’s Concept of Moral Self-constitution in dialogue with Charles Taylor.” Find it in the British Library in London, Oxford University Library, or Oxford Centre for Mission Studies Library.

More Great Resources: On the recovery of substantial ethical discourse, see also Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith, Moral Believing Animals; plus his more recent book: Atheist Overreach: and R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge: Overcoming the Fact-Value Dichotomy. IVP Academic, 2014; Houston & Zimmermann (eds.), Sources of the Christian Self. Eerdmans, 2018.

.

Yoho National Park in Canada, a World of Wonders

Share this:

Leave a Comment

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , ,

Posted by: gcarkner | June 5, 2024

Taylor versus Foucault on Freedom 3/

Proposition 3: Redeemed freedom flourishes within a trinitarian horizon. Trinitarian divine goodness proves to be a fruitful plausibility structure within which to think about freedom and the moral self. Trinitarian goodness-freedom takes us to one more dimension of the self. It reveals new possibilities for identity, discovery, and personal transformation. It also adds sophistication to some of Taylor’s categories of the horizon of the good. It is in the life of the God-man Jesus that one can visualize this goodness-freedom dynamic.

What is full liberation? Michel Foucault, the philosopher of freedom, claimed that, “Ethics is the deliberate form assumed by freedom.” So what form will endure as a stable, longterm identity? What is the possibility of a transcendent paradigm shift in this conversation? The language of strong transcendence implies some dynamic that resides outside the economies of human experience, and human culture spheres: science, art, religion and ethics. It plays a key role in the drama of moral self-constitution and personal freedom through the validation of the self from a larger horizon of significance. We achieve more not less human meaning.

Here we propose a further recovery of ethics in partnership with trinitarian relationality. Jesus of Nazareth offers an exemplum of redeemed human freedom. In my PhD dissertation, I show that the human good could be linked through a transcendent turn to trinitarian goodness. Jesus’ life constitutes reconciliation, rather than enmity between goodness and freedom. In the philosophical turn towards transcendent goodness, Foucault’s ontology of liberty is subverted by the ontology of agape love without losing anything. We move from the aesthetic to the ethical and now the religious plane of existence (Kierkegaard), towards maturity.

How does Jesus’s life interpret freedom uniquely in light of this suggested turn to transcendent goodness? The interpretation starts as trinitarian theonomous goodness-freedom, a God-related freedom, that is qualified by transcendent divine goodness. It begins with the living God of the Christian story, who is constituted by a form of relation, mutuality and reciprocity, in which freedom is given to that which is Other. In this case, it is other Persons within the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Christian Trinity is a tri-unity of Persons with a history of self-giving freedom that defines God’s being as agape love. It is the constitutive good, the highest moral source and inspiration for human, finite goodness.

The position we are taking is clarified by British theologian, Alistair McFadyen, who reflects on the hermeneutic of freedom and self-giving within the Trinity. Human freedom, he claims, is grounded in, and defined by, God’s freedom.

God’s inmost being is constituted by the radical mutuality of the three divine Persons, in which they both give and receive their individuality from one another. In their intersubjectivity, there is the creative intention and recognition of subjectivity, and therefore transcendence in form of the integrity of personal identity, in the giving of space to one another. This giving of space is an interpersonal event, and must not be thought of as analogous to the evacuation of physical space. It is not a form of absence, but a way of being present with others in creative recognition of their autonomy within the relationship. It is a letting-be, rather than a letting-go: a structuring of the relationship so that it includes space and time for personal discreteness and autonomous response. Thus, the trinitarian life involves a circulation of the divine potentialities of being through the processes of self-giving, in the unity of which the three Persons receive their distinct personal identities. (A. McFadyen, 1995, 46-7)

This is the same gift of benevolent divine freedom that is expressed through the presence in the world of God the Son (Jesus of Nazareth) and God the Holy Spirit, the second and third Persons of the Trinity. God is a community of Persons in movement towards and present within creation, stimulating and opening up a future possibilities for robust human freedom. Because God is free, loving and relational, humans should be confident that they are not victims of fate, domination, and materialistic determinism. The character of redeemed freedom is creative and dynamic in its existential engagement with human sociality. Human freedom takes its cue from God, and flourishes within the ethos of God’s freedom. In fact, the dependence of human freedom on God secures its integrity. God creates the larger horizon for freedom, God affirms and validates human freedom within this order. Thus, the relationship between divine and human freedom is a profound gift.

God’s gift of freedom also entails God’s willingness to take/suffer the consequences of human freedom, even human assertions of autonomy and disbelief in God.

Knowledge of this goodness-freedom is not invented sui generis. It is offered through relationship with God as Trinity. God’s creation opens the latitude that affords space for human response in a non-coercive environment. It even includes the possibilities of human misunderstanding, rejection, disobedience towards and even disbelief in God. McFadyen, (1995,44) writes: “We find God subjecting Godself, first of all to the limitation of the incarnation in a human person; secondly, allowing Godself to be subject to human freedom—even to the extent of death—to bear the consequences of the human refusal of freedom.”

Human freedom is enhanced and empowered when there is a grateful response to the God who built into creation the very possibility and parameters of human freedom. The created, ordered ecology of relations is respectful of both divine sovereignty and a large degree of finite human choice and autonomy. Space is given for growth in individual integrity, uniqueness and particularity. This matches Foucault’s strong emphasis on the creativity in the self, without sacrificing many other positive infrastructural dimensions. At the end of the day, Foucault resists this limited but rich definition of freedom as a gift from God. He wants instead unlimited, unrestricted freedom for the self–radical autonomy–which falls into nihilism and narcissistic obsession with oneself.

