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Book: THE MALAISE OF MODERNITY
Author:
Charles Taylor
Published
in 1991 (1st edition)
Publisher:
Anansi
Place:
Toronto, Canada
Reader:
Mr. M.D. Pienaar
Table of
Contents
22 April 2013
In the thanks
forward:
"I am grateful to
Eusebia da Silva for her help in defining this, and the
larger project to
which it belongs."
P1
"Sometimes
people feel that some important decline has occurred
during the last years or decades—since the Second World
War, or the 1950s, for instance. And sometimes the loss is
felt over a much longer historical period: the whole
modern era from the seventeenth century is frequently seen
as the time frame of decline."
P2
"..
that the usual run of debate about them in fact
misrepresents them—and thus makes us misconceive what we
can do about them. …
(1) The
first source of worry is individualism.
Of course, individualism also names what many people
consider the finest achievements of modern civilization.
.. to determine the shape of their lives in a whole host
of ways that their ancestors couldn't control. And these
rights are generally defended by our legal systems.
In principle, people are no longer sacrificed to the
demands of supposedly sacred orders that transcend them.
Very
few people want to go back to this achievement."
P3
"The eagle was not just
another bird, but the king of a whole domain
of animal life. By the same token, the rituals and norms
of society had more than
merely instrumental significance. The discrediting of
these orders has been called the "disenchantment"
of the world. With it, things lost some of their magic."
P3-4
"..
the individual lost something
important along with the larger social and cosmic horizons
of action. Some <P4> have written of this as the
loss of a heroic dimension to life. People no longer have
a sense of a higher purpose, of something worth dying for.
… And Nietzsche's
"last men" are at the final
nadir of this decline; they have no aspiration left in
life but to a "pitiable comfort."
This
loss of purpose was linked to a narrowing. People lost the
broader vision because they focussed on their individual lives."
Self
It
seems here that Taylor does not identify with being
sacrificed because he refers to "they" and not we. It
could be that he feels at his age (60 years, born in 1931)
he should be part of the sacrificing (Like Caiaphas)
and "they" refers to younger people.
P4-5
"(2)
The disenchantment of the world is
connected to another massively important phenomenon of the
modern age, which also greatly troubles <p5> many
people. We might call this the primacy of instrumental
reason.
By "instrumental reason" I mean the kind of
rationality we draw on when we calculate the most
economical application of means to a given end. Maximum
efficiency, the best cost-output ratio, is its measure of
success."
P3
"In
some cases, this was a cosmic order, a "great chain of
Being" in which humans figured in their proper place along
with angels, heavenly bodies, and our fellow earthly
creatures."
P5
".. the will of God,
… Similarly, once the creatures that surround us lose the
significance that accrued to their place in the chain of
being, they are open to being treated as raw materials or
instruments for our [bold
italics: self] projects.
.. instrumental reason not only has
enlarged its scope but also threatens
to take over our lives. … this worry: for instance, the
ways the demands of economic growth are used to justify
very unequal distributions of wealth and income, or the
way these same demands make us insensitive to the needs of
the environment, .."
p6
"Patricia
Benner has argued in a number of important works that the
technological approach in medicine has often side-lined
the kind of care that involves treating the patient as a
whole person with a life story, and not as the locus of a
technical problem. "
p6-7
"Almost
150 years ago, Marx, in the Communist Manifesto,
remarked that one of the results of capitalist development was
that "all that is solid melts in air." The claim is that
the solid, lasting, often expressive objects that served
us in the past are being set aside for the quick, shoddy,
replaceable <p7> commodities with which we now
surround ourselves."
P7
"A
bureaucrat, in spite of his personal insight, may be
forced by the rules under which he operates to make a
decision he knows to be against humanity and good sense."
Self
At this stage of the
reading it seems that Taylor regards humanity as groups
and that one may be sacrificed for humanity. This belief
is against Kant who said people
should not be used as means to ends whether the means
is an individual or a group.
P8
"Change
in this domain will have to be institutional as well, even
though it cannot be as sweeping and total as the great
theorists of revolution proposed.
(3)
This brings us to the political level, and to the
feared consequences for political life
of individualism and instrumental
reason. One I have already
introduced. It is that the institutions and structures of
industrial-technological society severely restrict
our choices, that they force societies as well as
individuals to give weight to instrumental reason that in
serious moral deliberation we
would never do, and which may even be highly destructive."
P9
"An
individual life-style is also
hard to sustain against the grain. For instance, the whole
design of some modern cities makes it hard to function
without a car, particularly where public transport has
been eroded in favour of the private automobile."
P10
"What is threatened
here is our dignity as citizens.
The impersonal mechanisms mentioned above may reduce our
degrees of freedom as a society,
but the loss of political liberty would mean that even the
choices left would no longer be made by ourselves as
citizens, but by irresponsible tutelary power.
