The Shadow-gloom and Weight of the Sacred

Credit: Sean Laurent
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I haven't been able to read much more than three pages at a time of Sources of the Selfby Charles Taylor. It's pretty dense. Plus, I'm pretty dense. Also, time is always a factor. I'll just jump right into it then.

Taylor explicates the modern understanding of respect by examining three connected features of it: (1) autonomy, (2) avoiding suffering, and (3) affirmation of the ordinary life. But, before he gets to that, he talks about rights. And, before I get to that, let me restate an earlier discussion from the book.

For Taylor, moral notions and reactions concern justice, respect of other people's life, well-being and dignity. Moral notions and reactions have two facets: (1) they are like instincts and (2)they make claims about the nature and status of human beings. So, for example, if we see a person being abused by another person and this initiates a response in us, the fact that we respond is indicative of the abused person's worth (for lack of a more precise word...I suspect "selfhood" would work). This was discussed in my first post on the book. Now, to Taylor's summarization of the development of natural rights.

A right in the Western legal tradition is "that of a legal privilege which is seen as a quasi-possession of the agent to whom it is attributed" (11). This is also called a "subjective right". A subjective right might be the right to participate in an assembly or collect a toll on a river. During 17th Century, the language of rights began being used to express universal moral norms. There began to be such things as "natural rights". Where there was once an instinct (i.e., moral norm) against taking an innocent life, there was now law. Law is what must be obeyed. Law is to be respected and, fundamentally, humans are under law. A subjective right has to be acted upon (by the possessor) in order to be put into effect, but not so with a natural right. A natural right simply is, and because of this, a human does not have to be subject to another human except by willing waiver of the natural right. All humans have respect, not just a select aristocracy. There is autonomy between humans.

This brings us to Taylor treatment of the modern understanding of respect, which I'll address in my next post. If you made it this far, thanks for wrestling with this stuff along with me.