Jesus, on the other hand, is the free and loyal Son of the Father, exemplifying the positive marriage between goodness, freedom and obedience, revealing its existential world impact. The irony of our discovery is that freedom as radical autonomy leads to a loss of self, crisis of identity and alienation from the Other. Jesus is completely free within a communion of love. In the practice of redeemed freedom, the human freedom of Christ vividly discloses God’s creative freedom–an important epiphany or revelation of strong transcendence.

[It is in the] Image of Christ, where freedom is exercised as rooted in the will of the Father and mediated in the power of the Spirit that the true character of the image of God is disclosed to us, both as the divine freedom for grace and as the human freedom of obedience …. Christ is … both the revelation of the divine freedom of grace and the disclosure of the human freedom of obedience, where obedience to the will of God the father is not the abrogation of human freedom but the form of its exercise. (Christoph Schwöbel, 1995, 80)

For Foucault, obedience to the Christian religion is negative and repressive, but in Jesus, it is never a contest between God the father’s freedom and his own. It entails an intimate cooperation rooted in this loving communion. Jesus reveals that modern freedom can be liberated from the weighty obligation to live self-reflexively out of one’s own power and resources. It also reveals a divine-human relationship rife with grace. This is carried on even in the midst of many attempts to oppress Jesus and repress his voice.

Form Works Beautifully with Freedom in this Furry Creek Waterfall

McFadyen illuminates some nuances of the divine-human interface of freedom, revealed through the incarnation.

[By] incarnation in the body of the crucified one implies that God’s freedom does not, after all, entail a transcendent aloofness from the world, but a form of involvement with it in which the divine being and freedom are staked. God subjects Godself to the risks, vulnerabilities and ambiguities of historical existence, including the risk of rejection, suffering and death, as well as of misinterpretation. God’s freedom and sovereignty must be of a radical kind: the freedom to give oneself in relation; to be with and in creation in ways that are costly to God, but which do not abrogate God’s sovereignty, freedom and transcendence. (A. McFadyen, 1995, 42)

In the incarnation, one sees God communicating and relating, not as a tyrannical, coercive, absolute sovereign, but vulnerably in and through the form of human individual, by uniting the divine freedom of self-giving agape love with that of a human being. I cover this idea in chapter 5. of my book, Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture. In the Christ event, one is confronted with a divine power that is highly personal, and which consequently has impact through forms of interpersonal communication and personal presence. This God posture makes creative appeal to human freedom. Divine freedom and will is the proper context of human freedom. It is not a divine monologue of commands, but a dialogue in which humans are intended and respected as subjects with free choice and freedom of speech. Abraham Joshua Heschel often says in his understated way, “God continues to be interested in human beings.”

Freedom and the moral self, its content and definition, was a central concern in my PhD dissertation. The upshot of this dialogue is that not all definitions of freedom are deemed equal. When freedom embraces goodness, it transforms freedom from an end in itself, to freedom as a benevolence toward the Other (agape love). Within the plausibility structure of trinitarian transcendent goodness, love becomes the content of freedom as well as freedom’s trajectory or raison d’être. The exercise of redeemed freedom takes seriously the human and divine Other, especially the weaker, more vulnerable Other. Schwöbel captures it succinctly.

The true measure of freedom is love as the relationship which makes the flourishing of the other the condition of self-fulfilment. Human freedom becomes the icon of divine freedom where the freedom of divine grace constitutes the grace of human freedom … That most poignant image of hope, the Kingdom of God, expresses the relation of free divine love and loving human freedom together in depicting the ultimate purpose of God’s action as the perfected community of love with his creation. The fulfilment of God’s reign and the salvation of creation are actualized together in the community of the love of God. (C. Schwöbel, 1995, 80-81)

More power to you in discovering rich, true freedom directed to the common good and God’s pleasure.

Gordon E. Carkner, PhD, Meta-Educator with UBC Graduate Students and Faculty, author of Towards and Incarnational Spiritual Culture: Grounding Our identity in Christ, Wipf & Stock, 2024.

McFadyen, A.I. (1995). Sins of Praise: the Assault on God’s Freedom. In C. Gunton (Ed.). God & Freedom: Essays in historical and systematic theology (pp. 36-56). Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.

Schwöbel, C. (1995). Imago Libertatis: Human and Divine Freedom. In C. Gunton (Ed.) God & Freedom: Essays in historical and systematic theology (pp. 57-81). Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.

Friendly Mama Bear on Blackcomb Mountain Slopes June 6, 2024

This siting 50 meters from me on the hiking trail ‘Little Burn’ added a thrill to my early morning hike. I was free to be in awe, wonder, and gratitude for creation; she was free to consume her morning breakfast of lush grasses.

Leave a Comment

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , ,

Posted by: gcarkner | May 30, 2024

Taylor Versus Foucault on Freedom 2/

Proposition Two: Redeemed freedom by definition takes on a distinctively communal character; it is contextualized within a discussion and relationships between fellow interlocutors, against the backdrop of larger narrative which makes sense of self. Individual freedom gives up ground to community and makes space for the Other, in order to avoid some of the pitfalls of radical autonomy and provide for a richer moral experience.

