Charles Taylor’s Moral Ontology Dr. Gordon E. Carkner PhD
Charles Taylor’s Moral OntologyDr. Gordon E. Carkner PhDGordon Carkner completed his doctorate in 2006 on the topic of “A Critical Examinationof the Constitution of the Moral Self in Michel Foucault in Dialogue with Charles Taylor”through the University of Wales, UK. He supports a ministry among faculty and graduatestudents at University of British Columbia through Outreach Canada.AbstractMany Christians today are discouraged by the moral drift in Western society and wonderif they can have any influence in a “post-secular” world with such a strong emphasis onindividual choice, taste and radical freedom. Freedom currently in the West is oftenclaimed as an ontological position, a reality within which one can justifiably choose one’sown moral parameters and construct or re-invent one’s self. Christian believers can feelpowerless and a bit odd for holding any moral convictions, but also feel themselvesslipping from their own standards under the weight of the cultural slippage towardnihilistic relativism and radical individualism. Where can they turn for help? This articlesuggests that eminent Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor, can be of strategicassistance to moral grounding in the recovery of a language of the good and a renewal ofnormativity. Taylor employs a language that a “pluralistic audience” can both understandand be engaged by, both intellectually and personally. This article outlines his moralontology of the good, with a particular emphasis on the vital concept of qualitativediscriminations. It reveals that aspirations towards the good can be a robust challenge tothe solipsism and a framework in which robust moral dialogue can take place.A. Taylor’s Case for Moral RealismTaylor’s argument for moral realism is five-fold. In terms of moral givens, he argues thatcertain perennial features of the self are present irrespective of culture or the way they areexpressed or understood. He starts his analysis with the question of how humans operateas moral beings in their actual moral experiences, and how they reflect upon thoseexperiences. So he is interested in praxis as well as moral theory. Beginning with humansand the way they experience morality, he claims that the most plausible explanation ofmorality is one that takes seriously humans’ perception of the independence of goods. Hedoes not want to substitute a philosophical abstraction for how people live and think.
Firstly, he argues for the ubiquity of moral intuitions and judgments in humanexperience. These are intuitions that transcend basic human desires for survival, sex, orself-realization. They are also referred to as second-order desires, strong evaluations orqualitative discriminations. One notes the important reference to the quality of the will.This concept of second-order desires appeals to the ancient idea of the good, one whichalthough interwoven with the self, transcends the self in significant ways. Secondly, heargues that there is a need for a larger moral picture to facilitate the task of making senseof moral experience (debates, deliberations, decisions and actions). He calls this picture(map) a moral framework or horizon. Each framework is made up of several goods heldtogether in a coherent relationship with one another, producing a moral worldview. Themoral self is in a dialectical relationship with its framework; it is not a static set ofconditions, but rather dynamic and developmental. Thirdly, he recognizes that there is akey defining good within each moral framework, which he calls the hypergood. Thehypergood is the highest/preminent good and operates a controlling influence andorganizer of the other goods within the framework; it defines the overall character of theframework and thus is central to the discussion of the moral self. Fourthly, Taylorrecognizes a narrative and communal texture to the pursuit of the good in moral selfconstitution. Humans interpret their lives in narrative and communal terms as they pursuemoral goods; these goods give vision and mission to life. This important narrativearticulation helps the self to find a unity amidst the complexity of moral experience and aplurality of goods vying for one’s attention. Fifthly, Taylor speaks of the sources of themoral/sources of the self, which he refers to as the constitutive good. The constitutivegood (a category of moral motivation) gives meaning to and empowers, the hypergood2