These,
then, are the three malaises about modernity that I want
to deal with in this book. The first fear is about what we
might call a loss of meaning,
the fading of moral horizons. The
second concerns the eclipse of ends,
in face of rampant instrumental reason.
And the third is about a loss of freedom."
P11
"Modernity
has its boosters as well as its knockers. … In particular,
I will claim that the right path to take is neither that
recommended by straight boosters nor that favoured by
outright knockers. … I want to claim that both boosters
and knockers are right, but in a way that can't be done
justice to by simple trade-off between advantages and
costs."
P14
"In
other words, the relativism was itself an off-shoot of a
form of individualism,
whose principles is something like this: everyone has a
right to develop their own form of life, grounded on their
own sense of what is really important or of value."
P15
"It seems true that
the culture of self-fulfilment has led many
people to lose sight of concerns that transcend them. And
it seems obvious that it has taken trivialized and
self-indulgent forms. .. as people insecure in their
identities turn to all sorts of self-appointed experts and
guides, shrouded with the prestige of science or some
exotic spirituality."
Self
The above "malaise"
could be grounded in the idea that what is most important
to society is what we do not
do. That is to not break the law and as long as the law is
not broken then every individual can determine how
he/she finds a way. This is partly how Jesus defined love when he said love
is a summary of the Old Testament laws and the prophecies.
P16
'"Survivalism has
taken the place of heroism as the admired quality."(12) ..
why it is used as a hypocritical "patina"
by the self-indulgent.'
'patina |pəˈtēnə|
noun
a green or brown film on the surface of
bronze or similar metals, produced by oxidation over a
long period.
• a gloss or sheen on wooden furniture
produced by age and polishing.
• an
acquired change in the appearance of a surface :
plankton added a golden patina to the shallow,
slowly moving water.
•
figurative an impression or appearance of something :
he carries the patina of
old money and good breeding.' (New Oxford
American Dictionary, Apple computer, Version 2.1 (80),
Copyright © 2005–2009 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.)
Self
Did Taylor draw a
comparison between 'patina'
and paten?
P17
'That the espousal
of authenticity takes the form of
a kind of soft relativism means that the
vigorous defence of any moral ideal is somehow
off limits. For the implications, as I have just described
them above, are that some forms of life are indeed higher than
others, and the culture of tolerance for individual self-fulfilment shies away from
these claims.'
P17-18
'One
of its basic tenets is that a liberal society must be neutral on
questions of what constitutes <p18> a good life.'
P19
'Of course, there
are critics who hold that there are standards in
reason.(15) They think that there is such a thing as human
nature, and that an understanding of this will show
certain ways of life to be right and others wrong, certain
ways to be higher and better than others. The
philosophical roots of this position are in Aristotle.
By contrast, modern subjectivists tend to be very
critical of Aristotle, and complain that this
"metaphysical biology" is out of date and thoroughly
unbelievable today.
But
philosophers who think like this have generally been
opponents of the ideal of
authenticity;
they have seen it as part of a mistaken departure from the
standards rooted in human nature. They had no reason to
articulate what it is about; while those who upheld it
have been frequently discouraged from doing so by their
subjectivist views.'
P22-23
'What
I am suggesting is a position distinct from boosters and
knockers of contemporary culture. Unlike the boosters, I
do not believe that everything is as it should be in this
culture. Here I tend to agree with the knockers. But
unlike them, I think that authenticity should be taken
seriously as a moral <p23> ideal.
I differ also from the various middle positions, which
hold that there are some good things in this culture (like
greater freedom for the individual),
but that these come at the expense of certain dangers
(like a weakening of the sense of citizenship),
so that one's best policy is to find the ideal point of
trade-off between advantages and costs.'
P23
'What
we need is a work of retrieval, through which this ideal
can help us restore our practise.
To go along with this, you have to believe three
things, all controversial: (1) that authenticity is a valid ideal;
(2) that you can argue in reason about ideals and about
the conformity of practices to these ideals; and (3) that
these arguments can make a difference. The first belief
flies in the face of the major thrust of criticism of the
culture of authenticity, the second involves rejecting
subjectivism,
and the third is incompatible with those accounts of
modernity that see us as imprisoned in modern culture by
the "system," whether this is defined as capitalism,
industrial society,
or bureaucracy.'
P25
'The ethic of
authenticity is something
relatively 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, pioneered by Descartes, where
the demand is that each person think self-responsibly for
him- or herself, or the political individualism of
Locke, which sought to make the
person and his or her will prior to social obligation.'
Self
The individualism of Descartes and
Locke is misunderstood
when it is claimed that personal will is prioritized above
social obligation. Descartes placed universal laws like
honesty above himself. Descartes said God requires truths.
