The Ideal Of Authenticity In Pluralism

Different from the past time, the world has tightly joined together than ever before since 1500s, with nation-state coming forth and commodity economy sweeping in the world. Those are so called "modernity". Modern society, however, does not only refer to nation-states, commodity economy and so on, still concerns more intrinsic and spiritual ingredients, such as an innovative consciousness of time, a conception of progress, scientism, a loss of meaning. In order to understand the age, thoughts such as Hegel, karl Max, Nietzsche, Max Weber, begin to focus on those spiritual ingredients, which comes into the so called "research of modernity".Since 1980s, a great controversy happened between modernity and post-modernity boosts the research of modernity to a new phase. During this period, Charles Taylor, whom was praised as one of ten most significant philosophers by Richard Rorty, especially attracts more attentions. Compared with mass of scholars absorbed in settling histories or philosophical deduction, Taylor starts with skeleton of the intellectual history in his research of modernity. He figures that a serious mistake in modernity consists in its thought of naturalism, which interprets human and human science with the standard of natural science. Naturalism reduces all meanings to non-meaning, which is not only embodied in modern psychology but also in other aspects of modernity theories, for instance, the subjectivism in moral philosophy and atomism in political philosophy. The typical characteristic of naturalism is regarding all issues in instrumental rationality or disengaged rationality.The dissertation is divided into three parts: introduction, chapter I to V, and conclusion.The introduction, firstly, describes modernity researches of three representative scholars, Hegel, Karl Marx, and Max Weber, and figures that modernity means an age of pluralism. Secondly, it basing on the controversy between modernity and post-modernity summarizes three discussion topics about all types of modernity researches: in sense of description, in sense of diagnoses, in sense of epistemology. At last, it presents Charles Taylor's basic thesis: there is both much that is admirable and much that is debased and frightened,. What people should consider is how to steer modernity towards the greatest promise and avoid the slide into the debased forms. Therefore, Taylor appeals to the conception of authenticity.Chapter one addresses that Taylor finds a reason why naturalism prevails in modernity is a wrong, but attractive view of human subject. Influenced by the romanticism and Hegel, Taylor provides a new view of human subject, a view jointing meaning, language, and self together, asserts that human is a self-interpreting animal on the ground of the view.Chapter two addresses on Taylor's view on morality. From the new view of human subject, an interpretive frame is essential for man. Criticizing modern moral theories' ignorance of the importance of good, Taylor provides a theory of moral realist and points out the importance of the good for human according to his persuasive analysis on the doctrine of "the priority of the right over the good".Chapter three discusses Taylor's view on politics and mainly clarifies that his theory is not a kind of communitarianism, but a liberal holism. Taylor does not oppose liberalism, but claim that it is far from enough to establish liberalism on a theory of atomistic rights, and that it also needs the common good.Chapter four discusses Taylor' view on democracy and the politics of difference. He asserts there is an antinomy in democracy. On one side, democracy is the most inclusion political manner. On the other side, it is obviously exclusion. To overcome this antinomy, people need to abandon the atomistic theory and actively participate the democratic organizational system. A new democracy needs a new conception of equality, which is Taylor calls "the politics of recognition".Chapter five discusses Taylor's view on religious and culture in modernity. Individual identity, self-interpreting, and self-fulfillment need a moral foundation beyond individual field of vision which can offer him significance. If modernity inhibit and negate those moral foundations, then it would never inspire those significances, and also fail to make individuals find the significance in their lives. This is the reason why Taylor puts forward "a Catholic modernity" . He points out that modernity is related with particular cultural background. Western modernity is a considerable peculiar modern experience from a special western cultural background. So Taylor advocates a theory of multiple modernities.Conclusion discusses two themes in Taylor's theory: pluralism and authenticity. Like Berlin, Taylor accepts the assertion that modernity is age of pluralism. However he does not satisfies to rest on pluralism, but hope to overcome the lost of meaning in modernity by authenticity.