Ethics of Authenticity, Chapter 1

[Michael Umphrey]

Chapter 10
Chapter 9
Chapter 8
Chapter 7
Chapter 6
Chapter 5
Chapter 4
Chapter 3
Chapter 2
Chapter 1

This is the first post in what's intended to be a dialogue between Steve Shann and me and anyone else who cares to join in. We will discuss Charles Taylor's The Ethics of Authenticity, chapter by chapter, as we have the time and the inclination. It's a brief book, but it treats a big topic: the disquiets of the modern age. Taylor is a professor of philosophy and political science, and his work has been quite influential.

With The Ethics of Authenticity Charles Taylor stepped into a rather noisy fray about whether modernity has been a good thing or a bad thing. Many pre-modern peoples lived in realities, or worlds, that had "given" moral orders that gave meaning and purpose to life. But those moral orders also limited their choices, sometimes in oppressive ways.

The main thrust of modernity has been to dissolve the authority of traditions, and so many view it as a welcome force of liberation.

But from the beginning others saw it as the cause of cultural decline, leading to a narrow narcissism where "liberated" individuals could see nothing larger or more important than their own desires. Allen Bloom, Alasdair MacIntyre, Robert Bellah, Christopher Lasch and others have spoken eloquently about the disquiets of modernity. We have heard much about a "permissive society" and the "me generation."

Taylor acknowledges the truth of what they have said, but he believes it's important to remain optimistic and he believes he sees reason for optimism. He seeks a middle path between those who see modernity in terms of decline and those who see it in terms of liberation. He believes that both the "boosters" and the "knockers" of modernity are right–that our present condition includes much that is admirable as well as much that is frightening. Our best course is to try to develop the former and avoid the latter.

He has a Roman Catholic background, and he is well-schooled in modernity, and it's not clear to me what, finally, he makes of either tradition. He seems to want to be thought of as "one of us" by both camps. I have some sympathy with that attempt. I grew up in a Christian cosmos but through much of my college and grad school periods I was somewhat in thrall to the modernists. Certainly I learned things from modernity that seem true to me, and thus are now part of the Christian way of seeing things that I haven't abandoned. So I would like to see Taylor's project succeed, to help me bring together aspects of my own mind that don't always harmonize. I'll say a little about how well I think Taylor succeeds later.

For now, a quick synopsis of Chapter 1 might be enough. Taylor argues that the when modernity dissolved belief in the old moral orders it left us with three malaises: a loss of meaning, a loss of purpose, and a loss of freedom.

The loss of meaning was brought about by the fading of moral horizons which gave meaning to our actions. In a reality where the old moral order has faded and the individual has become primary, there appears to be little beyond the self that has meaning. It then becomes difficult or impossible for anything the self does to matter very much. Nothing is worth dying for. There are no real occasions for passion. We may end wanting little more than what Nietzsche called "pitiable comfort."

The loss of purpose comes about through an "eclipse of ends" by instrumental reason. With no sacred order to constrain them, economic calculation and technological power combine to treat everything, including we ourselves, as raw materials for our projects. What other goals or purposes–what worthy ends–can withstand the logic of "cost-benefit" analysis? We have seen the danger to our environment when the logic of economic growth seemingly outweighs ordinary good sense, and we see it looming ahead as a centralized health care bureaucracy cannot help but "put dollar assessments on human lives."

The loss of freedom follows from the elevation of the individual and the rise of instrumental reason. One can see the pattern in a modern city. Though modern cities were designed to work for private vehicles–seemingly in homage to individual choice–once they are built the individual has great difficulty living in a way that goes against the grain. The individual becomes an atom in a vast and complex system built to favor the individual, but this deprives the individual of any feasible alternative.

Even worse, people who see themselves as individuals committed to their own satisfactions will not want to participate vigorously in public life. If the government provides enough satisfactions, most people will pay little attention to what it does, preferring to stay home, pursuing private pleasures. Taylor cites Tocqueville, who said we could end in "soft" despotism with such outward forms of democracy as regular elections when in reality we have no control over an "immense tutelary power" that runs everything. In this view, "each citizen is left alone in the face of a vast bureaucratic state and feels, correctly, powerless." Feeling helpless, the citizen withdraws even more, and the cycle of growing despotism continues.