This transformation of the Foucauldian thin aesthetic self is desirable under this proposal. The move is towards a deeper, more complex communal character of self, a thick self. Foucault articulates freedom as flight from one’s neighbour; the aesthetic self is part fugitive, part manipulator. Its context is reduced to a life of contest with the Other, within power relations and truth games. There is a certain validity to these concerns, but from the perspective of Taylor’s comments and those on trinitarian goodness, they lack vision for relationships that are other than manipulative, that is, relationships informed by love, compassion, and cooperation. In the light of this investigation, it is suggested that there is a need to rethink Foucauldian freedom in terms of a reconciliation between self and the Other, self and society, to put it metaphorically, in terms of self and one’s neighbour. The direction of reformulation/reassessment is the recovery of a social horizon, including a stronger concept of the social body, and the common good. This promotes the inspiration and courage to face the neighbour as a good. Lévinas encourages us to look into the face of the Other.

A radical pursuit of private self-interest, to the exclusion of the presence and the needs of the Other, is a far less tenable option after this critical dialogue. Foucault holds to a faulty assumption of chronic distrust, that is, that the Other will always try to control and manipulate my behaviour for their own purposes. Or they will try to impose their agenda on me–assumed hostility. Although such manipulation exists, this is a jaded and cynical perspective on human society, and the meaning of human relationships. The autonomy that modernity cannot do without, needs a dialectical relationship with community as a balance to one’s self-reflexive relationship to oneself. The nature of autonomy cannot be confined to a radical self-determination but must involve the possibility of recognition by and dependence upon other people within a larger horizon of significance. Flight is the easier and less complex default option. It is more challenging to take other selves seriously in terms of the good that they are, and the good that they can offer. I suggest that trust building (mutual listening) is a tentative but necessary exercise for the moral health of the self and society. Redeemed freedom can emerge through a wiser discernment and exploration of the communal dimensions of subjectivity, as freedom to cooperate with, and freedom to serve the Other.

This newly discoverable type of freedom is destined to find its fulfilment, not in a self- justifying control left alone in self-sufficiency, but in seeking out a communion of love, a healthy vulnerability, interdependency and mutuality, with an ear to the voice of the Other. It promotes the relocation of the dislocated self into a new narrative, a new drama which involves us, within the relational order of creation. Healthy human experience is intensely relational. One big weakness in Foucault’s quest for identity is that, by contrast, he assumes a denial of the social body when it comes to ethics and personal progress. This conclusion suggests the positive outlook for the future of the self will involve a communal experiment. The word discernment above speaks of exploring the potential of these relationships as they relate to a communal horizon of the good, the good that can be carried in the community and its narrative as Taylor articulates in his ethics of the good. It can lead to communion and friendship of a significant sort. Others can help one discern oneself, expand one’s understanding of oneself. This allows one to find spaces for both freedom and a deeper calling with responsibility.

Foucault highly values individual creativity, but he lacks appreciation for how this relates to communal creativity of interdependencies and complementarity. Fulfilment in community prevents the self from extreme forms of self-interest, narcissism, and solipsism (R. Wolin, 1986) which can be quite painful and alienating. Alister McFadyen (1995) offers a helpful reflection on this point concerning the deceptions and distortions of radical freedom.

The free pursuit of private self-interest has a naturally conflicting form, since the otherness of the individual means their interests must be opposed. One needs freedom from what is other in order to be oneself. Personal centeredness is essential, for autonomy is a private place that has to be protected by fencing it off from the sphere of relation and therefore from the otherness of God and one’s neighbours … Autonomy is something one has in self-possession, apart from relation to God and others in an exclusive and private orientation on an asocial personal centre…. Freedom and autonomy are had apart from relationship: they inhere within oneself. (35)

Foucault’s language of freedom has a mythological flavour that offers a mask for a disguised self-interest, the freedom to be and do whatever I want, even if it is harmful to others. Redeemed freedom reveals this outlook as a distorted reality-construction. M. Volf in Exclusion and Embrace (1996) shows how this reconciliation or redemption of sociality can occur even amidst the most abusive and oppressive of situations. He believes in the possibility of reconciliation and firgiveness–social healing. The lack of communal discernment is one of Foucault’s significant limitations.

In this anatomy of community, the good can be mediated and carried more fruitfully and robustly. One’s individual relationship to the good can be strongly enhanced by involvement with a group that allows the good to shape its identity. Not just any, but the right non-toxic community environment can provide a positive school of the good. Mirrored through others, the good can offer both accountability, encouragement, and empowerment to the self. Group covenant and commitment to one another sustains the self in its agency. The younger self in formation is released from the burden to invent its whole moral universe. Moreover, communal discernment supports the weak and challenges the strong with accountability, promoting societal justice. Moral self-constitution of this thicker, weightier, and more complex sort exceeds the capacity of the individual self. It requires a community. J. Habermas in response to Foucault argues that the preoccupation with the autonomy or self-mastery is simply a moment in the process of social interaction, which has been artificially isolated or privileged:

Both cognitive-instrumental mastery of an objective nature (and society) and a narcissistically overinflated autonomy (in the sense of purposively rational self-assertion) are derivative moments that have been rendered independent from the communicative structures of the lifeworld, that is, from the intersubjectivity of relationships of mutual understanding and relationships of reciprocal recognition. (Habermas, 1987, p. 315)

A moral journey in life requires narrative and communal reflection. This is the path to holism and peace-making in today’s tribal and fragmented world. In an important note, Charles Taylor points out something significant regarding the difference between the American and Continental European reception of Foucault (Taylor, 1994, 232). In America, Foucault is appreciated by those on the Left, those of a more egalitarian perspective (for example, pragmatic neo-liberal Richard Rorty at Berkeley) as a critique of power relations and the ubiquity of attempts to dominate, plus exposure of societal inequalities, or the liberation of women. Taylor balances this view, “But, saying that all human beings are equally worthy of respect is part of a different moral universe from Post-Romantic Bataille (one of Foucault’s sources of inspiration). The somewhat darker, more problematical, anti-humanist side of Foucault is better understood in France.” This is part of the revolutionary story of the aesthetics of power relations and truth games that would be wrong to hide. 

