ISSN 2227-7242 (Print), ISSN 2304-9685 (Online)
Антропологічні виміри філософських досліджень, 2022, Вип. 21
Anthropological Measurements of Philosophical Research, 2022, NO 21
ANTHROPOLOGICAL
PROBLEMS
IN
THE
HISTORY
OF
PHILOSOPHY
V. V. LIAKH1*
1*H. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine), e-mail vvlvv2012@ukr.net, ORCID 0000-0003-4683-0838
Charles Taylor’s Ideal of Modern Identity in the Context of the "Liquid Modernity" Realities
Purpose. The article aims, through a comparison of the modern identity as presented in Charles Taylor’s concept with the Postmodern era identities, to show the strengths and weaknesses of Charles Taylor’s position on preserving or prolonging the Modern era identity to our time, as well as to define the specifics of liquid modernity compared to the New Age. Theoretical basis. Given the relevance of the topic of the human search for authentic existence in the modern world, the author analyzes Taylor’s belief that the moral ideal of authentic identity emerged in the New Age. This ideal to contrast the idea of it in the previous periods is not set from the outside but is formed or created by a human himself. In addition, it is so powerful and productive that it must be fought for nowadays. After Taylor, since the existence of modern people tends to experience negative distortions associated with the focus on consumer individualism, instrumental thinking, and their loss of political freedom, the only possible way out is to turn to the ideal of authenticity of modern times. However, the article emphasizes that the modern studies of the Second Modernity (U. Beck) or liquid modernity (Z. Bauman) show a rather radical change in social reality, which, accordingly, requires new types of identity. Originality. The article argues that the identity formed in the New Age had signs of authenticity only owing to the socio-economic system of the time that formed a human as a self-acting being who determines his or her destiny. This person was characterized by such traits as individualism, self-sufficiency, self-reliance, victory, heroism, and so on. However, the article emphasizes that today the situation has changed radically, as the reality of the Postmodern era is characterized by the fact that instead of stable, clearly defined life forms and institutions we are dealing with changing, fluid, "liquid" (Z. Bauman) institutions and behaviours of people. Diversity, uncertainty, and pluralism are the hallmarks of this era that need to be taken into account in one way or another. Therefore, although Taylor’s arguments for defending the modern identity are logically invulnerable, they have the disadvantage of not taking into account the irreversibility of the changes that have taken place in modern reality. Therefore, the ideal of authenticity formed in the New Age may not be adequate in the times of pluralism and the development of other dimensions of identity. Conclusions. Taylor’s interpretation of modern authenticity was based on the idea of man as one who constantly constructs himself and is focused on the future, which we can imagine, plan and make some effort to achieve. This position of Taylor is criticized in the article. I substantiate the view that both the moral ideal and its components can change in the process of historical development. This becomes clear if we take into account the gap that manifested itself in the shift of value orientations during the transition from the Modern to the Postmodern era. Nowadays, we have a process of changing the basic conditions that determined the identity of a modern human, and the formation of new basic conditions that are suggested as requiring identity redefinition in a post-industrial network society.
Keywords: human; self-determination; identity; authenticity; Charles Taylor; modernity; second modernity; liquid modernity; basic conditions; post-industrial society
Introduction
The modern age, commonly referred to as the post-industrial or postmodern age, introduces a great deal of uncertainty into all spheres of human existence, which has become ambiguous, changeable, and requires constant self-determination. In addition, globalisation is destroying all people’s previous habitual lifestyles, the so-called "psychosphere" is breaking down, and more and more people are experiencing psychological anxiety. It changes the socio-cultural, psychological, moral forms of human existence. Some stability, personal determination in the social environment is lost, permanent connections and belonging to certain types of identities are disrupted.
At the level of the individual, this process manifests itself as an "identity crisis", which has become one of the leading research topics of contemporary philosophers and sociologists (Liakh, 2021). It is characteristic that not only the identities inherent in a traditional patriarchal society are being lost, but also the identities formed on the basis of the autonomy or sovereignty of the subject, i.e. those formed during the heyday of industrial society. As a result, the search for new varieties of identities and adequate responses to today’s challenges intensifies in the era of late modernity. Thus, the general trend that characterizes the movement of globalization is that the previous identities, which gave meaning and recognition to the individual, are being destroyed or levelled off. That is why the problem of finding new forms of identity became so acute in the period of globalization and the transition to the "second modernity" (Beck, 1992).