That's the dark view. Taylor claims that it is not inevitably how things need to go. Explaining the way forward is the task he sets for the rest of the book.

To some degree, my concerns are different than Taylor's. I'm a practitioner, a teacher who works with young people. While I'm interested in what philosophers have to teach, I also feel considerable urgency about what I can say, and how I should represent the world we face to young people who are buffeted by voices urging them in all sorts of directions.The dark side of modernity which Taylor deplores is often ascendant in public schools. In an earlier time, the school itself would have taken positions on the moral questions that are now in play. But as those questions have become controversial, schools have often simply retreated, leaving teachers without much in the way of guidance from the community or the school leadership. At critical moments, those whose assignment it is to lead are quiet.

Teachers are often on their own, with the understanding that there may be consequences for their own lack of silence. Teachers who believe that morality is simply a private matter may feel they are still too constrained by social pressure to conform to old teachings that are but fables. Teachers who believe in some traditional morality may feel they are no longer free to give young people the guidance they need.

I've been increasingly pessimistic the last couple of years that public education will be able to resolve the tension. My sense is that schools are trying to resolve the moral question by adopting workplace ethics as its model, which is to say that students will be taught that morality is mainly a matter of complying with the authorities on such questions as copyright infringement, nondiscrimination, or whatever the authorities decide is useful to support the project they are currently promoting. A good person will be one who pleasantly cooperates on the task as assigned.

Nonetheless, harder questions will continue dividing people until some groups decide to leave. Taylor believes that we can find in the modernist view grounds for greater agreement that might yet bring us together.

I'd love to hear what others think.

[Steve Shann]

Thanks for kicking this off Michael.

I find Taylor intriguing but somehow elusive. I have to read what he writes quite a few times before I begin to get a handle on where he’s going and what he’s saying. I’m not sure why this is. Something about the way he uses words, or the way he frames his argument? I’m not sure. I often get the feeling, when I’m reading his chapters (here and in Sources of the Self) that he’s saying things that are important, that can help me make sense of vague concerns I’ve had, but I have to work quite hard to get a handle on his argument.

So far I’ve read the first chapter a couple of times, and read on a bit as well. And I’ve read what you wrote a couple of times as well. I want to use this first response (to Taylor and to you) as a way of helping me get a firmer grip on what he is saying.

Michael, you wrote that ‘Taylor argues that when modernity dissolved belief in the old moral orders it left us with three malaises: a loss of meaning, a loss of purpose, and a loss of freedom,” and you went on to say that his project is that he’s saying that ‘our best course is to try to develop the former [the good in modernity] and avoid the latter [the three malaises].

As I re-read his first chapter, it struck me that he was being very careful with his language when describing these malaises. He wasn’t saying ‘this is where it has got us’, but more ‘this is what many feel modernity has brought with it’. He subtly distances himself from the critique. He uses phrases like: ‘The worry has been repeatedly expressed …’ (p3); ‘The worry has recently surfaced again …’ (p4); ‘… there is widespread unease … (p5); the dominant place of technology is also thought to have contributed (p6); ‘People have spoken of …’ (p6); ‘The claim is that … (p6).

It seems to me that he is expressing like this because he’s wanting us to think of things not in terms of ‘this is where it has got us, how can we find a way out of it’ so much as ‘this is what people feel about the downside of modernity, but these concerns come out of a misunderstanding’. His project is less about finding a way to steer between the good and the bad aspects of modernity (though he does use words like this on p12), and more about understanding its nature better so that we are in a better position to know how to act in a world where confusion leads to inaction. He says (p2) ‘we don’t really understand these changes that worry us, [and] the usual run of debate about them in fact misrepresents them – and thus makes us misconceive what we can do about them.’ Or, on p11: “… in the course of this debate, the essential nature of the developments, which are here being decried, there being praised, is often misunderstood. And as a result, the real nature of the moral choices to be made is obscured.”