~Dr. Gordon E. Carkner, PhD Philosophical Theology

Carkner, G.E. (2024). Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture: Grounding Our Identity in Christ. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.

Habermas, J. (1987). The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.

McFadyen, A.I. (1995). Sins of Praise: the Assault on God’s Freedom. In C. Gunton (Ed.). God & Freedom: Essays in historical and systematic theology (pp. 36-56). Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.

Taylor, C. (1994). Charles Taylor Replies. In J. Tully (Ed.) Philosophy in an Age of Pluralism: The philosophy of Charles Taylor in question (pp. 213-57). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Volf, M. (1996). Exclusion and Embrace: A theological exploration of identity, otherness and reconciliation. Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Leave a Comment

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , ,

Posted by: gcarkner | May 29, 2024

Taylor’s Wisdom: Commitment to the Good

Relation to the Good as a Key Element in Ethical Maturity and Conscientiousness

Charles Taylor takes the opportunity to fill out the picture/ecology of the moral self in more detail and to propose a vital relationship with the good as part of moral self-constitution. This addresses some of the dark implications of Foucault’s work on identity. Taylor’s analysis of morality is tightly interwoven with his analysis of the self in Western culture and that is very helpful as a critique of Foucault: Taylor (1989, 3) argues that the human self is an inherently moral entity; self is always situated in moral space: “Selfhood and the good … or selfhood and morality, turn out to be inextricably intertwined themes.” He does not settle for the self as a work of art, inventor or self, or artist of self. He wants more.

The moral ontology proposed by Taylor sets up a lively tension and contrast with Foucault; it challenges at points, it reveals what is hidden beneath the surface at other points, and it shows what is left out of the doctrine of aesthetic-freedom. Such a doctrine has become an ideology in today’s academic culture. This dialogue is deemed fruitful because there are insights to be gained by comparing and contrasting a more simple and minimalist ontology with a broader, richer, and more complex one. There is beauty in the simplicity of Foucault, of course, but there are serious problems of anti-humanism and potential for implosion into nihilism. Taylor’s discourse is a good route to comprehending/resolving Foucault’s skewed concept of freedom in context of a larger whole. Taylor is fair in raising some good questions on the one hand, and highlighting the insights of Foucault on the other. It is an important contribution to the current debate about identity. I begin with Taylor’s case for moral realism. 

Taylor’s argument for moral realism is five-fold. In terms of moral givens, he argues that certain perennial features of the self are present irrespective of culture or the way they are expressed or understood. He starts his analysis with the question of how humans operate as moral beings in their actual moral experiences in daily life, and with their reflection upon those experiences. So like Foucault, he is interested in praxis as well as theory. Beginning with humans and the way they experience morality, he claims that the most plausible explanation of morality is one that takes seriously the human perception of the independence of goods–we have an objective and subjective relationship with the moral good. He does not want to substitute a philosophical abstraction for how people live and think.

Firstly, he argues for the ubiquity of moral intuitions and judgments in human experience. We can all agree to this phenomenon. These are intuitions that transcend basic human desires for survival, sex, or self-realization. They are also referred to as second-order desires, strong evaluations or qualitative discriminations. All these terms are employed by Taylor. Note the important reference to the ‘quality of the will’. This concept of second-order desires appeals to the ancient idea of the good. Although interwoven with the self, it transcends the self in significant ways.

Secondly, he argues that there is a need for a larger moral picture to facilitate the task of making sense of moral experience (debates, deliberations, decisions, and actions). He calls this picture (map) a moral framework or horizon. Each framework is made up of several goods held together in a coherent relationship with one another, producing a moral worldview or social imaginary. The moral self is in a dialectical relationship with its framework; this is not a static set of conditions.

Thirdly, he recognizes that there is a key defining good within each moral framework, which he calls the hypergood. The hypergood is the highest/most important good and operates a controlling influence over the other goods within the framework. It defines the overall character of the framework and thus is central to the discussion of the moral self.

Fourthly, Taylor recognizes a narrative and communal texture to the pursuit of the good in moral self-constitution. Humans interpret their lives in narrative and communal terms as they pursue moral goods. This narrative articulation helps the individual to find a unity/continuity amidst the complexity of moral experience and a plurality of goods vying for one’s attention. This is key to making moral sense of life experience. It is also part of the quest of one’s life.

Fifthly, Taylor speaks of the sources of the moral, which he refers to as the constitutive good. The constitutive good (a category of moral motivation) gives meaning to and empowers the hypergood and the other life goods within the moral framework. It provides the constitutive ground of worth or value of the life goods, and empowers the self to live the good life. This is a very significant dimension that is often missed in moral deliberation.

Therefore, moral/spiritual identity is intimately interwoven with the pursuit of the good in Taylor’s ontology. This is essential to meaning and purpose. He discerns these five categories as basic givens, structural features that are common to the life of all morally healthy human beings. Taylor wants to problematize the occlusion or exclusion of such parameters, such qualitative distinctions for moral reasoning. He believes that within the life of the individual, there is a multiplicity of goods to be recognized, acted upon, and pursued. Taylor emphasizes the importance of being circumspect about these very significant goods. It entails a moral ontology of the self at its best, or most whole. It was not developed by Taylor specifically for a response to Foucault, but offers a useful framework for this dialogue on moral self-constitution. 