Thus, on the one hand, in the modern humanities there is a constant search for answers to the challenges initiated by the "identity crisis", and on the other hand, there is a demand for verification of the proposals claiming such an answer. In this context, we will try to consider the position of Charles Taylor (1991, 2001) on modern identity as a model for modern man. Taylor’s arguments have been repeatedly discussed in the works of other researchers (Kristinsson, 2007). In particular, a meaningful analysis of Charles Taylor’s position is contained in the book Philosophy in an Age of Pluralism: The Philosophy of Charles Taylor in Question (Tully & Weinstock, 1994). In a recent publication, G. H. Marcon and R. Furlan (2020), characterizing Taylor’s position, point to his excessive individualism in the process of trying to overcome the "malaises" of today. Although the authors aim to synthetically understand this problem and explore ways to overcome it, we also believe that they are captivated by the paradigm proposed by Taylor and do not focus on the phase transition that took place in the Western world in the 1970s of the last century.
Purpose
The article aims, through a comparison of the modern identity as presented in Charles Taylor’s concept with the Postmodern era identities, to show the strengths and weaknesses of Charles Taylor’s position on preserving or prolonging the Modern era identity to our time, as well as to define the specifics of liquid modernity compared to the New Age.
Statement of basic materials
In this context, we will try to consider the ideal of modern identity of Charles Taylor (2001) that he defended in his fundamental work "Sources of the Self", which has the eloquent subtitle "The Making of the Modern Identity". In general, the author understands identity as a process through which a social agent recognizes itself and constructs meanings around a cultural attribute or set of attributes. Concerning modern identity, Taylor (2001) puts it this way: "With this term, I want to designate the ensemble of (largely unarticulated) understandings of what it is to be a human agent: the senses of inwardness, freedom, individuality, and being embedded in nature which are at home in the modern West" (p. ix). That is, freedom, individuality, focus on inner self-expression are the set of virtues that distinguish the man of the modern era from the previous, traditionally oriented man.
Thus, identity here is interpreted quite broadly as a person’s compliance with certain guidelines and requirements of the day. Taylor refers to them as a "framework".
What I have been calling a framework incorporates a crucial set of qualitative distinctions. To think, feel, judge within such a framework is to function with the sense that some action, or mode of life, or mode of feeling is incomparably higher than the others which are more readily available to us. (Taylor, 2001, p. 19)
Some framework "helps define the demands by which they judge their lives and measure, as it were, their fulness or emptiness" (Taylor, 2001, p. 16).
It should be noted that Charles Taylor in his work "The Ethics of Authenticity" tries to substantiate the thesis of authenticity as a moral ideal, which was founded and developed in the modern era. In his opinion, this ideal originated in modern times, finds its meaningful justification in the Enlightenment, but then underwent some devaluation and significant distortions. In modern society, he notes, three "malaises" are clearly evident which have challenged authenticity as a moral ideal worthy of attention and cultivation. In particular, Taylor (1991) notes: "The first fear is about what we might call a loss of meaning, the fading of moral horizons. The second concerns the eclipse of ends, in face of rampant instrumental reason. And the third is about a loss of freedom" (p. 10).
So, the first thing that worries Taylor is individualism, which, on the one hand, is a great achievement of modern times, human gain of freedom and equality, and on the other hand, it is the "loss of the heroic dimension of life", human concentration on personal, devaluation of the socially significant, etc. Or, as the author puts it, "the dark side of individualism is a centring on the self, which both flattens and narrows our lives, makes them poorer in meaning, and less concerned with others or society" (Taylor, 1991, p. 4). Thus, according to Taylor, individualism is dangerous because it narrows the horizon of consciousness, neglecting socially significant values. That is, the horizon of life narrows to meet one’s own needs, to achieve a certain level of comfort. Of course, we have different horizons in life, and a person has a certain choice of them. However, Taylor is concerned that hedonistic choices are becoming dominant. Moreover, although self-realization appears as a moral ideal (that is, everyone must be honest with himself), yet quite often it looks like indulgence of one’s desires.