Honesties were thus a social obligation that keeps
individuals from doing things that require deceits. Other
social obligations that were acknowledged were compliances
to state laws. It was only
under severe state failure that Locke justified revolution
as a means of society to regain their
freedoms that a well-organized state should enforce. When
laws are for example not enforced by the state individuals
loose their freedoms because groups overpower individuals
by violent means and deceits.
P26-27
'..
the eighteenth-century notion <p27> that human
beings are endowed with a moral sense, an
intuitive feeling for what is right
and wrong.
The original point of this doctrine was to combat a rival
view, that knowing right and wrong was a matter of
calculating consequences,
in particular those concerned with divine reward and
punishment. The notion was that understanding right and
wrong was not a matter of dry calculation, but was
anchored in our feelings. Morality has, in a sense, a
voice within. (20) … It comes to be something we have to
attain to be true and full human beings.
To
see what is new in this, we have to see the analogy to
earlier moral views, where being
in 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 to think of ourselves
as beings with inner depths.'
P126
(20) The development
of this doctrine, at first in the work of Francis
Hutcheson, drawing on the writings of the Earl of
Shaftesbury, and its adversarial relation to Locke's
theory, I have discussed at greater length in Sources of the Self,
chapter 15.
P27
'Rousseau frequently
presents the issue of morality as that of our following a
voice of nature within us. … Rousseau also articulated a
closely related idea in a most influential way. This is
the notion of what I want to call self-determining freedom. …
Self-determining freedom demands that I break the hold of
all such external impositions, and decide for myself
alone.'
Self
I understand
Rousseau's
idea of self-determining freedom as having a
precondition. The precondition is to sacrifice creators
because that gives a person access to the society,
which Rousseau promotes. Access to this contractual
society frees a person from nature and gives a person the
freedom to self-determine because of the security that
Rousseau's societies impart.
P28
'I mention this
[Self-determining freedom (inserted by
reader)] here not because it is essential to authenticity.
Obviously the two ideals are distinct. But they have
developed together, sometimes in the works of the same
authors, and their relations have been complex, sometimes
at odds, sometimes closely bound together. As a result,
they have often been confused, and this has been one of
the sources of the deviant forms of authenticity, as I
shall argue.'
Self
The
above lines seems to identify the ideal Jesus referred to
when he said love is partly
following the prophecies. It could be understood that to
fulfil the prophecy of God as an immanent singular man,
sacrificing of creators should happen, thus identification
with Caiaphas. Secondly it could be interpreted to mean that truth should
be a way even if it implies being sacrificed. Rousseau followed the
Caiaphas way.
P28
'Self-determining
freedom has been an idea
of immense power in our political life. In Rousseau's
work it takes political form, in the notion of a social
contract state founded on a
general will, which precisely because it is the form of
our common freedom can brook no opposition in the name of
freedom. This idea has been one of the intellectual
sources of modern totalitarianism, starting, one might
argue, with the Jacobins. And although Kant reinterpreted this
notion of freedom in purely moral terms, as
autonomy, it returns to the political sphere with a
vengeance with Hegel and Marx.'
Self
The above statement
by Taylor shows his mistake because he does not realise
that sacrificing creators cause colonization because a state can then not keep
up with creativities else where in the world where
sacrifices has not the same negative impact on
creativities. The result of Taylor's belief is the
eventual moving away from a territory by the power he
espouses. I do not agree with Taylor that Kant can be compared
with Rousseau. Kant espoused honesty and
Rousseau implied deceit. Kant espoused creativities and
Rousseau denigrated creativities to be sacrificed and
developed by his society for gain. Creators
are not part of Rousseau's society and can therefore not
gain from their creativities because they do not take part
in the development process.
P29
'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 defining myself. I am realizing
a potentiality that is properly my own. This is the
background understanding to the modern ideal of
self-fulfilment or
self-realization in which it is usually couched. This is
the background that gives moral force to the
culture of authenticity,
including its most degraded, absurd, or trivialized forms.
It is what gives sense to the idea of "doing your own
thing" or "finding your own fulfilment".'
Self
Taylor
misunderstands authenticity because of the
psychological barrier of the thoughts of being God self
and being honest. Authenticity is controlled by the
concept of truths (honesties), which automatically causes
originality in new creativities that emanates organically
and logically out of truths (correspondences and
coherencies). These new creativities cause fear in Taylor
and also the transcending of the psychological barrier
causes fear in him. He thus chooses Rousseau's
way of sacrificing and safety within a gang. Taylor thus
probably defines "citizen"
as a contractual explicit membership in a city and not as
automatic national citizenship after being born
in a national state. The elthaught (social tendency
to sacrifice the "other I" or "me me".) is part of Taylor
and Rousseau's psychological barrier.
P31
'This is a very
rapid sketch of the origins of authenticity.'
