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The Ethics of Authenticity
Everywhere we hear talk of decline, of a world that was better once, maybe fifty years ago, maybe centuries ago, but certainly before modernity drew us along its dubious path. While some lament the slide of Western culture into relativism and nihilism and others celebrate the trend as a liberating sort of progress, Charles Taylor calls on us to face the moral and political crises of our time, and to make the most of modernity's challenges.
At the heart of the modern malaise, according to most accounts, is the notion of authenticity, of self-fulfillment, which seems to render ineffective the whole tradition of common values and social commitment. Though Taylor recognizes the dangers associated with modernity's drive toward self realization, he is not as quick as others to dismiss it. He calls for a freeze on cultural pessimism.
In a discussion of ideas and ideologies from Friedrich Nietzsche to Gail Sheehy, from Allan Bloom to Michel Foucault, Taylor sorts out the good from the harmful in the modern cultivation of an authentic self. He sets forth the entire network of thought and morals that link our quest for self-creation with our impulse toward self-fashioning, and shows how such efforts must be conducted against an existing set of rules, or a gridwork of moral measurement. Seen against this network, our modern preoccupations with expression, rights, and the subjectivity of human thought reveal themselves as assets, not liabilities.
By looking past simplistic, one-sided judgments of modern culture, by distinguishing the good and valuable from the socially and politically perilous, Taylor articulates the promise of our age. His bracing and provocative book gives voice to the challenge of modernity, and calls on all of us to answer it.
At the heart of the modern malaise, according to most accounts, is the notion of authenticity, of self-fulfillment, which seems to render ineffective the whole tradition of common values and social commitment. Though Taylor recognizes the dangers associated with modernity's drive toward self realization, he is not as quick as others to dismiss it. He calls for a freeze on cultural pessimism.
In a discussion of ideas and ideologies from Friedrich Nietzsche to Gail Sheehy, from Allan Bloom to Michel Foucault, Taylor sorts out the good from the harmful in the modern cultivation of an authentic self. He sets forth the entire network of thought and morals that link our quest for self-creation with our impulse toward self-fashioning, and shows how such efforts must be conducted against an existing set of rules, or a gridwork of moral measurement. Seen against this network, our modern preoccupations with expression, rights, and the subjectivity of human thought reveal themselves as assets, not liabilities.
By looking past simplistic, one-sided judgments of modern culture, by distinguishing the good and valuable from the socially and politically perilous, Taylor articulates the promise of our age. His bracing and provocative book gives voice to the challenge of modernity, and calls on all of us to answer it.
152 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
132 people are currently reading
3137 people want to read
About the author
Charles Margrave Taylor
152 books667 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.
Other authors with this name:
Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor, Journalist, Film critic
Charles Margrave Taylor CC GOQ FBA FRSC is a Canadian philosopher, and professor emeritus at McGill University. He is best known for his contributions to political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, history of philosophy and intellectual history. This work has earned him the prestigious Kyoto Prize, the Templeton Prize, the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy, and the John W. Kluge Prize, in addition to widespread esteem among philosophers. (Source: Wikipedia)
Other authors with this name:
Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor, Journalist, Film critic
Charles Margrave Taylor CC GOQ FBA FRSC is a Canadian philosopher, and professor emeritus at McGill University. He is best known for his contributions to political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, history of philosophy and intellectual history. This work has earned him the prestigious Kyoto Prize, the Templeton Prize, the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy, and the John W. Kluge Prize, in addition to widespread esteem among philosophers. (Source: Wikipedia)
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November 23, 2022
I was sitting in a coffee shop a few years ago when a young lady walked by with a t-shirt emblazoned with the words "Modernity Has Failed Us." Presumably, she had not read Charles Taylor’s The Malaise of Modernity (1991). Released at the height of the Culture Wars in the United States, the book attempts to pave a middle way between the “boosters’ and the “knockers” of modernity. Whereas the former view the modern emphasis on personal liberty as an unmitigated step forward, the latter bemoan the “malaises” of individualism, instrumentalisation, and fragmentation to which it has given rise.
According to Taylor, however, both the boosters and the knockers are wrong. The boosters are wrong because they fail to recognize the various ways in which individual self-fulfillment can lapse into narcissism and relativism. In contrast, the knockers are wrong to because they see the modern individualistic ethos as a nihilation of all value. Taylor’s thesis is instead that the culture of self-fulfillment is driven by its own moral ideal, that of authenticity. His project is to retrieve and articulate this ideal and, in doing so, to subject its deviant or debased modes to a kind of immanent criticism.
Taylor’s analysis rests on two observations. The first is that identity-formation is dialogical. We define ourselves intersubjectively through our relationships with others. The second is that self-definition rests on shared horizons of significance. In the absence of such a framework of evaluations and interpretations, it is impossible to form an identity by our choices. According to Taylor, therefore, authenticity properly understood precludes both narcissism and relativism: it requires that we foster meaningful relationships and acknowledge a shared reservoir of meanings that transcends us as individuals.
As innovative as Taylor’s theoretical project is, it’s hard not to be struck by the naïveté of his optimism where practical social and political problems are concerned. If anything, the malaises of individualism, instrumentalization, and fragmentation have only accelerated over the three decades since the publication of his book. Untethered from any overarching sense of meaning and lacking any significant mode of political engagement, we have been set adrift to be shaped and re-shaped as market forces see fit. Oh, and that “Modernity Has Failed Us” t-shirt? Turns out it was advertising a chart-topping pop single.
According to Taylor, however, both the boosters and the knockers are wrong. The boosters are wrong because they fail to recognize the various ways in which individual self-fulfillment can lapse into narcissism and relativism. In contrast, the knockers are wrong to because they see the modern individualistic ethos as a nihilation of all value. Taylor’s thesis is instead that the culture of self-fulfillment is driven by its own moral ideal, that of authenticity. His project is to retrieve and articulate this ideal and, in doing so, to subject its deviant or debased modes to a kind of immanent criticism.
Taylor’s analysis rests on two observations. The first is that identity-formation is dialogical. We define ourselves intersubjectively through our relationships with others. The second is that self-definition rests on shared horizons of significance. In the absence of such a framework of evaluations and interpretations, it is impossible to form an identity by our choices. According to Taylor, therefore, authenticity properly understood precludes both narcissism and relativism: it requires that we foster meaningful relationships and acknowledge a shared reservoir of meanings that transcends us as individuals.
As innovative as Taylor’s theoretical project is, it’s hard not to be struck by the naïveté of his optimism where practical social and political problems are concerned. If anything, the malaises of individualism, instrumentalization, and fragmentation have only accelerated over the three decades since the publication of his book. Untethered from any overarching sense of meaning and lacking any significant mode of political engagement, we have been set adrift to be shaped and re-shaped as market forces see fit. Oh, and that “Modernity Has Failed Us” t-shirt? Turns out it was advertising a chart-topping pop single.
February 24, 2020
A short but sweet piece. Taylor, who is responding here to the cultural criticisms of Alan Bloom, Daniel Bell, and Kit Lasch, presents a more workable ethics than his targets.
In short, Taylor agrees with the subject of their criticism. However, he departs from their take on the dominance of subjectivity - disagreeing that it portends a slip into narcissism. Rather to Taylor, there is no going back to the pre-modern modes of being. Modernity and classical liberalism has led to the ascendancy of subjectivity as we know it. To Taylor, this is here to stay, and there are successful routes and less unsuccessful routes. The unsuccessful routes fail to project an ideal or fail to live up to their ideal. The more successful routes reach out onto a horizon where the person strives beyond the subjective.
In the closing chapters, Taylor gives an intimation of how this ethics would work out in real life. In the 1990s, at the time of publication, the regional communities of Canada still resembled the communities de Tocqueville saw in the 19th Century; they still provided avenues for people to be engaged with agency and with space to strive towards the horizons. However over the years, Canada was drifting closer to its neighbor to the south. Here, the action takes place on electoral and legal stages removed from access for the general populous, and largely leaving the populous without direct access to political horizons.
We are still grappling with these issues. This books presents a promising start to a workable, livable ethics. It's a short piece. It only anticipates what this would look like.
In short, Taylor agrees with the subject of their criticism. However, he departs from their take on the dominance of subjectivity - disagreeing that it portends a slip into narcissism. Rather to Taylor, there is no going back to the pre-modern modes of being. Modernity and classical liberalism has led to the ascendancy of subjectivity as we know it. To Taylor, this is here to stay, and there are successful routes and less unsuccessful routes. The unsuccessful routes fail to project an ideal or fail to live up to their ideal. The more successful routes reach out onto a horizon where the person strives beyond the subjective.
In the closing chapters, Taylor gives an intimation of how this ethics would work out in real life. In the 1990s, at the time of publication, the regional communities of Canada still resembled the communities de Tocqueville saw in the 19th Century; they still provided avenues for people to be engaged with agency and with space to strive towards the horizons. However over the years, Canada was drifting closer to its neighbor to the south. Here, the action takes place on electoral and legal stages removed from access for the general populous, and largely leaving the populous without direct access to political horizons.
We are still grappling with these issues. This books presents a promising start to a workable, livable ethics. It's a short piece. It only anticipates what this would look like.
June 6, 2023
لماذا نسمع مؤخرًا
اتبع شغفك؟ حقق ذاتك؟
اتسق مع حقيقتك؟ كن كما أنت؟
خليك على طبيعتك؟ اصدق مع نفسك؟
صارت شعارات رائجة -حدّ القداسة- اليوم
ربّما لأنّ الإنسان النرجسي اليوم صار يعبد نفسه
أو نسي الله، والمرجعيّة العليا، والحقيقة الكبرى
فما بقي له ما يرجع إليه ويأخذ الحقيقة غير نفسه
رغم ذلك، فهذه الشعارات لا تعطي حياةً ورديّة
ثقيلةٌ هي مسؤولية اكتشاف ذواتنا والتعبير عنها
وسنجد أنفسنا ضعيفين، وقاصرين، وتائهين كلّ مرّة
لأن هذه "الذات الأصيلة" مخترعة مؤخرًا، أصلًا
ولا وجود لها، ولا لأسرارها، وينابيعها النقيّة، وفرادتها
وكلّما حفر الإنسان داخله أكثر بحثًا عن هذه الجوهرة
-التي بمجرد القبض عليها سيعرف كيف يعيش-
كلّما حفر؛ سيواجه الأوهام والهواجس المضطربة
وكلّ عودة إلى هذه الذات للاستغناء عن الآخرين
لا تزيد الإنسان إلا اتكاءً على حاجته لاعترافهم
وهذا ديدن الباحث عن الطمأنينة الداخلية
في القلب الذي من طبعه سرعة التقلّب
.
يبدأ الكتاب بعرض ثلاث آفات للحداثة، وهي
أوّلًا: الفردانيّة وفقدان الإحساس بالدور التاريخي
والمكانة في المجتمع والبعد البطولي في الحياة والغاية
ثانيًا: الكفاءة المهنيّة، العقل الأداتي الذي لا يفكر إلا بأكثر
الوسائل اقتصادًا لأيّ هدف دون النظر لذات الهدف ومساءلته
ثالثا: فقدان الحرية الإنسانية والسياسية والتشرذم والقابلية لتلقي الظلم
بسبب إجبار المنظمات المعاصرة للإنسان على العقد الأداتي في ثانيًا
.
"النسبية في حد ذاتها من أشكال الفردية، ومبدأها: لكل فرد الحق في تطوير شكل حياته الخاص، بناءً على إحساسه الخاص بما هو ذا قيمة. الناس مدعوّون لأن يكونوا صادقين مع أنفسهم وأن يسعوا لتحقيق ذواتهم. ما ينتج عنه أنّ على كلّ إنسان في نهاية المطاف أن يقرّر عن نفسه وحيدًا، لا أحد يستطيع ولا ينبغي أن يحاول وضع إملاءاته"
.