In addition, modern-day individualism is associated with such form in which everyone can determine for themselves what is meaningful and valuable to them. After all, according to Taylor (1991), "the culture of self-fulfilment has led many people to lose sight of concerns that tran-scend them" (p. 15). He refers to the works of D. Bell, K. Lesch, J. Lipovetsky, who expressed concern about this. In particular, as noted by D. Bell,
Modern culture is defined by this extraordinary freedom to ransack the world storehouse and to engorge any and every style it comes upon. Such freedom comes from the fact that the axial principle of modern culture is the expression and remaking of the "self" in order to achieve self-realization and self-fulfillment. And in its search, there is a denial of any limits or boundaries to experience. It is a reaching out for all experience; nothing is forbidden, all is to be explored. (Bell, 1978, pp. 13-14)
That is, self-fulfillment, with its reliance on internal potential, may conflict with the requirements of the day or local customs, and then it appears as indulgence of one’s own whims. Under such conditions, a person has to choose between engaging in the demands of social life (up to complete dissolution), or a person listens only to some inner call, and then this choice is difficult to distinguish from arbitrariness. Hence the question arises of defining some criterion by which authentic self-realization can be distinguished from its surrogates.
Taylor has several points in this regard. In particular, he says it is important to be "honest with yourself", to be in touch "with your own inner nature", to realise your "own inner potential". These statements indicate the basis on which authenticity as a moral ideal is built. In other words, it is about the presence of a certain inner potential that seems to be programmed in "human nature". But this "nature" is interpreted here in a somewhat metaphorical way. It is not the nature as understood by the ancient Stoics, acting as a fate, a doom. It is the "nature", which envisages the spontaneous activity of the individual striving for something, though listening to the "inner voice". In particular, Rousseau’s call to "listen to your heart" showed this turn from external precepts and prescriptions to an appeal to the "inner voice" and one’s own feelings. Of course, if the "voice" is not very clear and expressive, then we have to consult with someone, but this is by no means a mandatory requirement of the previous day. (Hence the difference between the "authenticity" of ancient times and the "authenticity" of modern times).
Pointing to the dominance of instrumental reason, the bureaucratisation and regimentation of human life and the relativisation of moral virtues in the modern age, Taylor seeks to defend authenticity as a moral ideal that inspires achievement, not just as one that leads to individualization of life’s impulses. He is convinced that in our time there is still a culture of self-realization (albeit in a perverted form) that acts as a certain guide. That is, he is aware that technology and instrumental rationality have a significant negative impact on people, but still argues that this is not doom, even in such conditions, "freedom is not zero". Thus, in his opinion, it is possible and necessary to fight for a certain human ideal, which can take place in modern society.
Another danger that awaits man in the modern world is that the moral ideal is being relativized today, and it is becoming weak rather than energetically motivating. In addition, the call for tolerance weakens the impulse to seek true authenticity. Taylor expresses concern about the loss of thoroughness in our everyday lives. In the end, the basis for the majestic and heroic is lost.
Taylor also points to another factor that undermines true authenticity: moral subjectivism, which is not about the position of reason or the nature of things, but about people’s inner tendency to make certain types of decisions. Of course, self-realization and self-fulfilment are certain achievements of the Modern Age. However, as the author notes, "It does indeed appear that the more self centred forms of fulfilment have been gaining ground in recent decades. This is what has caused the alarm. People do seem to be seeing their relationships as more revocable" (Taylor, 1991, p. 76).
That is to say, Taylor’s work speaks of certain signs of modern society in which, on the one hand, instrumental rationality, the "iron cage" of bureaucratic relations dominates, and on the other hand, we have manifestations of hedonistic aspirations, a propensity for self-expression, an orientation towards self-realization, which is understood rather narrowly.
Accordingly, Taylor (1991) sees his task in finding out, "how to steer these developments towards their greatest promise and avoid the slide into the debased forms" (p. 12). The peculiarity of his position is that he is convinced of the need to "correct" the current state of affairs.
