Religion

EthicsofAuthenticity.pdf

CHARLES TAYLOR

The Ethics of Authenticity

Charles Taylor (1931- ) is a Canadian philosopher who has written on a wide variety of subjects, especially on ethics and identity. His largest and most influential work, Sources of the Self (1989) , examines the historical and philosophical backgrounds to the ways in which those of us living in modern, Western societi es have come to think about who we are and how we should live. The reading below is from a shorter work, The Ethics of Au- thenticity, which critically examines the distinctively modern way in whic h a la rge numbe r of people in the West, perhaps a majority of them, speak about and think about their own lives and the lives of others .

The select ion begins in the third chapter, which is entitled "The Sources of Authenticity." How does Taylor's account help you to under- stand such frequent ly hea rd phrases as "do your own thing" and "deciding for myself"? It looks like American popular culture is constantly offering us images of people whom we should emulate, as in the case of Michael Jordan above. Yet , according to Taylor, moderns are reluctant even to "find models to live by outside of ourselves." Is Taylor right? Is there some way to explain this apparent contradiction?

In th e middle part of the excerpt below, Taylor tries to do something very important for the purposes of this enti re anthology. He shows us why and how we must ta lk and reason with each other about the many ques- tions that pe rplex us about our lives. It is not enough just to express our- selves and move on, agreeing to "accept all points of view." How does Tay- lo r describe or propose that we go about helping one another to reach deeper t ruth about who we really are and how we should live ?

Ta ylo r says that questions of identity provide the indispensable back-

From Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge: Harvard Un iversity Press, 1991) , pp. 25-53.

VOCABULARIES Authenticity

ground for questions about our desires and aspirations. Indeed, he argues that our identities were first formed in dialogue with others and that our identities continue to be "dialogically" formed. When we listen to our- selves to try to discover what we should do and who we should be, we of- ten find several voices speaking to us, not one. My self is not one voice struggling to be heard but a medley of voices that sometimes sing in uni- son , sometimes in discord. More important still, we continue to define and discover our identities in company with others. Identity formation is a

collective project. Taylor thinks that it is "crazy" to think that we can simply decide what

is significant for us or for others. Yet many of us speak and think as though this were possible. Do you agree with Taylor that we are deeply mistaken if we believe that significance is simply a matter of personal choice? "I can define my own identity," he writes, "on ly against a back•

ground of things that matter. " Matter to whom?

The ethic of authenticity is something rela1ively new and peculiar to modern culture. Born at the end of the eighteenth century, it builds on earlier forms of individualism, such as the individualism of disengaged rationality, pio- neered by Descartes, where the demand is chat each person chink self- responsibly for him- or herself, or the political individualism of Locke, which sought to_ make the person and his or her will prior co social obligation. But authent1c1ry also has been in some respects in conflict with these earlier forms. It is a child of the Romantic period, which was critical of disengaged rauonaliry and of an atomism that didn't recognize the ties of community.

_ One way of describing its development is to see its starting point in the e,ghteenth-<:entury notion that human beings are endowed with a moral shensde, an intuitive feeling for what is right and wrong. The original point of t 1s octrme was to comb t • I . h

f a a nva view, t at knowing right and wrong was

a matter o calculating co . . . . d nsequences, m particular those concerned with d1- vme rewar and punishm t Th . wrong was not fedn . e notion was that understanding right and

a matter o ry c I I · b Morality has - a cu auon, ut was anchored in our feelings. , m a sense, a voice within

The notion of authenticit dev I . acceni in this idea

O h Y . e ops out of a displacement of the moral

· n t e original view th · cause it I ells us what is th . h h. ' e inner voice is important be- feelings wou ld matter h e ng t t mg to do. Being in touch with our moral

I . ere, as a means t th d f ca 1mg the displacement of th I o e en o acting rightly. What I'm

e mora accent comes about when being in

CHARLES TAYLOR • The Ethics of Authenticity

touch cakes on independe~t and crucial moral significance. Ir comes to be something we have to attain to be true and full human beings.