الأصالة الحقّة تمنع النرجسية والنسبية
لأنها تتطلب تعزيز علاقات ذات معنى
والاعتراف بخزان معاني مشترك يتجاوزنا كأفراد
اتبع شغفك؟ حقق ذاتك؟
اتسق مع حقيقتك؟ كن كما أنت؟
خليك على طبيعتك؟ اصدق مع نفسك؟
صارت شعارات رائجة -حدّ القداسة- اليوم
ربّما لأنّ الإنسان النرجسي اليوم صار يعبد نفسه
أو نسي الله، والمرجعيّة العليا، والحقيقة الكبرى
فما بقي له ما يرجع إليه ويأخذ الحقيقة غير نفسه
رغم ذلك، فهذه الشعارات لا تعطي حياةً ورديّة
ثقيلةٌ هي مسؤولية اكتشاف ذواتنا والتعبير عنها
وسنجد أنفسنا ضعيفين، وقاصرين، وتائهين كلّ مرّة
لأن هذه "الذات الأصيلة" مخترعة مؤخرًا، أصلًا
ولا وجود لها، ولا لأسرارها، وينابيعها النقيّة، وفرادتها
وكلّما حفر الإنسان داخله أكثر بحثًا عن هذه الجوهرة
-التي بمجرد القبض عليها سيعرف كيف يعيش-
كلّما حفر؛ سيواجه الأوهام والهواجس المضطربة
وكلّ عودة إلى هذه الذات للاستغناء عن الآخرين
لا تزيد الإنسان إلا اتكاءً على حاجته لاعترافهم
وهذا ديدن الباحث عن الطمأنينة الداخلية
في القلب الذي من طبعه سرعة التقلّب
.
يبدأ الكتاب بعرض ثلاث آفات للحداثة، وهي
أوّلًا: الفردانيّة وفقدان الإحساس بالدور التاريخي
والمكانة في المجتمع والبعد البطولي في الحياة والغاية
ثانيًا: الكفاءة المهنيّة، العقل الأداتي الذي لا يفكر إلا بأكثر
الوسائل اقتصادًا لأيّ هدف دون النظر لذات الهدف ومساءلته
ثالثا: فقدان الحرية الإنسانية والسياسية والتشرذم والقابلية لتلقي الظلم
بسبب إجبار المنظمات المعاصرة للإنسان على العقد الأداتي في ثانيًا
.
"النسبية في حد ذاتها من أشكال الفردية، ومبدأها: لكل فرد الحق في تطوير شكل حياته الخاص، بناءً على إحساسه الخاص بما هو ذا قيمة. الناس مدعوّون لأن يكونوا صادقين مع أنفسهم وأن يسعوا لتحقيق ذواتهم. ما ينتج عنه أنّ على كلّ إنسان في نهاية المطاف أن يقرّر عن نفسه وحيدًا، لا أحد يستطيع ولا ينبغي أن يحاول وضع إملاءاته"
.
الأصالة الحقّة تمنع النرجسية والنسبية
لأنها تتطلب تعزيز علاقات ذات معنى
والاعتراف بخزان معاني مشترك يتجاوزنا كأفراد
June 10, 2021
Who Should Read This Book – Anyone who wants to better understand why our contemporary culture has come to so highly value authenticity (be true to yourself).
The Big Takeaway – The modern age of authenticity is not merely to be unequivocally celebrated (“boosters”) nor unflinchingly opposed (“knockers”) but instead to be critically examined so as to recognize what is good while clearly explaining blindspots.
A quote – “What our situation seems to call for is a complex, many-leveled struggle, intellectual, spiritual, and political, in which the debates in the public arena interlink with those in a host of institutional settings, like hospitals and schools, where the issues of enframing technology are being lived through in concrete form; and where these disputes in turn both feed and are fed by the various attempts to define in theoretical terms the place of technology and the demands of authenticity, and beyond that, the shape of human life and its relation to the cosmos.
But to engage effectively in this many-faceted debate, one has to see what is great in the culture of modernity, as well as what is shallow or dangerous” (120)
Charles Taylor is one of the most influential living philosophers, and his book A Secular Age is one of my all-time favorites. Surprisingly (to me), I’ve never read any of his other works. I desire to reread A Secular Age, but before I do I picked up this short book just to get a feel for some of his other work.
He begins by identifying what he calls the three malaises of modernity: individualism, the primacy of instrumental reason (reason that calculates the most economical means to a given end), and the political consequences of the first two which is a society where individuals will not actively participate in self-government. The rest of the book mostly focuses on the first one and ends with implications for the last two.
The rise of individualism led to relativism in which everyone has their own values:
“Relativism was itself an offshoot of a form of individualism, whose principle is something like this: everyone has a right to develop their own form of life, grounded on their own sense of what is really important or of value. People are called upon to be true to themselves and to seek their own self-fulfillment. What this consists of, each must in the last instance, determine for him-or herself. No one else can or should try to dictate its content” (14).
This is why I love reading Taylor – he puts words to the perceptions of the world I have. Quote s like that one, and other parts of the book, describe the culture we live in. Taylor argues this pursuit of authenticity and your own values is a moral idea. He says that something like this has always existed but what makes the modern age unique is the feeling that people are called to do this and waste their life if they do not (17).
There is a lot I could say about this little book. Seriously, I underlined like half of it. I will focus on two things for the rest of my review.
First, Taylor seeks a balanced approach. He describes two positions in regard to this modern age of authenticity. There are the “knockers” who mostly see the entire project as a loss and seemingly want to go back to some sort of good-old days. Then there are the “boosters” who gladly and uncritically welcome all changes the modern world has brought. In contrast to these, Taylor seeks a more balanced view which recognizes the benefits of modernity while also nothing its shortcomings.
This sympathetic yet critical view seems both true and helpful. There is a lot of good about the modern world (vaccines) and the emphasis on the individual. Yet there are places it has gone wrong. Further, only in being sympathetic is it possible to enter in and engage with people.
Second, Taylor’s critique of authenticity is helpful as it should have been obvious. The call of authenticity is for individuals to develop their own opinions, to be true to themselves and form their own values. Yet Taylor points out we always develop our opinions and ideas in dialogue with others – “things take on importance against a background of intelligibility” (37). Our culture values choice – be authentic – but for choices to matter, some must be favored over others. He writes:
“Unless some options are more significant than others, the very idea of self-choice falls into triviality and hence incoherence. . . Which issues are significant, I do not determine. If I did, no issue would be significant. But then the very idea of self-choosing as a moral ideal would be impossible. So the ideal of self-choice supposes that there are other issues of significance beyond self-choice” (39).
Take the issue of wearing masks during a pandemic. There was (is) a clash between those who elevate their choice (its my right not to wear a mask) and those who argue in response the individual’s responsibility to others (if it keeps others safe, you ought to wear a mask). Or take same-sex relationships, a topic that has certainly changed since this book was published in 1991. The general feeling is that you ought to be true to yourself, developing your own values. You should not be constrained by traditions or authorities outside yourself. Yet, this very idea is still formed in dialogue with others. There is an expectation (and I’d say, rightly so) that other people ought to respect who you are. As we cannot help but exist in community, in the world, together we cannot help but place demands upon one another. Whether it is wearing a mask or loving whomever you choose, these choices only matter in relationship to other people.
If all options are equally worthy solely because they are chosen, with personal choice of value being the highest value, then choice loses its significance. I could choose to find my self-worth in the specific number of hairs on my head which just might make me unique, but is that a significant choice because I choose to find value in it? Or, I could choose to find my self-worth in opposing same-sex relationships. In a world where being authentic and creating value is primary, is that choice equally as significant as the choice to support same-sex relationships?
I think it is important to note that Taylor does allude to same-sex relationships which is partly why I used that example. I am always nervous mentioning such topics, as what is left unsaid could lead to unwarranted assumptions. Obviously who a person is attracted to goes beyond mere choice. But I suppose that might fit Taylor’s point. If we argue any way of life is valid because all personal choices are valid, this collapses on itself because choice, as choice, is insignificant. If we argue a way of life is valid because of nature [people are naturally attracted to certain people] or society [we ought to respect other’s ways of life] we are appealing to a horizon beyond our individual selves.
Taylor writes:
“Only if I exist in a world in which history, or the demands of nature, or the needs of my fellow human beings, or the duties of citizenship, or the call of God, or something else of this order matters crucially, can I define an identity for myself that is not trivial. Authenticity is not the enemy of demands that emanate from beyond the self; it supposes such demands” (40-41).
There’s a tension here. We are asked to create our authentic selves yet to do so requires some openness to horizon of significance.
Finally, in the last chapter, after a chapter on instrumental reason, he returns to politics. Again he seeks balance, noting that market mechanisms are indispensable (sorry communists) but a free society ordered only through markets is also impossible (sorry capitalists). What really struck me was how prescient, even prophetic, his words were, written in 1991:
“The danger is not actual despotic control but fragmentation – that is, a people increasingly less capable of forming a common purpose and carrying it out. Fragmentation arises when people come to see themselves more and more atomistically, otherwise put, as less and less bound to their fellow citizens in common projects and allegiances” (112-113)
“The debate between the major candidates becomes ever more disjointed, their statements ever more blatantly self-serving, their communications consisting more and more of the now famous ‘sound bytes,’ their promises risibly unbelievable (‘read my lips’) and cynically unkempt, while their attacks on their opponents sink to ever more dishonorable levels, seemingly with impunity” (115).
Sounds familiar?
Overall, this book is a brilliant entry into Taylor’s thought. I’d highly recommend pastors, or anyone interested in understanding our culture, to pick it up. Its not a behemoth like A Secular Age, and even though it is kind of dated in some of the examples, this only reveals how clearly Taylor saw what was coming.
The Big Takeaway – The modern age of authenticity is not merely to be unequivocally celebrated (“boosters”) nor unflinchingly opposed (“knockers”) but instead to be critically examined so as to recognize what is good while clearly explaining blindspots.
A quote – “What our situation seems to call for is a complex, many-leveled struggle, intellectual, spiritual, and political, in which the debates in the public arena interlink with those in a host of institutional settings, like hospitals and schools, where the issues of enframing technology are being lived through in concrete form; and where these disputes in turn both feed and are fed by the various attempts to define in theoretical terms the place of technology and the demands of authenticity, and beyond that, the shape of human life and its relation to the cosmos.
But to engage effectively in this many-faceted debate, one has to see what is great in the culture of modernity, as well as what is shallow or dangerous” (120)
Charles Taylor is one of the most influential living philosophers, and his book A Secular Age is one of my all-time favorites. Surprisingly (to me), I’ve never read any of his other works. I desire to reread A Secular Age, but before I do I picked up this short book just to get a feel for some of his other work.
He begins by identifying what he calls the three malaises of modernity: individualism, the primacy of instrumental reason (reason that calculates the most economical means to a given end), and the political consequences of the first two which is a society where individuals will not actively participate in self-government. The rest of the book mostly focuses on the first one and ends with implications for the last two.
The rise of individualism led to relativism in which everyone has their own values:
“Relativism was itself an offshoot of a form of individualism, whose principle is something like this: everyone has a right to develop their own form of life, grounded on their own sense of what is really important or of value. People are called upon to be true to themselves and to seek their own self-fulfillment. What this consists of, each must in the last instance, determine for him-or herself. No one else can or should try to dictate its content” (14).
This is why I love reading Taylor – he puts words to the perceptions of the world I have. Quote s like that one, and other parts of the book, describe the culture we live in. Taylor argues this pursuit of authenticity and your own values is a moral idea. He says that something like this has always existed but what makes the modern age unique is the feeling that people are called to do this and waste their life if they do not (17).
There is a lot I could say about this little book. Seriously, I underlined like half of it. I will focus on two things for the rest of my review.
First, Taylor seeks a balanced approach. He describes two positions in regard to this modern age of authenticity. There are the “knockers” who mostly see the entire project as a loss and seemingly want to go back to some sort of good-old days. Then there are the “boosters” who gladly and uncritically welcome all changes the modern world has brought. In contrast to these, Taylor seeks a more balanced view which recognizes the benefits of modernity while also nothing its shortcomings.
This sympathetic yet critical view seems both true and helpful. There is a lot of good about the modern world (vaccines) and the emphasis on the individual. Yet there are places it has gone wrong. Further, only in being sympathetic is it possible to enter in and engage with people.
