The New 'Public Order': Within and
Above
Joseph Baldacchino
A review of Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity,
by Charles Taylor, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989. xii + 601
pp. $37.50.
[From HUMANITAS, Volume VI, No. 1, Fall 1992/Winter
1993 © National Humanities Institute, Washington,
DC USA]
In Sources of the Self Charles Taylor is both guide and traveling
companion on a long, rewarding journey through the history of Western philosophy.
His purpose is to trace "various strands of our modern notion of what it
is to be a human agent, a purpose, or a self." To be a purposeful agent
is intimately bound up in turn with our views and perceptions of the moral.
The latter encompasses not only the claims of others to justice, well-being,
and dignity; it is also what makes our own lives meaningful or fulfilling.
Such matters deserve "the vague term 'spiritual,'" says Taylor, because
they involve "'strong evaluation', that is, they involve discriminations
of right or wrong, better or worse, higher or lower, which are not rendered
valid by our own desires, inclinations, or choices, but rather stand independent
of these and offer standards by which they can be judged." (3-4)
Some moral intuitions—such as the demand that we "respect the life,
integrity, well-being, even flourishing, of others"—run so deep, Taylor
writes, that we are tempted to think of them as instincts. Yet "this `instinct,'"
he notes, "receives a variable shape in culture. . . . And this shape is
inseparable from an account of what it is that commands our respect. The
account seems to articulate the intuition." On one side, our moral reactions
are almost like instincts, similar to our love of sweet things or fear
of falling. On the other, they "seem to involve claims, implicit or explicit,
about the nature and status of human beings. From this second side, a moral
reaction is an assent to, an affirmation of, a given ontology of the human."
Taylor observes that an important strand of modern naturalist thought
has tried to ignore or dismiss this second side of morality as irrelevant
or illusory. This contradicts general experience. While ontological accounts
offer themselves as correct articulations of our "gut" reactions of respect,
no one feels called upon to give analogous explanations of one's reaction
to sweet or nauseous substances or extreme heights. "In either case," says
Taylor, "our response is to an object with a certain property. But in one
case the property marks the object as one meriting this reaction; in the
other the connection is just a brute fact. Thus we argue and reason over
what and who is a fit object of moral respect, while this doesn't seem
to be even possible for a reaction like nausea." (4-6)
In Sources of the Self Taylor provides a detailed and insightful
rendition of the way competing ontological accounts have emerged in response
to changing circumstances and shifting needs over the last 2,500 years.
For Plato, and in a somewhat different way Aristotle, to attain goodness
or the best life for man required attuning oneself to a rational cosmic
order that existed outside of man and wholly independent of him. The love
of this exterior cosmic order empowered men to order their own lives to
the Good. The good life consisted in imitating this vision of a pre-existing,
unchanging, external order of reality by subordinating one's passions to
one's reason. Certain ways of life were seen as more nearly approximating
the cosmic order of reality than others and therefore as higher or more
dignified. On this scale the philosopher, who devotes his life to contemplation
of the unchanging Good, is highest. The citizen, who acts to order the
political life of the city-state, though less exalted than the philosopher,
also participates in the order of the Good and therefore shares in the
good life. By contrast, the mundane work of the household or of commerce,
though providing the material necessities without which mere life would
be impossible, does not itself partake of the good life.
To help clarify important aspects of man's moral experience, Taylor
introduces several terms of art, including "life goods" and "constitutive
goods." He notes that, in the context of Platonic philosophy, certain types
of action and styles of life are seen as superior to others. Reason is
superior to the passions, for instance, and the activity of the citizen
more noble than that of the tradesman. Such qualitative distinctions between
actions, or feelings, or modes of life, Taylor designates as "life goods"
because the "goods which these define are facets or components of a good
life." But superior to these "life goods" in Plato's philosophy is "a cosmic
reality, the order of things"—"the Idea of the Good itself"—with reference
to which the other "life goods" get their meaning and significance. Taylor
calls this latter kind of reality a "constitutive good." He does so because
the "constitutive good does more than just define the content of the moral
theory. Love of it is what empowers us to be good. And hence also loving
it is part of what it is to be a good human being." (92-93)
With the passage of centuries man's understanding of the constitutive
good and his vision of the corresponding life goods that give meaning to
earthly existence have undergone countless revisions and developments.