To see what is new in chi~, we have to see the analogy to earlier moral views, where being m touch with some source- God, say, or the Idea of the Good - was considered essential to full being. Only now the source we have to connect with is deep in us . This is part of the massive subjective turn of modern culture, a new form of inwardness, in which we come co think of ourselves as beings with inner depths. At first, this idea that the source is within doesn't exclude our being related to God or the Ideas; it can be con- sidered our proper way to them. In a sense, it can be seen just as a continua- tion and intensification of the development inaugurated by Saint Augustine, who saw the road to God as passing through our own reflexive awareness of ourselves.

The first variants of this new view were theistic, or at least pantheist. This is illustrated by the most important philosophical writer who helped to bring about this change, Jean-Jacques Rousseau . I think Rousseau is impor- tant not because he inaugurated the change; rather I would argue that his great popularity comes in part from his articulating something that was al- ready happening in the culture. Rousseau frequently presents the issue of morality as chat of our following a voice of nature within us. This voice is most often drowned out by the passions induced by our dependence on others, of which the key one is "amour propre" or pride. Our moral salva- tion comes from recovering authentic moral contact with ourselves. Rous- seau even gives a name to the intimate contact with oneself, more funda-

. f · d contentment· "le mental than any moral view, chat 1s a source o JOY an _ ·. sentiment de !'existence." Rousseau also articula1ed a closely related idea mfa

. h . f vhat I want to call sel - most influential way. This 1s t e nouon ° ' ·d c If

h "d h I free when I dee, e ,or myse

determ in ing freedom. It is t e I ea I at am . 1 . b

. h d by external influences. t ,s a what concerns me , rather than emg s ape h h b called nega-

h b . I es beyond w at as een

standard of freedom t at o v,ous Y go . 1 . " rence by 01hers I b h f d

hat I want wit ,out mter e live i erry, w ere I am ree to 0 w d d . fluenced by society b h

"bl ·th my being shape an 10 k ecause c at is compat1 e w1 . . freedom demands that I brea and its laws of conformity. Self-dete~mmm~d decide for myself alone. - • · the hold of all such external impos,uo~s'. a. it becomes crucially import_ant

But to return to the ,deal of authenucILY- and thaI I assooa1e h s after Rousseau ..

because of a development t at ~ccur I

articulawr raiher than i1s ong,na- with Herder - once again its ma1or ear Y f h s an origina l way ofbemg tor. Herder put forward the idea that each o us a " is his way of putting it.

h h. her own "measure . I new

uman . Each person has IS or d nsc iousness. II 1s a so · This idea has entered very deep into mo ern co

VOC A BULARIES • Authenticity

Before the late eighteenth century no one thought that the differences be- tween human beings had this kind of moral significance. There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in th is way, and not in imitation of anyone else's, But this gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life, I miss what being human is for me.

This is the powerful moral ideal that has come down to us. It accords crucial moral importance to a kind of contact with myself, with my own in- ner nature, which it sees as in danger of being lost, partly through the pres- sures towards outward conformity, but also because in taking an instru- mental stance to myself, I may have lost the capacity to listen to this inner voice. And then it greatly increases the importance of this self-contact by in- troducing the principle of originality: each of our voices has something of its own to say. Not only should I not fit my life to the demands of external conformity; I can't even find the model to live by outside myself. I can fin d it only within.

Being true to myself means being true to my own originality, and that is something only I can articulate and discover. In articulating it, I am also de- fmmg myself. I am realizing a potentiality that is properly my own . This is the background understanding to the modern ideal of authenticity, and to ~e. goals of self-fulfillment or self-realization in which it is usually couched. . his 15_ the. background that gives moral force to the culture of authenticity, mcludmg Its most degraded , absurd, or trivialized forms. It is what gives sense to the idea of"doingy th' • "

our own mg or finding your own fulfillment."

