Charles Taylor's Ethics of Authenticity

Résumé du document

If Francis Picabia was right in asserting that "only cowards celebrate every idiocy that emerges from History in the name of Modernity", Charles Taylor's The Ethics of Authenticity testifies the author's intellectual courage. In this opus, the Canadian philosopher presents a thoughtful and original criticism of Modernity's pernicious drifts and inner discrepancies. Building on Alexis de Tocqueville's prophetic insights on the transition to the democratic age, he begins defining the position of the "modernity's knockers". These thinkers, such as Bloom, Lasch or Bell, tend to criticize the perilous modern veer towards the prevalence of "mild relativism", which refuses any moral judgment, "subjectivism", which confers equal value to each personal choices and "instrumental reason", which focuses on means and consequently denies any possibility to debate the ends of one's existence.

Extraits

[...] Hence, stuck in the contingency of his language, selfhood and community, man finds himself deprived of all possibilities to claim any “moral privilege”, and is meant to improve his self-description by using pre-existing practices but mostly by inventing new language metaphors whilst constantly avoiding the temptation of the Absolutes. This is the only way of being Authentic according to Rorty. In fact, under such assumptions, what do the Taylorian concepts of “social horizons” or shared values still mean? If we recognise that “there is no such thing as a language” and that our linguistic devices are metaphors used in “communication games” (Wittgenstein), Charles Taylor's “authentic self- fulfilment”, based on a network of collective expressions, is thereby rendered quite irrelevant. [...]

[...] Charles Taylor's Ethics of Authenticity If Francis Picabia was right in asserting that “only cowards celebrate every idiocy that emerges from History in the name of Modernity”, then Charles Taylor's The Ethics of Authenticity testifies to its author's intellectual courage. In this opus, the Canadian philosopher presents a thoughtful and original criticism of Modernity's pernicious drifts and inner discrepancies. Building on Alexis de Tocqueville's prophetic insights on the transition to the democratic age, he begins by defining the position of the “modernity's knockers”. [...]

[...] By way of conclusion, Charles Taylor provides us with an original criticism of modernity, overcoming the traditional cleavage between “knockers” and “boosters” via the deconstruction and a re-definition of the concept of authenticity. However, his ideal notion of authentic self- fashioning, on the basis of shared horizons of meaning as well as social and moral measurement can hardly resist a post-modernist criticism. Its lack of precision, pragmatism and justification renders it similar to a metaphysical aspiration. Yet, God died with Nietzsche a century and a half ago, and metaphysics seem to be waning as well. [...]

[...] His goal is to have the “boosters” realise that their conception of authenticity is too shallow and the “knockers” understand that they can criticise relativism and subjectivism all the while saving the concept of authenticity. In order to do so, his main argument is that authenticity does not foster subjectivism, but is rather a remedy for it. In fact, Charles Taylor believes that the ideal of authenticity is much more than the mere justification for the fulfilment of each individual's idiosyncrasies. His ability here consists in showing that paradoxically enough, authenticity is not a fully subjective concept. In fact, if we assume that man is a dialogical being, i.e. [...]

[...] In this brief essay, I shall contend that although highly challenging and articulated, Charles Taylor's conception of authenticity deemed as a possible antidote to Modern relativism is misguided. In fact, I hold that he is oblivious to a certain number of paramount contingencies that render most of his fundamental assumptions irrelevant. Although sympathetic to the “knockers” view, Charles Taylor refuses their dismissal of the ideal of authenticity, too often held responsible for the development of our subjectivist, instrumental and individualistic modern societies. [...]