A major milepost is the "turn inward" of Augustine. Heavily influenced
by Plato's thought, Augustine created a synthesis between the God of Christianity
and Plato's Idea of the Good. Elucidating the parallels between them, Taylor
notes that "both provide the ultimate principle of being and knowledge;
and both are portrayed with the same central image of the sun. Part of
the force of the image in both philosophies is that the highest reality
is very difficult, indeed in a sense impossible, to contemplate directly."
But while, for Plato, we find out about this highest principle by looking
outward to the objects which it orders, for Augustine
our principal route to God is not through the object domain
but "in" ourselves. This is because God is not just the transcendent object
or just the principle of order of the nearer objects, which we strain to
see. God is also and for us primarily the basic support and underlying
principle of our knowing activity. God is not just what we long to see,
but what powers the eye which sees. So the light of God is not just "out
there", illuminating the order of being, as it is for Plato; it is also
an "inner" light. [129]
It would be hard to exaggerate the significance of this internalization
of the source of order. Men and women now looked within the self to find
direction. Taylor notes that Augustine's turn to the self was a turn to
"radical reflexivity." For the first time men and women, instead of focusing
only on the outward things experienced, turned their gaze inward and became
aware of their own active contribution to the process of experience. "In
our normal dealings with things," Taylor explains, "we disregard this dimension
of experience [the active role of the agent] and focus on the things experienced.
But we can turn and make this our object of attention, become aware of
our awareness, try to experience our experiencing." Augustine's introduction
of radical reflexivity and the first-person standpoint was a fateful one,
Taylor continues, for the "modern epistemological tradition from Descartes,
and all that has flowed from it in modern culture, has made this standpoint
fundamental—to the point of aberration, one might think." (130-31)
But, unlike the thought of many who were to come later, Augustine's
turn to radical reflexivity did not encompass radical subjectivity: the
belief that there is no compelling standard set above the individual. "Augustine's
proof of God is a proof from the first-person experience of knowing and
reasoning. I am aware of my own sensing and thinking; and in reflecting
on this, I am made aware of its dependence on something beyond [and above]
it, something common. . . . By going inward, I am drawn upward." (134)
Related to Augustine's reflexive turn—and of like significance—was his
recognition of the importance of the will. "Where for Plato, our desire
for the good is a function of how much we see it, for Augustine the will
is not simply dependent on knowledge."
The teleological theory of nature underlying Greek moral philosophy
supposes that everyone is motivated by a love of the good, which can be
sidetracked to evil through ignorance (the view that Plato attributes to
Socrates) or distortive training and bad habits (Aristotle). Augustine's
doctrine of the two loves allows for the possibility that our disposition
may be radically perverse, driving us to turn our backs even on the good
we see.
Taylor adds that for Augustine "the will is as much the independent variable,
determining what we can know, as it is the dependent one, shaped by what
we see. The causality is circular and not linear." (137-38)
Augustine's reflexive stance, with its accompanying focus on will, set
the stage for an extensive series of varied, albeit related, positions
that remain influential to this day. Space does not allow mentioning, let
alone doing justice to, all of the theories discussed by Taylor. What can
be said is that, in the wake of Augustine's inward turn, the old Greek
account of knowledge in terms of "a self-revealing reality, like the Ideas,"
lost credibility. "A representation of reality now has to be constructed,"
says Taylor. "As the notion of 'idea' migrates from its ontic sense to
apply henceforth to intra-psychic contents, to things 'in the mind', so
the order of ideas ceases to be something we find and becomes something
we build." (144)
Beginning with Descartes and progressing through thinkers as different
as Locke, Bacon, the Protestant Reformers, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson,
men and women increasingly sought their constitutive sources within the
self. Those sources were found in man's dignity, which was variously attributed
to an ability to make choices, objectify his universe and make instrumental
use of nature, or a purported natural inclination to goodness and benevolence.
