Review of Craig Taylor's MORALISM (original) (raw)
Craig Taylor, Moralism: A Study of a Vice (Durham: Acumen, 2012). xi + 187, price £11.99
Philosophical Investigations, 2013
Rupert Read, UEA This is an important book on an important subject.Taylor's charming and delicate prose guides the reader carefully and often delightfully through difficult waters: the "moral dilemmas," if that is the right phrase (Taylor suggests good reasons why in fact it isn't; this is one of many virtues of his book), facing foreign ministers, journalists, artists, reality-show participants, philosophers, Lord Jim, Dostoevsky's "Idiot," and in fact all of us, everyone. There has never, in this reviewer's opinion, been a better critique of "moralism" than this book. Taylor argues that moralism is a vice, and an important and dangerous vice. His argument is convincing, and by and large (though not alwayssee below), he himself manages beautifully to avoid moralising, in the process. (This might seem obvious/natural/easy; but in fact my experience is that those who are against moralism are quite often the worst-the most persistent-moralisers of all. How easy it is, how appealing, to self-righteously moralise. .. against moralism!) Having said that, there remain some areas that Moralism opens up for debate that are by no means settled by it, and from which, in my view, an alternative (or at least a complementary) track opens up, towards a stance rather different from Taylor's. I propose to spend most of this review focusing on those areas and on that alternative track. Before doing so, let me make a few other, specific, philosophical points that arise in relation to Taylor's book, and that will, I think, interest readers of Philosophical Investigations: (1) On p. 147, Taylor criticises an SUV-driver with a "No blood for oil" bumper-sticker. An easy criticism to make, but perhaps too easy.There seems a tacit danger at this of Taylor descending into moralism here towards individuals. For: It is a perfectly legitimate move for an individual to make under many circumstances to say that they would do
Given Taylor’s status as one of the most important thinkers in contemporary moral and political philosophy, it is somewhat surprising that so little attention has been paid to the implications of his views for metaethics. To fill this gap, this paper considers the highly unorthodox approach to metaethics articulated in his philosophy. While his views can be seen as “anti-metaethical,” I argue that Taylor in fact takes the cause of metaethics in a new direction by showing the problems of moral realism in a whole new light. To demonstrate this, I first sketch the mainstream debate on moral realism (§1) to clear the way for Taylor’s non-mainstream approach (§2). I continue to explain his unusual position by highlighting the contrast between the classical conception of moral facts and Taylor’s key concepts of “strong evaluation” and “moral sources” (§3). Against the background of this contrast, I turn to Taylor’s view on the nature of language to explain how it informs his distinctive conception of moral realism (§4). I conclude by discussing the implications of Taylor’s realism for wider trends within metaethics (§5).
Models of moral philosophy: Charles Taylor's critique of Jürgen Habermas
Eidos: The Canadian Graduate Journal of Philosophy, 1998
This article lays out Charles Taylor's three-tiered critique of Jürgen Habermas' theory of discourse ethics, which is reconstructed from an analysis of several of Taylor's writings. First, Taylor maintains that Habermas' discourse ethics is incapable of answering the question, "Why be moral?". Instead of owning up to the goods it is in fact moved by and on which it depends (e.g. a certain conception of rationality, modern hypergoods of universal justice and freedom) it strives to maintain its universal—and hence unsubstantive—validity by relegating the question of motivation to the lifeworld. Second, there is the question of the lack of fit between its procedural form and narrow focus on justice and the real moral world. The upshot of this form and focus is that the messiness and complexity of moral reality is lost from sight. Many of the really difficult moral questions involving, for example, conflicts between collectively pursued goods and individual rights or the problem of competing principles of justice, are again seen to lie outside the scope of moral theory and to be the task, rather, of discourses of application. Habermas is careful in this regard to define the tasks of his theory as including clarifying the moral point of view and the problem of justification. It is by no means clear, however, that Habermas’ notion of the moral point of view and his understanding of justification are in fact universally accepted. In fact, they patently are not. The point of his theory, however, is that they could be. Taylor’s third critique originates in the challenge to this claim and takes issue with the acultural theory of modernity on which it depends. Habermas’ discourse theory of morality is, for Taylor, simply too laden with cultural baggage unique to the West to be universally applicable.