As a nominalist and anti-essentialist, Foucault has suggested that there is no objective, stable human moral nature either independent of culture or one’s historical formation, or alternatively independent of one’s own private self-construction. Therefore, on his view, the constructing forces of society and government are in tension with the constructing force of the individual self. This is the battle line for identity formation. Culture tends to determine the meaning one assigns to the world around, and what one takes as human and natural. Therefore, what is often called human nature is very temporary, contingent, local, and changeable. The quest for freedom means that change is necessary; every self is involved in the process of defining and shaping itself. In Foucault’s mind, there is no universal human nature other than either the ability to acquire a culture from society or the nature individuals construct themselves. Moral selves are either a cultural product or a self-made product, or perhaps some combination of the two. 

Foucault’s moral ontology of aesthetic-freedom entails a whole meta-position of relativism, multiplicity, difference, and diversity. We should not miss that it too is an ideology. It is one that excludes the moral good as defined by Taylor drawing on a historic understanding going back to the Greeks. For Foucault, there exists no ultimate or final moral position or common set of moral parameters, which is to be seen as hierarchically justified. In this, he agrees with many of his fellow late moderns. Attempts at claiming such justification would be seen by him as a fatal flaw. His relativist moral position means that he does not believe that it is possible to argue rationally for the superiority of one moral construction over another. We have said that this can lead to chaos, anti-humanism, or nihilism.

There is no totalizing or final position because that would be to court vulnerability to domination. All positions, according to Foucault, are seen as problematic and dangerous, implicated with power, regime-biased. Ethics, in his sense, is history all the way down or a historical-cultural predisposition or bias, and therefore must be constantly put under the critical knife. Moral self-constitution changes from place to place and era to era, and ultimately individual to individual. The moral vision he offers in an age of moral crisis and nihilism (loss of moral consensus) is that the self might gain increased control over self-construction and escape dominating power strategies. This tool can be of some help and provide a basis for dialogue with Taylor’s dynamic grappling with the good. For Foucault, the creativity and originality of self is the road to freedom from domination. It is clear by now that he does not offer hope for society as a whole in his ethics–no mutual or common good. Freedom has an individual shape and it is a contest, a struggle. Perhaps he has in mind the image of the Greek Olympic Games. One must assertively and proactively manage one’s own identity. This sets the stage for debate on moral ontology as it relates to the self. 

Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 

Watkin, C. (2018). Michel Foucault. Philipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing.

Leave a Comment

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , ,

Posted by: gcarkner | May 27, 2024

Taylor Versus Foucault on Freedom 1/

Freedom, Identity and the Good

Proposition One: Redeemed freedom means that one refuses freedom as an ontological ground of ethics, and embraces a new definition of freedom within an ontology/frame of the moral good. Charles Taylor’s moral horizon of the good is offered as a lively and robust alternative to Foucault’s horizon of aesthetic-freedom.

Foucault’s idea of autonomous freedom as self-invention, self-interpretation, self- expression, self-legislation and self-justification is radical indeed. Schwöbel sums it up:

In deciding for policies of action which incorporate choices concerning the interpretation of our possibilities of action, of our goals of action and of the norms of action we attempt to observe, we decide the fundamental orientation of our lives. Such decisions are examples of self-determination. Self-determination is contrasted to determination by external authorities. (C. Schwöbel, 1995, pp. 62-3)

Aesthetic-freedom certainly has its appeal; it comes with a creative, youthful energy, to launch human subjectivity, overcoming the inertia and restrictions of governmentality and unhappy power relations. This is often attractive to young people with an edge of rebellion against authority. Foucault does not apologize for its élitist outlook. But this view of freedom has revealed a failure to offer sufficient direction for subjectivity, for a sophisticated use of the will. It lacks a platform for critical appraisal of our actions or choices. Thus, it shows a major deficit in equipping the individual for serious moral reflection, debate and action. It short circuits moral discourse by moving too quickly to praxis or action, without sufficient reflection on the reasons for such action, or the virtues or moral goods endemic to ethics. It can lead to moral autism (Matthew B. Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head, 183-93) with the loss of moral language needed to distinguish oneself, or even worse to nihilism, will-to-power and violence.

During the conversation with Foucault in previous posts, cracks and contradictions in his ideology of the aesthetic (Terry Eagleton) have emerged along with its potential dangers of overindulgence–of Dionysian proportions. The great philosopher Charles Taylor illuminates the darker side of Foucault’s artful freedom. The absolute sovereignty that Foucault gives to the individual for self-expression raises concerns: it may indulge in a fantasy of the human will. Foucault propounds a very optimistic philosophical anthropology of the aesthetic self (artistic work is worthy in and of itself, of course) with great faith in the creativity and imagination of the individual. At the same time, there is great cynicism about society and its institutions. He understands that domination can occur in corporate regimes of knowledge (making evil and oppression visible), but he is less open to acknowledge the potential evil in individual self-shaping and self-expression, radical self-control–aka expressive individualism. This is a major oversight/blind spot which is not acceptable in such a notable scholar.

Read More…

Leave a Comment

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , ,

Posted by: gcarkner | May 24, 2024

Taylor Versus Foucault on Ethics

Foucault, by privileging the aesthetic hermeneutic of self, the ontology of freedom, and the power of the creative imagination, has managed to launch a whole new discourse for ethics; it is an ethics of aesthetic self-empowerment, and expressive individualism. For Foucault, the clear weight of bias in his discourse on subjectivity is towards a radical autonomy, not construction as a communal dialogue, nor was it a communal ethics. It is an ethics of the individual. This tends to skew Foucault’s theory of the moral self towards an ethics of self-interest or even narcissism (excessive self-care). According to Foucault, ethics means that the self studies the power relations within the social matrix, abstracts itself from the problematized social matrix, rethinks itself, and then imposes the newly invented self combatively onto society. “The understanding of value as something created gives a sense of freedom and power” (Taylor, 1991, p. 67). Foucault attempts to deal with self-constitution issue through his strong emphasis on the creative, constructive imagination. For him, the language of a transcendent good is repressed in self-making, in favour of the language of creative imagination and radical individual self-articulation. The grammar of the good is rethought and refigured in terms of the artistic self; self and its expression are taken as the proximate source of the good and the true. 