Second, Taylor’s critique of authenticity is helpful as it should have been obvious. The call of authenticity is for individuals to develop their own opinions, to be true to themselves and form their own values. Yet Taylor points out we always develop our opinions and ideas in dialogue with others – “things take on importance against a background of intelligibility” (37). Our culture values choice – be authentic – but for choices to matter, some must be favored over others. He writes:
“Unless some options are more significant than others, the very idea of self-choice falls into triviality and hence incoherence. . . Which issues are significant, I do not determine. If I did, no issue would be significant. But then the very idea of self-choosing as a moral ideal would be impossible. So the ideal of self-choice supposes that there are other issues of significance beyond self-choice” (39).
Take the issue of wearing masks during a pandemic. There was (is) a clash between those who elevate their choice (its my right not to wear a mask) and those who argue in response the individual’s responsibility to others (if it keeps others safe, you ought to wear a mask). Or take same-sex relationships, a topic that has certainly changed since this book was published in 1991. The general feeling is that you ought to be true to yourself, developing your own values. You should not be constrained by traditions or authorities outside yourself. Yet, this very idea is still formed in dialogue with others. There is an expectation (and I’d say, rightly so) that other people ought to respect who you are. As we cannot help but exist in community, in the world, together we cannot help but place demands upon one another. Whether it is wearing a mask or loving whomever you choose, these choices only matter in relationship to other people.
If all options are equally worthy solely because they are chosen, with personal choice of value being the highest value, then choice loses its significance. I could choose to find my self-worth in the specific number of hairs on my head which just might make me unique, but is that a significant choice because I choose to find value in it? Or, I could choose to find my self-worth in opposing same-sex relationships. In a world where being authentic and creating value is primary, is that choice equally as significant as the choice to support same-sex relationships?
I think it is important to note that Taylor does allude to same-sex relationships which is partly why I used that example. I am always nervous mentioning such topics, as what is left unsaid could lead to unwarranted assumptions. Obviously who a person is attracted to goes beyond mere choice. But I suppose that might fit Taylor’s point. If we argue any way of life is valid because all personal choices are valid, this collapses on itself because choice, as choice, is insignificant. If we argue a way of life is valid because of nature [people are naturally attracted to certain people] or society [we ought to respect other’s ways of life] we are appealing to a horizon beyond our individual selves.
Taylor writes:
“Only if I exist in a world in which history, or the demands of nature, or the needs of my fellow human beings, or the duties of citizenship, or the call of God, or something else of this order matters crucially, can I define an identity for myself that is not trivial. Authenticity is not the enemy of demands that emanate from beyond the self; it supposes such demands” (40-41).
There’s a tension here. We are asked to create our authentic selves yet to do so requires some openness to horizon of significance.
Finally, in the last chapter, after a chapter on instrumental reason, he returns to politics. Again he seeks balance, noting that market mechanisms are indispensable (sorry communists) but a free society ordered only through markets is also impossible (sorry capitalists). What really struck me was how prescient, even prophetic, his words were, written in 1991:
“The danger is not actual despotic control but fragmentation – that is, a people increasingly less capable of forming a common purpose and carrying it out. Fragmentation arises when people come to see themselves more and more atomistically, otherwise put, as less and less bound to their fellow citizens in common projects and allegiances” (112-113)
“The debate between the major candidates becomes ever more disjointed, their statements ever more blatantly self-serving, their communications consisting more and more of the now famous ‘sound bytes,’ their promises risibly unbelievable (‘read my lips’) and cynically unkempt, while their attacks on their opponents sink to ever more dishonorable levels, seemingly with impunity” (115).
Sounds familiar?
Overall, this book is a brilliant entry into Taylor’s thought. I’d highly recommend pastors, or anyone interested in understanding our culture, to pick it up. Its not a behemoth like A Secular Age, and even though it is kind of dated in some of the examples, this only reveals how clearly Taylor saw what was coming.
October 30, 2012
Charles Taylor has a remarkable grasp of intellectual history and this book is no exception in his continued efforts to carefully position present ideas against the horizons of past conceptual shifts and innovations. Unlike his other books like Sources of the Self or A Secular Age, though, this book is a much briefer treatment of one idea in particular, namely the ideal of authenticity and its relationship to individualism in this contemporary age. Nonetheless, I found Taylor's arguments to be perceptive and convincing. In particular, I appreciated the way in which he carefully distinguished higher forms of the ideal of authenticity from degenerate forms of the ideal. Taylor's arguments go a long way towards re-energizing the ethical value of personal autonomy, and especially moving away from a conception of personal autonomy as a mere commitment to human choice. This is an accessible book for non-philosophers and might offer a good bridge to Taylor's larger and more expansive works, namely Sources of the Self and A Secular Age.
February 5, 2025
Charles Taylor, like many of us, has deep misgivings about postmodern culture. He highlights some of the typical culprits attributed to contemporary ennui and societal breakdown. Individualism, instrumental reason, loss of freedom, subjectivism, neutral liberalism, moral relativism. These are all inextricably linked both epistemologically and ethically, and whatever place we have arrived at in the realm of the reigning ethics that have dug their way into our modern consciousness is probably some admixture of these things.
The pursuit of actual authenticity has been warped because of Western society's prevailing social disposition that orients towards industrialization or technology, which sets a precedent for a calculative approach to life and fundamentally alters lived experience. According to Taylor, the primary question is why people, who were once almost exclusively actuated by moral considerations, are now compelled by things entirely severed from the metaphysical.
The general thrust of the book is Taylor's presentation of authenticity as a noble and morally legitimate aim that is not, in and of itself, automatically narcissistic but which can, if galvanized by the wrong ideas, morph into something debased, degraded, or trivial. It shouldn't be celebrated when it has collapsed into these diminished forms simply because freedom has been exercised. In other words, the pursuit of something on one's own terms, whatever it may be, does not necessarily mean said thing is justified in moral terms. And these terms are precisely the thing that endows something with meaning or a kind of metaphysical weight, which is unevenly distributed across the variety of pursuits and choices that we make, forging a hierarchy of values. Taylor links this to his concept of 'horizons of significance' - the idea that our actions, consciously or unconsciously, play out against multitudinous and diverse backgrounds of meaning (existing simultaneously) where they are only conferred moral significance based on the fulfillment of their respective ethical demands - these demands vary in magnitude and rigor, granting them different degrees of significance. These models of meaning are where genuine value systems can become legible to their practitioners and, in a world where the "only remaining value is choice itself," the contradiction between Taylor's concept and the contemporary consensus on individual morality could provide a lot of clarity.
Whenever we come to recognize ourselves as moral agents, and I believe this is a much slower and more arduous process than people realize, true authentic responsibility begins. Rather than a single phenomenological experience, it usually presents itself in a flux of deeply private, secret acknowledgements that fashions us into something other than mere observers. We become vested with a type of moral and therefore creative power because of this self-discovery. Just as Saint Augustine "saw the road to God as passing through our own reflexive awareness of ourselves" apprehending oneself grants moral and creative power. The former necessarily precedes the latter, functioning as a kind a foundation for the trajectory of those creative powers to unfold.
Yet problems arise when agency becomes detached from its moral underpinnings. We hear lots of seemingly updated language supplanting what are commonly held to be the traditional pillars of morality. And this seems normal enough or even a cause to be celebrated, considering everything else in society is rapidly changing as well.
But if moral values are analogous to technological, social, or economic change, then they become fungible as well, taken up or discarded at will, a relativism that implicitly suggests the equivalency of all things. So you can, in good conscience, chose anything without any process of justification other than that which you have to make to yourself. The moral ideal(s) are no longer the nucleus of the human personality, rather the individual becomes the core on which constantly new arbitrary values are grafted.
A lot can be said about having arrived at this point of fixation on identity. Some will point to the social upheaval of the sixties, which very successfully usurped a lot of the primary cultural values, whose consequences we are still dealing with today. And perhaps disruptions like these shouldn't be seen as aberrations within American liberal democracies but the full realization of the reigning ethos. Rather than moments that punctuate experienced freedom, they stand as teleological beacons that contain within them the animating principle of democratic freedom; that being an overcoming of social or cultural limitations restrictive to fully realized human freedom.
The Triumph of the Therapeutic - A Theory of Modern Religion
Therapy culture exists as a kind of barnacle on the side of the medicine, attempting and very much succeeding in insinuating itself into the domain of empiricism and pathology generally reserved for the hard sciences, which then grants it a kind of prestige and legitimacy, both precursors for high sociocultural status. In a sense, it impersonates medicine through its use of quantifiable metrics and pathologization (both imprecise and highly questionable).
And the undeniable secularization of society has meant the therapeutic mode has become the predominant one for understanding sociocultural dynamics and even more significantly, deeply moral questions, and therefore it's no surprise that the profession is utilized to either deploy or sanction traditionally shitty ideas, and transform them into palatable if not highly desirable pseudo philosophies.
The logic of therapy, obviously wanting to sustain and aggrandize itself as a professional class and also just as a matter of economic necessity, is ultimately grounded in a kind of voyeuristic culture of affirmation. Its practitioners must respect their patients and maintain them as clients by affirmatively accepting their subjective judgements no matter how bad they are. In other words, it's an inversion of the artistic mandate to reflexively assume you're contending with an unreliable narrator and instead, replacing them with an unassailable, unimpeachable protagonist, a fastidious, fully conscientious chronicler of personal narrative. This very much parallels the market's injunction that 'the customer is always right' seeing as how this is a decree that affirms, in all instances, the subjective judgments of the consumer in order for consumption to continue unabated.
As with all things relating to the zeitgeist and its related cultural shifts, there has naturally been a kind of informal, albeit highly influential vocabulary that has seeped out of the psychoanalytic tradition of contemporary therapeutic quarters. It's sort of like a linguistic scaffolding, where words become symbols and symbols become either paramount or insignificant based on certain cultural ratification processes. This isn't anything new, it's always been the origin point of civilizations and trajectory of cultures. The difference is that the power to consecrate is no longer reserved for religion, it actually comes from the realm of professional expertise and technical reason.
By wedding ourselves so intimately to reason as the final arbiter of all things, including the moral, we become a sort of instrumentalized vessel, trapped within a paradigm of practicality and dry calculation, thereby making all relationships and obligations fundamentally transactional in nature, since this is what the logic demands. This is the fundamental ethic of authenticity today.
Within this modern hellscape you may have to endure such catchphrases like "living your best life" or "YOLO." These types of things are usually uttered ironically but they have become cultural catchphrases for the simple fact that they carry within them the animating principle of the contemporary world. And as we know, much can be gleaned from the gutter of popular culture and what ideas it's smuggling in under the guise of humor. Everything now coalesces around the individual as the normative subject of all discourse. YOU are living YOUR best life and that YOU only live once.
And this meets no resistance from the new therapeutic religion because it has no higher aim or ideal other than obsessive self-fulfillment and egoistic indulgence, which "seems to recognize few external moral demands or serious commitments to others" if they happen to be in conflict with one's personal development. It grants preeminence of the self and advocates for whatever burgeoning desires, ambitions, motivations that emerge in the individual and that could be antithetical or in conflict with the concepts, duties, or obligations that previously anchored a person. This makes it intrinsically antisocial, yet its genesis and perpetual reformulations advance from presumably higher, more sophisticated, and more credentialed cultures of academia and science, whose rejection of metaphysical abstraction for a supposedly more rigorous and concrete form of truth naturally provides justification and absolution that meets the standard of postmodern ethics. And because it descends from such intellectual, cultural, and philosophical heights, it gives these ideas "a certain patina of deeper philosophical justification."
"...they tend to see fulfillment as just of the self, neglecting or delegitimizing the demands that come from beyond our own desires or aspirations, be they from history, tradition, society, nature, or God; they foster, in other words, a radical anthropocentrism."
This new religion desecrates and destroys, atomizes and diminishes relationships, bonds, communities, and any higher ideal required to uphold them. Its compatibility with other proto-religious commitments like neoliberalism, the market economy, and consumption make it wholly inhuman, indiscriminately extirpating humanity, so that it may be more fully consummated with the postmodern sacred.