A Critique of Charles Taylor’s Notions of Moral Sources and Constitutive Goods
In this paper I argue that moral realism does not, pace Charles Taylor, need “moral sources” or “constitutive goods”, and adding these concepts distorts the basic insights of moral realism. Yet Taylor's ideas of “moral topography” or “moral space” as well as the idea of “ontological background pictures” are OK, if separated from those notions.
Perspectives on the Philosophy of Charles Taylor
Sample chapters: "Introduction", Arto Laitinen, Nicholas H. Smith, pp. 5-9. http://www.jyu.fi/yhtfil/fil/armala/INTRO.pdf "On Identity, Alienation and Consequences of September 11th. An Interview with Charles Taylor", Arto Laitinen, Hartmut Rosa. pp.165-195. http://www.jyu.fi/yhtfil/fil/armala/texts/Part%20Four%201112.pdf "Culturalist Moral Realism", Arto Laitinen, p.115-131. http://www.jyu.fi/yhtfil/fil/armala/texts/2002c.pdf See the series: http://www.helsinki.fi/filosofia/acta.htm
In this dissertation I examine the topics of ethics, religion, and their relationship in the work of Charles Taylor. I take Taylor's attempt to confront modern disenchantment by seeking a kind of re-enchantment as my guiding thread. Seeking re-enchantment means, first of all, defending an `engaged realist' account of strong evaluation, i.e., qualitative distinctions of value that are seen as normative for our desires. Secondly, it means overcoming self-enclosure and achieving self-transcendence, which I argue should be understood in terms of transcending a `lower' mode of selfhood for a `higher' one in concern for `strong goods'. One of the main issues that Taylor raises is whether re-enchantment requires theism for its full adequacy. He advances - often as `hunches' - controversial claims regarding the significance of theism (1) for defending strong evaluative realism and (2) for motivating an ethic of universal human concern. I seek to fill out his hunches in terms of a theistic teleological perspective that is centered on the `telos of communion'. I argue that such a view is important for overcoming the problem of what Bernard Williams calls the `radical contingency' of ethical beliefs, which seems to undermine their normative authority. However, I argue that if a non-theistic view of cosmic purpose (e.g., Thomas Nagel's view) can be regarded as a viable option, then it could also help to address this problem and support a kind of re-enchantment. Taylor also advances the controversial view that (3) there is an ineradicable draw to `transcendence' in human life in connection to the quest for the meaning of life. Here he opposes certain mainstream theories of secularization that see it as a process involving the ineluctable fading away of the relevance of religion. I seek to fill out and defend Taylor's view in this matter. Besides providing a reading of Taylor's work as a whole and advancing further some of the issues he raises, I also examine his general evaluative framework based on his account of strong evaluation. In doing so I show how he provides a distinct and important perspective among contemporary moral philosophers.
Strong Evaluation without Moral Sources: On Charles Taylor's Philosophical Anthropology and Ethics.
2008
Charles Taylor is one of the leading living philosophers. In this book Arto Laitinen studies and develops further Taylor's philosophical views on human agency, personhood, selfhood and identity. He defends Taylor's view that our ethical understandings of values (so called "strong evaluations") play a central role. The book also develops and defends Taylor's form of value realism as a view on the nature of ethical values, or values in general. The book criticizes Taylor's view that God, Nature or Human Reason are possible constitutive sources of value – Laitinen argues that we should drop the whole notion of a constitutive source.
This paper critically discusses Charles Taylor’s ontological views in an ongoing discussion with Mark Redhead’s analysis of what he calls “Taylor’s Nietzschean predicament.” The paper is divided in five sections. The first section examines Taylor’s evaluation of the difference between theistic and non-theistic moral sources. It becomes clear in the second section that this is only the gateway to Redhead’s critique of Taylor. I argue that his analysis, while revealing, is largely based on interpretive errors. After locating Taylor’s “Nietzsche problem” by drawing heavily on an insightful paper by Michael Shapiro in the third section, I continue to discuss the implications of this problem for Taylor’s views in the fourth section by showing that his hermeneutic perspective of strong evaluation tends to close the very questions that Nietzsche’s genealogy opens up, and finally reflect in the concluding fifth section on how these issues affect Taylor’s ontology as a whole.