Also during this period heightened meaning came to be associated not, as
in the past, with certain highly esteemed callings—whether philosophy,
statesmanship, soldiering, or asceticism—but with the qualities that are
present to a greater or lesser degree in ordinary life. In some thinkers
these internal moral or constitutive goods were attributed to the presence
of God within, but as time passed the theistic dimension became less prevalent,
and beliefs that had originated in Christianity often became secularized.
With the dawning of the Romantic movement, yet another crucial element
of the modern conception of the self was added: the sense that men are
endowed with inner depths, sometimes attributed to a oneness with nature,
that are only made manifest as they are articulated in works of creative
imagination. More is involved here than merely making known to others what
was fully known beforehand to the artist or agent. Taylor explains that,
in the case of the novel or play, the expression will also
involve a formulation of what I have to say. I am taking something, a vision,
a sense of things, which was inchoate and only partly formed, and giving
it a specific shape. In this kind of case, we have difficulty in distinguishing
sharply between medium and "message". For works of art, we readily sense
that being in the medium they are is integral to them. Even when it is
clear that they are saying something, we sense that we cannot fully render
this in another form. [374]
What is true in art or literature also holds true in the world of action,
Taylor argues.
My claim is that the idea of nature as an intrinsic source
goes along with an expressive view of human life. Fulfilling my nature
means espousing the inner élan, the voice or impulse. And this makes
what was hidden manifest for both myself and others. But this manifestation
also helps to define what is to be realized. The direction of this élan
wasn't and couldn't be clear prior to this manifestation. In realizing
my nature, I have to define it in the sense of giving it some formulation,
but this is also a definition in a stronger sense: I am realizing this
formulation and thus giving my life a definitive shape. A human life is
seen as manifesting a potential which is also being shaped by this manifestation;
it is not just a matter of copying an external model or carrying out an
already determinate formulation. [374-75]
For those living in the late twentieth century, this turn to expressivism—this
(belated) recognition that the imagination does not merely reflect an external
reality that is already given but creatively interacts with the historically
given to bring into existence new reality that otherwise would not exist—is
a crucial development that has irretrievably changed the world in which
we live. Because art no longer is seen as mimetic or merely imitative but
as epiphanic—i.e., as providing the locus in which new realities fraught
with meaning emerge from the inexhaustable depths—art and culture have
assumed an unprecedented influence in our epoch and, for good or ill, have
in large part displaced the role filled by religion in earlier times. One
result is that "artists" and those recognized as "creative" are accorded
a respect (frequently accompanied by special dispensation from the minimum
restraints society demands of mere mortals) that is out of all proportion
to historical precedent.
Another result of reflexive expressivism is that ontic logos—the existence
of a cosmic source of order that is publicly accessible to men and women
unmediated by personal experience—is no longer real for us as it was for
earlier generations. At its best, this change has been salutary, not least
because it has opened us to a new appreciation of the positive contributions
that can come from diverse abilities and unique personal perspectives.
But the drive toward expressive fulfillment also has presented a darker
side. Too often, in its modernist and postmodernist manifestations, it
has issued in visions that glorify unrestricted freedom, amoral force,
and arbitrary assertiveness on the part of individuals, groups, and sometimes
whole nations. Such visions, Taylor writes, have had "effects, some of
them catastrophic on a world scale." (445) Yet another weakness of the
expressivist impulse, he adds, is its tendency toward radical subjectivity—the
belief that there are no standards set above the individual—which gives
rise to meaninglessness and banality.
