The Modern Fall and Authentic Salvation

In his book A Theory of Justice (1972), John Rawls envisaged a value neutral state as guarantor of justice. Rawls’ liberalism was far from the classical liberalism espoused by John Stuart Mill, imbued with classical moralities (Devigne 2006). Rawls’ liberal conception of society was grounded in the notion of a bounded and self-sufficient individual, at the centre of a well-ordered and homogeneous society maintained by an “overlapping consensus” of principles chosen through the device of the “veil of ignorance,” implying that all rational beings would choose the same fundamental principles. This was met with

9 ‘Morality’ derives from the Latin mos (custom, one’s disposition/character), while ‘ethics’ derives from the Greek ʾethos (custom) and ʿethos (character). On a humorous note, ‘ethics’ as the philosophy of morality is the customary definition for Italian crosswords, which no doubt settles the matter once and for all.

156 opposition from – what became known as – communitarian philosophers, including Alaisdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor, among others.

For his detractors, Rawls had detached individuals from their communities, where meanings are formed, and disconnected them from the processes through which moral imperatives, or virtues are developed. In Political Liberalism (1993), Rawls recognised that modern democratic societies are characterised by a plurality of beliefs (“comprehensive doctrines”) that can often be irreconcilable. He developed further his idea of “overlapping consensus”, the agreement, between citizens, on principles of justice that enable co-existence without prejudice to diversity. This is dependent on a “reasonable political conception of justice” (Rawls 1987, p. 10) that is shared by different comprehensive doctrines to guarantee a stable and secure polity.

In his seminal work, After Virtue (1981), MacIntyre argued that the conception of the ‘good’

is embedded in tradition, for “man without culture is a myth” (1981, p. 161). He revived Aristotle’s account of virtues, whose practice develops the person morally, together with her understanding of the good. MacIntyre criticised the supposedly neutral and universalistic stance of liberal individualism. Kant’s project of morality, based on rationality, had failed. Modern society, in MacIntyre’s eyes, is affected by “emotivism”, which “is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling”

(1981, pp. 11-12, emphasis in the original). As such, agreement in moral judgement cannot be secured by any rational method (1981, pp. 12). Yet, it is not clear on what evidence

157 MacIntyre argues that there was ever a society where moral agreement was determined on the basis of rational argument, rather than might or persuasion.

MacIntyre criticised the universalistic claims’ of liberalism for failing to acknowledge that liberalism is itself a tradition. Ironically, MacIntyre has refused to view liberalism as a complex and multifaceted tradition favouring, in its stead, a narrow conception of the

‘liberal project’ that claims neutrality. His communitarian conception of the aftermath of the Enlightenment seems to be the ‘fall’ of ‘modern man’ from the Garden of Eden of Gemeinschaft. Yet, whilst individuals are undoubtedly relational, the idealisation of communities by communitarian philosophy neglects to appreciate how communities have too often imposed homogeneity and hierarchies, and marginalised or excluded dissenters.

MacIntyre’s emphasis on tradition is valuable, however, it comes at the cost of individual freedom and the internal diversity of communities. He also seems to assume that all different communities will come to a similar understanding of the good, or one that is not antagonistic to the others, if they only practised the virtues from within their tradition.

In contrast, Taylor, in The Sources of the Self (1989), identified the subjective turn of modernity as the inheritance of the Protestant Reformation, and considered the turn inward not simply an affirmation of individual autonomy, but “a fragmentation of experience which calls our ordinary notions of identity into question” (Taylor 1989, p.

462). Thus, the ‘condition of modernity’ not only encapsulates the fragmentation of morality, but, paradoxically, of individuality. The subject turns inward and the ‘I’ becomes a fragmented ‘self’ in search of authenticity. The search for authenticity is, for Taylor, a form

158 of self-absorption originating in the three “malaises” of modernity: “the fading of moral horizons”, “instrumental reason”, and “loss of freedom” (Taylor 1991, p. 10). The extreme individualism of the modern age, not tempered by a “higher purpose” (Taylor 1991, p. 4), leads to an obsession with self-fulfilment.

Following Tocqueville, Taylor sees the democratic equality of modern times leading the individual to “self-absorption” (Taylor 1991, p. 4). Individuals are “enclosed in their own hearts” (Tocqueville, cited in Taylor 1991, p. 9) and thus unable to form communities. Pre-modern Gemeinschaft is lost for the atomised Geselleschaft. This leaves a moral vacuum and a search for impossible fulfilment. Echoing Trilling (1972), Taylor seeks to recuperate the ethical dimension. Thus, he argues that the modern individualistic idea of self-fulfilment is a valid idea that needs to be rescued from extreme subjectivism. Self-fulfilment is not vain egoism or relativistic self-referentiality. There is a moral ideal behind self-fulfilment which is “that of being true to oneself” (Taylor 1991, p. 15). This fulfilment is to be found in something “which has significance independent of us or our desires” (Taylor 1991, p. 82). It is in something ‘bigger than ourselves’, where we can find meaning.