IV Inescapable Horizons

This is a very rapid sketch f h . . more detail later. But fo tho t e ongms of authenticity. I shall have to fill in

r e moment it is h reasoning here. And so I want k enoug to see what is involved in I made at the end of the last se~~-ta ~up the second controversial claim that pie who are immersed in the co~:: an one say anything in reason to pea- talk tn reason to people who are d Pf rary culture of authenticity? Can you accept no allegiance higher than t~ep y mto soft relativism, or who seem to seem ready to th eir own develo of some c ~ow away love, children de pment - say, those who

Well ~reer a vancement? , mocrat1c solidarity, for the sake . . , ow do we reason;i R . tng wuh somebod y . easomng in moral .

y. ou have an interlocut matters ts always reason- or, and you start from where that

CHARLE S TAYLOR • The Ethics of Authenticity

person is, or with the actual difference between you; you don 't reason from rhe ground up, as though you were talking to someone who recognized no moral demands whatever. A person who accepted no moral demands would be as impossible to argue with about right and wrong as would a person who refused to accept. t~e world of perception around us be impossible

10 argue with about empmcal mailers. But we are imagining discussing with people who are in the contempo-

rary culture of authenttctty. And that means that they are trying to shape their lives in the light of this ideal. We are not left with just the bare facts of rheir preferences. But if we start from the ideal, then we can ask: What are th e conditions in human life of realizing an ideal of this kin d? And what does the ideal properly understood call for? The two orders of questions interweave, or perhaps shade into each other. In the second, we are trying to define better what the ideal consists in. With the first, we want to bring out certain gen eral features of human life that condition the fulfillment of this or any other ideal.

In what follows, I want to work out two lines of argument that can illus- trate what is involved in this kind of questioning. The argument will be very sketchy, more in the nature of a suggestion of what a convincing demonstra- tion might look like. The aim will be to give some plausibility to my second claim, that you can argue in reason about these mailers, and hence to show that there is indeed a practical point in trying to understand bener what au- thenticity consists in .

The genera l feature of human life that I want to evoke is its fundam entally dialogical character. We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining an identity, through our acquisition of rich human la nguages of expression . For purposes of this discussion, I want to ta ke "language" in a broad sense, covering not only the words we spea k bur also ot her modes of expression whereby we defi ne ourselves, including_ the "languages" of art , of gesture, of love, and the like. But we are inducted into these in exchange wi th others. No one acquires the languages needed for sdf- definition on their own. We are introduced to th em through exchanges with oth h b M d II d "signifi ca nt oth-ers w o matter to us - what George Her ert ea ca e ers." The genesis of the human mi nd is in this sense not "monological," not something each accomplishes on his or her own, but dialogical.

M . h · h can be ignored later oreover, this is not just a fact about genesis, w tc on 1 • • d' I ue and rhen can go on · ts not just that we lea rn the languages m 1a og . . to use them for ou r own purp oses on our own. This describ es our s1tu at1?n to some extent in our culture. We are expected to develo p our otn ~pm· Ions , outlook, stances to things , 10 a co nsiderab le deg ree th_ro ug so lhtary refl · k . h · portant issues, sue as ection. Bur thi s is not how things war Wl t ,m

VOCABULARIES • Authenticity

the definition of our identity. We define this always in dialogue with, some- times in struggle against, the identities our significant others want to recog- nize 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.

So the contribution of significant others, even when it occurs at the be- ginning of our lives , continues throughout. Some people might be following me up to here, but still want to hold on to some form of the monological ideal. True , we can never liberate ourselves completely from those whose love and care shaped us early in life, but we should strive to define ourselves on our own to the fullest degree possible, coming as best we can to under- stand and thus gain some control over the influence of our parents, and avoiding falling into any further such dependencies. \Ve will need relation- ships to fulfill but not to define ourselves.

This is a common ideal, but I think it seriously underestimates the place of the dialogical in human life . It still wants to confine it as much as possible to the genesis. lt forgets how our understanding of the good things in life can be transformed by our enjoying them in common with people we love, how some goods become accessible to us only through such common en- joyment. Because of this , it would take a great deal of effort, and probably many wrenching break-ups. to prevent our identity being formed by the peo- ple we love. Consider what we mean by "identity." It is "who" we are, "where we're coming from. " As such it is the background against which our tastes and desires and opinions and aspirations make sense. If some of the things I value most are accessible to me only in relation to the person I love, then she becomes internal to my identi ty.