and the other life goods within the moral framework: it acts as a moral driver. It providesthe constitutive ground of the worth or value of the life goods, and allows the self to livethe good life; this is a very significant dimension. Moral identity is interwoven with thepursuit of the good in life in Taylor’s ontology. He discerns these five categories asgivens, structural features that are common to the life of all morally healthy humanbeings. Taylor wants to problematize the occlusion or exclusion of such parameters, suchqualitative distinctions for moral reasoning, because he believes that within the life of theself, there is a multiplicity of goods to be recognized, acted upon and pursued. Tayloremphasizes the importance of being circumspect about these goods. It is quite anambitious and challenging proposal, a moral ontology of the self at its best, noblest ormost whole. It offers a useful framework for this dialogue on moral self-constitution.B. Intuitions of Qualitative Discriminations: a Common ExperienceTaylor recognizes the existence of a plurality of moral positions and constructions, but intension with relativism, he has a conviction that some features of the self are universalregarding moral self-constitution. He contends that there are certain features of the moralself and its world that are endemic or common to all healthy humans. He recognizesplurality in the shape of human moralities, but does not follow the tradition of pluralism(relativism where all are of equal value in exploring one’s morality).Taylor scholar Ruth Abbey (2000, p. 29) comments on this point that: ‘He does notsuggest that in trying to explain morality we imagine a moral world devoid of humansand attempt to separate its subject-dependent properties from its objective or realproperties.’ He begins by claiming that all humans have certain moral intuitions, and allmake moral judgments, including judgments about the behaviour of others. They all have3
a qualitative sense of their moral choices and deliberations; moral agency is not reducibleto mere choice. For example, he points out that respect for human life is one of thedeepest and most universally held moral instincts across cultures (Taylor, 1989, pp. 8, 1112), which includes a concern for the Other; it is not merely a characteristic of selfsurvival. For example,‘Human beings command respect in all societies; the Westarticulates this in the language of rights’ (Taylor, 1989, p. 11). All societies condemnmurder and lesser forms of abuse. When this respect is not shown to someone, it isjudged negatively; there is moral conviction, an intuition about such behaviour. Oneexercises/engages a moral or qualitative evaluation of the situation, appealing to somemoral standard or moral good, which transcends at some level the situation and theparties involved.Taylor further claims that these strong evaluations are humanly inescapable.Our moral reactions have two facets . On the one side, they are almost like instincts, comparable to ourlove of sweet things, or our aversion to nauseous substances . on the other, they seem to involveclaims, implicit or explicit, about the nature and status of human beings. From the second side, a moralreaction is an assent to, an affirmation of a given ontology of the human . The whole way in which wethink, reason, argue, and question ourselves about morality supposes that our moral reactions have thesetwo sides: that they are not only “gut” feelings but also implicit acknowledgments of claims concerningthe objects. (1989, pp. 5 & 7)Taylor’s form of realism means that the emphasis includes both objective and subjectiveaspects (poles) of self and morality, both a subjective and objective givenness. Humansdo not just act, but regularly evaluate, praise and condemn other’s actions and motives,and their own speech and conduct, always appealing to certain objective standards.According to Taylor, humans are strong evaluators by nature; strong evaluation is anessential feature of identity and a permanent feature of moral life (1989, pp. 3-4, 14, 15).He sees this capacity for evaluating or judging desires to be a distinctively anduniversally human one. He believes that human beings experience the goods that4
command their respect in a non-anthropocentric way, that is, as not deriving solely fromhuman will or choice, nor depending only on the fact of individual affirmation of theirvalue. He challenges the projectivist hypothesis (Taylor, 1989, p. 342). Humaninterpretation is involved (moral convictions are human convictions), but there is also anobjective element in this evaluation process that Taylor wants to make explicit and clear.Taylor’s term strong evaluation comes from Harry Frankfurt’s (1971, pp. 5-20)argument about second order desires, that is, desires one has about one’s desires,evaluative desires (such as respect, or justice) that transcend other desires (sex, safety,food and survival). These are ‘standards by which basic desires and choices are judged’(Taylor, 1989, p. 20). Humans experience a range of desires, but do not view them allequally; some are seen as higher or more admirable than others. There is a hierarchy andcontrast in human desires (Taylor, 1989, pp. 4, 20, 47); individuals do not see all theirvalues or desires as being of equal worth. Strong evaluation is inherently contrastive andhierarchical; it appeals to certain goods that are independent of the self and human choice(Taylor, 1989, pp. 58, 68, 74). These goods are always related to the human moralsituation, never mere abstract categories. Abbey (2000) captures the nuance of Taylor’sview.The best account of morality must be one that incorporates the fact that individuals experience goods asbeing worthy of their admiration and respect for reasons that do not depend on their choice of them.Beginning with humans and the way they experience morality, Taylor claims that the most plausibleexplanation of morality is one that takes seriously humans’ perception of the independence of thegoods. (p. 28)This independence of goods is vital to the ethics of Taylor.Furthermore, as Flanagan (1996, p. 147) notes in his commentary on Taylor, thisconcept of strong evaluations is both descriptive of how people are and act, and alsonormative regarding what is required for full personhood. Individuals do make these5