Taylor Chapter 13 The Good Edited
The Murdochian Mind, 2021
It is no exaggeration to say that the concept of the Good is absolutely central to understanding Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy. But to understand her reference to the Good and its place in human life it is a help first to understand the role that metaphor, as she sees it, plays it in our lives. Metaphors for her are not just 'useful models [but] fundamental forms of awareness of our condition' (SGC 363). In that sense all philosophy, and especially, she thinks, moral philosophy, uses metaphors as a way of understanding our human condition. Murdoch's contribution to moral philosophy then can be understood first, as arguing that the pervasive metaphors operative in contemporary moral philosophy are inadequate for our self-understanding and for morality, and second, that we have available to us alternative metaphors though which we might better understand ourselves and our condition and the possibilities for our moral improvement. The structure of this chapter is as follows: After noting Murdoch's view of human beings as naturally selfish, I consider the metaphor for the Good that Murdoch commends to us, which she derives from Plato and his allegory of the cave in the Republic. This she sets against what she takes as the now dominant metaphor for human nature provided by Kant, where morality enters the world with the choosing will. I then consider Murdoch's argument for her favoured metaphor for the Good by considering the analogy she draws in various places between the concept of 'Good' with the concept of 'God' in western theology. Both concepts, she thinks, provide a model for how we might orientate ourselves away from the self, for Murdoch a source of so much consoling fantasy and illusion, towards the real. I then consider what realism in Murdoch's moral philosophy amounts to and the way in which her understanding of realism here presents both a striking contrast and challenge to much contemporary moral philosophy. Underlying Murdoch's moral philosophy are some fairly depressing but at the same time surely plausible assumptions about human beings. These include that human beings are naturally selfish and that human life has no external point. Such assumptions combine with, perhaps contribute to, the further observation that human beings can't face too much reality, that our tendency is rather to consoling fantasy in which our naturally selfish drives are insulated from the pain that attends their disappointment in the face of the harsh reality that is our limited freedom of action and ultimate mortality (OGG, 364). Granting Murdoch this image of human life, how might we respond to it? The way modern philosophy from Kant onwards has responded to it, Murdoch claims, is to focus on the choosing will. On this view, the choosing will is the sum of our freedom and really is what we are. One could say that faced with the rather dispiriting picture of human life, of its pain and pointlessness, modern philosophy, modernity itself in fact, has tended to revel in the mere capacity to choose. This is for Murdoch as true of Kant as it is of existentialist philosophers, by which she means those who would accept the title, such as Sartre, but also her contemporary analytic philosopher peers who might not. For Kant, in the idea of the good will and the moral law there was the possibility of transcending of our empirical nature and natural selfishness. For Sartre, there was a sort of momentary experience of freedom as well as resignation, while for her analytic philosopher peers there was utilitarian
Putting the Apolitical into Question: A Critique of Fullness in the Work of Charles Taylor
In A Secular Age, Charles Taylor points to the ambiguous relation between the liberal values of freedom and equality and what he claims is a fundamental human search for meaning in our secular modern society. The relation between society and the individual, especially in a context of deep diversity, is likely to see tensions over values, convictions, or traditions. Taylor has long been concerned with the effects that the absence of a universal authority has on establishing rules and values and on the state's ability to choose between equally valid demands. He contends that our secular age restricts the dominant discourse to a secular one, which hinders the possibility for an open and diverse dialogue among cultural and religious groups. Thus, Taylor seeks to articulate a notion of a 'beyond' that could be palatable to modern values and outlooks. From his own interpretation of Rawls' overlapping consensus, he proposes that the universal sentiment of fullness -or the existence of something that gives sense to one's existence -is a proper basis for the consensus.