The pursuit of actual authenticity has been warped because of Western society's prevailing social disposition that orients towards industrialization or technology, which sets a precedent for a calculative approach to life and fundamentally alters lived experience. According to Taylor, the primary question is why people, who were once almost exclusively actuated by moral considerations, are now compelled by things entirely severed from the metaphysical.
The general thrust of the book is Taylor's presentation of authenticity as a noble and morally legitimate aim that is not, in and of itself, automatically narcissistic but which can, if galvanized by the wrong ideas, morph into something debased, degraded, or trivial. It shouldn't be celebrated when it has collapsed into these diminished forms simply because freedom has been exercised. In other words, the pursuit of something on one's own terms, whatever it may be, does not necessarily mean said thing is justified in moral terms. And these terms are precisely the thing that endows something with meaning or a kind of metaphysical weight, which is unevenly distributed across the variety of pursuits and choices that we make, forging a hierarchy of values. Taylor links this to his concept of 'horizons of significance' - the idea that our actions, consciously or unconsciously, play out against multitudinous and diverse backgrounds of meaning (existing simultaneously) where they are only conferred moral significance based on the fulfillment of their respective ethical demands - these demands vary in magnitude and rigor, granting them different degrees of significance. These models of meaning are where genuine value systems can become legible to their practitioners and, in a world where the "only remaining value is choice itself," the contradiction between Taylor's concept and the contemporary consensus on individual morality could provide a lot of clarity.
Whenever we come to recognize ourselves as moral agents, and I believe this is a much slower and more arduous process than people realize, true authentic responsibility begins. Rather than a single phenomenological experience, it usually presents itself in a flux of deeply private, secret acknowledgements that fashions us into something other than mere observers. We become vested with a type of moral and therefore creative power because of this self-discovery. Just as Saint Augustine "saw the road to God as passing through our own reflexive awareness of ourselves" apprehending oneself grants moral and creative power. The former necessarily precedes the latter, functioning as a kind a foundation for the trajectory of those creative powers to unfold.
Yet problems arise when agency becomes detached from its moral underpinnings. We hear lots of seemingly updated language supplanting what are commonly held to be the traditional pillars of morality. And this seems normal enough or even a cause to be celebrated, considering everything else in society is rapidly changing as well.
But if moral values are analogous to technological, social, or economic change, then they become fungible as well, taken up or discarded at will, a relativism that implicitly suggests the equivalency of all things. So you can, in good conscience, chose anything without any process of justification other than that which you have to make to yourself. The moral ideal(s) are no longer the nucleus of the human personality, rather the individual becomes the core on which constantly new arbitrary values are grafted.
A lot can be said about having arrived at this point of fixation on identity. Some will point to the social upheaval of the sixties, which very successfully usurped a lot of the primary cultural values, whose consequences we are still dealing with today. And perhaps disruptions like these shouldn't be seen as aberrations within American liberal democracies but the full realization of the reigning ethos. Rather than moments that punctuate experienced freedom, they stand as teleological beacons that contain within them the animating principle of democratic freedom; that being an overcoming of social or cultural limitations restrictive to fully realized human freedom.
The Triumph of the Therapeutic - A Theory of Modern Religion
Therapy culture exists as a kind of barnacle on the side of the medicine, attempting and very much succeeding in insinuating itself into the domain of empiricism and pathology generally reserved for the hard sciences, which then grants it a kind of prestige and legitimacy, both precursors for high sociocultural status. In a sense, it impersonates medicine through its use of quantifiable metrics and pathologization (both imprecise and highly questionable).
And the undeniable secularization of society has meant the therapeutic mode has become the predominant one for understanding sociocultural dynamics and even more significantly, deeply moral questions, and therefore it's no surprise that the profession is utilized to either deploy or sanction traditionally shitty ideas, and transform them into palatable if not highly desirable pseudo philosophies.
The logic of therapy, obviously wanting to sustain and aggrandize itself as a professional class and also just as a matter of economic necessity, is ultimately grounded in a kind of voyeuristic culture of affirmation. Its practitioners must respect their patients and maintain them as clients by affirmatively accepting their subjective judgements no matter how bad they are. In other words, it's an inversion of the artistic mandate to reflexively assume you're contending with an unreliable narrator and instead, replacing them with an unassailable, unimpeachable protagonist, a fastidious, fully conscientious chronicler of personal narrative. This very much parallels the market's injunction that 'the customer is always right' seeing as how this is a decree that affirms, in all instances, the subjective judgments of the consumer in order for consumption to continue unabated.
As with all things relating to the zeitgeist and its related cultural shifts, there has naturally been a kind of informal, albeit highly influential vocabulary that has seeped out of the psychoanalytic tradition of contemporary therapeutic quarters. It's sort of like a linguistic scaffolding, where words become symbols and symbols become either paramount or insignificant based on certain cultural ratification processes. This isn't anything new, it's always been the origin point of civilizations and trajectory of cultures. The difference is that the power to consecrate is no longer reserved for religion, it actually comes from the realm of professional expertise and technical reason.
By wedding ourselves so intimately to reason as the final arbiter of all things, including the moral, we become a sort of instrumentalized vessel, trapped within a paradigm of practicality and dry calculation, thereby making all relationships and obligations fundamentally transactional in nature, since this is what the logic demands. This is the fundamental ethic of authenticity today.
Within this modern hellscape you may have to endure such catchphrases like "living your best life" or "YOLO." These types of things are usually uttered ironically but they have become cultural catchphrases for the simple fact that they carry within them the animating principle of the contemporary world. And as we know, much can be gleaned from the gutter of popular culture and what ideas it's smuggling in under the guise of humor. Everything now coalesces around the individual as the normative subject of all discourse. YOU are living YOUR best life and that YOU only live once.
And this meets no resistance from the new therapeutic religion because it has no higher aim or ideal other than obsessive self-fulfillment and egoistic indulgence, which "seems to recognize few external moral demands or serious commitments to others" if they happen to be in conflict with one's personal development. It grants preeminence of the self and advocates for whatever burgeoning desires, ambitions, motivations that emerge in the individual and that could be antithetical or in conflict with the concepts, duties, or obligations that previously anchored a person. This makes it intrinsically antisocial, yet its genesis and perpetual reformulations advance from presumably higher, more sophisticated, and more credentialed cultures of academia and science, whose rejection of metaphysical abstraction for a supposedly more rigorous and concrete form of truth naturally provides justification and absolution that meets the standard of postmodern ethics. And because it descends from such intellectual, cultural, and philosophical heights, it gives these ideas "a certain patina of deeper philosophical justification."
"...they tend to see fulfillment as just of the self, neglecting or delegitimizing the demands that come from beyond our own desires or aspirations, be they from history, tradition, society, nature, or God; they foster, in other words, a radical anthropocentrism."
This new religion desecrates and destroys, atomizes and diminishes relationships, bonds, communities, and any higher ideal required to uphold them. Its compatibility with other proto-religious commitments like neoliberalism, the market economy, and consumption make it wholly inhuman, indiscriminately extirpating humanity, so that it may be more fully consummated with the postmodern sacred.
July 17, 2015
The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor is an uncharacteristically short work in which Taylor presses home through clear arguments the point that critics of the modern moral stance or ethos of authenticity, represented by Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind, and Christopher Lasch, the author of The Culture of Narcissism, go too far in their condemnations and so prevent a fruitful engagement with the good that can be affirmed and rescued in contemporary notions of the authenticity from the aberrations from the good such as in instrumental self-centeredness and subjectivist affirmation of choice in and of itself without a horizonal setting which is necessary to give it meaning. Since I am a fan of Bloom and Lasch's books I found this especially intriguing and challenging. I think Taylor is effective in making his case. His strength is an assiduous, empathic seeking to know which sometimes leaves me feeling queasy. I think though that Taylor still has iron in his critique both of the critiquers and the critiqued. Regarding the later I found his analysis deft and clear regarding how many attempts to ground the worth of non-standard sexual orientations based on choice for choices' sake, without a horizon beyond the self to give it meaning, collapse into incoherence.
December 8, 2025
I am rather disappointed by this book. Instead of going for an insightful analysis, Taylor sits comfortably, paternalistically, and philosophically in between and tells us the goods and the bads of the two positions out there regarding the “authentic self” in the Western culture. On one side there is nihilism and narcissism, while on the other there is the “really authentic self” and progress. According to Taylor, we need to make a cultural, moral/ethical, and intellectual effort as the whole of our society and to embrace the good and to discard the bad parts of the two extremes. Except that no one stands there in the middle to comprehensibly and neutrally understand both these extremes, to sort them, and moreover to act according to the final mix of “good-only”. Moreover, modern subjectivism and technology are no longer under human control for a long time now and in no way these two are “human achievements” that can be ignored or embraced at will and based on some ideas, values, or feelings. I guess that I need to re-read “A Secular Age” and see how I feel about Taylor’s main work and ideas these days.
January 19, 2026
You’re that undergraduate who has started carrying a dog-eared copy of The Portable Nietzsche wherever you go. Cynical onlookers think you’re doing this because nothing else has ever worked for you, and by this, they mean that you can’t get a date. Indeed, your greasy hair and mild halitosis give some credence to their suspicion, but what they don’t understand is that your new passion is not fundamentally an attempt to vivify your romantic life.
What’s ultimately driving you is the idea of self-creation. You want to become, for the first time ever, your real authentic self. Not the mop-headed kid who suffered through confirmation classes to please your parents. Not the awkward adolescent who acted like such a dope during your senior prom. You’re finally summoning the courage to be yourself, your real self, and nobody has the right to say dick about it.
Well, you happen to be in luck, because Charles Taylor has written The Ethics of Authenticity for people like you. Don’t worry, he’s not here to lecture. He actually thinks that your pursuit of authenticity is a positive development. He just wants you to know that authenticity contains two poles. The Nietzschean pole emphasizes originality, creativity, self-determination, revolt against certain conventions. But there’s another pole, without which the first cannot be sustained, and this pole involves recognizing that we are dialogical beings who live in “horizons of significance.”
You seem to believe that you can determine the significance of your life entirely on your own. One thing you’re failing to understand is that human life is fundamentally dialogical. You value things like honesty, independence, and emotional restraint, and although the way you’re now embracing these values feels unique, you almost certainly absorbed them through interactions with your parents. You were praised for honesty and witnessed the disappointment in their eyes when you were deceptive. You were praised for trying things on your own, shamed for being too needy, and learned emotional restraint through tone, facial expressions, and silence — seeing which emotions were welcome and which were met with discomfort.
And yes, in some important ways you are now choosing to be different from your parents — perhaps by affirming the importance of expressing vulnerability — and that is an important part of your journey. But keep in mind that even this rebellion is dialogical. Both the desire to differentiate yourself and the particular way you are choosing to do so have probably been shaped, at least in part, by them. You absorbed the story your father told you about the time he quit the junior high school basketball team, and you will never forget the flare-ups between your mother and her own parents. And as you redefine yourself, this process continues through new relationships in which vulnerability is recognized, welcomed, and mirrored back to you.
Your individualism also overlooks that authenticity requires horizons of significance. A horizon of significance is a pre-reflective sense that some things matter, that some things matter more than others, that some ways of living are more meaningful than others. This sense developed dialogically: as you grew up with your particular parents and within your specific culture, you inevitably adopted many shared beliefs. Most of these beliefs remain with you, and some will likely always be inescapable.
What this means is that you cannot live meaningfully without many of these shared beliefs — for example, that courage is better than cowardice or that a life devoted solely to pleasure feels hollow — because they are essential to your coherent identity. To have a coherent identity is to possess such beliefs, such values and commitments that shape your life. Erasing these beliefs, as if that were even possible, would amount to changing your very identity.
Taylor posits James Joyce as an artist who remains faithful to both poles of authenticity. Stephen Dedalus famously repudiates the Church and flees Ireland, declaring: “I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use — silence, exile, and cunning.”