The sources of the self, to use Taylor’s language, are contained within the creative self. Once this is realized, suggests Foucault, individual freedom and power will emerge. Unlike other conceptions of transcendent moral sources in reason, nature or God, Foucault focuses on sources of the self within the self, in the register of moral empowerment. Such a perception of sources, such a “love affair with power” makes it possible to relativize, even marginalize the other and the social world. This gives one power over the other and the world, a power which could easily be abused by such a subject. It at least decreases vulnerability to the other. This is especially acute given Foucault’s emphasis on the kind of accountability that is merely a self-reflexive phenomenon, a responsibility to care for self as a prime directive. It produces a radical self-determining form of freedom: “It seems that significance can be conferred by choice, by making my life an exercise in freedom” (C. Taylor, 1991, 69). The one remaining virtue is choice itself. The kinder side of this, says Taylor, is that this is “taken as supports for the demands of difference” (C. Taylor, 1991, 69). But overall, it pushes towards the atomization of society–social chaos. 

Characteristics of the Aesthetic, Post-Romantic Self as gleaned from C. Taylor, 1989, 434-455: 

1. Art is superior to morality, and sees itself in conflict with the social moral order. 

2. Humans live in a chaotic or fallen natural and social world, rooted in chaos and the will to power. One can take an affirmative stance towards the world through seeing it as beautiful—seeing the world through an aesthetic lens. This is the only remaining basis for its justification. 

3. Being itself is not good as such, nor is human being per se taken as good. 

4. Hope resides in a strong belief in the power of the creative imagination to transfigure or transform the world and the self, or to reveal it afresh as beautiful. 

5. Language is a key means of changing the world, or at least the way one sees the world—key to one’s poetic self-expression, and re-writing of one’s self. 

6. This tends to result in an aesthetic amorality, a move beyond good and evil, an embrace or affirmation of violence and cruelty as well as patience and care. There can be no logical or moral distinction between them. We are experiencing this in Western culture and politics today.

Foucault would agree basically with Taylor’s placement of his project in the twentieth century cultural transition called the Post-Romantic Turn (Taylor, 1989, 434-55)30. The expressivism (desire for freedom of expression) of this tradition gives a higher, even a normative significance to the aesthetic, and opens a full challenge to the moral (Taylor, 1991, 63). Foucault wishes to transcend the code-morality with its universal intent towards normalization, by a new morality of the evolving ethics of the autonomous self. The pressing question at this stage of the argument is whether Foucault himself is captive to his own totalizing and unexamined impulse, the aestheticization of the moral self. There is a strong tendency in Foucault to celebrate the individual’s own powers to construct and interpret reality in a context shaped by immanence and the finite, and to deny the legitimacy of any binding moral horizon, any transcendent principle or ideal, or moral culture outside the self. Taylor (1989) sees the picture in the quote below. 

Foucault’s spiritual profile: an even higher estimate of the unrestricted powers of the imagination than the Romantics had, and hence a celebration of those powers … This subjectivism of self-celebration is a standard temptation in a culture which exalts freedom and puts such value on the creative imagination. (C. Taylor, 1989, 489, 490) 

According to this sentiment resulting from a strong atheism, all values are welcome to the table of open hospitality, indicating a moral levelling. The consequence is that nothing appears to be of ultimate value, better or worse, innately. Virtues and vices, good and evil are levelled and reduced to an individual’s stylization; only one’s individually chosen values remain–with the freedom to cherish them or discard them later. It is ethics as self-assertive politics; one posits and then promotes one’s values in the name of style. This is a Nietzschean embrace of it all in the name of beauty. There is no higher or lower morality, no higher or lower marks of authenticity in Foucault. They are all just expressions of the self, all legitimated in and of themselves. “Beauty is a satisfaction for itself … gives its own intrinsic fulfilment. Its goal is internal” (C. Taylor, 1991, 64). Also, “aesthetic wholeness is an independent goal with its own telos, its own form of goodness and satisfaction” (C. Taylor, 1991, 65). Taylor makes the connection between Nietzsche’s nihilism and Foucault on the issue of the aesthetic (C. Taylor, 1991, 60) 

It is here that one more clearly recognizes that Foucault’s project of the recovery of the subjective agency is threatened by a loss of meaning. There is a potential implosion into a fatal and tragic nihilism, self imploding in upon itself, without a broader horizon of significance and the recognition/validation by the other (triangulation). Foucault strategically sought to escape nihilism through the invention of the aesthetic self, but it has failed. Taylor (1989) notes that in this philosophical turn, there is a tendency to legitimate action and ethical behaviour according to beauty rather than by its inherent good. 

What in the universe commands our affirmation, when we have overcome the all-too-human, is not properly called its goodness but comes closer to being its beauty…. Part of the heroism of the Nietzschean superman is that he can rise beyond the moral, beyond the concern with the good, and manage in spite of suffering and disorder and the absence of all justice to respond to something like the beauty of it all. (C. Taylor, 1989, 454) 

The interpretative lens of goodness (perhaps even right and wrong) is exchanged for the lens of the beautiful. The beauty of it all makes all things tolerable. In William T. Cavanaugh’s (2024) language, this is a form of idolatry of the self. If Foucault’s ethics as artistic life is passed through such a repudiation of the moral, any socially empowering moral principle is recognized and yet demoted in favour of the individual’s controlled agenda over the self. This entails a distortion of reality and a distortion of the self. A prestigious place is given to one’s own inner powers of construing, imagining or interpreting the world, while making over the self. Self-confidence is encouraged, but sensitivity to, and responsibility for the other is wanting. 

