charles taylor essay
Post on 18-Nov-2014
110 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
Charles Taylor’s Faith and Hope Through the Modern Social Imaginary
Brayden BenhamCSP 2000
Submitted to: Dr. Kenneth KieransApril/20/09
Charles Taylor offers a postmodern philosophy thoroughly influenced by
Hegel. Taylor is influenced greatly by Nietzsche and the subsequent critics of
modernity who followed in his footsteps; he offers a synergistic interpretation of
these thinkers much in the spirit of Hegel. His book "Modern Social Imaginaries"
reads like a Foucauldian anthropological study, but while he takes the disinterested
attitude of Foucault he is also fusing it with Hegelian dialectic and the end result is
much different from anything that has come out of Foucault. Taylor's critique
concerns the question of the history of the will and the modern concept of it. Taylor
traces the origin of the will back its source and finds it in Augustine, he believes that
this idea has transformed over many years but still remains present in the modern
relationship to the will. Taylor sets up the "modern social imaginary" as an eternal
religious, moral, and ethical consciousness that cannot help but permeate and play a
part in political discussion. Taylor is able to look on the advancements of the
modern age in a post-modern way but still remains faithful to the Hegelian principle
of synergy.
In a specific way Charles Taylor's philosophy is postmodern. It is so in the
sense that that it is "undoubtedly part of the modern" (Lyotard, 115); it is a deep
reflection on modernism itself, but still operating within the bounds of modernism.
It's post-modern in the sense of Nietzsche's seminally influential critique of moral
values. It was Nietzsche's going beyond modernism that allowed him to ask the
question: "Do you want to accompany? or go on ahead? or go off alone?" (Twilight,
27). This is a post-modern question in that it implies a break from the modern
concept of equality and mutual benefit (i.e. "do you want to accompany?"), an ideal
that Taylor will argue is the basis of modernism which takes on increasing
importance as history progresses (Modern Social, 2). It can also be seen as an
extension of Nietzsche initial thought: "I mistrust all systematizes and avoid them.
The will to a system is a lack of integrity" (Twilight, 25). But Nietzsche has a firm
"mistrust" of systems (or meta-narratives) and sought to breakdown the old moral
order, and a lot of the post-modern thinkers like Lyotard and thinkers Taylor deems
postmodern, like Derrida and Foucault (Sources, 499), share in this mistrust of and
thereby reject all systematization and adopt a nihilistic stance. The postmodern
answer for Lyotard - in a very Nietzschean sense - is "[for] us [to] wage a war on
totality; [to] be witness to the unrepresentable; [to] activate the differences...
(Lyotard, 118). But though Taylor is also driven by Nietzsche's impetus he does not
"mistrust all systematizers" nor think that we should "wage a war on totality"; he
thinks, in the spirit of Hegel that systems are irrevocably valid and instrumental in
the modern social order. He is not as faithful in one as Hegel but he doesn't entirely
reject them either; in regard to meta-narratives he has said: "I'm knocking one or
some but that doesn't mean all" (Taylor, Keynote Speech Internet Video). Taylors
writing is imbued with the Hegealian language of unity, symbiosis, cognition, God,
and implicit ideas. He has much more respect and much more of a willingness to put
systems to positive use than Foucault who to Taylor "...seems to be claiming (I
believe) impossible neutrality, which recognized no claims as binding" (Sources,
519). Taylor is against this type of nihilism and offers a philosophy of "hope", in the
face of the paradigm of European modernity (Modern Social, 196) (Sources, 521).In
a postmodern way Taylor remains skeptical of systems in general but has a larger
capacity for affirmative action than the postmodern philosophers mentioned above,
in this way he seems to be fusing Nietzschean skepticism with Hegaelian
systematization. And he acknowledges this quality in himself, he says in regard to
Nietzsche's critique of morality: "Morality demanded a kind of self-overcoming in its
way. And perhaps one can say (or is this introducing a kind of Hegealian vision of
stages into Nietzsche?) that it was a necessary step (Sources, 453). Here Taylor is
looking at history as a series of steps, which has been an image of systematization,
meta-physics and Christianity since the time of Plato, Plotinus and Augustine,
epitomized by modernity in Hegel, and still in use to this day. Taylor, as opposed to
so many others, is using Nietzsche in a positive way with the aim of offering a vision
of unity in the spirit of Hegel.