working moral assumptions, says Taylor, even if they are not conscious about relating to,evaluating, sorting and ordering goods. The process is often tacit, unconscious orintuitive. Taylor (1985a) emphasizes this essential point and this fine distinction:I want to speak of strong evaluations when the goods putatively identified are not seen as constituted asgood by the fact that we desire them, but rather are seen as normative for desire. That is, they are seenas goods which we ought to desire, even if we do not, goods such that we show ourselves up as inferioror bad by our not desiring them. (p. 120)There is an attempt to recover a key dimension of the normative and a hierarchy ofgoods. Not all moral philosophers agree to the hierarchy of course.Moral realism for him, means that (Taylor, 1989, pp. 4, 20) strongly valued goodscommand the respect of individuals because of their intrinsic value, not one’s choice tovalue them; they are experienced as making calls or demands upon individuals, ratherthan being freely or arbitrarily chosen by them. This means that Taylor takes moralexperience of the good seriously and imputes ontological significance to it.He isresisting the slide towards moral subjectivism, which suggests that one’s choice amongthe various goods can only be justified according to individual preferences or inclinations(e.g. clothing fashion). These preferences, claims Taylor, can be judged objectively andcan be rationally discussed and debated. Taylor claims that there is an inherent quality(goodness) in the good that individual selves ought to recognize. The good is the keyelement in morality, claims Taylor, that helps an individual self transcend the animallevel of desires for food, sex, and survival. Taylor (1989, p. 42) offers a key test of agood: Can it be the basis of attitudes of admiration or contempt? It raises questions about‘what kind of life is worth living what would be a rich, meaningful life, as against anempty one?’ (Ibid.). One can actually discern the difference in the goods appealed tobetween medical relief work and international sex trafficking or child pornography;6
Taylor claims that this discernment, this instinct is linked to a second order desire, orqualitative discrimination which is part of who we are as moral beings. The formergarners one’s admiration; the latter draws one’s contempt. Taylor wants the moral self toaffirm this capacity for evaluating or judging desires, claiming that there is a capacitywithin the human self (discernment) which can be revived and can help us look criticallyat our own desires and behaviour from the perspective of the good. It gives the individuala position from which to self-critique as well. He resists the stance of the nihilist, wherethe good is demoted to subjective choice, projection or group values (Weber).Some important qualifications are in order for these qualitative distinctions. Tayloris not suggesting that each and every choice is subject to strong evaluation. This is clearlynot true of the choice of flavour of ice cream or style of clothing. Secondly, individualsare not always aware of the hierarchy that is in play; it can be held pre-articulately ortacitly as a background to moral understanding. Thirdly, the language of strong speaksmore about quality than force or power. Fourthly, Taylor believes that all individuals arestrong evaluators, but does not believe that they all value the same things strongly. Hedoes however believe that some goods do feature in all moral codes and are stronglyvalued by all cultures: for example, human life, the dignity of the person, respect. Basedon this objective element, there can be rational debate about, and critique of the variousgoods held by an individual or a culture. Vital to the whole discussion is the claim that‘strong value is both logically and ontologically prior to strong evaluation’ (Taylor, 1989,p. 99). Intrinsic high value calls forth strong evaluation.Thus, the first point of Taylor’s argument about morality is that there existsqualitative discriminations intimately related to the self, yet to some important degree,7