Aestheticism naturally endorses violence and undercuts Foucault ‘liberating’ ethics. Taylor reveals the dark side:

 This is the revolt from within unbelief … against the primacy of life … from a sense of being confined, diminished by this sense of primacy. This has been an important stream in our culture, something woven into the inspiration of poets and writers—for example Baudelaire and Mallarme. The most influential proponent of this kind of view is undoubtedly Nietzsche, and it is significant that the most important antihumanist thinkers of our time—for example Foucault, Derrida, behind them Bataille—all draw heavily on Nietzsche. Nietzsche rebelled against the idea that our highest goal is to preserve and increase life, to prevent suffering. He rejects that both metaphysically and practically. He rejects the egalitarianism underlying this whole affirmation of ordinary life … Life itself can push to cruelty, to domination, to exclusion, and, indeed, does so in its moments of most exhuberant affirmation … There is nothing higher than the movement of life itself (the Will to Power). But it chafes at the benevolence, the universalism, the harmony, the order. It wants to rehabilitate destruction and chaos, the infliction of suffering and exploitation, as part of the life to be affirmed. Life properly affirmed affirms death and destruction. To pretend otherwise is to try to restrict it, hem it in, deprive it of its highest manifestations, which are precisely what makes it something you can say yes to. (Taylor, 1991, p. 27) 

Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 

Taylor, C. (1991). The Malaise of Modernity. Concord, ON: Anansi. 

Cavanaugh, W.T. The Uses of Idolatry, Oxford University Press, 2024.

Leave a Comment

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , ,

Posted by: gcarkner | May 18, 2024

Charles Taylor’s Wisdom, Scrutiny re: Overreach of the Aesthetic in Ethics

Taylor’s Concern with the Overreach of Aesthetic Self-Making in Morality 

This post explores a critical appraisal of Foucault’s ethics as aesthetic self-determination, which ultimately yields a full-orbed self-making or self-invention. A strategic starting point is with Taylor’s diagnostics of self-constitution in his book, The Malaise of Modernity (Taylor, 1991, 65-67). This chart is employed as a criteria grid to begin the critical examination of the robustness of Foucault concept of aesthetic moral self-constitution, which is lively in late modern culture today. It highlights what is present and what is excluded (the gaps); it leads us on a trajectory of opening up our awareness of the full dimensions of the self. Taylor begins by agreeing with Foucault that, in the West, one is self-consciously involved in one’s self-development, and that one’s identity, one’s spirituality, and one’s moral self are intimately linked; those dimensions are common to both philosophers. Both are also critical of a cultural over-emphasis on scientific definitions of the moral self. Their debate begins when one asks who and what else is involved in one’s self-shaping. 

In Taylor’s analysis, there are five significant criteria in the chart below, divided into categories A and B, indicators of the shape of one’s own moral self-constitution/formation. It is a chart which is respectful of the plurality of contemporary approaches. Taylor suggests that all five elements tend to be involved, in some combination, in the pursuit of an authentic life. 

Taylor’s Moral Self-Construction Diagnostics 

Category A (Creativity) 

(i) Creation and construction (as well as discovery) of the self. 

(ii) Pursuit of originality in one’s self-crafting. 

(iii) Opposition to the rules of society and even potentially to what one traditionally recognizes as morality, the moral sense, or the moral order. 

Category B (Social and Communal Accountability) 

(i) Openness to horizons of significance prevents one’s self-creation from losing the background that can save it from insignificance and trivialization (self-destructive tendencies). 

(ii) Self-definition needs to be developed in dialogue with significant others, that is, fellow moral interlocutors. (Taylor, 1991, 65, 66)

This chart is rooted in Taylor’s moral ontology of the good, but contains a broad application. While admitting the strong impact of the Post-Romantic Turn in philosophy (of which Foucault is a part), Taylor understands the existence and currency of the language of self-construction. [Post-Romantic Philosophy, in the late nineteenth early twentieth century, traces from Schopenhauer to Baudelaire to Nietzsche to Foucault.] Taylor takes Foucault seriously, even though he disagrees with him on certain key emphases. Taylor does not reject the Romantic and Post-Romantic traditions out of hand, but he does bring a critical reflection to bear on them. 

Taylor believes in both objective, social, and subjective components to ethics. He does not concede the legitimacy of just any form of self-construction, a view that puts him into a significant tension with Foucault’s perspective on the self. Referring back to the chart above, Taylor’s concern with Foucault (as with other Neo-Nietzscheans) is the extreme emphasis that he places on Category A (Creativity), and the near exclusion of an emphasis on Category B (Social Accountability and Mutuality). Moreover, he contests that Foucault’s radical nominalism, which denies the possibility of self-discovery along with self-creation (Ai); his problem is with what he considers an over-emphasis or skewing/unnecessary bending of reality. Taylor has a higher stake in, puts a higher value on, certain human and natural (even moral) givens than Foucault. Taylor is not a nominalist but a falsifiable moral realist.