But why does Taylor trust systems? What is so vaild in the Judeo-Christian,
Neo-platonic and Hegealian vision of metaphysics? Their importance lies in what
Taylor calls the "Social Imaginary". For him the "Social imaginary" is not motivated
by the specific ideas in these historically influential visions because "[i]t is..absurd to
believe...that ideas somehow drive history" (Modern Social, 63). Ideas do not drive
history but the extent to which they are interpreted and applied to a given culture
plays an instrumental role. The modern social imaginary is "that common
understanding that makes possible common practices and a widely shared sense of
legitimacy" (Modern Social, 23). The social imaginary can be derived from ideas of
God, ideas of justice, the good, political ideals and economic ideals, but they do not
become valid until they become "social" and thereby motivate a large number of
people. The social imaginary doesn't have to be a new idea either, or a reiteration of
an old, it can be both at the same time or either. This is where the social imaginary
derives its "divine" and "eternal" quality in that Taylor believes "...certain
motivations are dominant in history..." (Modern Social, 32), and thereby must
receive credit as eternally human and divine in that it is something that "...can never
be adequately expressed in the form of explicit doctrines because of its unlimited
and indefinite nature" (Modern Social, 25). Since certain recurrent concepts and
ideas keep coming up and being modified throughout history Taylor attributes this
to a transcendental source which seems to be unmovable and unchangeable but
which we change our human views on from time to time. The modern social
imaginary issues from “God” for Taylor, much like “Spirit” issued from God for Hegel
and is gradually revealed throughout history.
Taylor calls the historical process of the social imaginary "the long march";
this is "a process whereby new practices or modifications of old ones, either
developed through improvisation among certain groups and strata of the
population" (Modern Social, 30). An example of the modern social imaginary in
modern literature - and one that Taylor extensively employs - is that of the poetry of
T.S. Eliot. ""What are the roots that clutch, what braches grow/Out of this stony
rubbish? Son of man,/You cannot say or guess, for you know only heap of broken
images, where the sun beats,/And the dead tree gives no shelter , the cricket no
relief,/And the dry stone no sound of water..." (Waste Land, 19-24). Eliot got the
"Son of man..." bit from Ezekial 2:1 and the "dead tree...cricket..." part from
Ecclesiastes 12:5, but this poem was written in the nineteen-twenties and these are
references to the Old Testament. The intervening sentence: "You cannot say or
guess for you know only a heap of broken images..." is Eliot's own; in using the
language of the Bible to express his own personal feelings within the context of the
modern world he is appealing to the eternal truth expressed in the Bible and in this
way complements Taylor's idea of the social Imaginary. Taylor's reading of Eliot is
as a positive affirmation of the social imaginary, but he realizes that nihilistic
conclusions can be drawn from the "Waste Land": "The implicit narration here is a
history of decline" (464). And indeed this is the initial impression upon reading the
poem; we are presented with a vision of a land with infertile soil and no sign of
water for regeneration, we are lead to believe in this that Eliot is nostalgic for an
outdated "romanticism" which cannot be returned to. "But", Taylor says, "on
examination, this doesn't seem at all what is afoot...in Eliot's...work. The goal here
seems to be a kind of unity across persons, or across time..." (Sources, 465). This
idea of "unity" is crucial to Taylors overall philosophy and to his concept of the
social imaginary. It seems that Eliot attests to this concept of unity in making
Tiresias "the most important personage in the poem" (Waste Land, 42). In Tiresias
has immortal life, like the social imaginary, and is both male and female, thereby
holding an all encompassing and superior view to common man. In the Waste Land
Tiresias can be seen as an embodiment of the idea of the social imaginary in that the
goal of "unity across persons, or..time...is realized" in him (Sources, 465). Though
Eliot's Tiresias is an example of the positive manifestation of the social imaginary
there are many forms - some much more negative - that this concept can take.
In terms of Taylor’s definition of the “long march” the social imaginary is
something that is developed overtime but which revels certain fundamental
characteristics of human existence. The most dominant social imaginary, for Taylor,
is that of society for the purpose of mutual benefit and security. Through the scope
of the long march Taylor believes “the underlying idea of society as existing for the
(mutual) benefit of individuals and the defense of their rights takes on more and
more importance” (Modern Social, 4). In this light in Modern Social Imaginaries,
Taylor deals with the developing stages of this crucial driving force behind society.