But Joyce, who narrates Stephen’s inner life with profound intimacy, never falls into atomism — the idea that we are fully self-contained, independent of others. The story reveals how individuality is always intertwined with our culture and traditions. Stephen ultimately rejects Catholic doctrine, but his renunciation unfolds within a Catholic framework; his lived experience remains saturated with religious meaning — guilt, shame, and temptation as alive as ever. Because the Church has so deeply shaped him, his decision is psychologically costly, feeling as if something significant in himself has been lost. And he cannot help but understand his new artistic vocation in religious terms.
Taylor’s big fear is that when atomism becomes widespread, it undermines genuine freedom and produces fragmentation. Public life devolves into a cacophony of rival monologues rather than a shared conversation. Moral language hardens into slogans, and disagreement becomes adversarial. In such a climate, the very conditions that make authenticity meaningful — dialogue, common horizons, and a sense of belonging to something larger than oneself — erode.
What’s ultimately driving you is the idea of self-creation. You want to become, for the first time ever, your real authentic self. Not the mop-headed kid who suffered through confirmation classes to please your parents. Not the awkward adolescent who acted like such a dope during your senior prom. You’re finally summoning the courage to be yourself, your real self, and nobody has the right to say dick about it.
Well, you happen to be in luck, because Charles Taylor has written The Ethics of Authenticity for people like you. Don’t worry, he’s not here to lecture. He actually thinks that your pursuit of authenticity is a positive development. He just wants you to know that authenticity contains two poles. The Nietzschean pole emphasizes originality, creativity, self-determination, revolt against certain conventions. But there’s another pole, without which the first cannot be sustained, and this pole involves recognizing that we are dialogical beings who live in “horizons of significance.”
You seem to believe that you can determine the significance of your life entirely on your own. One thing you’re failing to understand is that human life is fundamentally dialogical. You value things like honesty, independence, and emotional restraint, and although the way you’re now embracing these values feels unique, you almost certainly absorbed them through interactions with your parents. You were praised for honesty and witnessed the disappointment in their eyes when you were deceptive. You were praised for trying things on your own, shamed for being too needy, and learned emotional restraint through tone, facial expressions, and silence — seeing which emotions were welcome and which were met with discomfort.
And yes, in some important ways you are now choosing to be different from your parents — perhaps by affirming the importance of expressing vulnerability — and that is an important part of your journey. But keep in mind that even this rebellion is dialogical. Both the desire to differentiate yourself and the particular way you are choosing to do so have probably been shaped, at least in part, by them. You absorbed the story your father told you about the time he quit the junior high school basketball team, and you will never forget the flare-ups between your mother and her own parents. And as you redefine yourself, this process continues through new relationships in which vulnerability is recognized, welcomed, and mirrored back to you.
Your individualism also overlooks that authenticity requires horizons of significance. A horizon of significance is a pre-reflective sense that some things matter, that some things matter more than others, that some ways of living are more meaningful than others. This sense developed dialogically: as you grew up with your particular parents and within your specific culture, you inevitably adopted many shared beliefs. Most of these beliefs remain with you, and some will likely always be inescapable.
What this means is that you cannot live meaningfully without many of these shared beliefs — for example, that courage is better than cowardice or that a life devoted solely to pleasure feels hollow — because they are essential to your coherent identity. To have a coherent identity is to possess such beliefs, such values and commitments that shape your life. Erasing these beliefs, as if that were even possible, would amount to changing your very identity.
Taylor posits James Joyce as an artist who remains faithful to both poles of authenticity. Stephen Dedalus famously repudiates the Church and flees Ireland, declaring: “I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use — silence, exile, and cunning.”
But Joyce, who narrates Stephen’s inner life with profound intimacy, never falls into atomism — the idea that we are fully self-contained, independent of others. The story reveals how individuality is always intertwined with our culture and traditions. Stephen ultimately rejects Catholic doctrine, but his renunciation unfolds within a Catholic framework; his lived experience remains saturated with religious meaning — guilt, shame, and temptation as alive as ever. Because the Church has so deeply shaped him, his decision is psychologically costly, feeling as if something significant in himself has been lost. And he cannot help but understand his new artistic vocation in religious terms.
Taylor’s big fear is that when atomism becomes widespread, it undermines genuine freedom and produces fragmentation. Public life devolves into a cacophony of rival monologues rather than a shared conversation. Moral language hardens into slogans, and disagreement becomes adversarial. In such a climate, the very conditions that make authenticity meaningful — dialogue, common horizons, and a sense of belonging to something larger than oneself — erode.
August 2, 2018
"The agent seeking significance in life, trying to define him- or herself meaningfully, has to exist in a horizon of important questions. That is what is self-defeating in modes of contemporary culture that concentrate on self-fulfillment in opposition to the demand of society, or nature, which shut out history and the bonds of solidarity. These self-centered 'narcissistic' forms are indeed shallow and trivialized; they are 'flattened and narrowed,' as Bloom says. But this is not because they belong to the culture of authenticity. Rather it is because they fly in the face of its requirements. To shut out demands emanating beyond the self is precisely to suppress the conditions of significance, and hence to court trivialization. To the extent that people are seeking a moral ideal here, this self-immuring is self-stultifying; it destroys the condition in which the ideal can be realized." (40)
February 21, 2023
Read for school. First half was my favorite, probably would have enjoyed it more if I had time to go in and make sure I understood everything
November 25, 2023
*2.5 stars
genuinely can't understand without charles taylor translation services (thank you person for your support in class) or perhaps i'm just sleep
genuinely can't understand without charles taylor translation services (thank you person for your support in class) or perhaps i'm just sleep
May 13, 2023
Great book about the benefits and drawbacks of our culture of individuality. Charles Taylor is really balanced instead of coming off as an old grouch, he seems genuinely concerned about contemporary society and individualism while also admitting its benefits. Lots of great ideas, but I especially liked the importance of dialogue and community to authenticity.
3.5
Quotes
But this is not how things work with important issues, such as the definition of our identity. We define this always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the identities our significant others want to recognize in us. And even when we outgrow some of the latter - our parents, for instance - and they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live
Articulacy here has a moral point, not just in correcting what may be wrong views but also in making the force of an ideal that people are already living by more palpable, more vivid for them; and by making it more vivid, empowering them to live up to it in a fuller and more integral fashion.
No one acquires the languages needed for self definition on their own. We are introduced to them through exchanges with others who matter to us what George Herbert Mead called "significant others. The genesis of the human mind is in this sense not "monological," not something each accomplishes on his or her own, but dialogical.
3.5
Quotes
But this is not how things work with important issues, such as the definition of our identity. We define this always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the identities our significant others want to recognize in us. And even when we outgrow some of the latter - our parents, for instance - and they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live
Articulacy here has a moral point, not just in correcting what may be wrong views but also in making the force of an ideal that people are already living by more palpable, more vivid for them; and by making it more vivid, empowering them to live up to it in a fuller and more integral fashion.
No one acquires the languages needed for self definition on their own. We are introduced to them through exchanges with others who matter to us what George Herbert Mead called "significant others. The genesis of the human mind is in this sense not "monological," not something each accomplishes on his or her own, but dialogical.
September 13, 2019
This is one of my favorite books and the best introduction to Taylor's unique hermeneutic approach to philosophy and political theory. Taylor aims to chart a third past beyond the knockers and boosters of modernity. He aims to recover the moral ideals behind modern society. His primary argument rest on the importance of recognition for any sort of discursive understanding of value. This points beyond atomistic notions of authenticity. Taylor's book remains timely both because of the ongoing challenges of individualism, social atomism, and the political consequences of these views, and because his account dovetails with recent work on Hegel that has sought to restate more clearly the central importance of recognition. For instance, Taylor's approach is at points very similar to Brandom's recent reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Sprit, A Spirit of Trust.
January 17, 2023
Arguably one of the greatest thinkers of our time.
Read
October 17, 2023Knockers hahahahah like boobs
November 17, 2025
another one I had to read for class, safe to say I have little interest in this topic
May 7, 2024
À ce qu'il paraît I got the biggest academic crush on that guy
February 6, 2021
Prophetic. Written 30 years ago. A must-read.
Does “being true to oneself” carry with it a set of ethics? Absolutely – as do all of our actions. All that we say, think, and do carries with it consequences, be they good or bad. In this book, Charles Taylor argues that the ethics of authenticity lead to a world in which “many people lose sight of concerns that transcend them… (often for) trivialized and self-indulgent forms.” Yet, Taylor doesn’t lament authenticity or modernity as malaises that need to be cured. Rather, he optimistically calls for embracing the healthy aspects of authenticity that have enabled greater peace around the globe, more enhanced technological advancements for communication, and equality of all races in a world that used to regard those of different skin colors as inferior. Authenticity at its best envisions a world where each individual harnesses sympathy for the common good of those around them. At its worst, authenticity creates an unsustainable world of narcissistic and subjectivistic people who are driven solely by their own feelings and desires. This brand of authenticity also carries with it an ethical worldview that denies the place or influence of external systems, ideas, or people. It is an individualism rooted solely in one’s emotional perceptions and, as much as is possible, divorced from anything that transcends the self and/or provides accountability.
It’s crazy to think this book was written thirty years ago… It feels as though it addresses the specific issues of today! Unfortunately, the culture of “authenticity” has swung toward an even more solipsistic place since this book was written. In order to recapture the positive side of authenticity, we must surround ourselves with other people who will hold us accountable to ideas, values, and behavior that transcends our own feelings or self-perceived identity. Ironically enough, the authentic self is the self that looks beyond its own horizons. As a Christian, I know God has graciously given us the local church as a type of shepherd’s goad that presses into our side when we veer off the path. Praise God for the gift of grace that comes with being a member of a local church. Submitting to godly shepherds (elders) and living life alongside fellow sheep (members) frees me from living a myopic lifestyle and forces me to look both upward to God and downward to the needs of others. My authentic self – a new creation in Christ – is elucidated when shaped by God through the lives and influence of other people. Taylor’s work has only deepened my love for the local church and heightened my desire to labor in the church’s mission until Christ returns. I recommend this book to all people!
Does “being true to oneself” carry with it a set of ethics? Absolutely – as do all of our actions. All that we say, think, and do carries with it consequences, be they good or bad. In this book, Charles Taylor argues that the ethics of authenticity lead to a world in which “many people lose sight of concerns that transcend them… (often for) trivialized and self-indulgent forms.” Yet, Taylor doesn’t lament authenticity or modernity as malaises that need to be cured. Rather, he optimistically calls for embracing the healthy aspects of authenticity that have enabled greater peace around the globe, more enhanced technological advancements for communication, and equality of all races in a world that used to regard those of different skin colors as inferior. Authenticity at its best envisions a world where each individual harnesses sympathy for the common good of those around them. At its worst, authenticity creates an unsustainable world of narcissistic and subjectivistic people who are driven solely by their own feelings and desires. This brand of authenticity also carries with it an ethical worldview that denies the place or influence of external systems, ideas, or people. It is an individualism rooted solely in one’s emotional perceptions and, as much as is possible, divorced from anything that transcends the self and/or provides accountability.
It’s crazy to think this book was written thirty years ago… It feels as though it addresses the specific issues of today! Unfortunately, the culture of “authenticity” has swung toward an even more solipsistic place since this book was written. In order to recapture the positive side of authenticity, we must surround ourselves with other people who will hold us accountable to ideas, values, and behavior that transcends our own feelings or self-perceived identity. Ironically enough, the authentic self is the self that looks beyond its own horizons. As a Christian, I know God has graciously given us the local church as a type of shepherd’s goad that presses into our side when we veer off the path. Praise God for the gift of grace that comes with being a member of a local church. Submitting to godly shepherds (elders) and living life alongside fellow sheep (members) frees me from living a myopic lifestyle and forces me to look both upward to God and downward to the needs of others. My authentic self – a new creation in Christ – is elucidated when shaped by God through the lives and influence of other people. Taylor’s work has only deepened my love for the local church and heightened my desire to labor in the church’s mission until Christ returns. I recommend this book to all people!