Furthermore, Taylor questions the merits and overall legitimacy of category Aiii, that self-constitution should automatically, by definition, involve denial of the moral rules of society—the anarchic/narcissistic stance. This makes an idol of self and one’s choice. He does not have an inherent bias against social norms, but nor is he an uncritical social conventionalist. Taylor (1991, 63) can ask seriously why aesthetic self-making should necessarily pass through a repudiation of the moral and moral history. Also, why are all moral regimes and all humanisms written off so thoroughly by Foucault? Finally, his concern with Foucault is the inherent denial of the significance of category Bi and Bii, including the idea of moral horizons and the more social dimension of self-making, which includes important elements of triangulation (Matthew Crawford) in identity production. Foucault’s idea of moral self-constitution is extremely individualistic.

Taylor, as a more communitarian thinker, brings a fresh set of concerns to the table of discussion on the self. He suggests that, 

“What must be wrong is a simple privileging of one over the other (A over B) …. That is what trendy doctrines of “deconstruction” involve today … they stress (Ai) the constructive, creative nature of our expressive languages, while altogether forgetting (Bi). They capture the more extreme forms of (Aiii), the amoralism of creativity … while forgetting (Bii), its dialogical setting, which binds us to others …. These thinkers buy into the background outlook of authenticity, for instance in their understanding of the creative, self-constitutive powers of language … while ignoring some of its essential constituents.” (Taylor, 1991, pp. 66, 67) 

Taylor’s concern is that Foucault makes such a move, ignoring certain key constituents of self-articulation or self-constitution, such as the dynamics of Category B (Accountability). By abolishing all extra-self horizons of significance, and demoting the significance of dialogue with other moral interlocutors, morality can become a monologue, narcissistic, an abstract self-projection onto the world, rather than a source of communal conversation and cooperation–which is essential for one’s emotional health and sanity. It entails a kind of excarnation–living in one’s own head. It does not promote responsible citizenship or build community.

Bibliography:

Taylor, C. (1991). The Malaise of Modernity. Concord, ON: Anansi (also published as The Ethics of Authenticity).

Crawford, M. (2016). The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction.

Eagleton, T. (1990). The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Oxford: Blackwell

Leave a Comment

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , ,

Posted by: gcarkner | May 17, 2024

Charles Taylor’s Wisdom

Taylor’s Case for Moral Realism in Sources of the Self.

Charles Taylor’s argument for moral realism is five-fold: In terms of moral givens, he argues that certain perennial features of the self are present irrespective of culture or the way they are expressed or understood. He starts his analysis with the question of how humans operate as moral beings in their actual moral experiences, and how they reflect upon those experiences. So like Foucault, he is interested in praxis. Beginning with humans and the way they experience morality, he claims that the most plausible explanation of morality is one that takes seriously humans’ perception of the independence of goods. He does not want to substitute a philosophical abstraction for how people live and think.

Firstly, he argues for the ubiquity of moral intuitions and judgments in human experience. These are intuitions that transcend basic human desires for survival, sex, or self-realization. They are also referred to as second-order desires, strong evaluations or qualitative discriminations: each of these terms is used by Taylor. One notes the important reference to the quality of the will. This concept of second-order desires appeals to the ancient idea of the good, one which although interwoven with the self, transcends the self in significant ways.

Secondly, he argues that there is a need for a larger moral picture to facilitate the task of making sense of moral experience (debates, deliberations, decisions and actions). He calls this picture (map) a moral framework or horizon. Each framework is made up of several goods held together in a coherent relationship with one another, producing a moral worldview. The moral self is in a dialectical relationship with its framework; it is not a static set of conditions.

Thirdly, he recognizes that there is a key defining good within each moral framework, which he calls the hypergood. The hypergood is the highest good and operates a controlling influence over the other goods within the framework; it defines the overall character of the framework and thus is central to the discussion of the moral self.

Fourthly, Taylor recognizes a narrative and communal texture to the pursuit of the good in moral self-constitution. Humans interpret their lives in narrative and communal terms as they pursue moral goods. This narrative articulation helps the self to find a unity amidst the complexity of moral experience and a plurality of goods vying for one’s attention.

Fifthly, Taylor speaks of the sources of the moral, which he refers to as the constitutive good. The constitutive good (a category of moral motivation) gives meaning to and empowers, the hypergood and the other life goods within the moral framework. It provides the constitutive ground of the worth or value of the life goods, and allows the self to live the good life; this is a very significant dimension.

Moral identity is interwoven with the pursuit of the good in life in Taylor’s ontology. He discerns these five categories as givens, structural features that are common to the life of all morally healthy human beings. Taylor wants to problematize the occlusion or exclusion of such parameters, such qualitative distinctions for moral reasoning, because he believes that within the life of the self, there is a multiplicity of goods to be recognized, acted upon and pursued. Taylor emphasizes the importance of being circumspect about these goods. It is quite an ambitious and challenging proposal, a moral ontology of the self at its best, or most whole. It offers a useful framework for dialogue across differences of interpretation on moral self-constitution. 

Qualities of a Strong Identity for Philosopher Charles Taylor Humans at their best, their fullest, richest linguistic and social capacity

  • Their words and actions cohere-integrity.
  • They pursue what is of top significance without deviation. They pursue wholeness and unity of motives, not confusion, brokenness, and fragmentation.
  • They overcome dispersal, contradiction, or self-stifling: temptations to reduce themselves to something less or lower (the race to the bottom).
  • The results of this pursuit involve them in seeing better, believing better, loving better, and living a more wholistic life. We respect our future self by taking our present self more seriously through more responsible behaviour. Never forget that we are always situated in moral space, on a moral journey, we are thoroughly moral creatures. Morality is intimately entwined with identity, narrative, community, and spirituality.

Leave a Comment

Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , ,

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »

Categories