The earliest and most influential example given of this is in reference to Book II of
Plato’s Republic- seemingly with a passage such as the following in mind: “I think a
city comes to be…because not one of us is self-sufficient, but needs many things…
and as they need many things, people make use of one another for various
purposes” (Republic, II:39:b-c). This remains the fundamental principle of society,
but over the course of history its importance is compounded and its definition is
transformed to suit a given age, nonetheless it remains constant. In this ancient
social imaginary people are convinced that they most band together, on an
individual level - in that they wish to avoid bodily harm, and on a spiritual level - in
that they believe that banding together is justified demanded by a higher order in
order for one to achieve spiritual well being. This is because moral order always
remains “a hierarchy in society that expresses and corresponds to hierarchy in the
cosmos” (Modern Social, 9). Taylor argues that in ancient cultures the evils of
independence from society were manifested in spiritual images and in this “we have
an order that tends to impose itself by the course of things [where] violations are
met with a backlash that transcends the merely human realm” (Modern Social, 10).
He cites Heraclitus’ example that if the sun were ever to derive from its nature
course the Furies would fly up and put it back into check (Modern Social, 10). This
view is similar to the Aristotelian/Platonic concept of the forms, and the Christian
concept of God (Modern Social, 9); this crucial imaginary comes to be developed and
adapted continuously over time in many different ways. Since the influence of this
ideal of mutual benefit justified by transcendence only becomes greater over time;
these archaic concepts of it that may seem ridiculous to modern readers but for
Taylor they gain increasing importance over the course of the long march of history.
Taylor believes that the Platonic concept of mutual benefit is crucially
expanded upon by Augustine, and that the Augustinian interpretation has “been
formative of our entire Western culture” (Sources, 132). The difference between
Plato and Augustine is God. More specifically the difference between Plato and
Augustine is the New Testament. For Plato the object of ones’ love and knowledge
should be the good and that we come to discover this good over time. But for
Augustine the object of ones knowledge and love is God. The difference here is that
for Plato the good is to be found externally and is eternally manifested in the
universal, but for Augustine God is both present in the external world and universe
but also within ourselves. In Taylor’s words the differences is that “…where Plato
the eye already has the capacity to see, for Augustine it has lost this capacity. This
must be restored by grace” (Sources, 139). Through this Augustinian interpretation
influenced by Christian benevolence in the sense of the “new commandment” that
Jesus delivers in the New Testament: “That ye love one another, as I have loved you,
that ye also love one another” (John 13:14). Here spiritual well-being is justified
through Christ and through God rather than through the individual in the face of the
good. Another crucial aspect of the Augustinian interpretation of Plato is his
emphasis on memory. To this Taylor says: “[Memmoria]…it is here that our implicit
grasp of what we are resides, which guides us as we move from our original self-
ignorance and grievous self-misdescription to true self-knowledge…[in this way] the
soul can be said to ‘remember God’” (Sources, 135). This implies an ancient form of
the social imaginary. Of course Augustine would never ever refer to God as
“imaginary”, but his idea of innate ideas does follow the criteria of the social
imaginary set up by Taylor: it “guides us” and it is “implicit” in that it “can never be
adequately expressed in the form of explicit doctrines” (Modern Social, 25).
Augustine’s achievement is that of fixing the social imaginary in God and putting an
emphasis on the inwardness that is required to come to know God. In this way “…
the will is the basic disposition of our being” (Sources, 138), but it is not our
individual will but God’s will in the sense of John 5:30: “…I seek not my own will, but
the will of the Father which hath sent me”. In vesting the relations of human will to
the will of God though inwardness puts man in a reciprocal position where causality
is “circular not linear” (Sources, 138), and the will of man is reciprocally justified by
the eternal will of God. This is a pivotal moment in the long march of social
imaginaries and this Augustinian concept will come to be interpreted in many
different and influential ways in the future.
This Augustinian idea of love, inwardness and benevolence based on the will of
God came to influence the modern world through its interpretation by Descartes
and the seminal Enlightenment figureheads. To this effect Taylor says,
“…the sixteenth and seventeenth [centuries], can be seen as an immense
flowering of Augustinian spirituality across all confessional differences…which
continued in its own way into the Enlightenment, as the case of Liebniz amply
illustrates…the impact is still potent today, and that it in a sense matches the
outlook and identity of modernity” (Sources, 141).
