Abstract

This article focuses on the ethical challenge that the “punctual self” generates for democracy understood as the system that combines the differences of society and state action. Modern subjectivity has several sides, as there are different aspects of what it means to be a man and a woman, a human agent, a person. Charles Taylor investigates the origins of these subjective features from the thinkers who make up the Western tradition. From the ideas of John Locke, Charles Taylor creates the “punctual self” to indicate a tendency to see the inwardness of the subject as an autonomous substance of the community, who is able to reformulate itself by the instrumentalization of reason. The radicalization of the punctual self leads to atomism in society, in which individuals should suspend their own ideas of good in the collective life. In response to the atomistic movement, Taylor proposes an Ethics of Authenticity based on the recognition, which is more suited to the purposes of pluralistic democracy.