Self
The
origins of authenticity in the Western
mind are found in the Bible's identification with truth as
a way, especially in the New Testament books of John,
Revelation and also Hebrews.
P31
'Can one say
anything in reason to people who are deeply into soft
relativism, or who seem to accept no
allegiance higher than their own development—say, those
who seem ready to throw away love,
children, democratic solidarity, for the sake of some
career advancement?'
Self
The above statement
reflects a contradiction in Taylor's argument because the
authenticity he described above
causes career failure after sacrificing of authentic
original creatures by Rousseau's
society,
but above he writes of career advancement. There could be
therefore somewhere partly a misunderstanding between
Taylor and reader. Misunderstandings between Taylor and
reader might be in definitions of love by Jesus Christ
(complying to Old Testament laws and prophecies) and the
dictionary definition of love.
P32
'But
we are imagining discussing with people who are in the
contemporary culture of authenticity.
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 their preferences. But if we start from the
ideal, then we can ask: What are the conditions in human
life of realizing an ideal of this kind? 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
general features of human life that condition fulfilment
of this or any other ideal.'
P32
'..
and hence to show that there is indeed a practical point
in trying to understand better what authenticity consists in.'
Self
The
above is an acknowledgement by Taylor that he does not
understand modern authenticity partly because of
his psychological barrier and elthaught.
24
April 2013
P32-33
'The
general feature of human life that I want to <p33>
evoke is its fundamentally dialogical character.'
P36-37
'I
may be the only person with exactly 3732 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 domain of recognizable
self-definitions.
The
difference is plain. We understand right away that the
latter properties have human significance, or can easily
be seen by people to have this, whereas the former do
not—not, that is, without some special story. Perhaps the
number 3732 is a sacred one in some society;
then having this number 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
culture of authenticity slides towards
soft relativism.
This gives further force to a general presumption of
subjectivism about value:
things have significance not of themselves but because
people deem them to have it—as though people could
determine what is significant, either by decision, or
perhaps unwittingly and unwillingly by just feeling that way. This is
crazy. I couldn't just decide that the
most significant action is wiggling my toes in warm mud.
Without a special explanation, this is not an intelligible
claim (like the 3732 hairs above). So I wouldn't know what
sense to attribute to someone allegedly feeling that was
so. What could someone mean who said this?
<p37> … because your feeling can't determine what is
significant. Soft relativism self-destructs.
Things
take on importance against a background of
intelligibility. Let us call this a horizon.'
Self
Taylor
should explain how the "self-destruction" takes place. How
can feelings "self-destruct". It is more likely that it is
the reactions of other people to "feelings", which
destroy. If a person is within the laws of society why can the
person's feelings not be respected?
P37
'..
homosexual relations, ..'
Self
Currently
there are much upheaval in France about legally allowing
homosexual marriage and adoption. A relevant question is
whether these laws are acceptable according to Jesus'
definition of love because if his
definition is transposed to other times as a universal law
it means that the law of homosexual marriage should be
accepted, even whilst differing from the law's moral authenticity.
My definition of authenticity is not the same as Taylor's.
Authenticity means to me validity and to him it means
invalidity. We agree partly for example about the question
of homosexuality? He however describes homosexuality as
authenticity and I not. Probably the difference is in the
definition of homosexuality self. It seems that people who
subscribe to Rousseau's
social contract define homosexuality as not being part of
an explicit social contract. If such a contract includes a
work contract, then dignity becomes relevant
and the Roman Catholic church's pride. Society can for
example allocate a menial work to an authentic (my
definition) character and the character's dignity could
prohibit him from entering into such a contract. The
extreme result will be death by poverty.
P39
'There
is a picture here of what human beings are like, placed
between this option for self-creation, and easier modes of
copping out, going with the flow, conforming with the
masses, and so on, which picture is seen as true,
discovered, not decided. Horizons are given.
But
more: this minimum degree of givenness, which underpins
the importance of choice, is not sufficient as a horizon,
as we saw with the example of sexual orientation. It may
be important that my life be chosen, as John Stuart Mill
asserts in On Liberty, (27) but unless some options are
more significant than others, the very idea of self-choice
falls into triviality and hence incoherence.'
Self
Taylor chooses the
easier road above, but his meaning is not very sure
to reader because of probable contradictions in his
writing. It looks as if he writes society has a right to
decide on the sexual orientation of a person for example
in the South of Asia where boys are given poison to change
their sexuality. Such a person has not the right according
to Taylor to decide self he is a man. Taylor does not
distinguish between the important implied difference
between Rousseau and Kant.
According to Rousseau individuals/groups may be used by
society as means to ends and according to
Kant societies have not the right to use
individuals/groups as means to ends.
P41
'We
have not shown that any particular one has to be
taken seriously.'
Self
Is the above 'one' the
surviving sacrificed caused by Taylor's elthaught?