. To some people this might seem a limitation , from which one might as- ~ire to free oneself. This is one way of understanding the impulse behind the hfe_ of the hermit, or to take a case more familiar to our cu lture. the solitary art15 ~ Bu~ from another perspective, we might see even 1his as aspiring to a certa m kind of dialogicality. ln the case of the hermit, the interlocutor is Go~. In the case of the solitary artist, the work itself is addressed to a future audience, perhaps still to be created by the work itself. The very fo rm of a work of art shows its ch dd h k.i aracter as a ressed. But however o ne feels about it ,

e :a ng and s_ustaining of our identity, in the absence of a heroic effort to real out of ~rd1_nary existence, remain s dialogica l throughout o ur lives.

g O _want to! mdicate below that this central fact has been recognized in the

r wmg cu ture of authentic'ty B h . dialogical feat f 1 •• • ut w at I want to do now is take thts ure o our condu1on on o h d d .

herem in the ideal of authcnticit 0

' ne an , an certain demands m- y n the other, a nd show that the more self-

(HA RL ES TAYLOR • The E1hics of Authemiciry

centered and "narcissi~tic" modes of contemporary culture are manifestly inadequate. ~ore parucularly, I want to show that modes that opt for self- fulfillment without regard (a)_ to the demands of our ties with others or (b) to demands of any kind emanatmg from so mething more or other than human desires or aspirations are self-defeating, that they destroy the conditions for realizing authenticity itself. I'll take these in reverse order, and start with (b), arguing from the demands of authenticity itself as an ideal.

(i) When we come to understand what it is to define ourselves, to deter- mine in what o ur originality consists, we see that we have to take as back- ground some sense of what is significant. Defining myself means finding what is significant in my difference from others. I may be the only person with exactly 3,732 hairs on my head, or be exactly the same height as some tree on the Siberian plain , but so what? If I begin to say that I define myself by my ability to articulate important truths, or play the Hammerklavier like no one else, or revive the tradition of my ancestors, then we are in the do- main of recognizable self-definitions.

The difference is plain. We understand right away that the latter proper- ties have human significance, or can easily be seen by people to have this, whereas the former do not - not, t hat is, without some special story. Per- haps the number 3,732 is a sacred one in some society; then having this num- ber of hairs can be significant. But we get to this by linking it to the sacred.

We saw above in the second section how the contemporary cu lture of authenticity slides towards soft relat ivism. This gives further force to a gen- eral presumption of subjectivism about value: things have sign ificance not of themselves but because people deem them to have it - as though peo~le could determine what is significant, either by decision, or perhaps u_n~vit- tingly and unwillingly by just feeling that way. This is crazy._ I couldn t Ju

decide that the most significant action is wiggling my toes m warm mud. Without a special explanation, this is not an intelligible claim Oike the 3,73

hairs above) . So 1 wouldn 't know what sense to attribute to so~eo~e alleg- ld mean who said this?

edly feeling that this was so. \Vh~t cou sorneo~e rha s mud is th e elc- But if it makes sense only with an explanatton (pe P . .

mcnt of the world spirit, which you contact with yo ur toes), tt is op:n t~ criticism. W hat if the explanation is wrong, doesn't pan out, or cabne 5:~-c 1' rtain way can never placed with a better account? Your iee mg a cc fi J"ng can't deur- cient grounds for respecting yo ur position, because your ee

mine what is significant. Soft relativism self-deS[ruc~. f ' t lligibility. Let us Things take on importance againSt a backg~oun ° inn~ do if we arc to

h f the things we ca ' call this a horizon. It follows t at one O d he horizons against define ourselves significantly, is suppress or eny

VOCABULAR I ES • Au thenticiry

which things take on significance for us. Thi_s is_ the kin_d_ of _self-defeating mo,·e frequently being carried out in our su?1ect1':st c1vthzanon. In stress- ing the legitimacy of choice between certain options, we very often find ourselves depriving the options of their sig01fkance. For ms~ance ,_ there is a certain discourse of justification of non-sta ndard sexual onentat1ons. Peo- ple want 10 argue that heterosexual monogamy is not th e only way to achieve sexual fulfillment , that those who are inclined to homosexual rela- tions, for instance, shouldn't feel themselves embarked on a lesser, less wor- thy path. This fits well into the modern understanding of authenticity'. with its notion of difference, originality, of the acceptance of d1vers1ty. I ,vill try 10 say more about these connections below. But however we explain it, it is clear that a rhetoric of"difference," of"diversity" (even "multiculturalism"), is central to the contemporary culture of authenticity.

