The struggle continues

The Ethics of Authenticity, Part 3

Welcome back to our philosophy of technology book club. This month’s book is The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor. Here is the reading schedule:

• June 8: Chapter I-III (approx. 30 pages)

• June 15: Chapters IV-VI (approx. 40 pages)

• June 19: Members-Only Zoom Call, 8 PM Eastern (Recording)

• June 22: Chapters VII-VIII (approx. 22 pages)

• June 29: Chapters IX-X (approx. 30 pages)

• July 5: Members-Only Zoom Call, 3 PM Eastern

I pushed the final Zoom call to July 5, as I’ll be in New York the last week of June for a workshop with the Marc Sanders Foundation.

In July, we’re reading Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, and in August, we’ll read (selections from) Mumford’s Technics & Civilization.

There are a few hours left on my mid-year discount., If you become a subscriber using this link, you’ll save 15% on an annual subscription. Nearly all of my work is made freely available, but I rely on your support. If you are able, please consider taking out a subscription.

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We’re now nearly done with our exploration of authenticity and Charles Taylor’s The Ethics of Authenticity. So far, Taylor has argued that:

1. A culture of subjectivism has arisen. This culture is motivated by a deficient form of the ideal of authenticity and paired with the ideal of self-determining freedom.

2. This culture has both ‘boosters and knockers,’ but that both camps fail to realize that there is a deeper, more compelling ideal of authenticity presently being ignored.

3. This more substantial ideal of authenticity relies on both the dialogical nature of identity and on recognizing sources of significance outside of ourselves, which Taylor calls ‘horizons of significance.’

4. We can argue for this substantial ideal in reason, meaning that we can make a rational and compelling case for it. This involves taking on some of the assumptions of the subjectivists and showing that their own ideal requires looking beyond themselves.

Last week, two active participants left similar comments. I want to highlight these at the beginning, as I think they were both getting at the same issue.

First, from Adam:

One thing I dislike about economists is that they think the world is based on market forces and money, and they don’t account for the role of power. Everyone is assumed to be equally powerful in their economic models. Likewise, I think many philosophers believe the world is based on ideas and logic, not power. Taylor has been neglecting power, and it makes it hard for me to credit his arguments.

Second, from David F.:

Another challenge, for me, with this book is answering the “So what?” question. It is almost like we are reading one drama critic (Taylor) debating other critics (Lasch, etc) about the interpretation of a subplot of a play (the malaises) of which I am acting in in real time. The debate is intellectually interesting but has no effect on the performance. At least profilicity explains why the person in front of me at a concert is annoyingly holding their phone up to record it in its entirety.

I think that Adam and David are gesturing at the same issue, though their motivations are a bit different. For Adam, the problem is a lack of recognition of power; since Taylor doesn’t address power, the argument falls short. For David, the problem is one of applicability. Both seem to come to the same conclusion, however. That’s a nice argument you have, Dr. Taylor —but so what?

This is directly related to the first chapter we read this week, ‘La Lotta Continua.’ In that chapter, Taylor makes explicit three assumptions he’s held implicitly throughout the book:

1. Authenticity is truly an ideal worth espousing.

2. You can establish in reason what it involves.

3. This kind of argument can make a difference in practice.

Adam and David’s response seems to revolve around (2) and (3). What is the point of making these sorts of arguments, and what effects will they have on our lives? I take this to be an important subject, especially when we are in the realm of practical philosophy. Theorizing about morality and the flourishing of the human person is pointless if it does not, in fact, make a difference in practice.

What this boils down to, I think, is a question of whether or not you think rational persuasion is a worthwhile practice. I take the project of rational persuasion to be highly valuable, as attempting to persuade another person (rather than manipulating, coercing, or defrauding them) is a sign of respecting them—it shows that you view them as an epistemic peer, or at least as someone who possesses enough power of mind to engage in reflection about the shape of their life or the truth of the matter. What Taylor is trying to do is actively persuade those who believe authenticity to be a worthwhile ideal that there is a better way, one that does not involve rejecting authenticity but rather taking it more seriously.

Contrast this with some of the critics of students on campus. These critics, unfortunately, often become scolds. Instead of persuading, they chide. They shake their heads solemnly and mutter ‘Kids these days…’ The students aren’t peers to these critics, and I think it is fair to say that the critics do not take them seriously. There is a lack of respect.