September 21, 2017
My eye falls upon words of philosophy that are easy to read: tears come to my eyes
Next I notice that this philosophy lives in a small book: I look skyward and bless the heavens
For real tho kudos to Taylor for making phil so easy and accessible
Content wise I'm more mixed
So this book is about all the problems of modernity- you know the ones: the hyper individualism, the passiveness, the instrumental reason
This book addresses and examines that and comes to an interesting conclusion:
Modern life aspires to the ideal of authenticity, of realisation (a moral and agreeable ideal), although in practice we have sort of perverted it creating tension in our lives
To fix this, we must examine our ideal of authenticity, and attempt to correct our path towards it
This involves acknowledging that not everything revolves around the self as an individual, even to form and confirm our identity, this must happen in dialogue with other people. We also need larger causes and communities that transcend individual life, or everything is chaos and nothing has any meaning, the value in even establishing the self has no value if it does not have a background of external values on which to rely.
So we must assert a common ground that is larger than ourselves. This is particularly interesting and urgent when you do consider it in connection to the attitudes of the damn youth today. A neutral "you do you fam" attitude has arisen and been viewed as a correct moral stance, but according to Taylor, this only increases the fractured nature of our society, which leaves us as isolated individuals in a fractured society, which then plays into larger issues, political, economical, environmental blah blah blah issues (so basically issues that transcend individuals that won't be solved by neutrality). This fractured state also leaves us trapped in our capitalistic, instrumental reason hellscape
Actually the more I think about it the more I come round to Taylor..
Anyways, a good accessible book that was really well grounded in history but also art and literature!!! Drag the postmodernists Taylor!!
My only real problem with it is that it isn't an overdramatic earth shattering piece of philosophy, its more subtle and more readily applicable to everyday life which is a dumb criticism but still
Next I notice that this philosophy lives in a small book: I look skyward and bless the heavens
For real tho kudos to Taylor for making phil so easy and accessible
Content wise I'm more mixed
So this book is about all the problems of modernity- you know the ones: the hyper individualism, the passiveness, the instrumental reason
This book addresses and examines that and comes to an interesting conclusion:
Modern life aspires to the ideal of authenticity, of realisation (a moral and agreeable ideal), although in practice we have sort of perverted it creating tension in our lives
To fix this, we must examine our ideal of authenticity, and attempt to correct our path towards it
This involves acknowledging that not everything revolves around the self as an individual, even to form and confirm our identity, this must happen in dialogue with other people. We also need larger causes and communities that transcend individual life, or everything is chaos and nothing has any meaning, the value in even establishing the self has no value if it does not have a background of external values on which to rely.
So we must assert a common ground that is larger than ourselves. This is particularly interesting and urgent when you do consider it in connection to the attitudes of the damn youth today. A neutral "you do you fam" attitude has arisen and been viewed as a correct moral stance, but according to Taylor, this only increases the fractured nature of our society, which leaves us as isolated individuals in a fractured society, which then plays into larger issues, political, economical, environmental blah blah blah issues (so basically issues that transcend individuals that won't be solved by neutrality). This fractured state also leaves us trapped in our capitalistic, instrumental reason hellscape
Actually the more I think about it the more I come round to Taylor..
Anyways, a good accessible book that was really well grounded in history but also art and literature!!! Drag the postmodernists Taylor!!
My only real problem with it is that it isn't an overdramatic earth shattering piece of philosophy, its more subtle and more readily applicable to everyday life which is a dumb criticism but still
February 27, 2014
A short philosophy book that perfectly illustrates my own existential struggles and moral dilemmas in our modern society.
I agree wholeheartedly that our era is characterised by an ethic of authenticity; we feel deeply responsible to create ourselves and to express our own originality, but find ourselves often lost and bewildered when doing so. In order to truly embody this goal we require recognition by others, and for recognition we require a horizon of common held significances... These significances, however, are still at issue here. What are they exactly and how do we go by agreeing on them?
Taylor's solution seems to be a continual political dialogue or at least the recognition of constant dialogue towards others within ourselves necessary for this creation of ourselves. Thus he places relationships once again in a pivotal role in an individual's life, as opposed to individualistic atomism.
A very good analyses of the dilemma of subjectivism, however, the question remains whether the horizon of significances should now be ethically approached in a deontological or consequentialist fashion? Much left to discuss.
Most of all, I am happy to have this quote now in my possession, exemplifying my own more balanced view of modernity:
"What our situation seems to call for is a complex, many-levelled struggle, intellectual, spiritual, and political, in which the debates in the public arena interlink with those in a host of institutional settings, like hospitals and schools, where the issues of enframing technology are being lived through in concrete form; and where these disputes in turn both feeds and are fed by the various attempts to define in theoretical terms the place of authenticity, and beyond that, the shape of human life and its relation to the cosmos.
But to engage effectively in this many-faceted debate, one has to see what is great in the culture of modernity, as well as what is shallow or dangerous.
As Pascal said about human beings, modernity is characterized by 'grandeur' as well as 'misère'. Only a view that embraces both can give it the undistorted insight into our era that we need to rise to its greatest challenge."
I agree wholeheartedly that our era is characterised by an ethic of authenticity; we feel deeply responsible to create ourselves and to express our own originality, but find ourselves often lost and bewildered when doing so. In order to truly embody this goal we require recognition by others, and for recognition we require a horizon of common held significances... These significances, however, are still at issue here. What are they exactly and how do we go by agreeing on them?
Taylor's solution seems to be a continual political dialogue or at least the recognition of constant dialogue towards others within ourselves necessary for this creation of ourselves. Thus he places relationships once again in a pivotal role in an individual's life, as opposed to individualistic atomism.
A very good analyses of the dilemma of subjectivism, however, the question remains whether the horizon of significances should now be ethically approached in a deontological or consequentialist fashion? Much left to discuss.
Most of all, I am happy to have this quote now in my possession, exemplifying my own more balanced view of modernity:
"What our situation seems to call for is a complex, many-levelled struggle, intellectual, spiritual, and political, in which the debates in the public arena interlink with those in a host of institutional settings, like hospitals and schools, where the issues of enframing technology are being lived through in concrete form; and where these disputes in turn both feeds and are fed by the various attempts to define in theoretical terms the place of authenticity, and beyond that, the shape of human life and its relation to the cosmos.
But to engage effectively in this many-faceted debate, one has to see what is great in the culture of modernity, as well as what is shallow or dangerous.
As Pascal said about human beings, modernity is characterized by 'grandeur' as well as 'misère'. Only a view that embraces both can give it the undistorted insight into our era that we need to rise to its greatest challenge."
January 3, 2024
How many times have you heard a preacher rail against modern authenticity as enshrined selfishness? Where everything is instrumentalised and treated as a mere tool? Charles Taylor here challenged my preconceptions and predilections to dismiss as entirely narcissistic our contemporary culture of individualism and authenticity. He argues against both 'boosters' (who embrace contemporary authenticity & modern culture) and 'knockers' (who reject both wholesale) while facing up to the hot mess that is the malaise of modernity.
His methodology?
To "undertake a work of retrieval, that we identify and articulate the higher ideal behind the more or less debased practices, and then criticize these practices from the standpoint of their own motivating ideal."
His conclusion?
For Taylor, authenticity discourse is not a brute power grab to be met with an equal and opposite brute power grab against it, but a genuine moral concept in disarray: a habituated ideal subject to and persuadable by reason. If we reject this, "[contemporary authenticity] meets its own ideal and is impervious to argument". Hence, the title of the book is the ethics of authenticity.
"These self-centred 'narcissistic' forms are indeed shallow and trivialized...But this is not because they belong to the culture of authenticity. Rather it is because they fly in the face of its requirements. To shut out demands emanating beyond the self is precisely to suppress the conditions of significance, and hence to court trivialization."
That's one of my favourite arguments of the book: for someone's identity as LGBTQIA+ to be any more interesting than another's identity in having 1,284 hairs is determined entirely by factors outside that individual. This gives the lie to the mantra of 'being true to oneself', showing how authenticity is always according to a nature, a society, a culture, and a tradition.
For what I take to be my identity to have anything more than trivial significance rests on social webs of meaning and history-enmeshed tradition. My identity cannot be created monologically but can only be participated in dialogically. As such, content or matter of identity by definition cannot be self-created or directed back onto its own desires but it must be conditioned externally, tethered to and disciplined by friendships, institutions, family, God.
Nevertheless, it also by definition must be 'my' identity. It is precisely my identity and not another's that must be projected beyond myself, onto the world and its Maker. This means that knockers err when they try to detach morality entirely from self-fulfilment. While the matter of identity must go beyond the self, its manner or mode can only be that of the self.
While Taylor doesn't argue the following explicitly, it made me realise what kind of age of bifurcation we inhabit: where the classical Christian held my self-fulfilment to lie partly in earthly goods and fully in heavenly ones, the boosters make it lie in my own self and the knockers hang those goods out in mid-air as cold duties entirely detached from self-fulfilment & human flourishing. Both are profound mistakes corrected by affirming that all men (rightly) seek their own happiness, and it is found in the Three in the One.
Taylor doesn't stop at ethics but is particularly adept at connecting the dots to the politics of authenticity. He shows how there's a straight line to liberal democratic politics, yielding an imposing obstacle for the 'winsome' crowd of Tim Keller's followers. The liberal democratic settlement of the West, while admittedly on fire in these days, is the requirement for all citizens to pursue their own self-constructed identities unencumbered by social or political pressures. Thus procedural neutrality, liberal democracy and postmodern authenticity are a mutually reinforcing triad. Evangelicals whose politics simply assume the benevolence of the liberal democratic order are unwittingly strengthening the social and political conditions of identity politics and its concomitant sexual narcissism. Treating everyone equally, after all, requires treating all identities equally.
One other section I really appreciated was on authenticity in art & poetry. The artist has become the exemplar of the authentic person, truly able to express beyond mere words their unique humanity, and especially their intrinsic sexual tastes. But the ideal of the artist is entirely different to the classical conception before Romanticism: "where formerly poetic language could rely on certain publicly available orders of meaning, it now has to consist in a language of [private] articulated sensibility."
The book would have been strengthened by engaging with actual knockers and boosters themselves: there's lots of "people today think..." without any evidence to back it up or any concrete interlocutors responded to in detail. As such it's too easy for critics to dismiss his argument as woollenly based on a strawman. I suspect Taylor is much more at his best in his three other central books The Sources of the Self, A Secular Age, and Hegel. It's much shorter than all those other books, though, and definitely worth a quick read through.
His methodology?
To "undertake a work of retrieval, that we identify and articulate the higher ideal behind the more or less debased practices, and then criticize these practices from the standpoint of their own motivating ideal."
His conclusion?
"We ought to be trying to persuade people that self-fulfilment, so far from excluding unconditional relationships and moral demands beyond the self, actually requires these in some form. The struggle ought not to be over authenticity, for or against, but about it, defining its proper meaning. We ought to be trying to lift the culture back up, closer to its motivating ideal. Of course, all this assumes three things: the three premisses that I laid out at the end of Section II: (1) that authenticity is truly an ideal worth espousing; (2) that you can establish in reason what it involves; and (3) that this kind of argument can make a difference in practice—that is, you can’t believe that people are so locked in by the various social developments that condition them to, say, atomism and instrumental reason that they couldn’t change their ways no matter how persuasive you were."
For Taylor, authenticity discourse is not a brute power grab to be met with an equal and opposite brute power grab against it, but a genuine moral concept in disarray: a habituated ideal subject to and persuadable by reason. If we reject this, "[contemporary authenticity] meets its own ideal and is impervious to argument". Hence, the title of the book is the ethics of authenticity.
"These self-centred 'narcissistic' forms are indeed shallow and trivialized...But this is not because they belong to the culture of authenticity. Rather it is because they fly in the face of its requirements. To shut out demands emanating beyond the self is precisely to suppress the conditions of significance, and hence to court trivialization."