But in some forms this discourse slides towards an affirmation of choice itself. All options are equally worthy. because they are freely chosen, and it is choice that confers worth. The subjectivist principle underlying soft relativ- ism is at work here. But this implicitly denies the existence of a pre-existing horizon of significance, whereby some things are worthwhile and others less so, and still others not at all, quite anterior to choice. But then the choice of se."Wal orientation loses any special significance. It is on a level with any other preferences, like that for taller or shorter sexual partners, or blonds or bru- nettes. No one wo uld dream of making discriminating judgments about these preferences, but that's because they are all without importance. They really do just depend on how you feel. Once sexual orientation comes to be assimilated to these, which is what happens when one makes choice the crucial justifying reason , the original goal, which was to assert the equa l value of this orientation , is subtly frustrated. Difference so asserted beco mes insignificant.

Asserting the value of a homosexual orientation has to be done differ- ently. more empirically, one might say, taking into account the actual nature of homo- and heterosexual experience and life. It can't just be ass umed a priori, on the grounds that anything we choose is all right.

. In this case, the assertion of value is co ntami nated by its connection W1 th ano~er leading idea, which I have mentioned above as closely inter- wove~ wnh authenticity, that of self-determining freedom. This is partly re- s~onsible for the accent on choice as a crucial consideration, and also for the shde towards soft relativism. I wi ll return to this below, in talking about how the goal of authenticity comes to deviate. fi d8~1. for the moment , the general lesson is that authenticity can't be de- ;n i~ ways that co ll apse horizons of significance. Even the sense that

e s1gm icance of my li fe comes from its being chosen - the case wh ere

CHARLES TAYLOR • Th e Ethics of Authenticity

henticity is actually grounded on self-determining " d aut d' h . d d ree om - depends the understan mg t at m epen ent of my will there is h' on d h . 'fi . . somet mg noble

courageous, an ence s1gm ic~nt m giving shape to my own life. There is; picture here of what human beings are like, placed between this option for self-creation. and easier modes of copping out, going ,vith the flow, con- forming with the masses, and so on, which picture is seen as true, discov- ered, not decided. Horizons are given ....

So the ideal of self-choice supposes that there are other issues of signifi- cance beyond_ self-choice. The ideal couldn't stand alone, because it requires a horizon of issues of importance, whJCh help define the rtspecJS in which self-making is significant. Following Nietzsche, I am indeed a truly great philosopher if I remake the table of values. But this means redefining values concerning important questions, not redesigning the menu at McDonald's or next year's casual fashion. ·

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 demands 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 authentic- ity. 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 de- stroys the condition in which the ideal can be realized.

Otherwise put, I can define my identity on ly against the background of things that matter. But to bracket out history, nature, society, the demands of solidarity, everything but what I find in myself, would be to eliminate all candidates for what matters. 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 du- ties 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.

But if this is so , there is something you can say to those who are en~ired in the more trivialized modes of the culture of authenticity. Reason is not powerless . Of course, we haven't got very fa r here; just to sho,ving that some sel f-transcending issues are indispensable [issue (b) above]. We have not shown that any particu lar one has to be taken seriously. The argument so far is

r VOCABULAR I ES Aurhenricity just a sketch . and I ho pe to take it Oust a little)_ further in subsequent sections. But for che moment I want to wrn to the oth er issue, (a), whether there is some- thing self-<lefeating in 3 mode offul fillment tha t denies our ties to o thers.