Now, respect does not mean refraining from criticism altogether; in fact, serious criticism is a sign of respect. But the criticism must be, to use Taylor’s phrase, in reason. It must be an attempt to rationally persuade.

In this brief chapter, we are told that we currently reside within a tension—and that means we can go in a few ways to resolve this tension. We can give in to subjectivism, we can reject authenticity altogether, or we can seek a better understanding of authenticity. For Taylor, the stakes are high. He writes:

I believe that in articulating this ideal over the last two centuries, Western culture has identified one of the important potentialities of human life. Like other facets of modern individualism – for instance, that which calls on us to work out our own opinions and beliefs for ourselves – authenticity points us towards a more self-responsible form of life. It allows us to live (potentially) a fuller and more differentiated life, because more fully appropriated as our own.

But it would also be a mistake to think that we can make one argument and then rest comfortably. No, Taylor says, we must remember the old Italian slogan: ‘la lotta continua.’ The struggle goes on.

Chapter VIII turns toward the issue of subjectivation, where ‘things centre more and more on the subject.’ As Taylor gives the history, we have seen a rise of subjectivation for several centuries. One might trace this back to at least the Modern philosophers: Descartes’ cogito ergo sum, Hume’s reliance on impressions as the foundations for epistemology, Kant’s consideration of the thinking subject and what it brings to experience. But Taylor illustrates his point primarily through poetry.

We must make a distinction here. Taylor calls this the manner/matter distinction. ‘Manner’ refers to the way we express a given an idea; ‘matter’ refers to the content expressed. Putting it crudely: Taylor is in favor of the subjectivation of manner, but not the subjectivation of matter. So, we begin with the subject, and from there we try to express something larger than ourselves.

This contrasts with the way that poets prior to modernity could express their ideas. These poets relied on a pre-understood language of symbols replete with public meaning: poets, as well as their fellow artists, could rely on the symbol of Madonna and Child or the oath of Horatii to easily communicate an idea. The symbols were already understood in the culture; they may need elaboration, and poets may do something interesting and novel with them, but they provide a foundation. But modernity arose, and Taylor believes that a shared backdrop of meaning began to fade away. Thus, Rilke writes of angels (to use one example), ‘We cannot get at them through a medieval treatise on the ranks of cherubim and seraphim, but we have to pass through this articulation of Rilke’s sensibility.’ Still, though, Rilke – as well as other great modernist writers – attempt to go beyond the self even when they begin with the self.

Early in our discussions, many commenters praised Taylor for his apparent metaethical minimalism; he seemed to be presuming very little about metaphysics in general, in fact. But here we see Taylor being a bit more open about his commitments, as when he writes at the end of this chapter:

Perhaps the loss of a sense of belonging through a publicly defined order needs to be compensated by a stronger, more inner sense of linkage. Perhaps this is what a great deal of modern poetry has been trying to articulate; and perhaps we need few things more today than such an articulation.

And Taylor was already hinting at this when he wrote of horizons of significance—sources of meaning beyond us.

Here are some of my favorite comments from last week.

JMB writes:

I think that anyone interested in what Taylor really means by "horizons of significance", as well as those interested in Taylor's metaethical background, should examine W. Dilthey's philosophy. Much of Taylor's thought is grounded in "the problem concerning the Weltanschauung". Taylor is taking a stance for the reality of ideal objects —this is the metaethical position that underlies his entire argument.

I asked JMB for some specific recommendations, and here is what they wrote:

I think Taylor’s essay “Interpretation and the Sciences of Man” is a good start.

Then, Choi’s “Defending Anti-Naturalism After the Interpretive Turn: Charles Taylor and the Human Sciences” and Blakely’s “Returning to the Interpretive Turn: Charles Taylor and His Critics”. They are very clear about the metaethical program that Taylor is committed to.

I wasn’t able to read these this week, but I will need to get to them soon.

I always feel a bit guilty about not mentioning comments from Live from the Tokyo Dome, 2001 (who also has one of my favorite usernames), but the comments are so long that they are difficult to include. But I’ll make an exception for this week’s post, as it bears directly on the discussion of artistic creation:

As Taylor is more or less just rapidly gesturing at things, it is understandable that he doesn’t linger on anything for long and most of what he has said still feels to me to be provisional in order to make some future point, so that’s fine.

But I think the rejection of an understanding of human creation as mimesis bears some thought. In what sense could we possibly mean this coherently?