For then one has something to say, in all reason, to the people who invest their lives in these deviant forms. (…) Articulacy here has a moral point, not just in correcting what may be wrong views but also in making the force of an ideal that people are already living by more palpable, more vivid for them; and by making it more vivid, empowering them to live up to it in a fuller and more integral fashion. (Taylor, 1991, p. 22)
That is, the essence of Taylor’s argument is that the ideal of authenticity can correct trends that are caused by social change and that destroy traditional values. Taylor tries to present the ideal of authenticity as one that is self-sufficient, independent of circumstances and historical conditions (that is, independent of genesis). According to him, we must fight for higher authenticity, for higher forms of self-realization, for a community against the severance of ties, for heroism, not trivialization, and so on.
In his view, the problem is not to find a compromise or synthesis of polar viewpoints on the changes taking place in our time, but to uphold the moral ideal that emerged in the New Age, which continues to play a significant role in modern life and whose loss leads to frustration and distortion. Of course, when choosing an authentic identity, the influence of nature, history, the demands of society, etc. are important, and Taylor takes this into account. There are also certain, already set horizons that define the important and unimportant, essential and insignificant. Therefore, his arguments seem convincing. But they are so only until there is a radical change in the matrix of values caused by the transition to another type of development.
Therefore, when Taylor considers the moral categories of "honour", "dignity", "courage", etc. as those that do not seem to be abolished, it should be borne in mind that at different times they were filled with different meanings. The concept of "la noblesse oblige" speaks of the honour that was inherent in people of a certain social status. The "honour" of other classes or strata of society is manifested in a different way. Nonetheless, since Taylor sees authenticity as a moral ideal that does not lose its significance in the process of historical development, it seems to him that there is no possibility of its transformation, when the whole set of value orientations can completely change.
However, the present demonstrates not just the erosion or degradation of previous values, but their radical transformation. Such researchers as U. Beck, Z. Bauman, M. Castells, R. Inglehart, each in a different way, but in general unanimously note the radical change that has taken place in our time. They point to the advent of the "second modernity" (Beck, 1992), "liquid modernity" (Bauman, 2000), "networked societies" (Castells, 2010), the "new values map" (Inglehart, 2018), and so on.
In particular, M. Castells (2010) in his work "The Power of Identity" notes that in the period of formation of the information network society there is a disintegration of "legitimate identity". The radical transformation of the previous industrial society with its clearly defined identity (belonging to classes, large communities, corporations, etc.) leads to the disappearance of the shared identity, its dissipation. So it seems that
No need for identities in this new world: basic instincts, power drives, self-centered strategic calculations, and, at the macrosocial level, "the clear features of a barbarian nomadic dynamic, of a Dionysian element threatening to inundate all borders and rendering international political-legal and civilizational norms problematic". (Castells, 2010, p. 420)
Castells does not deny that resistance identities oriented towards a return to patriarchal values can emerge and grow under new conditions. However, in his view, they cannot develop into project identities, that is, into identities with which we can go into the future (That is, given this, Taylor must have conclusive evidence that only a previous set of values will allow us to cope with today’s problems and that there is no other way out).
However, this process can be interpreted in the context of the transition from Modernity to Postmodernity. In particular, characterizing the previous era, Z. Bauman (1994) in his speech "Controversy about Postmodernism" quite thoroughly reveals the features of the latter. He demonstrates the striking discrepancy between the principles of the Modern and Postmodern worlds. As Bauman noted,
The ideal of this world (the world of Modernity – V. L.) is the absence of internal contradictions or the ability to eliminate them; lack of ambiguity, the presence of clear instructions on how to achieve unambiguous situations and views; general agreement on principles deemed necessary for the continued existence of integrity, or the ability to disarm those that deny consent… (Bauman, 1994, p. 73)
Conversely:
The deepest and richest feature of the time in which we have to live, that it not only does not think, but is incapable of thinking of itself as a 'project'. The present is most characterised by the sudden popularity of the plural – the frequency with which plural nouns now appear, which used to appear only in the singular… Today we live by projects, not by Project. (Bauman, 1994, p. 74)
That is, postmodernity actually captures and states the decline of the Superproject, which previously inspired people to build the future (better) order of things (transl. by the author V. L.).