So I’m getting the impression that he’s wanting to reveal something to us that at the moment we can’t see clearly. He thinks that there’s a potential in, or essence of, modernity that is not understood either by its supporters or its opponents.

I want to believe that this is true. I'm pleased to be discussing this with you (and anyone else who'd like to join in) because I'm guessing that you are doubtful.

Why do I want it to be true? In another forum on the Ning, you told the story of your PD day where time was being spent on an activity that was going to have no meaning in the real lives of any of the staff or any of the students. You could have been describing any number of meetings at the school where I work! I often feel quite powerless in situations like this. I'm hoping that Taylor's project is all about understanding a situation differently and in a way that points towards more potent and profitable action.

[Michael Umphrey]

Steve, I agree that Taylor carefully distances himself from the critiques of modernity. I was struck by his repetition of the vague--"nothing here is agreed" (p.10) and "nothing is agreed here" (p.11). I was reading carefully to see whether he was saying that the attacks on modernity were controversial, or that he himself was not in agreement with those attacks, but I don't think he makes it clear.

This was partly what I was thinking about when I said, "He has a Roman Catholic background, and he is well-schooled in modernity, and it's not clear to me what, finally, he makes of either tradition. He seems to want to be thought of as "one of us" by both camps." I agree that he's holding out hope that he can find a way to bring those who see modernity as decadence together with those who see it as liberation. But I'm mainly left with the sense that he wants to be accepted by the modernists, though he shares the concerns voiced by its critics.

My reluctance has to do with my sense of the limits of philosophy and reason. In a different discussion I had yesterday with a young woman who was having trouble with some characters I think I know well, I gave her this rather harsh view of them:

They think like this: Goodness is an infringement on my desire and therefore is evil. Power is what matters. To get power, it is necessary to frame your moves as something done for the sake of goodness. Therefore, imitate goodness through constant lies.

They cannot be reasoned with. They need to be opposed....

Taylor is targeting people who are open to reason. Does that include all of modernity's children?

[Bill Maniotis]

I am going to pick up a copy of Taylor's book this weekend, or order it online, and I hope to join the discussion more fully at that point. But as a more hard-core Roman Catholic, I'd say that Taylor's fence-sitting is what I find most disturbing. Ultimately, I think we must choose sides, and he always writes (in my humble estimation) as if he is somehow above the fray. But Michael, I think those of us who understand that truth, beauty, and goodness must exist for morality to exist cannot help but choose a side. Otherwise, it really does come down to who has the power. And sometimes, we pretend to bridge great distances with a paltry show of democracy like on Saturday night, when, by a mere 4 votes (219-215, wasn't it?), we pretend to have found the "middle" way. Why is it so hard to understand that reason is only ONE of the eyes with which we see?

[Michael Umphrey]

I've had several occasions in the past few years where I've spoken up with a nearly complete lack of interest in persuasion--just because I felt I needed to stand for what I stood for. I have a growing sense that reason is inadequate to what lies before us. But let's follow where Taylor leads and see what's there.

[Bill Maniotis]

I am always willing to listen. I just read a book this past weekend called THE RIGHT TO BE WRONG, by a constitutional scholar. He tries to walk the middle road, with solid reasoning, between what he calls the "Pilgrims," who want to defend their version of transcendent truth and what he calls the "Park Rangers," who want to banish religion from the public square altogether. He makes a very reasonable case that both sides are extreme, and therefore "wrong." Of course, he fails to enumerate what is "right" and where that "rightness" comes from. Ah, there's the rub. I wish it were all that simple. The problem is that some Pilgrim or other will always be trying to bash us over the head with his truth claim, and simply refusing to acknowledge ANY truth claim leaves us not only supremely vulnerable to the Pilgrim but supremely vulnerable to what Wallace Stevens might call "the nothing that is." I do believe in persuasion, ultimately, because the beauty of faith, it seems to me, is that we are free to choose good or evil. When you think, as modernity tells us, that you are beyond good and evil, you truly turn the whole game into one giant power struggle. Recently, one of Obama's minions said, "If we can't use the power of persuasion, we'll use the persuasion of power." Enough said.

