Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Chapter 1: Three Malaises
What are the three "malaises" of modernity that Taylor is going to discuss in this volume?
What are three positive aspects of individualism?
Why does Taylor think that modern freedom came about, in part, by discrediting the hierarchial orders of the universe as reflected in the hierarchies of human society?
What is the "disenchantment of the world"?
What does Taylor mean by the phrase "flattens and narrows our lives"?
What is "instrumental reason"?
How does instrumental reason threaten to "take over our lives"?
According to Taylor, how does technology contribute to the "flattening and narrowing" of our lives?
Who are the great "theorists of revolution," and what did they propose?
What is "soft depotism"?
Why do Tocqueville and Taylor believe that soft depotism threatens our dignity as citizens?
Does Taylor favor the position of Modernity's boosters or Modernity's knockers?
Chapter 2: The Inarticulate Debate
What three factors have obscured the importance of authenticity as a moral ideal?
What is relativism?
How is this relativism related (allegedly) to the individualism Taylor described in chapter one?
What is the "powerful moral ideal" which is at work in the relativism which Bloom critiques?
What is contradictory and self-defeating about the relativist appeal to the moral ideal of authenticity?
Why do some thinkers want "to banish discussions about the good life to the margins of political debate"?
What is moral subjectivism, and why can't reason adjudicate moral disputes?
Why, according to Taylor, does the normal fashion of social science research obscure the importance of authenticity as a moral ideal?
What is the advantage of explanations which focus on "non-moral" motivations?
Why does Taylor think that "the affirmation of the power of choice as itself a good to be maximized is a deviant product of the ideal"?
Why does Taylor claim that his proposal is NOT a "carefully balanced trade-off"?
What three things does Taylor ask us to believe in order to engage in his "work of retrieval" of the ideal of authenticity?