P43
'(2)
Another one of the common axes of criticism of the
contemporary culture of authenticity is that it
encourages a purely personal understanding of
self-fulfilment, thus making the various
associations and communities in which the person enters
purely instrumental in their significance. At the broader
social level, this is antithetical to any strong
commitment to a community. In particular, it makes
political citizenship,
with its sense of duty and allegiance to political society,
more and more marginal. On the more intimate level, it
fosters a view of relationships in which these ought to
subserve personal fulfilment. The relationship is
secondary to the self-realization of the partners.'
Self
Taylor
accuses 'authentic' persons from using societal groups as
means to ends. The crux of the matter is
whether an individual should break God's
law for a group he/she is part of? According to Taylor an
individual should break God's law for the society he/she is part of.
The opposite of Taylor's argument implies that citizenship does not require
lying. In absolute terms a person cannot be expected to
lie for society but only expected to keep quiet for
society. A problem is that keeping quiet sometimes causes
inferences of affirmation. This line of argumentation is
dependent on circumstances. Having children for example
can change the view of society in a negative manner. Some
parents could become deceivers for their children against
society. Some partners could become 'Bonny and Clyde',
against broader society, because the partners became a
union for crime.
P44
'The
individualism of anomie and
breakdown of course has no social ethic attached to it;
but individualism as a moral principle or ideal
must offer some view on how the individual should live with
others.'
anomie |ˈanəˌmē| (also anomy)
noun
lack of the
usual social or ethical standards in an individual or
group : the theory that high-rise architecture leads
to anomie in the residents.
DERIVATIVES
anomic |əˈnämik;
əˈnō-| adjective
ORIGIN
1930s: from French, from Greek anomia, from
anomos ‘lawless.’ (New Oxford American Dictionary)
Self
The question is whether norms according to
Taylor relate to God's norms or to society's normal behavior. Taylor gives the
impression that "norms" mean to
him societies' norms because he does not refer often
enough to God's norms.
P45
'Two modes of social existence are quite
evidently linked with the contemporary culture of
self-fulfilment. The first is based on the notion of
universal right:
everyone
should have the right and capacity to be themselves. This
is what underlies soft relativism as
a moral principle:
no one has a right to criticize another's values. …
Secondly, this culture puts a great emphasis
on relationships in the intimate sphere, especially love relationships.
These are seen to be the prime loci of self-exploration
and self-discovery and among the most important forms of
self-fulfilment. This view reflects the continuation in
modern culture of a trend that is now centuries old and
that places the centre of gravity of the good life not in
some higher sphere but in what I want to call the
"ordinary life," that is, the life of production and the
family, of work and love.(31)'
Self
Thus, Taylor chooses the dictionary
definition of love and
not the Bible's definition of love as the true definition.
P46
'As against this notion of honour, we have
the modern notion of dignity, now used in a universalist and egalitarian
sense, where we talk of the inherent "dignity of human
beings," or of citizen dignity.
The underlying premiss here is that everyone shares in
this.(33)
p48
'The thing about inwardly derived, personal,
original identity is that it doesn't enjoy this
recognition a priori. It has to win it through exchange,
and it can fail.'
Self
Taylor contradicts himself with regard to
'dignity' and 'original identity' above? See page 49.
Taylor argues against any inherency of humans. He argues
like Locke that a person is not inherently good, maybe he
argues like the Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages
that people are inherently bad, am not sure.
P48
'It's not surprising that we can find some of
the seminal ideas about citizen dignity and
universal
recognition, even if not in these terms, in Rousseau, one of the points of origin of the modern
discourse of authenticity. Rousseau is a sharp critic of hierarchical
honour, of "preferences." In a significant passage of the
Discourse on Inequality, he pinpoints a fateful
moment when society takes
a turn towards corruption and injustice, when people begin
to desire preferential esteem. (34)'
Self
Taylor contradicts himself again above
because here a disagreement with Rousseau's corrupt sacrificing society is
mentioned
but in the start of the book on page 2 he espouses
Rousseau's sacrificing society. It seems that the issue of
sacrifice (Self or other, self or own child) is where most
people contradict themselves.
P49-50
'It
is not surprising that in the culture of authenticity,
relationships are seen as the key loci of self-discovery
and self-confirmation.' … They are also crucial because
they are the crucibles of inwardly generated identity. …
Equal recognition is not just the appropriate mode for a
healthy democratic society,
Its refusal can inflict damage on those who are denied it,
according to a widespread modern view. The projecting of
an inferior or demeaning image on another can actually
distort and <p50> oppress, to the extent that it is
interiorized. .. denied recognition can be a form of
oppression.'
Self
At
the end of chapter V, Taylor and I agreed.
P56
' .. one holds to a
subjectivist view of moral convictions as
mere projections that reason cannot alter.'
