Charles Taylor and his diagnosis of the illness of modernity

Abstract

We intend here to summon up Charles Taylor's critical assessment of modern Western culture, based on his work The Ethics of Authenticity, by characterising the malaise of modernity by the loss of horizons of meaning, namely by the replacement of a cosmic order that sustained social hierarchies, by a subjectivist and relativist individualism. Within this new framework, the feeling of unease that haunts modernity is now also understood as the primacy of instrumental reason over the lives of individuals and the loss of freedom sustained by this blurring of moral horizons. From the diagnosis of these three maladies, Taylor emphasises the principle of modernity's vitality: authenticity. The author does not dwell on the debate surrounding modernity, but aims to understand the moral sources of our Western civilisation, often hidden in this debate, so that we can undertake "a work of regeneration" of the ideals of modernity.