V The Need for Recognition

(l) Another o ne of the com mon axes of criticism of the contemporary cul- ture of authenticity is that it encourages a purely personal understanding of self-fulfillment . thus making the various associations and communities in which the pe rson enters purely instrumental in t.heir significance. At the broader social level, this is anti thetical to any strong commitment to a com- munity. In particular, it makes political citizenship, with its sense of duty and allegiance ro political society, more and more marginal On the more intimate leveJ , it fosters a view of relationships in which these ought to sub~ serve personal fulfillment. The relationship is secondary to t he self- realization of the partners . On this view, unconditional ties, meant to last for life, make little sense. A relationship may last till death , if it goes on serv- ing its purpose. but there is no point declaring a priori that it ought to.

Th is philosophy was articulated in a popular book of the mid-197os: "You can't take everything with you when yo u leave on the midlife journey. You are moving away. Away from institutional claims and other people 's agenda. Away from external valuations and accreditations . You are moving o ut of roles and into the self. If I could give everyone a gift for the send-off on this journey, it would be a tent. A tent for tentativeness. Th e gift of porta- ble roots . .. . For each of us there is the opportunity w emerge reborn, au- thentically unique. with an enlarged capacity to love ourselves and embrace others .... The delights of self-di scovery are always available. Though loved o nes move in and out of our lives, the capacity to love remains." Authentic- ity seems once more to be defined he re in a way that centers on the self, which distances us from o ur relations to o thers . And this has been seized o n by the critics I quoted earlie r. Can one say anything about this in reason ? . Before sketching the direction of argument , it is impo rtant to see that the rdeal of authenticity incorporates some notions of society, or at leas t of how peo~l~ ought to live togethe r. Authenticity is a facet of m odern individualism , and It is a feature of all forms of individualism that th ey don 't just em phasize the freedom of the individual but also propose m odels of society. We fail to s~e t~,s when we confuse the two very different senses of individualism I dis- tmguished ea rH er. The individ ualism of anomie and breakdown of course has

EL I ZABETH CADY STANTON • "Solitude of Se!{"

0 social ethic attached to it; but individualism as a moral princi 1 . n ffer some view on how the individual should live . h h P e or ideal

must O . d .. d r h·J Wit ot ers So the g~e-at m . tvt ua ist p t osophies also ~roposed models of socie k

a n indwiduahsm gave u s the theory of society as contr L ty. Loe e . f I . act. ater form s connected to nouo~s o po~u ar sovereignty. Two modes of social existence are quite evidently hnked WJth the contemporary culture of self-fulfillment. The first is based on the notion of umve rsal rrg ht : everyone should have the right and c~pa_c1ty to be themselv~s. This 1s ~h~t underlies soft relativism as a rnoral pnnctplc: n o o_n e ha~ a right to cnt1c1ze another's values. This in- clines those imbu ed with ~hi s culture towards conceptions of procedural ·ustice: the limit on anyone s sel f-fulfillment must be t he safeguarding of an ~qual chance at '.his fulfillment for others . _

Secondly. this culture puts a great emphasis on relationships in the inti- rnate sphere, especially love relations hips . These are seen to be the prime loci of self-exploration and self-discovery and among the most important fo rms of self-fulfillment. This view reflects the continuation in modern cul- cure of a t rend that is now centuries o ld and that places the centre of gravity of the good life not in so me higher sp here but in what I want to call "ordi- nary life," that is, t h e life o f production and the family, of wo rk and love. Yet it also reflects something else that is important here: the acknowledgement that our ident ity requires recognition by others.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON

"Solitude of Self'

Th e conviction that ea ch individu al possesses a unique self and deserves a degree of individual choice and auto nom y is, as Ta ylor has shown , closely tied to t he emergence of democratic philosoph ies and cultures

From Soli1udc of Self: An Ad d ress Delivered before 1he United States Co ngressional Commit• tee o n the Jud ic iary, Monday, Jan ua r y 18, 1892 [pamphlet, 1910 ]; also reprin ted in Eliwbtth Cady Stanton and Susan B. An1hony: Comspondenct, Writing s. Speeches, ed. Elle n Carol DuBois (New York: Schoc kcn Boo ks, 198 1), pp. 247- 250.

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