P58
'And
they tend to see fulfilment as just of the self,
neglecting or delegitimating the demands that come from
beyond our own desires or aspirations, be they from
history, tradition, society,
nature, or God; they foster, in other words, a radical
anthropocentrism.'
Self
Here it seems clear
that Taylor and my differences are on a high level where
definitions of God are relevant. He sees anthropomorphism
as negative for society and I see
anthropomorphisms as positive for society. He has a
psychological barrier, which prohibits his 'horizon'
to beyond anthropomorphism to anthropomorphisms formed by
the Word of God. He uses a presupposition of one singular
'radical' anthropomorphic God who survived sacrificial
religious rites as possible, whereas I rejected the
presupposition of possibility of one singular future
anthropomorphic God. Another possibility is that he
believes in the possibility of a wholly incorporeal God
that will never return in human form, which according to
me is not possible without transcendent creatures.
P60-61
'But in fact, the
Nietzschean critique of all "values" <p61> as
created cannot but exalt and entrench anthropocentrism. …
As this "higher" theory filters down into the popular
culture of authenticity—we
can see this, for instance, among students, who are at the
juncture of the two cultures—it further strengthens the
self-centred modes, gives them a certain patina of deeper
philosophical justification.'
Self
Nietzsche caused the
necessity of re-evaluation of dogmatic values for example
honesties. Honesties as valuable moral has to be proven
in our postmodern society and the proof has
to be sufficiently spread before society will recover to a
new order of explained values. Reader's thoughts that
Taylor's reference to 'patina'
refers to human sacrifices and patens are enforced above.
The reference to students with a patina is probably a
reference to arrogant students who needs to be sacrificed
according to Taylor.
P62
'Since
about 1800, there has been a tendency to heroize the
artist, to see in his or her life the essence of the human
condition, and to venerate him or her as a seer, the
creator of cultural values.
But of course, along with this has gone a new
understanding of art. No longer defined mainly by
imitation, by mimēsis
of reality, art is understood now more in terms of
creation. These two ideas go together. If we become
ourselves by expressing what we're about, and if what we
become is by hypothesis original, not based on the
pre-existing either, but a new creation. We think of the
imagination as creative.'
Self
The
above writing shows Taylor's identification with forming
catharsis and being Caiaphas. He does not realize it seems
that he can reject both Caiaphas and Caiaphas' teaching
(assumed) that one anthropomorphic God, the Messiah, can
exist after surviving numerous attempts to murder 'Him'.
He accepts Caiaphas' teaching, which is similar to
Aristotle's
teaching of 'mimēsis'.
P63
'But there is
another range of reasons for this close drawing together
of art and self-definition. It's not just that both
involve creative poiēsis.
It is also that self-definition comes early to be
contrasted to morality. Some theories hold them tightly
together. Rousseau does, for
instance: "le sentiment de l'existence" would make me a
perfectly moral creature if I were
but in full contact with it. But very early on it came to
be seen that this was not necessarily so.
'Poïesis (Ancient
Greek: ποίησις) is etymologically derived from
the ancient term ποιέω,
which means "to make". This word, the root of our modern "poetry", was first
a verb, an action
that transforms and continues the world.' (From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poiesis
on 24 April 2013)
Self
Above
Taylor opines that there is not a mystical union between
one anthropomorphic human and a metaphysical force.
p65
'Authenticity
involves originality, it demands a revolt against
convention. It is easy to see how standard morality itself
can come to be seen as inseparable from stifling
convention. Morality as normally understood obviously
crushing much that is elemental and instinctive in us,
many of our deepest and most powerful desires. So there
develops a branch of search for authenticity that pits it
against the moral.'
Self
Taylor does not
distinguish between the Dionysian and Apollonian in
Nietzsche's writings. He generalises
against anthropomorphism's good and evil parts. He thus
presupposes a wholly incorporeal God like Plato. Plato
distinguishes clearly between Dionysian and Apollonian
characters in The
Statesman. Plato also says though that humans cannot
be God in The
Statesman. Plato is a bit closer to the truth than
Taylor because he distinguishes between good and evil
anthropomorphism.
P66
'So
authenticity can develop in
many branches. Are they all equally legitimate? I don't
think so. I am not trying to say that these apostles of
evil are simply wrong. They may be onto something, some
strain within the very idea of authenticity, that may pull
us in more than one direction.'
