The Shadow-gloom and Weight of the Sacred

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Taylor ends chapter 1 by further discussing the shift in values away from the honor ethic towards Plato's ethic. This shift is compounded by the fact that Plato's ethic actually requires a theory, a reasoned account of what human life is about, which is an outflow of the new moral status of reason. Those who live by the warrior ethic don't normally (if ever) articulate their framework theoretically. They share certain discriminations: what is honorable and dishonorable, what is admirable, what is done and not done. As Taylor notes, to be a gentlemen is to know how to act without ever having been told the rules. The "gentlemen" here, incidentally, are the heirs of the former warrior nobility.

While it could be determined that the absence of an articulated framework is the absence of a framework altogether, Taylor finds this to be false, just as the inarticulate warriors lived entirely structured by qualitative distinctions of preimminent importance, though it may be left to the observers--the historians, the philosophers, the anthropologists--to formulate what goods, ends, or qualities are discriminated. The naturalist, with whom Taylor is at odds, denies the existences of frameworks (or, at least, is tempted to do so) and sees all human goals as equal. This, Taylor states, is motivated by moral reasons.

The affirmation of the ordinary life (see "Interaction: Sources of the Self #5"), "[t]he notion that the life of production and reproduction, of work and family, is the main locus of the good life flies in the face of what were originally dominant distinctions of our civilization" (23). In both the honor ethic and Plato's ethic, the ordinary life was not considered a part of the higher life. To affirm the ordinary life is to assume a critical stance towards the traditional (classical?) views and their implied elitism. The utilitarianism that views all human goals as equal also would dispose of all qualitative distinctions as they are (wrongly) accused of downgrading the ordinary life, "of failing to see that our destiny lies here in production and reproduction and not in some alleged higher sphere, of being blind to the dignity and worth of ordinary human desire and fulfillment" (23).

For Taylor, though, the affirmation of the ordinary life does indeed denounce or negatively view some distinctions, but it also amounts to a distinction in and of itself. Knowing that there is a certain dignity and worth in life requires contrast. For the honor ethic or Plato's ethic, it was between this life and a "higher" activity such as war or contemplation. Now, the contrast is between different ways of living the life of production and reproduction. The notion cannot be "whatever we do is acceptable" as this is unintelligible as a notion of dignity. This tension between different ways of living the ordinary life highlights some of our most important moral distinctions. We are in conflict, perhaps confusion, about what it means to affirm ordinary life. "We are as ambivalent about heroism as we are about the value of the workday goals that it sacrifices. We struggle to hold on to a vision of the incomparably higher, while being true to the central modern insights about the value of the ordinary life. We sympathize with both the hero and the anti-hero; and we dream of a world in which one could be in the same act both. This is the confusion in which naturalism takes root" (24).