That's one of my favourite arguments of the book: for someone's identity as LGBTQIA+ to be any more interesting than another's identity in having 1,284 hairs is determined entirely by factors outside that individual. This gives the lie to the mantra of 'being true to oneself', showing how authenticity is always according to a nature, a society, a culture, and a tradition.
For what I take to be my identity to have anything more than trivial significance rests on social webs of meaning and history-enmeshed tradition. My identity cannot be created monologically but can only be participated in dialogically. As such, content or matter of identity by definition cannot be self-created or directed back onto its own desires but it must be conditioned externally, tethered to and disciplined by friendships, institutions, family, God.
Nevertheless, it also by definition must be 'my' identity. It is precisely my identity and not another's that must be projected beyond myself, onto the world and its Maker. This means that knockers err when they try to detach morality entirely from self-fulfilment. While the matter of identity must go beyond the self, its manner or mode can only be that of the self.
While Taylor doesn't argue the following explicitly, it made me realise what kind of age of bifurcation we inhabit: where the classical Christian held my self-fulfilment to lie partly in earthly goods and fully in heavenly ones, the boosters make it lie in my own self and the knockers hang those goods out in mid-air as cold duties entirely detached from self-fulfilment & human flourishing. Both are profound mistakes corrected by affirming that all men (rightly) seek their own happiness, and it is found in the Three in the One.
Taylor doesn't stop at ethics but is particularly adept at connecting the dots to the politics of authenticity. He shows how there's a straight line to liberal democratic politics, yielding an imposing obstacle for the 'winsome' crowd of Tim Keller's followers. The liberal democratic settlement of the West, while admittedly on fire in these days, is the requirement for all citizens to pursue their own self-constructed identities unencumbered by social or political pressures. Thus procedural neutrality, liberal democracy and postmodern authenticity are a mutually reinforcing triad. Evangelicals whose politics simply assume the benevolence of the liberal democratic order are unwittingly strengthening the social and political conditions of identity politics and its concomitant sexual narcissism. Treating everyone equally, after all, requires treating all identities equally.
One other section I really appreciated was on authenticity in art & poetry. The artist has become the exemplar of the authentic person, truly able to express beyond mere words their unique humanity, and especially their intrinsic sexual tastes. But the ideal of the artist is entirely different to the classical conception before Romanticism: "where formerly poetic language could rely on certain publicly available orders of meaning, it now has to consist in a language of [private] articulated sensibility."
The book would have been strengthened by engaging with actual knockers and boosters themselves: there's lots of "people today think..." without any evidence to back it up or any concrete interlocutors responded to in detail. As such it's too easy for critics to dismiss his argument as woollenly based on a strawman. I suspect Taylor is much more at his best in his three other central books The Sources of the Self, A Secular Age, and Hegel. It's much shorter than all those other books, though, and definitely worth a quick read through.
February 13, 2026
Charles Taylor examines the modern condition. Why does it feel like we are in societal and moral decline when the train of progress has been steadily chugging along? Taylor traces this sentiment back to the seventeenth century. Since then, there has developed three threads constitutive of this feeling: (1) the rise of individualism and the corresponding disenchantment of the world, (2) the preeminence of "instrumental reason", and (3) a general apathy toward political matters beyond the self. Taylor sums these three modern "malaises" in brief: "The first fear is about what we might call a loss of meaning, the fading of moral horizons. The second concerns the eclipse of ends, in face of rampant instrumental reason. And the third is about a loss of freedom" (Taylor, 1991, 10). Taylor acknowledges that some "cultural critics" have treated of the problem before (Allan Bloom, Christopher Lasch, and Daniel Bell are his examples). He categorizes such critics as "knockers" of modernity. In contrast, there are the "boosters", the champions of modernity. Ultimately, Taylor argues that both sides are right, but that they have been fighting in an "inarticulate debate". The answer lies in neither one side or the other, nor is it a carefully balanced tradeoff - "the middle position." It lies in a work of retrieval using the moral ideal of "authenticity."
But what is authenticity? According to Bloom, its main feature is a superficial relativism: "everybody has his or her own 'values,' and about these it is impossible to argue" (Taylor, 1991, 13). This epistemological feature however misses the moral aspect: "one ought not to challenge another's values" (Taylor, 1991, 13-14). That is their own life choice to make and it ought to be respected. This relativism comes from a form of individualism, which says something like "everything has a right to develop their own form of life, grounded on their own sense of what is really important or of value" (Taylor, 1991, 14). This position leads to a narcissistic self-absorption, a turn inward into the self and bracketing out of greater, even transcendent issues. "As a consequence, life is narrowed or flattened" (Taylor, 1991, 14). It also breeds a desire for self-fulfillment, which wields as its mighty weapon "instrumental reason", broadly defined by Taylor as a "kind of rationality we draw on when we calculate the most economical application of means to a given end" (Taylor, 1991, 5). The adverse effects of these features of self-fulfillment is evident: atomistic society and ecological devastation to name just two. This is the main position of the cultural critics. Taylor offers another view.
What this definition misses is a moral ideal. The desire for self-fulfillment, for authenticity, is a desire to be true to oneself. There is a sense of aspiring to be "better", above oneself. One feels a call to action, and this is only achievable with a great moral force. But this moral force is also strong when the boosters defend a form of "soft relativism." Authenticity is inarguable against because of its strong moral convictions, says the boosters. Who are you to say my wanting self-fulfillment is wrong? It is for myself, after all, and you have your own. Taylor will argue that authenticity is a valid ideal but it can be reasonably argued against, and that these arguments can make a difference.
Thus far, I have treated of the first two chapters of Taylor's book. To see how he fleshes out these arguments, one must read the rest of it. However, it is already clear that this will involve a radical rejection of subjectivism and the popular notion that we can't escape the modern culture that the "system" has forced us into. The rest of this review will be about my thoughts on what I found most profound in Taylor.
What is most striking to me about The Ethics of Authenticity is Taylor's diagnosis of instrumental reason and its effects. We are living in perhaps the extreme end of the pendulum, where every task, pursuit, and ideal has the stink of instrumental reason. In tech spheres, the term for this is "optimization." But of course it has breached its containment and the term has run its course through every aspect of contemporary society. It is to the point that you are "behind" if you are not applying some degree of instrumental reason. The ideal modern man is the instrumental man. He is the master of a complex calculus of means to ends. He is on a journey of debased self-fulfillment to realize those ends. Taylor was right in the sense that authenticity involves a moral ideal, but he couldn't have predicted a culture that so easily does away with that ideal in the name of instrumental reason.
What is perhaps the fault of Taylor is his failure to falter in his profound optimism in light of contemporary techno-economic structures driving ecological degradation. He says: "I believe that the view of technological society as a kind of iron fate cannot be sustained. It simplifies too much and forgets the essential" (Taylor, 1991, 98). He goes on to say that human beings are much more complex than any theory of an ineluctable "iron cage" simplifies. We constantly generate resistance, says Taylor. Look at the ecological movement, says Taylor. Look at the Romantic response to an off-the-rails reason, says Taylor. Chapter IX seems ripe for me to reread, but at this time I don't share Taylor's hope. As Hugo Roeffaers in an essay on Taylor (2004) noted, Taylor seems to believe that humans have an ontological bent to aspire to some form of transcendence. It is in our nature to reach outside ourselves, so it is also in our nature to break out of this iron cage. This is no doubt in part due to Taylor's Catholic attitude, but I will not bring that fact into the conversation out of respect to Taylor, who is first and foremost a philosopher. To be convinced of Taylor's hope, I must be convinced that it is in our nature to break out of this instrumental thinking, that this is not the end point of rationality - but this is hard to do. Further reading of Taylor and other analysts of the modern condition is in order, particularly Marx and Weber.
But what is authenticity? According to Bloom, its main feature is a superficial relativism: "everybody has his or her own 'values,' and about these it is impossible to argue" (Taylor, 1991, 13). This epistemological feature however misses the moral aspect: "one ought not to challenge another's values" (Taylor, 1991, 13-14). That is their own life choice to make and it ought to be respected. This relativism comes from a form of individualism, which says something like "everything has a right to develop their own form of life, grounded on their own sense of what is really important or of value" (Taylor, 1991, 14). This position leads to a narcissistic self-absorption, a turn inward into the self and bracketing out of greater, even transcendent issues. "As a consequence, life is narrowed or flattened" (Taylor, 1991, 14). It also breeds a desire for self-fulfillment, which wields as its mighty weapon "instrumental reason", broadly defined by Taylor as a "kind of rationality we draw on when we calculate the most economical application of means to a given end" (Taylor, 1991, 5). The adverse effects of these features of self-fulfillment is evident: atomistic society and ecological devastation to name just two. This is the main position of the cultural critics. Taylor offers another view.
What this definition misses is a moral ideal. The desire for self-fulfillment, for authenticity, is a desire to be true to oneself. There is a sense of aspiring to be "better", above oneself. One feels a call to action, and this is only achievable with a great moral force. But this moral force is also strong when the boosters defend a form of "soft relativism." Authenticity is inarguable against because of its strong moral convictions, says the boosters. Who are you to say my wanting self-fulfillment is wrong? It is for myself, after all, and you have your own. Taylor will argue that authenticity is a valid ideal but it can be reasonably argued against, and that these arguments can make a difference.
Thus far, I have treated of the first two chapters of Taylor's book. To see how he fleshes out these arguments, one must read the rest of it. However, it is already clear that this will involve a radical rejection of subjectivism and the popular notion that we can't escape the modern culture that the "system" has forced us into. The rest of this review will be about my thoughts on what I found most profound in Taylor.
What is most striking to me about The Ethics of Authenticity is Taylor's diagnosis of instrumental reason and its effects. We are living in perhaps the extreme end of the pendulum, where every task, pursuit, and ideal has the stink of instrumental reason. In tech spheres, the term for this is "optimization." But of course it has breached its containment and the term has run its course through every aspect of contemporary society. It is to the point that you are "behind" if you are not applying some degree of instrumental reason. The ideal modern man is the instrumental man. He is the master of a complex calculus of means to ends. He is on a journey of debased self-fulfillment to realize those ends. Taylor was right in the sense that authenticity involves a moral ideal, but he couldn't have predicted a culture that so easily does away with that ideal in the name of instrumental reason.
What is perhaps the fault of Taylor is his failure to falter in his profound optimism in light of contemporary techno-economic structures driving ecological degradation. He says: "I believe that the view of technological society as a kind of iron fate cannot be sustained. It simplifies too much and forgets the essential" (Taylor, 1991, 98). He goes on to say that human beings are much more complex than any theory of an ineluctable "iron cage" simplifies. We constantly generate resistance, says Taylor. Look at the ecological movement, says Taylor. Look at the Romantic response to an off-the-rails reason, says Taylor. Chapter IX seems ripe for me to reread, but at this time I don't share Taylor's hope. As Hugo Roeffaers in an essay on Taylor (2004) noted, Taylor seems to believe that humans have an ontological bent to aspire to some form of transcendence. It is in our nature to reach outside ourselves, so it is also in our nature to break out of this iron cage. This is no doubt in part due to Taylor's Catholic attitude, but I will not bring that fact into the conversation out of respect to Taylor, who is first and foremost a philosopher. To be convinced of Taylor's hope, I must be convinced that it is in our nature to break out of this instrumental thinking, that this is not the end point of rationality - but this is hard to do. Further reading of Taylor and other analysts of the modern condition is in order, particularly Marx and Weber.
February 9, 2019
021015: short, sharp, perceptive, pungent. have not read his longer books, academic articles, but this is a concise book giving a contrary argument to those who see current culture as declining. itself a historical document 1991, it is useful to think his thoughts in the air of that time. there is some history, then some dispute that everything was better once, that there was ever a hierarchy ordering the world, but also recognition that there is some loss, primarily in atomism, fragmentation, powerlessness. there is also strong argument for 'authenticity', noting valourization of the artist, the necessary dialogue with the public, brief but strong argument against conservatism and narrowness of concepts, art, culture, such as harold bloom's book 'closing of the american mind'- which demotes his centrality the eurocentric, male, canon. believe with Taylor, this is not a very bad thing: art is not a zero sum game, is not divisive, is not just history, is not only the one way, rather just a way to experience our world...