P66-p67
'Briefly, we can say
that authenticity (A) involves (i)
creation and construction as well as discovery, (ii)
originality, and frequently (iii) opposition to the rules
of society and even
potentially to what we recognize as morality. But it is
also true, as we saw, that it (B) requires (i) openness to
horizons of significance (for otherwise the creation loses
the background that can save it from insignificance) and
(ii) a self-definition in dialogue. That these demands may
be in tension has to be allowed. But what must be wrong is
a simple privileging of one over the other, of (A), say,
at the expense of (B), or vice versa. <p67> This is
what the trendy doctrines of "deconstruction" involve
today. They stress (A.i), the constructive, creative
nature of our expressive languages, while altogether
forgetting (B.i). And they capture the extremer forms of
(A.iii), the amoralism of creativity, while forgetting
(B.ii), its dialogical setting, which
binds us to others.
Self
The above quote
shows that Taylor's emphasis is on sacrifice of the amoral
but his emphasis is problematic because he interferes with
the judicial system when he philosophises sacrifices of
the amoral as part of the '"bourgeois" ethic of order'
(p66) because inherent in his saying is a disrespect of
the judicial system, which' mandate it is to sacrifice
amoral people. Through his generalisation about
anthropocentric authenticity he could allow
himself to sacrifice, which is against the judicial
system's rules, good anthropomorphism. Reader experienced
such sacrificing last year when his employer dismissed him
and broke many laws of the Labour Relations Act in the
name of sacrificing anthropomorphism, without
distinguishing between right and wrong.
Sociology of Knowledge and madness of crowds are relevant.
Anthropomorphism is part of Western human nature after 1
500 years of Christian indoctrination. If a person does
not acknowledge anthropomorphism by him/her Self the
person makes a presupposition error, which causes
irrational behaviour. Natural transcendence in metaphors
about Father of God, Mother of God and Son of God does not
leave any human's subconscious in the West, which followed
the normal educational route, alone. Taylor should have
rather accepted that fact and channelled his own God
thoughts to the good; his denial of his own God thoughts
perhaps plunged him into evil, Caiaphas like, sacrificing.
Caiaphas utilitiristically, sacrificed Jesus who defined
love as partly
complying with laws, whilst Jesus had a friend, Matthew
who was a tax collector. There was thus no amorality in
Jesus' philosophy but yet he was sacrificed because of
Caiaphas' and society's God thoughts (after 333
years of Greek and Roman mythological influence). Mind
you, Taylor must be already 82 years old, if still alive.
25
April 2013
p72-73
'There is already a
battle going on between the boosters and the knockers as
far as the culture of authenticity is concerned. I'm
suggesting that this struggle is a mistake; both sides are
wrong. What we ought to be doing is fighting over the
meaning of authenticity,
and from the standpoint developed here, we ought to be
trying to persuade people that self-fulfilment,
so far from excluding unconditional relationships and
moral <p73>
demands beyond the self, actually requires these in some
form.'
Self
That
makes sense.
P74
'..—authenticity points us towards
a more self-responsible form of life. … at it's best
authenticity allows a richer mode of existence.'
P82
'On one level, it
clearly concerns the manner of
espousing any end or form of life. … But this doesn’t mean that on another
level the content
must be self-referential: that my goals must express or
fulfil my desires or aspirations, as against
something that stands beyond these. I can find fulfilment
in God, or a political cause, or tending
the earth.'
'The
change I want to talk about here goes back to the end of
the eighteenth century and is related to the shift from an
understanding of art as mimēsis to one
that stresses creation, which I discussed in section VI.'
Self
This
question about mimesis or creation has its presuppositions
in different versions of Exodus 20:4. In the 1933
Afrikaans version it is: 'Jy mag vir jou geen gesnede
beeld of enige gelykenis maak van wat bo in die hemel is,
of van wat onder op die aarde is, of van wat in die waters
onder die aarde is nie.' In the New International Version
(English) of 1985 it reads: 'You shall not make for
yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above
or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.' The
Afrikaans is much stricter and probably the Jewish as well
because The New Testament in Afrikaans (1933 version)
speaks about Jesus' 'gelykenisse' and Exodus 20 does not
refer to an idol. The reference is to any painting or
statue or parable. The implication in the 1933 Afrikaans
version is that Jesus broke this law of God by comparing
parables to actualities. Probably it is also this Old
Testament law of God, which inspired Derrida's post-modern
philosophy of deconstruction to not make 'gelykenisse'
when we speak. The Christian church rejects this law of
the Old Testament because the history of Jesus is mimesis.
P83
'Shakespeare
could draw on the correspondences, for instance when, to
make us feel the horror of the act of regicide, ..'
P85
'"…'nature',
which was once prior to the poem and available for
imitation, now shares with the poem a common origin in the
poet's creativity."(45)'
'(45)
Earl Wasserman, The
Subtler Language (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1968), pp. 10-11.
P89-90
'To take a salient
example, just because we no longer believe in the
doctrines of the Great Chain of Being, we don't need to
see ourselves as set in a universe that we can consider
simply as a source of raw materials for our projects.