In another work Liquid Modernity (Bauman, 2000), the author also emphasized the radical difference between the realities of the New Age and the present. The previous
Heavy modernity was, after all, the era of shaping reality after the manner of architecture or gardening; reality compliant with the verdicts of reason was to be 'built' under strict quality control and according to strict procedural rules, and first of all designed before the construction works begin. (Bauman, 2000, p. 47)
In particular, he noted: "these days patterns and configurations are no longer 'given', let alone 'self-evident'; there are just too many of them, clashing with one another and contradicting one another’s commandments, so that each one has been stripped of a good deal of compelling, coercively constraining powers" (Bauman, 2000, p. 7). Instead of setting a framework for determining the course of life, they change depending on the needs of life. If in the New Age society identity stands as a task to get to a certain class, stratum, etc. and maintain identity (given certain resources) throughout life, the task of modern man is (as reality becomes "liquid") to change identities as quickly as possible, as they become dispersed, multiple, unstable. In other words, Bauman emphasized that in modern realities both the form and the content of identity have changed. In the process of those changes that have taken place in the structure of post-industrial society, there are opportunities for new forms of self-realization and self-fulfilment, namely those that ultimately contribute to further human development.
Finally, one can understand the concerns of Charles Taylor and his desire to defend the ideals of modernity. After all, Modernity was marked by the greatness of tasks and plans, while Postmodernity, having lost the greatness of tasks, was largely reduced to self-realization on a daily basis, or in the field of consumption. Reality itself was reduced to episodes and fragments ("life in fragments"). It has lost its uniqueness and integrity. Accordingly, the postmodern era, with its slogan "everything fits" and pluralism of approaches, precludes the mobilization of large masses of people to achieve goals at the societal level. And this is what inspired Taylor to fight for previous ideals. In our view, his position stems precisely from a desire to prevent the erosion of previous established forms of identity, which date back to modern times and which appear as a significant cultural heritage of the previous era.
Of course, Taylor does not deny the existence of changes in the value sphere of today. Moreover, he recognizes both their existence and the possibility of such changes (for example, changing gender roles, etc.). In doing so, however, Taylor seeks to defend certain moral principles as such, which should not undergo change. In particular, in his later works Disenchantment-Reenchantment (Taylor, 2011a), Recovering the Sacred (Taylor, 2011b), Taylor raises the question of restoring sacred or previous core values, and presents this as a kind of "reenchantment" as opposed to what Weber called the process of "disenchantment of the world" in the context of the formation and development of capitalism. As is well known, the author of the Protestant Ethics understood "disenchantment" as an increasing process of rationalisation in all spheres of social life, whereby there is no longer any need to explain the world in some magical way. In the end, however, pervasive rationalisation acts as an 'iron cage' into which the individual is trapped and this is what contributes to his alienation. Today, alienation under the influence of the growth of economic and socio-cultural freedom is largely losing its significance. Accordingly, on this basis, Bauman concluded that in our time, the "iron cage" has become a "light cape".
Yet, Taylor’s position is not meaningless, as he tries to defend the value "framework conditions" and institutions that once contributed to the formation and development of civilizations. And since we are currently experiencing something similar to the crisis of civilization, we can resist this only through a kind of "enchantment" that allows us to re-establish human contact with the world on the basis of basic values. This Taylor’s statement can be better understood from his subsequent works and interviews. In particular, in the interview "Fellow Travellers on Different Paths" (Meijer & Taylor, 2020) Taylor mentions various ontologies that underlie moral virtues of a certain type: naturalistic, phenomenological, and so on. That is, the existence of any civilization is based on a value distinction: higher and lower, significant and insignificant, sacred and mundane, etc. As a rule, this distinction took place within the framework of religious guidelines, which allowed humanity to reach a new round of unification of large masses of people in the form of "civilizations". (And it is such (higher) values, according to Taylor, that should be fought for and defended, despite the pressure from the current society).