June 21, 2022
This short book is a must-read for anyone struggling to understand the forces of individualism, relativism, and fragmentation that are so prevalent in society today. First offered in 1991, I find Professor Taylor's poignant and prescient insights apply with even greater force today, as our society continues to evolve. His thoughtful analysis provides context and framing around the deviations and excesses of the current "me" culture, without dismissing the virtues of the authentic perspective from which it arose or unduly railing against the current state of modernity.
Highly recommend.
Highly recommend.
April 8, 2021
Philosophy is a little bit like alcohol. You probably first got to try some at your friend's basement during high school, felt like barfing and wondered what all the fuzz was about. By college you already got used to the taste and often chug as much of the cheapo stuff as you can, usually followed by a mild headache the day after. After that you do it out of habit more than anything, but you try to stay away from the strong stuff. Sometimes you may even get together with your old friends and go a bit overboard for the sake of old times (Careful! The headaches get worse). And then one day someone shows up with a bottle of Junmai Daiginjo and turns your world upside-down. This is what it was supposed to be like all along! It is smooth, tasty and goes down like water.
This book is the Junmai Daiginjo of philosophy. It deals with a meaningful subject in a clear, but interesting way. If I had to recommend a book to a friend looking to get into philosophy, this would be it.
Taylor writes in response to a series of books and articles that accuses the modern desire to "lead an authentic life" of being self-indulgent and narcissistic. This quest for authenticity would be associated to a collapse of all meaningful relationships, by eroding our feelings of duty and commitment. Taylor is no apologist of this kind of authenticity. Quite the contrary, he sets up to prove in what ways this sham authenticity is self-contradictory and dangerous. However, the project of this book consists in saving the metaphorical baby from those angry at the bathwater. Taylor first presents a brief genealogy of the concept of authenticity and how it came to take its significant place in our value system. Through this short exposition, he shows that self-determination is the cornerstone of modernity and convincingly argues for its inherent value.
Having a clearer view of what "authenticity" means, he then shows how it must be inherently linked to an external horizon of choices that is dialogical in nature; solipsism would be anathema to autonomy. This is by far the most interesting point of his work, so let me put it in plain English: there is no such thing as creating your own values or choosing your lifepath independently of the values of those around you. For an act of self-determination to be meaningful, it must concern a choice that is considered as meaningful by those we care about. As Taylor puts it, choosing poutine over stake for lunch is not an act of self-determination, because it is a trivial choice, and it's triviality is social in nature. We are free to make meaningful choices, but we cannot choose what is meaningful.
Once the social element of self-determination is clearly demonstrated, Taylor goes on to address all the issues with these deviant contemporary forms of authenticity. Using his framework, he can differentiate between legitimate acts of authenticity, and those that would be self-defeating.
I found this book extremely illuminating, not so much for the problems it tries to elucidate (you will not find them too interesting if you don't share this feeling of malaise face à la modernité), but the way in which he goes beyond the knee-jerk responses and navigates through all of these concepts to create a framework that is meaningful and useful.
His analysis is deep. Not complex, or wordy, or obscurantist, or unnecessarily scholarly. Simply deep.
This book is the Junmai Daiginjo of philosophy. It deals with a meaningful subject in a clear, but interesting way. If I had to recommend a book to a friend looking to get into philosophy, this would be it.
Taylor writes in response to a series of books and articles that accuses the modern desire to "lead an authentic life" of being self-indulgent and narcissistic. This quest for authenticity would be associated to a collapse of all meaningful relationships, by eroding our feelings of duty and commitment. Taylor is no apologist of this kind of authenticity. Quite the contrary, he sets up to prove in what ways this sham authenticity is self-contradictory and dangerous. However, the project of this book consists in saving the metaphorical baby from those angry at the bathwater. Taylor first presents a brief genealogy of the concept of authenticity and how it came to take its significant place in our value system. Through this short exposition, he shows that self-determination is the cornerstone of modernity and convincingly argues for its inherent value.
Having a clearer view of what "authenticity" means, he then shows how it must be inherently linked to an external horizon of choices that is dialogical in nature; solipsism would be anathema to autonomy. This is by far the most interesting point of his work, so let me put it in plain English: there is no such thing as creating your own values or choosing your lifepath independently of the values of those around you. For an act of self-determination to be meaningful, it must concern a choice that is considered as meaningful by those we care about. As Taylor puts it, choosing poutine over stake for lunch is not an act of self-determination, because it is a trivial choice, and it's triviality is social in nature. We are free to make meaningful choices, but we cannot choose what is meaningful.
Once the social element of self-determination is clearly demonstrated, Taylor goes on to address all the issues with these deviant contemporary forms of authenticity. Using his framework, he can differentiate between legitimate acts of authenticity, and those that would be self-defeating.
I found this book extremely illuminating, not so much for the problems it tries to elucidate (you will not find them too interesting if you don't share this feeling of malaise face à la modernité), but the way in which he goes beyond the knee-jerk responses and navigates through all of these concepts to create a framework that is meaningful and useful.
His analysis is deep. Not complex, or wordy, or obscurantist, or unnecessarily scholarly. Simply deep.
February 5, 2025
"The general feature of human life that I want to evoke is its fundamentally dialogical character. We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining an identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression. For purposes of this discussion, I want to take "language" in a broad sense, covering not only the words we speak but also other modes of expression whereby we define ourselves, including the "languages" of art, of gesture, of love, and the like. But we are inducted into these in exchange with others. No one acquires the languages needed for self definition on their own. We are introduced to them through exchanges with others who matter to us what George Herbert Mead called "significant others." The genesis of the human mind is in this sense not "monological," not something each accomplishes on his or her own, but dialogical. Moreover, this is not just a fact about genesis, which can be ignored later on. It's not just that we learn the languages in dialogue and then can go on to use them for our own purposes on our own. This describes our situation to some extent in our culture. We are expected to develop our own opinions, out look, stances to things, to a considerable degree through solitary reflection. But this is not how things work with important issues, such as the definition of our identity. We define this always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the identities our significant others want to recognize in us."
"Modern freedom was won by our breaking loose from older moral horizons. People used to see themselves as part of a larger order. In some cases, this was a cosmic order, a "great chain of Being," in which humans figured in their proper place along with angels, heavenly bod ies, and our fellow earthly creatures. This hierarchi cal order in the universe was reflected in the hierarchies of human society. People were often locked into a given place, a role and station that was properly theirs and from which it was almost un thinkable to deviate. Modern freedom came about through the discrediting of such orders. But at the same time as they restricted us, these orders gave meaning to the world and to the activi ties of social life. The things that surround us were not just potential raw materials or instruments for our projects, but they had the significance given them by their place in the chain of being. The eagle was not just another bird, but the king of a whole domain of animal life. By the same token, the rituals and norms of society had more than merely instru mental significance. The discrediting of these orders has been called the "disenchantment" of the world. With it, things lost some of their magic."
"Modern freedom was won by our breaking loose from older moral horizons. People used to see themselves as part of a larger order. In some cases, this was a cosmic order, a "great chain of Being," in which humans figured in their proper place along with angels, heavenly bod ies, and our fellow earthly creatures. This hierarchi cal order in the universe was reflected in the hierarchies of human society. People were often locked into a given place, a role and station that was properly theirs and from which it was almost un thinkable to deviate. Modern freedom came about through the discrediting of such orders. But at the same time as they restricted us, these orders gave meaning to the world and to the activi ties of social life. The things that surround us were not just potential raw materials or instruments for our projects, but they had the significance given them by their place in the chain of being. The eagle was not just another bird, but the king of a whole domain of animal life. By the same token, the rituals and norms of society had more than merely instru mental significance. The discrediting of these orders has been called the "disenchantment" of the world. With it, things lost some of their magic."
May 27, 2025
An absolutely stunning book. Published in the pivotal year - and year of pivot - 1991, Taylor enters the culture wars debates of Bloom, but summons a calm, rational and considered argument. The calmness masks the power and brutalizing beauty of his argument
Those of us reading this book in the 2020s have to take a few breaths. He is offering some tough arguments and debates about identity politics. The 'culture of narcissism' takes a hammering. Quite rightly. The focus on individuals making choices about banal and ridiculous hyper-personal 'things' is discredited by summoning the historiography of modernity.
The book probes authenticity, but the importance of collective respect, roles and responsibilities undergird this trope. The fragmentations of identity politics are revealed. He critiques the notion that "self-fulfilment [is] the major value in life.
When collective belonging atrophies, the consequences of fragmentation and the - often desperate - imperative for attention, validation and recognition of individual choices destroys the social fabric and the capacity to enable social good, beyond the self.
This book is startling in its calmness. It is also - accidentally - a 'how to' guide about how 'we' got 'here' in life, society and politics.
A ripper.
Those of us reading this book in the 2020s have to take a few breaths. He is offering some tough arguments and debates about identity politics. The 'culture of narcissism' takes a hammering. Quite rightly. The focus on individuals making choices about banal and ridiculous hyper-personal 'things' is discredited by summoning the historiography of modernity.
The book probes authenticity, but the importance of collective respect, roles and responsibilities undergird this trope. The fragmentations of identity politics are revealed. He critiques the notion that "self-fulfilment [is] the major value in life.
When collective belonging atrophies, the consequences of fragmentation and the - often desperate - imperative for attention, validation and recognition of individual choices destroys the social fabric and the capacity to enable social good, beyond the self.
This book is startling in its calmness. It is also - accidentally - a 'how to' guide about how 'we' got 'here' in life, society and politics.
A ripper.
February 6, 2024
I was directed to this book by an interview with John Gray, a contemporary political philosopher. Taylor, a Canadian political philosopher, published this book quite a while ago, but it is still relevant and important.
Although written in simple and direct prose, it is in fact complex and not that easy to follow.
The issue of authenticity interested me for a long time. At a certain point I dismissed it as meaningless, and I'm still not sure, though Taylor writes about it with conviction and wisdom.
For me the problem lies in the difficulty of affirming that one is authentically oneself. What does the adverb "authentically" add to that statement? And on what basis could I declare that someone else is inauthentic? Authenticity is connected with identity, certainly a fraught issue.
I'm aware that there's a long history of discussion of these matters in romantic philosophy, Nietzsche, etc. And if I hadn't been aware of it, Taylor reminds the reader of it.
Taylor wants to steer a course through conflicting trends in modern Western society, not with the aim of balancing demands and reaching a compromise, but rather by acknowledging that the trends are incompatible and form the ground for conflict, which he regards as a good thing.
One of his central themes is the need to refer to values outside one's own self-definition. Another one is that identity emerges from dialogue.
Although written in simple and direct prose, it is in fact complex and not that easy to follow.
The issue of authenticity interested me for a long time. At a certain point I dismissed it as meaningless, and I'm still not sure, though Taylor writes about it with conviction and wisdom.
For me the problem lies in the difficulty of affirming that one is authentically oneself. What does the adverb "authentically" add to that statement? And on what basis could I declare that someone else is inauthentic? Authenticity is connected with identity, certainly a fraught issue.
I'm aware that there's a long history of discussion of these matters in romantic philosophy, Nietzsche, etc. And if I hadn't been aware of it, Taylor reminds the reader of it.
Taylor wants to steer a course through conflicting trends in modern Western society, not with the aim of balancing demands and reaching a compromise, but rather by acknowledging that the trends are incompatible and form the ground for conflict, which he regards as a good thing.
One of his central themes is the need to refer to values outside one's own self-definition. Another one is that identity emerges from dialogue.
July 28, 2018
Taylor tries to strike a transcendental stance contrasted with “knockers” and “boosters” of modernity, particularly the culture of authenticity. My only frustration with the book is that it conceals even as it tries to reveal its subject. That is, Taylor says that we need things like an appreciation of the moral sources of modernity or more democratic participation while only touching on the surface of how such things would practically come about. As such this book is a kind of tease of a much larger book or practical program. That’s what you get for brevity though. Taylor accomplishes his purpose even though he does not give me everything I want. That’s what it means to treat your readers like adults.
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