The ‘Other’ and its Demand For Relatedness
Taylor’s Response to the Moral Crisis of Modernity
Keywords:
Authenticity, Autonomy, Heteronomy, Identity, Incommensurability, ‘Other’, Modernity, Morality, Pluralism, Politics, ReligionAbstract
The ‘Other’ or ‘constitutive other’ is a contribution of the continental philosophy. Global humanity has been rampantly transitioning to a pluralism or multiculturalism, which places greater demand and complexity on the role of the ‘Other’. Emmanuel Levinas deserves credit for formalizing the ‘Other’ in the western philosophy. However, in our time, Charles Taylor also presents an alternative, which can also provide some insights to our understanding of modernity, rationality, morality, and religiosity. Prospects of the ‘Other’ have been explicitly presented by Taylor on authenticity, respect, responsibility, recognition, dialogue, moral frames, immanent frame, and transcendence. This article re-emphasizes the importance of being related to the Other for an authentic definition of modern human being for which Taylor’s philosophical frame is significant and relevant. There is a growing tendency to undermine the importance of religion in defining human being and, hence, it is urgent and important to engage in this debate.
References
Charles Taylor, “What Is Human Agency?” in Human Agency and Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, 15 (henceforth HA). This idea is taken from Harry Frankfurt’s article “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of the Person,” Journal of Philosophy 67 (1971), 5-20.
Harry G. Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 12. Taylor explains further: “My conception of the freedom of the will appears to be neutral with regard to the problem of determinism. It seems conceivable that it should be causally determined that a person is free to want what he wants to want. If this is conceivable, then it might be causally determined that a person enjoys a free will” (HA 336).
Charles Taylor, “Embodied Agency” in Merleau-Ponty: Critical Essays, ed. Henry Pietersma, Washington, DC: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, University Press of America, 1989, 1 footnote (Henceforth EA).
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, Cambridge: Belnap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007, 27 (Henceforth SA).
Charles Taylor, “The Dialogical Self” in The Interpretative Turn: Philosophy, Science, and Culture, vol. 2, eds. Davis R. Hiley, James F. Bohman, and Richard Shusterman, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 304 (Henceforth DS).
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989, 9-10 (Henceforth SS).
Charles Taylor, Philosophical Arguments, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995, 225 (Henceforth PA).
J. J. Rousseau, “Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men or Second Discourse” in The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, ed. V. Gourevitch, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997, 111–222.