However, what appears to Taylor as a kind of civilizational "malaise", Bauman characterizes as the current state of social development, or as the development of society towards another ("liquid") state. In his opinion, the very texture of sociality is changing: there is a widespread replacement of stable and rigid forms with unstable and changeable ones. In the process of moving from a scarcity society to a surplus society, in which people pay more attention to the quality of life than to solving larger social problems, there is a definite shift towards individualisation. However, as Bauman (2000) pointed out, individualisation is taking on new forms nowadays: it has gone from an "authentic" identity to an "ironic" one and finally to an "associative" one, which means that people are losing a stable identity (p. 87).
In The Ethics of Authenticity, Taylor tries to present this as a struggle of different arguments and seeks to prove the strength of his arguments, because they are based on the moral ideal, which in one way or another should determine our position in this world. But if we are aware that there has been a transition to a new phase of development, then given this context, all these phenomena take on a different meaning. That is to say, today we have a process of changing those basic conditions that defined the identity of the modern era person, and forming new basic conditions that are proposed as requiring a redefinition of identity in the modern day.
Consequently, it should be noted that in our time there is not just a change in socio-cultural context, but there is a phase transition, during which the previous system of functioning of society is destroyed, when certain types of social ties do not simply lose their dominant position or change, but are completely dismantled. Accordingly, new connections and opportunities emerge, prompting a transition to a qualitatively new social order with its own system of value orientations.
Originality
The article critically analyses C. Taylor’s thesis that identity formed in the New Age had such attributes of authenticity, which are of unremarkable importance in our day. The authentic person was characterised by such traits as individualism, self-sufficiency, self-reliance, victory, heroism, etc. Since this ideal of authenticity suffers from a certain type of "malaises" in our time, Taylor stresses the need to uphold a previous set of values as ensuring the survival of civilisation.
In contrast, the article, based on the works of Z. Bauman, M. Castells, U. Beck and others, focuses on the fact that today the situation has changed radically, because the reality of the Postmodern era is characterized by the fact that instead of stable, clearly defined forms of life and institutions we deal with changeable, fluid, "liquid" (Bauman) institutions and forms of human behaviour. Diversity, uncertainty and pluralism are not simply signs of this era, which should be taken into account one way or another, but constitute the socio-ontological basis for a new civilizational order.
Taylor’s arguments for defending the modern identity are logically invulnerable, yet they have the disadvantage of not taking into account the irreversibility of the changes that have taken place in modern reality. Meanwhile, the new reality is so radically different from previous age that one can speak of a phase transition, in the process of which both the basic assumptions of society and its value orientations change.
Conclusions
Thus, our analysis shows that Taylor, as the author of the idea of prolonging the "Modern Identity", clearly and unequivocally defends the ideal of authenticity (as a certain achievement of Modernity), trying to purge it of further perversions. Taylor details the various confusions, errors and inconsistencies that occurred in the moral sphere in the further development of society, and hence gives the impression that there seem to be originally set forms of virtues that are the model for their further realisation.
However, Taylor’s conception fails to account for those trends that point to a change in the framework conditions, a radical transformation of a socially defined context. More precisely, Taylor considers them as those that cannot radically affect his conception. The social deformations of human existence are only "malaises" to be dealt with. Because of this, the phenomena recorded by him are not endowed with a particularly significant meaning, and therefore they do not indicate another vector of social development. And without this context, self-fulfilment can be interpreted either as atomisation or egocentrism, or as a narrowing of the spectrum of moral consciousness, as C. Taylor believes.
What is changing, however, is the social background that sets the horizons and dominants for basic values. Or, to put it differently, Taylor’s concept does not take into account the socio-ontological basis of human existence, namely, that phenomenon which sociology and social psychology designate as a stable "social character" (Riesman, Fromm, Toffler). It is the latter that attests to the modification of people’s behaviour in response to the demands of socio-economic reality. Thus, to the above ontologies (naturalistic, phenomenological) we should also add a socio-economic ontology, which becomes a dominant factor in the era of social transformation.
In general, an assessment of Taylor’s position depends largely on answering the question: are the changes fixed in modern social life "malaises" or aberrations, or are they signs of a new reality that we will have to live with in the future? And here the conclusion arises that first of all it is necessary to consider the changes in modern social ontology. That is, one must consider the problem in the context of those shifts that signify the transition of society to a new socio-economic order. Finally, the post-industrial era makes further adjustments to this process of destruction of previous identities (now the identities of the industrial era) and pushes the search for new identities, which are much more numerous than before and have a tendency towards pluralism.