Authenticity, for Taylor, is the foundation for a modern identity that results from one’s moral stance. Thus, identity “is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stance” (Taylor 1989, p. 27). Taylor’s moral horizon is based on “hypergoods”, “goods which not only are incomparably more

159 important than others but provide the standpoint from which these must be weighed, judged, decided about” (Taylor 1989, p. 63).

This is explained clearly by Varga (2012), who subscribes to Taylor’s notion of authenticity:

authenticity “acknowledges that our wholehearted engagements have a grip on us as on persons embedded in horizons of significance that are partly constituted by qualitative distinctions of worth. While we constitute ourselves through our choices of commitments, these commitments are linked to ideas of the good that qualitative distinctions of worth are based on” (Varga 2012, p. 160, emphasis in the original). Here, wholeheartedness “means that betraying your commitment would also mean betraying yourself (centrality), and it involves being committed to both the actual project and to entertaining the commitment itself (continuity)” (Varga 2012, p. 160).

This notion of authenticity is based not on a solipsistic and self-enclosed self, but a

“dialogical” self. As Taylor points out, “in the culture of authenticity, relationships are seen as the key loci of self-discovery and self-confirmation. Love relationships are … the crucibles of inwardly generated identity” (Taylor 1991, p. 49). For Varga, “authenticity is about articulating goods from a collective horizon by way of a commitment which requires responsiveness to these more or less locally constituted goods” (Varga 2012, p.161).

However, it is not clear how our “interlocutors” (Taylor), or “a collective horizon” (Varga) may compel the individual in pursuing an ethical path. Taylor recognises that there are different views of what constitutes the ‘good’, which one needs to confront.

160 Taylor does not put forward a substantial conception of the good, nor does he subscribe to Kantian universalistic ethics. The self of Taylor has “moral sources”, but no categorical imperatives. Thus, there are no criteria on the basis of which “hypergoods” should be debated and decided. At times, he seems to believe that there are universal ethical principles upon which agreement is possible, although he does not set out how such agreement is to be achieved. Thus, Taylor constructs a normative but procedural understanding of authenticity to be contrasted with the self-centred version of authenticity, fruit of the malaises of modernity. It is not clear, however, what makes this redemptive version of authenticity more than self-absorption apart from the ‘dialogue’ with other

‘selves’, who might be seeking the same authenticity in very different ways and in ways that might be antithetical to those of others.

Alasdair MacIntyre (1981) and Charles Taylor (1989, 1991 and 2007) unwittingly construct a mythical pre-modern world of cohesive communities, where people believed in God and thus shared an overarching moral universe. One is left confused as to their disregard for the plurality, complexity, and conflictual nature of the past. Undoubtedly, the many abuses of the Church and Christian monarchs were not simply the result of dogma, but were part of a wider geopolitical and economic structure. However, Christian ‘morals’

were imposed with violence by the ruler, be that a monarch or religious authorities, on their own subjects and neighbours. The fiercest materialist would still need to acknowledge the ideological-religious character of the massacre of the Cathars during the Albigensian crusade, in 1209; the expulsion of the Jews from England, in 1290; the persecutions of ‘heretics’ and non-Christians by the Spanish Inquisition and by various

161 European monarchs; the massacre of the day of St. Bartholomew, in 1572; and the burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno, in 1600, to list but a few examples.

A political incentive, if not motive, can be found in all these examples. However, this is partly due to the fact that religion was not about ‘belief in God’ or a ‘cosmic embeddedness’, but the conception of the order of nature, society and power an elite imposed on their competitors and the rest of the population. Far from being a cohesive and uniform world, the pre-modern era was torn apart by political-religious wars. Indeed, the principle cuius regio, eius religio¹⁰ had to be proclaimed after drawn-out wars, and, of course, did not include individual freedom of conscience. The ‘cosmic embeddeness’ of the Peace of Westphalia is very far from the normative conception sung by Taylor or MacIntyre. For Taylor and MacIntyre, the ‘melting’ of the pre-modern ‘solids’ (Marx and Engels 1848/2002, p. 223)¹¹ at the hand of heightened individualism has shattered communities and the overarching universalistic ethics.

10 The principle of the ruler determining the religion of the ruled was recognised in 1555 with the Peace of Augsburg, part of the Peace of Westphalia, concluded in 1648.

11The reference is used ironically to stress the normative tone of MacIntyre and Taylor and the many abuses of Marx’s quote. Marx referred to the economic system of capitalism requiring constant transformation and its impact on society. “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.

Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. … All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.” (Marx and Engels 1848/2002, p. 223).

162 The condition of modernity is thus ethical fragmentation where we are no longer

“governed by impersonal standards justified by a shared conception of the human good”

(MacIntyre 2007, p. ix). Although both MacIntyre and Taylor accept pluralism, they presume that diverse societies, without a shared ‘sacred canopy’, are inherently conflictual and individuals no longer inhabit communities, which are sources of meaning. Alessandro Ferrara shares similar ethical preoccupations, although his formulation of authenticity is more nuanced and sophisticated, as outlined in the next section.