Dialectics of the Self

Ian Fraser

Description

Charles Taylor is a philosopher concerned with morality and the nature of the identity of individuals and groups in the West. This book offers an evaluation of Taylor's conception of self, and its moral and political possibilities.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Western philosophy
• Philosophy of mind

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 02 février 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781845407155
• Langue: English

Extrait

Dialectics of the Self
Transcending Charles Taylor
Ian Fraser




Published in 2020 by
Imprint Academic
www.imprint.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 2020 Ian Fraser
The right of Ian Fraser to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
The views and opinions expressed herein belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Imprint Academic or Andrews UK Limited.



Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Lawrence Wilde for his insightful comments on the manuscript, and for his support and encouragement throughout the project. Anthony Freeman, Managing Editor of Imprint Academic , deserves thanks for his understanding, and David Boucher for backing the book. Gary Browning and Howard Williams have been supportive over a number of years for which I am especially grateful. Joan Melia also merits a mention for her infectious love of Joyce’s Ulysses . I am grateful to Nottingham Trent University for granting me sabbatical leave and the library staff there, particularly Terry Hanstock, for their excellent provision of interlibrary loans. The technical wizardry of Paul Green was impressive and greatly appreciated. Audrey Bradshaw, Keith and Mary Fraser, and Carol and Vincent Murphy, have helped in indirect ways that they may not even realise, which is all the more reason for mentioning them here. My Brother, Keith Fraser, requires a further mention, along with my nieces Danielle and Laura Fraser, in memory of our unforgettable, epiphanic night in Istanbul. Molly has kept me company for the entire project, and that necessitates a posthumous recognition of similar exploits by Strider and Tigger. Sharon Garratt deserves heartfelt praise for her patience and support. As a transcending testament to the power of dialectics, I dedicate the book to the memory of Frank Fraser, for developing one form of his aesthetic self in his superb photography, and also for being my Father.
Portions of the book have appeared elsewhere. Chapter Two is a revised version of my ‘Charles Taylor’s Catholicism’, Contemporary Political Theory , 4, 3, 2005. Chapter Three is a revised version of my ‘Charles Taylor on Transcendence: Benjamin, Bloch and Beyond’, Philosophy & Social Criticism , Vol 29, 3, 2003. Chapters One and Seven feature some of the sections from my ‘Charles Taylor, Marx and Marxism’, Political Studies , Vol 51, 4, 2003. I would like to thank the
anonymous referees of those journals for their helpful comments and suggestions, and Paul Kelly in particular in relation to the Political Studies article. Many thanks also to Ruth Abbey for providing a stimulating basis for debate in relation to the Catholicism piece. The usual disclaimers apply.
Emphases in quotations in the book are always in the original unless otherwise stated. Terms in square brackets are my amendments and insertions unless otherwise stated.