Given the excesses and deficiencies of modern expressivism—and attendant
deep societal divisions and human suffering sometimes approaching chaos—the
temptation is strong to seek refuge in a simple return to pre-modern public
sources. But such pre-modern sources cannot again provide the same level
of certainty that once was possible. This is so if for no other reason
than that the pre-modern creeds now stand in tension with competing strains
of thought, including not only expressivism but mechanistic utilitarianism
of various kinds. The latter are powerful in part because they answer to
deeply felt needs that have arisen over recent centuries and also because
they speak a language that seems in tune with our more experiential approach
to reality. Taylor points approvingly, for example, to the predominantly
anti-hierarchical thrust of contemporary opinion. He sees this thrust as
related to "the affirmation of ordinary life," which arose as a reaction
to the earlier classical and Christian practice of imputing a special dignity
to certain sharply defined classes based on their position in polity or
church. Taylor adds that we as inheritors of modern culture "feel particularly
strongly the demand for universal justice and beneficence, are peculiarly
sensitive to the claims of equality, feel the demands to freedom and self-rule
as axiomatically justified, and put a very high priority on the avoidance
of death and suffering." (495)
In comments similar to the one just quoted, Taylor seems too easily
satisfied and self-congratulatory concerning the degree of "enlightenment"
attained by twentieth-century European and American culture. He tends to
view as unmixed blessings widely and strongly held beliefs about "equality,"
"freedom," "beneficence," and so forth—he calls these "moral goods"—that,
depending on circumstances and the precise sense in which the terms are
used, may in some instances be inimical to civilized life. Though Taylor
seems to detect in contemporary society a nearer approximation to unanimity
about widely proclaimed norms than arguably is either present or deserved,
he nevertheless recognizes that these or any beliefs about right and wrong
will be tenuous unless based on a more convincing "constitutive good" (i.e.,
account of why standards that transcend our narrow self-interest deserve
respect) than is now available either in traditional theism or competing
varieties of non-theistic humanism.
The weakness of theism as traditionally articulated, according to Taylor,
is that many doubt its truth. While the existence of God once was as obvious
as that day is light and night dark, belief in God now has regressed and
the practice of religion declined "to the point where from being central
to the whole life of Western societies, public and private, this has become
sub-cultural, one of many private forms of involvement which some people
indulge in." (309) But Taylor sees potential strength in theism as well.
"Opponents may judge it harshly and think that it would be degrading and
unfortunate for humans if it were true," he writes. "But no one doubts
that those who embrace it will find a fully adequate moral source in it."
By way of contrast, Taylor notes, the two contending non-theistic moral
sources that exert major influence in our time are "inherently problematic":
The question is whether, even granted we fully recognize the
dignity of disengaged reason, or the goodness of nature, this is in fact
enough to justify the importance we put on it, the moral store we set by
it, the ideals we erect on it. . . .
We might say that all positions are problematized by the fact that they
exist in a field of alternatives. But whereas faith is questioned as to
its truth, dignity and nature are also called into question in respect
of their adequacy if true. The nagging question for modern theism is simply:
Is there really a God? The threat at the margin of modern non-theistic
humanism is: So what? [317]
What our time needs, then—urgently, palpably—is a new synthesis. What kind
of synthesis? Taylor stops short of offering one, but he does hint at several
criteria that an adequate synthesis would have to meet. It should incorporate
a "theistic perspective": "great as the power of naturalist sources might
be, the potential of a certain theistic perspective is incomparably greater."
(518)
Yet such a perspective should simultaneously be able to face squarely the
"untold misery and even savagery" that have been wrought throughout history
in the name of religion and—if possible, and Taylor is not sure that it
is—should offer an intrinsic standard by which such false fruits could
be distinguished from the true working of the spirit. The ideal, Taylor
indicates, would be to avoid the "sacrifice, even mutilation," often associated
with historical religion without "adopting a stripped-down secular outlook"
that "involves stifling the response in us to some of the deepest and most
powerful spiritual aspirations that humans have conceived." (519-20) To
be convincing, the new articulation must accord with the way those now
living view reality; it must, in other words, be compatible with contemporary
man's reflexive awareness of the central and active role of the creative
imagination both in shaping and apprehending the truth of existence. Taylor
criticizes as "too narrow" the views of the "followers of Leo Strauss,
which are critical of the whole modern turn." Such views, he argues, tend
to overlook the "deeper moral vision, the genuine moral sources invoked
in the aspiration to disengaged reason or expressive fulfillment" while
disproportionately emphasizing the "less impressive motives—pride, self-satisfaction,
liberation from demanding standards. . . . Modernity is often read through
its least impressive, most trivializing offshoots." (510-11) Also "too
narrow" but for a different reason, Taylor writes, are theories such as
those of Jürgen Habermas that do recognize the "demands of expressive
fulfillment" but miss the potential of the expressivist stance for contributing
"moral sources outside the subject through languages which resonate within
him or her, the grasping of an order which is inseparably indexed to a
personal vision."