independent of human choice or will (ontologically prior). The good is something thehuman self owns personally and with which it can build a relationship, yet the good hassome independent status from its owner. The good is no mere projection, or thepromotion/valorization of a certain value; it is not reducible to one’s style. Projectivismholds that the world is essentially meaningless and that one must create meaning for lifeby what one affirms or creates. A moral good, under projectivism, would calculate asonly a myth or an illusion, even if a myth by which one lives, or seems to flourish.Realists, on the other hand, say that there are both objective characteristics andinterpretations concerning morality, that there is a moral world that is independent of,while intimately interwoven with, the self’s articulation, interpretation and understandingof it. The ‘moral world’ is something one can grapple with, embrace and get to knowintimately. They therefore assume that some interpretations come closer to explainingwell the phenomena of human moral experience, that they are more accurate or plausiblethan others. Taylor holds that these identified moral instincts are rooted in some greaterreality than the self; this is his first indicator that the moral self is not wholly the productof culture or a product of one’s self-construction alone or indeed reducible to one’s basicdesires. This is the distinctive and important anthropological space in which Taylorpositions himself.Taylor does not believe that any moral self-constitution can do without someemployment of the good, even if it is covert. He (Taylor, 1989, p.12) contrasts with thepost-Romantic notion of individual difference: ‘individual rights expands to the demandthat we give people the freedom to develop their personality in their own way, however8
repugnant to ourselves and even to our moral sense.’ This kind of eclectic subjectivism isa serious concern for today’s society.C. Moral Frameworks or HorizonsAnother important dimension of the moral self for Taylor is the concept of horizon, alarger context for the self and its moral discriminations. Once the case is made forqualitative discriminations, Taylor continues to develop the case for realism by arguingthat one has to make sense of these basic human moral intuitions. This means that onehas to articulate self within a moral framework, in a way that makes sense of thatexperience. The various goods that vie for attention need to be organized within a definedmoral worldview, a big picture of moral thought and action. This process involves thegeography metaphor of moral mapping of a landscape, producing a map or makingexplicit the existence within the self of a map which can describe, contextualize andguide one’s moral experience and judgments, through a set of moral parameters. Taylorbelieves that this is very significant for moral consciousness. He sees that this moralhorizon is an essential dimension of the self’s moral reality, claiming that all selves havesuch a framework, even if it is there in a fragile state or they are entirely unconscious ofit. The self is interconnected in dialectical relationship with such a horizon. Taylor (1989)writes:I want to defend the strong thesis that doing without moral frameworks is utterly impossible for us;otherwise put, that the horizons within which we live our lives and which make sense of them have toinclude these strong qualitative discriminations. Moreover, this is not meant just as a contingently truepsychological fact about human beings Rather the claim is that living within such strongly qualifiedhorizons is constitutive of human agency, that stepping outside these limits would be tantamount tostepping outside what we would recognize as integral, that is, undamaged human personhood. (p. 27)He comments on the crisis that emerges with the loss of such a horizon as a disorientationof self, the kind of phenomenon that is endemic to nihilism (1989, pp. 18-19). He notes9
that to begin to lose one’s orientation is to be in crisis—both a moral and identity crisis—and to lose it utterly is to break down and enter a zone of extreme pathology (Ibid., pp.27-28). Employing the metaphor of physical space, Taylor claims that the frameworkorients the self in moral space, a space of moral questions of purpose, conduct anddirection. One’s moral horizon is composed of a series of qualitative discriminationsspoken of above, strong evaluations, or judgments about which goods are of higherimportance. The moral horizon automatically invokes a hierarchy of goods; it offersstructure and guidance concerning how to relate to others, what it is good to be and whatis meaningful, important and rewarding, and what one endorses and opposes. Some maylack this orientation but it is not taken as a situation to be normalized or celebrated as aboon of freedom; actually, it is taken as a concern for that individual’s moral health, as aform of confusion.The qualitative nature of the framework reads as follows (Taylor, 1989).To think, feel, judge within such a framework
Charles Taylor’s Moral Ontology Dr. Gordon E. Carkner PhD Gordon Carkner completed his doctorate in 2006 on the topic of “A Critical Examination of the Constitution of the Moral Self in Michel Foucault in Dialogue with Charles Taylor” through the University of Wales, UK. He supports a ministry among faculty and graduate
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