[Steve Shann]

It is precisely this characterisation of modernity - that it allows us to think we are beyond good and evil - that Taylor is challenging. We're missing something crucial about modernity if that's the way we characterise it, he says.

[Carol Sanders]

This post reminds me of William Golding's Lord of the Flies. The Beast within us all is that desire to feed one's own urges without regard to the good of the whole. Unfortunately, our urges are not admirable: laziness, selfishness, irresponsibility, and violence. All these are innately part of human beings, and Golding's point is that without some kind of societal pressure (read: tradition and authority), people will give way to these urges, to the detriment of all.

Modernity (a very ugly nominalization, by the way) is the attempt to allow the "freedom" to feed one's own urges. On the outside, this looks peachy: people can worship as they choose, live where they choose, marry whom they choose, work as they choose, and indulge their urges as they choose. Ultimately, though, those lazy, selfish, irresponsible, and violent urges overtake any other harmless urges we may be trying to feed. With the increase in "freedom" we have seen an increase in dependence on government to take care of people (laziness and irresponsibility) and in crime (selfishness and violence). These are detrimental to the common good. The more people on welfare, the more taxes I have to pay and hence the less cash I have to pursue my own happiness. I'm free to spend my money as I wish . . . but in great danger of having it stolen, either by a mugger or by an electronic thief. Is this freedom?

I could say a lot more, but I'll stop there for now. In a nutshell, my belief is that the pursuit of freedom looks good "on paper" but in practice brings out the Beast. We need more tradition and authority--not from government, but from community.

[Michael Umphrey]

We need more tradition and authority--not from government, but from community.

The most eloquent critics of modernity (MacIntyre, Lasch) have ended up suggesting that although society or the nation might be beyond being saved or reformed, it is still within our power to form civilized and civilizing communities on a more local scale, and that withdrawing from things national and global to focus on building such communities should now be our goal.

I believe Taylor is somewhat arguing against their position, making the claim that we need to engage the modernists in moral discourse, and that there is cause for hope if we do this, and cause for great alarm if we give up on it.

[Bill Maniotis]

I think I agree with you, Michael, but I guess I fear the barbarian hordes knocking at the gate. What you say lines up with the Catholic notion of subsidiarity, a concept I truly think we should all aspire to. However, there are "bigger" issues over which we must allow a "larger" entitity--like a government--to hold sway (mostly military, in my opinion), or else we run the risk of being overrun by the anti-community forces swirling all around us. I'm also unsure of how to accomplish a return to tradition and authority without coercion. Thoughts?

[Michael Umphrey]

By invitation.

I think some people have stayed in community and others have returned to tradition and authority, freely. That's the local option.

I think Taylor is arguing that we can also persuade modernists that their position is not logically and reasonably tenable, and that there is hope that this will work on a larger and wider scale.

If reason doesn't work, I have zero faith that coercion can. Or even if it could, it would not be anything I wanted to be part of. I may be enough of a modernist to think that freedom is nearly the whole game. I just don't think freedom is sustainable without goodness. I think some pre-modern forms of community are largely closed to us now. There is no going back to some divine right of kings to prop up some great chain of being. I think we need a better understanding of authority

[Bill Maniotis]

Authority is the good, the true, and the beautiful. I would like to invite others to help me define those terms. The problem is, too many of my brethren have been drinking the "truth-doesn't-exist" Kool Aid for so long that they don't see the point of attending the party at all.

[Michael Umphrey]

I'm sort of inclined to point to them in story rather than define them. Definition is part of the philosopher's game that got us into our present mess. We'll see if it can get us out.

For truth I would suggest a knowledge of things as they were, as they are, and as they will be. That knowledge is best represented in stories of what has happened. Some kinds of things regularly happen. Some kinds of things never happen. Paying attention lets us "see" the rules.