Comments on Charles Taylor’s "The Malaise of Modernity" By Janet Oakes April 2007

For me, the word authenticity is associated with Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, the humanist psychologists who helped us understand what people need to become authentic and fulfill their fullest potential. Their work in the 1950’s and 60’s contributed to the human potential movement that spawned the ‘me’ generation, permissive society, or culture of narcissism Charles Taylor reacts to and criticizes in The Malaise of Modernity. 

Taylor tracks the development of an ‘ethic of authenticity’ from the individualism of the late eighteenth century through Descartes, Locke, Rousseau 'self determining freedom', J. S. Mill, etc. as a valid, fundamental human ethic, to it’s debasement by the extreme individualism of Nietzsche and the relativism and deconstructivism of the post moderns, Foucault, etc. 

He explains and seeks to rectify the distortion of the ethic of authenticity, which is both cause, and symptom of the sense of decline experienced in contemporary culture. He describes modern ‘authenticity’ as a deeply subjective new form of inwardness, cut off from a moral sense or source such as God. He sees the plight of modern man as tragic, with one redeeming feature, the freedom to choose. But when ‘horizons of significance’ are abolished the freedom to choose is trivialized and stripped of meaning, choice is only about self-fulfillment. We are reduced to choices like what brand of jeans to buy. 

Taylor describes a sort of Waiting for Godot condition that results when the Ethic of Authenticity is debased, “…alone in a silent universe, without intrinsic meaning, condemned to…lives without meaningful choice as there are no crucial issues”. I was not satisfied with his explanation of why modern man succumbs to this condition, although his emphasis on instrumental reason as a contributing factor made sense. Our industrial-technological-bureaucratic society and it’s economic/power interests use instrumental reason through advertising to creates false needs, stirs up fear, greed and desire then promise an illusory “self fulfillment”.

Taylor’s supposition that people’s lives were less selfish and banal in earlier historical times seems highly unlikely to me. Today we are under the sway of instrumental reason used by capitalism, big business, science, etc., but in previous ages humans were manipulated and controlled in a similar way by the domination of the church. It seems that throughout history, survival has been the all-consuming preoccupation for most of mankind and that only the privileged few (like the philosophers and students at Plato’s Symposium) have had the luxury of pursuing a greater sense of significance and meaning. 

Where is the evidence for greater ‘heroism’ and sense of purpose in previous times? Were the serfs in feudal times more heroic or altruistic than us? Taylor maintains that in past ages identity was a non issue (as it was preordained by ones role in the social hierarchy) so a sense of significance came from something outside of oneself, whereas modern man seeks a sense of significance by looking into the ‘depths of his being’ and carving out a sense of individual identity from there (Herder).

Again, I have some doubt about this assertion, the dictum, “Know thyself,” suggests that introspection into one’s inner world, intentions and motives and interest in a sense of personal identity (beyond a fixed role in the social fabric) were a part of the human experience long before the modern era. 

Taylor asserts that to make moral choices as authentic people we need to be recognized by others, we cannot exist in a vacuum and these relationships, committed relationships where people are not replaceable commodities, are important in creating the ‘horizons of significance’ that give our lives meaning. His Catholic morality around sexual issues, marriage, abortion and homosexuality, leaks through in this part of his book. Without clearly stating it, he implies that divorce, multiple relationships and homosexuality are inferior ways of expressing our individuality and authenticity. He says some choices have to be held in higher esteem that others or all choices lose significance and are trivialized. 

Although I agree with him that we cannot form our identities and become authentic in isolation, that human life unfolds within a “dialogical context” which is fundamental to a sense of meaning in human life (developmental psychology and neurobiology, mirror neurons, etc, substantiate this), and although I also agree with his criticism of extreme individualism and his communitarian view that community and participation in civic life are important (like Jane Jacobs), I think it is useful for people in communities to struggle to agree upon values and priorities beyond those dictated by the market place, the balance sheet, and the bottom line) - I don’t agree with his implied, “family values” moral stand on these sexual/social issues (divorce, abortion, homosexuality). 

Taylor states, “Over the last two centuries, western culture has identified one of the important potentialities of human life. Like other facets of modern individualism the ideal of authenticity points us towards a more self responsible form of life.” (He’s reminiscent of Kant here). Despite how he exemplifies these ideals in his own life, by being actively involved in politics and civic life, I sense a conservatism and romanticized nostalgia that hints at (what Freud might see reflected in his devout Catholicism) an unconscious reluctance to give up the past (childhood?) and live life without the comforting illusion of a parental god.