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В. В. ЛЯХ1*
1*Інститут філософії імені Г. С. Сковороди, Національна академія наук України (Київ, Україна), ел. пошта vvlvv2012@ukr.net, ORCID 0000-0003-4683-0838
Ідеал новочасної ідентичності Ч. Тейлора в контексті реалій "рідинної модерніті"
Мета. У процесі зіставлення новочасної ідентичності, представленій в концепції Ч. Тейлора, та ідентичностей доби Постмодерну або "liquid modernity" (З. Бауман) передбачається показати сильні й слабкі сторони його позиції щодо збереження чи подовження ідентичностей доби Модерну в наш час. Визначити специфіку "liquid modernity" у порівнянні з добою Нового часу. Теоретичний базис. Зважаючи на актуальність у сучасному світі теми пошуку людиною автентичного існування, автор аналізує концепцію Тейлора, який вважає, що в період Нового часу зародився моральний ідеал автентичної ідентичності. Цей ідеал, на відміну від уявлень щодо нього у попередні часи, не заданий ззовні, а формується чи створюється самою людиною. До того ж, він є настільки потужним і продуктивним, що за нього потрібно боротися й в наш час. На його думку, оскільки буття сучасних людей зазнає негативних деформацій, пов’язаних із орієнтацією на споживацький індивідуалізм, інструментальний тип мислення та втратою ними політичної свободи, то єдиним виходом може бути звернення до ідеалу автентичності новочасної доби. Утім, у статті наголошується, що сучасні дослідження доби Другої модерніті (У. Бек), або liquid modernity (Z. Bauman) свідчать про досить радикальну зміну соціальної реальності, яка, відповідно, потребує нових типів ідентичності. Наукова новизна. В статті відстоюється теза, що ідентичність, сформована в добу Нового часу, мала ознаки автентичності лише тому, що соціально-економічний устрій того часу формував людину як самодіяльну істоту, що сама визначає свою долю. Таку людину характеризували наступні ознаки: індивідуалізм, самодостатність, опора на власні сили, звитяга, героїзм тощо. Однак в статті акцентується увага на тому, що на сьогодні ситуація радикально змінилася, оскільки реальність доби Постмодерну характеризується якраз тим, що замість сталих, чітко визначених форм життя та інституцій маємо справу з мінливими, плинними, "рідинними" (Бауман) інституціями і формами поведінки людей. Різноманітність, невизначеність і плюралізм є ознаками цієї доби, на які так чи інакше треба зважати. А тому, хоча аргументи Тейлора щодо відстоювання новочасної ідентичності є логічно невразливими, але мають ту ваду, що не враховують незворотність змін, які відбулися в сучасній реальності. Відтак ідеал автентичності, сформований в добу Нового часу, не може бути адекватним в часи плюралізму і розбудови інших вимірів ідентичності. Висновки. Тлумачення Тейлором новочасної автентичності спиралося на уявлення про людину як таку, що постійно конструює себе, яка зорієнтована на майбутнє, яке ми можемо собі уявити, запланувати і докласти певних зусиль для його досягнення. Ця позиція Тейлора в статті піддається критиці й обґрунтовується точка зору, що в процесі історичного розвитку може змінюватися як моральний ідеал, так і його складові. Це стає зрозумілим, якщо взяти до уваги той розрив, який проявився в зсуві ціннісних орієнтацій при переході від доби Модерну до Постмодерну. Сьогодні маємо процес зміни тих базових умов, які визначали ідентичність людини модерної доби, і формування нових "базових умов", котрі пропонуються як такі, що потребують перевизначення ідентичності в постіндустріальному мережевому суспільстві.
Ключові слова: людина; самовизначеність; ідентичність; автентичність; Чарльз Тейлор; Модерн; Друга модерніті; рідинна модерніті; базові умови; постіндустріальне суспільство
Received: 17.01.2022
Accepted: 25.05.2022
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
doi:
https://doi.org/10.15802/ampr.v0i21.260348
© V. V. Liakh, 2022