Descartes went on to develop the Augustinian idea of the will in his meditations. It is
here that he says: “I think therefore I am”. To Taylor this suggests the Augustinian
demarche that one can only understand oneself in the light of a perfection that goes
beyond ones powers (Sources, 141). Taylor describes the inwardness of Augustine
as a sort of “proto-cogito”: “this understanding of thinking as a kind of inner
assembly an order we construct [and] will be put to new revolutionary use by
Descartes” (Sources, 141). This concept of cognition will go on to be used by The
Enlightenment, Hegel, and will gain new importance and new meaning in the
nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. One of the most important enlightenment
figures for Taylor is John Locke who takes the idea of society and humanity as based
on good and puts it into a political context: “[The modern Lockian] picture of society
is that of individuals who come together to form a political entity against a certain
preexisting moral background and with certain ends in view” (Modern Social, 3).
The moral background here is Christianity and the new political entity is democracy.
For Taylor and many others democracy is the necessary evolution of the Judeo-
Christian doctrine of benevolence and the societal concept of mutual benevolence.
But the form that this development takes runs contrary to the original doctrines that
initiated it. In a specific way for Taylor we find this contradiction in Rousseau. In the
Augustinian/Christian sense Rousseau wanted to justify human endeavors through
God by reiterating in a political sense that “in the perfectly virtuous man, self-love is
no longer distinct from love of others” (Modern Social, 118), and in this way we
“distinguish two qualities in the will: good and evil.” (Modern Social, 116). In this
way democracy is seen as the natural will of God. This order in an Augustinian way
supposes a kind of Manacheanism in that it involves the physical representation of
good and evil as two opposing forces within oneself and society. It is in this that the
Augustine theory of the will comes full circle, but in a new and contrary form.
Justification is no longer cicular but linear, on the course of history. This doesn’t
happen at the exact point of the Enlightenment, at this point society is still strongly
based on religion it is the induction of a new social imaginary that allows for this
concept of providence to enter the secular sphere.
The economy is the new social imaginary that proceeds from the
Enlightenment. “The (market) economy comes to constitute a sphere…not only
objectively but in…self-understanding…secularly constituted…but…not public”
(Modern Social, 103). The economy was able to be held in this regard through the
framework of optimism and justification set up by the Enlightenment thinkers. The
economy is something vastly different from Augustinian concepts of the relationship
with God because in this case a hierarchy was constituted; those who pray are on
the top of this hierarchy, those who fight are in the middle and those who work are
on the bottom. This ideal was justified by the organic metaphor that “that the feet
are below the head is how it should be” (Modern Social, 10). But with our modern
democratic/economic order this aristocratic hierarchy is destroyed and we enter a
new objective framework of equality and polity. Once this emphasis on the
economic was set up we entered a new era of privilege for those who previously had
little. This takes place in the public sphere. This is a new place “transalted into our
modern public sphere, which consists of ‘bourgeoisie’ and ‘homme’ agents who,
manipulated by the economy, have reliance on church and family but not in the
original…sense” (Modern Social, 101). The public sphere is a space in which the
public may come and discuss matters that may or may not have political/religious
stance, but in a way that establish a consensus that merits certain norms within the
society. This is founded on the Augustinian/Christian concept of self-fulfillment
through inwardness and relationship to the world. The difference here though is
that “the ordinary is sanctified” (Modern Social, 102), and the power of grace is put
into the human hand rather than the hand of God. To Taylor this constitutes a
“secular” society. But this shouldn’t suggest that God is slowly waned out of society
but rather, “…it is the end of society as structured by its dependence on God or the
beyond. It is not the end of personal religion” (Modern Social, 187). In fact as our
democratic society continues, since it was originally justified by God, the question of
God’s existence should only burn hotter and hotter in us the further we move
further away from him.
“But this identification of civilization and modern moral order didn’t come
about without opposition (Modern Social, 179). In the centuries following the
Enlightenment there were a number of philosophers who saw what they thought
were negative implications in the democratic/economic society. Amongst them are,
Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. In describing the developments in
economic and democratic society Taylor speaks of a certain “leveling” which takes
place gradually as a result of this (Modern Social, 73, 180-1). This leveling has to do
with the expansion of Judeo-Christian benevolence and equality across the world.
