The Shadow-gloom and Weight of the Sacred

Credit: Toms Bauģis
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A couple of years ago I began reading Charles Taylor's book Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity. Unfortunately, I only made it about 200 pages in and was unable to finish it. The book is very interesting but, as with most philosophical publications, difficult to internalize. I decided to try reading it again because I'm really interested in the subject and thought I'd try writing a summarization or response to my reading as I progress through the book in attempt to better comprehend the topic. Normally, I'd do this type of thing in my journal, but as Sources of the Self is an exceptionally long and dense book (500+ pages of very small print), I kind of feel like I'll interact better with what I'm reading by responding here, posting questions here, and so on. I don't expect anyone to find this interesting; I just think typing out this stuff will help me understand.

Last night I read the first section of the first chapter, which is titled "Inescapable Frameworks". Here Taylor states his desire to explore the various aspects of modern identity and how these aspect came to be. He sees selfhood and morality (i.e., the good) as intertwined so intricatally that it is necessary to examine morality in its own right. This is problematic for the English-speaking world because of our narrow focus concerning morality. "This moral philosophy has tended to focus on what it is right to do rather than on what it is good to be, on defining the content of obligation rather than the nature of the good life..." (3). There is a background which is the foundation and purpose of the moral obligations we acknowledge and this dimension is usually excluded from the discussion of contemporary philosophy.

What is typically described as moral, according to Taylor, include notions and reactions to justice, respect of other people's life, well-being and dignity. Taylor's pursuit is broader in that he also wants to explore "our sense of what underlies our own dignity, or question about what makes our lives meaningful or fulfilling" (4). What these broader questions have in common with with accepted moral issues is that they involve discriminations between "right and wrong, higher or lower, which are not rendered valid by or own desires...or choices, but rather stand independant of these and offer standards by which they can be judged" (4). Taylor calls this discrimination process "strong evaluation".

Moral notions and reactions have two facets: (1) they are like instincts comparable to our aversion to nauseous substances and (2) they make claims about the nature and status of human beings. People will argue over who merits our moral reaction but this seems an impossible task for a reaction such as nausea. With nausea we don't acknowledge that there is anything to articulate. But with moral reactions to people, this is not the case because the background, or predicate, or this reaction is an ontological assessment(s). When we deem a person's life or well-being as worthy of respect, this is rooted in a concept of human being in God's image, or humans as having immortal souls, or as humans being rational agents thus with transcendent dignity. "Rascists have to claim that certain of the crucial moral properties of human being are genetically dtermined: that some races are less intelligent, less capable of high moral consciousness, and the like" (7).

In the few pages that comprise the first section of Sources of the Self, there is a lot to discern, but I think that is enough. Summarizing this has helped me better understand the content and, hopefully, has not too greatly alienated my two loyal readers.