We may still need to see ourselves as part of a larger
order that can make claims on us. <p90> Indeed, this
latter may be thought of as urgent. It would greatly help
to stave off ecological disaster if we would recover a
sense of the demand that our natural surroundings and
wilderness make on us. … Albert Borgman points out how
much of the argument for ecological restraint and
responsibility is couched in anthropocentric language.
(50) Restraint is shown as necessary for human welfare.'
P96
'Richer
moral sources have fed
it. But as in the case of authenticity,
these moral sources tend to get lost from view, precisely
through the hardening of atomist and instrumentalist
values. Retrieving them might allow us to recover some
balance, one in which technology would occupy another
place in our lives than as an insistent, unreflected
imperative.
Self
Stopping
utilitarian imparting of ideas could help to achieve the
above wish of Taylor. Concurrently the Occidental
universally unrealised ethic of modernity, which causes
creativities, can be explained to humanity in a way all
realize their own creativities, without ideas being
imparted to all in order to prohibit inequality due to
territorial advancements.
P98
'Atomism
in particular tends to be generated by the scientistic
outlook that goes along with instrumental efficiency, as
well as being implicit in some forms of rational action,
such as that of the entrepreneur. And so these attitudes
acquire almost the status of norms, and seem backed by
unchallengeable social reality.'
P99
'We
need think only of the whole movement since the Romantic
era, which has been challenging the dominance of these
categories, and of the offshoot of that movement today,
which is challenging our ecological mismanagement.'
Self
I argued that
utilitarian imparting of ideas contribute to ecological
mismanagement. The following argument about ethics of
authenticity could further
enhance ecological management. It is a universal argument
that if every nation in the world sees dignity in creating their
own, that possibly ecological mismanagement would be less
because then acceptance of imparting of others' ideas
would not be accepted and imparting of ideas would not
happen. Perhaps then, naturally, the world will go back to
a state in which consuming
societies and greed will not be the overpowering force it
is currently. A world can then be imagined, which will
compare to the time of presumed Atlantis when one island
fell away into the see, perhaps, because that island could
not contain it's own consumption.
P113
'A sense grows that
the electorate as a whole is defenceless against the
leviathan state; a well-organized and
integrated partial grouping may, indeed, be able to make a
dent, but the idea that the majority of the people might
frame and carry through a common project comes to seem
utopian and naïve. And so people give up. Already failing
sympathy with others is further weakened by the lack of a
common experience of action, and a sense of hopelessness
makes it seem a waste of time to try.
P120
'And
this common action requires that we overcome fragmentation
and powerlessness—that is, that we address the worry that
Tocqueville first defined, the slide in democracy towards
tutelary power.'
tutelary |ˈt(y)oōtlˌerē|
(also tutelar |-tl-ər|)
adjective
serving as
a protector, guardian, or patron : the tutelary spirits
of these regions.
• of or
relating to protection or a guardian : the state maintained
a tutelary relation
with the security police.
ORIGIN
early 17th cent.: from Latin tutelarius,
from tutela ‘keeping’ (see tutelage ).
(New Oxford American Dictionary)
A
Aristotle · 7, 23
authenticity · 7, 8,
9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28,
29
C
Caiaphas · 3
capitalism · 8
capitalist · 4
citizen · 12, 19, 20
citizens · 5
citizenship · 8, 12,
17, 18
colonization · 11
consequences · 5, 9
D
decline · 2
dialogical · 14, 24
dignity · 5, 16, 19,
20, 29
disenchantment · 2,
3
E
eagle · 2
elthaught · 12, 14, 17
ends · 4, 5, 17
F
feeling · 9, 15
freedom · 5, 8, 10,
11
H
horizon · 15, 16, 21
I
individual · 3, 4,
5, 6, 7, 8, 17, 18
individualism · 2,
5, 6, 9, 18
instrumental reason
· 3, 4, 5
K
Kant · 4, 11, 12, 17
king · 2
L
larger project · 2
legal systems · 2
liberal · 7
Locke · 9, 10
love · 6, 11, 13,
15, 19, 25
M
Marx · 4, 11
mean · 3, 5, 11, 15, 18,
26
meaning · 5, 16, 26
moral · 5, 7, 8, 9,
10, 11, 12, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 26, 28
N
Nietzsche · 3, 22,
24
Nietzsche's "last
men" · 3
O
opponents · 7
P
patina · 6, 7, 22
political · 5, 9,
11, 17, 26
projects · 4, 27
R
right and wrong · 9,
25
Rousseau · 10, 11,
12, 13, 16, 17, 20, 23
S
sacrificing · 3
self-fulfilment · 6, 7, 12, 17, 19,
26
society · 2, 5, 6,
7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24,
25
soft relativism · 7,
13, 15, 19
state · 9, 11, 12,
29, 30
subjectivism · 8, 15
subjectivists · 7
T
threaten · 4
tutelary · 5, 30
U
universal · 19