Do we say that human beings can create entirely original forms that they didn’t first perceive within physis? Aristotle even foresees the objection to this that we have an abundance of forms which are not found in nature which we can nonetheless conceive of and describe. He would reply that what we are describing is the work of composition but not of generating entirely novel forms, and that at the end whenever any invented form is put under analysis it will have to reveal that it was made in some way by compositing things which really do exist. I find this pretty compelling, personally.

I would argue that whether you are attempting to represent a form of something real or are attempting to create a perhaps novel combination of pieces of forms, both would be describable as a mimetic activity.

Now, since we are mostly concerned with the human life as a work of art in this book, that each human being has a unique life to live and it is almost existentially their duty or calling to pursue what only they uniquely can and to do what only they can and in this way their life and their works will be original to them and them alone. A form of life is not the same as when we talk about the form of say a tree or an elephant. We use the word form for describing a life only in an analogical sense with this first usage.

Here we might say, that while the act of writing a book is not unique to you, you can write a book that only you can write. It may contain information that other people could have imparted but only you would have composed it in the way that you did and with the precise thoughts you did. Writing and thinking is something which you share with humanity and in which you are not innovating, but you can use them to communicate things which because of the inherent uniqueness of your life only you can. And you could make this same argument with building a house or a boat, or even the relationships that you have and helped to build and so on.

Heidegger will say that Dasein is the structure of its potentialities. And from this he will form the existential notion of guilt, which is failing to become that which you could have become. So then, the work of living your life could be seen in some sense as being the work of understanding and actualizing your potentialities.

This, and Heidegger’s thinking more broadly, contains a disconcerting amount of breadth. Human beings assuredly contain the potential for much evil and those potentialities remaining dormant would not necessarily be something you would ascribe any guilt to. But as Taylor points out, authenticity is often seen as requiring a conflict with common morality which would produce actions which many would call evil. So there is an amoral component to this existential understanding of the requirements that your own life places on you, when viewed from this tradition of thinking.

But leaving that aside for the moment, we can see how an argument can be made that your life can have an originality to it. I think it is pretty convincing. But in order to understand whether or not this is something of a banal point, we would need to know what mimesis could mean in the context of forms of life. If you reject your own inner longings for a career as a mangaka because of the demands of the world and the need to provide financially for family, are you living mimetically? Do you merely reflect the forms of life which are generally seen as reasonable or valid in your society? Or are you reflecting something about the life of your father if you follow him into his profession despite your own disparate yearnings toward other things?

But even in these conditions, your choices and the things you do and create are all still originally yours. It’s a pretty shallow understanding of originality and life to suppose that a plumber is inauthentic if he sometimes also wanted to be a novelist. That his sacrifices for his family were in fact inauthentic ones. So this can’t be it.

And what are we supposing is the original of which we are making a degraded copy? In the case of making a sculpture of a lion it is somewhat clear that either there is simply the real form of the lion which I see or else there is the Ideal form of a lion which I already knew and was able to intuit as a form of recollection. Or, if you prefer, as a nominalist I saw a lot of lions and formed an abstract idea of the form of a lion which then I used as a model to make a sculpture.

But in the case of the way I live my life, we also talk about models. Many traditions feature the acts and behaviors of paragons to be offered up as something worthy of direct emulation. But I think as we looked at above, striving to live up to the example of some kind of righteous forbear is itself not something which can undercut the kind of originality which we established every life has by default.

So perhaps we did not find the real originality being discussed by Taylor? If we make use of Heidegger’s notion, it seems to suggest that there is something more to it than simply the life that is lived only by you, in your way. That we all somehow, from some unspecified origin, have distinct potentialities in our lives which we can fail to live up to.

And in fact, one could say that you may have the potential to follow some virtuous person in the greatness of their virtue, that you have some potential strength of spirit which would allow you to negate yourself in favor of helping others to some extent which I could not personally hope to achieve. This is all kind of a supposition but maybe it is true.

Now we encounter the problem that although I introduced an idea of Heidegger’s, it’s not really the same thing as what Taylor is talking about. He specifically says that human creativity consists in original creation and not mimesis. Heidegger’s notion of guilt and potentiality don’t really imply that we need to be original in our creation, whether of artifacts or of our own lives. So maybe bringing that up lead us off the mark more than it helped us find our way. I suppose for now we will wait and see if this aspect of the idea of authenticity receives more consideration or not from Taylor.