What equality constitutes in this societal construct is a lower common denominator,
a lower standard which we are thereby free to pursue through common expectation:
“if we…reject the catholic idea…that all Christians must be 100 percent Christian…
than one must claim that ordinary life, the life that the vast majority cannot help
leading…is as hallowed as any other” (Modern Social, 73-4). To this Kierkegaard
would say: “Enthusiasm may end in disaster, but leveling is ipso facto the
destruction of the individual…It can therefore only be held up by the individual
attaining the religious courage which springs from his individual religious isolation”
(Kierkegaard, 54). This is a direct opposition to the development of Christian theory
in the light of democracy. Kierkegaard believes that such equality through
democracy will be the ruin of the individual and the religious way of life despite the
fact that it is founded upon this. Nietzsche is another example of this, who said: “For
the position is this: in dwarfing and leveling of the European man lurks our greatest
peril, for it is this outlook which fatigues—we see to-day nothing which wishes to be
greater, we surmise that the process is always still backwards…what is present day
nihilism? It is that we are tired of man” (Genealogy, 25). What this Christian doctrine
of equality introduces is for Nietzsche is a new era of politeness where consensus
and safety are the highest virtues. Nietzsche would rather switch back to the old
aristocratic way of thinking. He believes that the Judeo-Christian motivations behind
society have come to hold an authoritative grasp of the minds of men. The idea here
that the “process is still always backwards” is Nietzsche’s view of the Judeo-
Christian hold on modern morality. We reason “backwards” in that we only think
that happiness can be achieved through bottom-up initiatives of equality. It is this
mentality that allowed the Jews to escape from the Egyptians and for the Christians
to chastise the Scribes and Pharisee, and it has worked its way into the common
mind through the influence of religious doctrines and the social imaginary.
Although the Judeo-Christian democratic social imaginary has been met with
vehement refutations it remains the order of our society. Taylor is not trying to say
whether this is right or wrong rather, rather he says that, “their falsity cannot be
total” (Modern, 183). This is Taylor’s optimistic view shining through. He believes
since certain trends emerge from history and are accepted into our social imaginary
they must be valid in some truthful way. In a very Hegealian way Taylor says that
“belief and unbelief can co-exist as alternatives” (Modern Social, 187). This is a
breath of fresh air in the face of nihilistic philosophies like those of Derrida and
Foucault. But the position of nihilism is understandable to Taylor who says “to see
this question is profoundly unsettling, ultimately threatening our ability to act”
(Modern Social, 182). Therefore we are presented with a choice of whether or not to
act. Taylor has obviously chosen affirmative action. Rather than outlining the
differences and contradictions in history he analyzes the similarities and the
differences in a way that offers a more hopeful outlook without losing sight of the
drawbacks. In his words: “there is a lot we don’t understand…at the end of the day,
one model among many, a province of the multi-form world we hope (a little against
hope) will arise in order and peace…I hope that in a modest way it contributes to the
larger project” (Modern Social, 196). Taylor sets up the daunting task for himself
and us to make sense of it all, to try and integrate it so that “peace” and “order” will
come about. Even though this may seem an impossible task to some it is at least
encouraging to hear that some educated individuals still have faith in God and
society and a means to put such faith to work.
Bibliography
King James Bible. New York: American Bible Society, 1997.
Eliot, T.S.. The Waste Land and other Poems. London: Faber Publishing, 1988.
Hegel, G.W.F. Philosophy of Mind. U.S.: Kessinger Publications,
Hegel, G.W.F. Introduction to the History of Philosophy. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1988.
Heidegger, Martin. What is Called Thinking?. New York: Harper Colophon, 1968.
Kierkegaard, Soren. The Present Age. New York: Harper Perrenial, 1962.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois. Answering the Question: What is Postmodern?. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Twilight of the Idols, The Anti-Christ. London: Penguin, 1974.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Genealogy of Morals. New York: Dover Thrift, Inc., 2003.
Plato, Republic. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1974.
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self. Boston: Harvard, 1989.
Taylor, Charles. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.
http://fora.tv/2007/05/04/Keynote_Lecture_with_Charles_Taylor#chapter_05
top related