Introduction
All I know is that I’m not a Marxist [1]
—Karl Marx
A spectre haunts Charles Taylor’s conception of the self—the spectre of Marxism. One of the most prominent thinkers to identify this Marxist presence was Isaiah Berlin who, in 1994, five years after the publication of Sources of the Self , [2] wrote a brief introduction to one of the first comprehensive evaluations of Charles Taylor’s work. [3] While seeing him as a teleological Christian and Hegelian, Berlin also stressed how Taylor is influenced ‘in a fascinating fashion’ by ‘Marxist ideas’. [4] This emanates, he suggests, from Taylor’s emphasis on the possibility of human flourishing only if society is liberated from oppression, exploitation and domination, which derive from modern capitalism and which have their roots in various formations in the past. He argues that, for Taylor, such liberation is only possible with the creation of a rational society where individuals pursue their ends on their own and as part of a community. Berlin suggests this ‘Marxist’ desire is impossible because of the multiplicity of values that are pursued by different societies and cultures and that often conflict or are incompatible with each other. [5] Any notion of a common humanity, as he assumes Taylor to approve of, is therefore unrealistic. In his response to Berlin, Taylor ignores the Marxist epithet but does mention the ‘sad story of Bolshevism’ and urges that we keep the aim of human liberation and fulfilment ‘before our eyes’ rather than assume we have achieved them with ‘cheap substitutes, like Leninist ‘‘democracy’’’. [6] However, Taylor maintains that there is still a possibility for a more humane and liberated society even though the aforementioned disasters have been realised in pursuit of the goals he obviously endorses. Against Berlin, he believes that we should still continue to struggle for a ‘mode of life’ where conflicting demands ‘could be reconciled’ even where other conflicting demands persist.
Despite Berlin’s observation, there has been little written about Taylor’s relationship to Marx, Marxism and the notion of the self. [7] Such an omission is strange, because Taylor has a long history of sympathy, albeit critical, with the more humanist side of Marx’s and Marxists’ writings. We should not forget that he was one of the founders of the New Left in Britain, and began the journey of rethinking and re-evaluating Marxism’s continued relevance to contemporary debates concerning a more humane society and pursuit of the good life. From the late 1950s onwards, he wrote a number of articles and chapters, which explicitly engaged with Marxism in one form or another. [8] Over this thirty-year period, he can be seen as adopting a sympathetic and immanent critique of Marx and Marxism in which he teases out problems or unanswered questions and then explores them in relation to his own political philosophy. Such a project is certainly of great service in re-vitalising Marxist theory from under the shadows of Stalinism and a supposedly triumphant capitalism. Indeed, it was one of the factors for constituting the New Left itself. Most of the early pieces developed and re-iterated similar themes that were drawn together in his first major study Hegel , which was first published in 1975. Three years later, he was prominent enough to be chosen by Bryan Magee to discuss Marxist theory as part of the ‘Men Of Ideas’ series televised by the BBC. [9] However, by 1989, in the year Sources of the Self was published, Taylor was about to settle his account with Marx and Marxism in a retrospective essay, ‘Marxism and Socialist Humanism’ [10] , in which he considered the position of the New Left thirty years after its inception. Throughout this piece, he certainly desires to distance himself from his Marxist past, even though he does note some positive aspects in that tradition. Ten years later, the break with Marxism becomes more overt with his eventual declaration for the Catholic religion as his preferred framework within which to pursue the good. [11] It is interesting to note here that Stuart Hall, a co-founder of the New Left, referred to Taylor in his younger days as a ‘sort of Catholic Marxist’, [12] which might suggest that Catholicism and Marxism are not mutually exclusive—at least not for Taylor.
As Taylor is quite rightly seen, in the words of Richard Rorty, as ‘among the dozen most important philosophers writing today, anywhere in the world’, then his long engagement with Marxism certainly warrants attention’. [13] Indeed, if Berlin could detect the presence of ‘Marxist ideas’ in Taylor’s work five years after the publication of Sources and his retrospective essay, then an analysis of his engagement with Marx and Marxism on the conception of the self and of its moral and political possibilities in modernity seems even more pertinent. This book is an attempt to do just that. I therefore offer an immanent and transcendent critique of Taylor’s notion of the self, through which I will demonstrate the continued relevance of the humanist Marxist tradition he came from but ultimately rejects. This rejection is not total, as we shall see throughout the course of this book, because certain elements of Marx and Marxism continue to haunt his work. I will therefore be engaging in an analysis of Taylor’s own sympathetic and immanent critique of Marx and Marxism to expose those aspects where he shares similarities and where he has been far too dismissive of that tradition.
I begin in Chapter One by outlining Taylor’s notion of the self in order to offer a comparison with Marx’s discussion of the self. I show that Taylor has, by his own admission, a core aspect of Marxism in his notion of the self which is the affirmation of ordinary life, while other aspects—the social self, self-interpretation, language and dialogue—also find resonance in Marx’s writings. Taylor operates with a universal/particular notion of the self, which is reflected in Marx’s dialectical understanding of the self as abstract and concrete. The dialectical nature of the self in capital means that people find their identity being imposed from outside at the same time they attempt to assert their own identity or human essence. The self therefore becomes a split or alienated self as we try to assert our human essence, and attempt to