The failure to see this potential, writes Taylor, "is a major gap. It
is not just the epiphanic art of the last two centuries which fails to
get its due. . . . We are now in an age in which a publicly accessible
cosmic order of meanings is an impossibility. The only way we can explore
the order in which we are set with an aim to defining moral sources is
through this part of personal resonance." (510) Yet we can easily see why
this gap exists. What is called for
is not the exploration of an "objective" order in the classical
sense of a publicly accessible reality. The order is only accessible through
personal, hence "subjective", resonance. This is why . . . the danger of
a regression to subjectivism always exists in this enterprise. It can easily
slide into a celebration of our creative powers, or the sources can be
appropriated, interpreted as within us, and represented as the basis for
"liberation". But, at its best, in full integrity, the enterprise is an
attempt to surmount subjectivism. It is just that this remains a continuing
task, which cannot be put behind us once and for all, as with the public
order of former times. [510]
Taylor suggests the lineaments of a new synthesis but does not himself
break through to one. One possible reason why he does not may be an unresolved
tension in his thought that is partially illustrated in the passage just
quoted. On the one hand, he says, we no longer have available to us "an
'objective' order in the classical sense of a publicly accessible reality."
On the other hand, the order is accessible through "personal, hence 'subjective',
resonance." Yet the goal is to "surmount subjectivism." But how is it possible
to surmount subjectivism with subjectivism? Assuming it can be done, by
what criteria are we to distinguish the subjectivism that does transcend
the merely individual from the subjectivism that falls short of that goal?
Still another question: If we can penetrate, with the aid of the creative
imagination, to an order that transcends mere subjectivism, does this not
point to the emergence of a new "publicly accessible reality" to replace
the one that was lost: an event of world-wide historical significance?
Implicit in Taylor's book is the possibility that these things can be accomplished.
Why search for a trans-personal order that cannot possibly be found, because
it does not exist? That Taylor does not take up and extensively deal with
these issues but leaves the tension unresolved indicates that he does not
possess some philosophical categories and concepts that would alert him
to the need for such a task and facilitate it. In fact, that philosophical
work is well underway.
A great mystery about this book, considering the depth of Taylor's interest
in expressivism and the creative imagination, is the lack of any mention
of the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce. He has been perhaps the leading
authority on these issues in this century. The omission is all the more
conspicuous in that Croce creatively builds on and revises Hegel, a philosopher
to whom Taylor has devoted much attention. (And where is John Dewey, author
of such books as Art as Experience?) One part of Croce's work that
would have been helpful to Taylor is a reformulation of dialectics that
does away with inflexible alternatives originating in reification. This
aspect of Croce would have rescued Taylor from a tendency to construct
artificial alternatives, as when he separates subjectivity and universality
without sufficiently recognizing their possible union. Another example
of Taylor's use of overly rigid categorization is his rejection of hierarchy
in favor of egalitarianism out of a belief that hierarchy is incompatible
with a proper appreciation of the dignity of ordinary life.
But perhaps the most unfortunate flaw in this admirable work is its
failure to recognize the extent to which the élan of human creativity
contains bad potentialities as well as good and to explore sufficiently
the nature of that tension. Taylor does not highlight that what keeps creativity
humane is that it is disciplined by a higher power within the human self.
Here Taylor could have learned much from a thinker who early in this century
anticipated Taylor's arguments regarding creative imagination and the need
for experiential validation. Irving Babbitt combined these insights with
a stress on the existence of an ethical quality of will in man that is
experienced by the individual but also transcends him. He recognized that
imagination, to enrich and elevate human existence, must be grounded in
this will. Babbitt's emphasis on ethical willing and on a corresponding
quality of the imagination as the way to reality represents an important
part of the synthesis that is needed.
But these matters pertaining to a new synthesis go beyond the scope
of this particular book. In writing Sources of the Self, Taylor
notes, the "intention was one of retrieval, an attempt to uncover buried
goods through rearticulation—and thereby to make these sources again empower
. . . ." (520) He has done that and more.
Copyright © 2010 NATIONAL HUMANITIES
INSTITUTE
Updated 29 July 2010