Abstract
In this chapter I discuss Taylor’s claim that strong evaluation is inevitable
for human agency: without a framework of strong evaluations human
agents would be in a crisis which Taylor calls, perhaps misleadingly, “an
identity crisis”. With a broad brush I introduce some of the essential
background in first three sections, and scrutinize the inevitability of
strong evaluation more closely in the last three sections.
I introduce first the distinction between the engaged perspective,
which in Taylor’s view provides the correct approach to humans and
values, and two kinds of disengaged perspectives (objectivist and
subjectivist ones) (2.1). Taylor’s ideal typical distinction (engaged and
disengaged) resembles Sellars’s (1963) distinction between manifest and
scientific image, but Taylor takes the scientific worldview to be only one
objectivist variant of disengaged views: the Cartesian view of mind is
detached from the lifeworldly reality, and is a variant of a subjectivist
disengaged view.
There are many aspects to Taylor’s philosophical anthropology, based
on such an engaged perspective. He defends many “human constants”
related to humans as social, self-interpreting, embodied language animals.
Although here the focus is merely on one of the human constants, namely
on the claim that humans are essentially strong evaluators, I give a sketchy
account of the essentials of the broader picture in section 2.2.
Taylor uses transcendental argumentation in trying to show the
inescapability of strong evaluation in human life. I will, following
Nicholas Smith’s reconstruction, discuss Taylor’s reasons for adopting
such argumentative strategy in relation to this issue, as opposed to socalled
ordinary language philosophy, phenomenological description,
hermeneutical interpretation, or strict Hegelian dialectics (2.3). The
central point is that although we may want to stress the hermeneutical or
interpretive nature of being-in-the-world, and the constitutive nature of
human self-interpretations, the few human constants are true whether
explicitly taken to be true or not: humans are self-interpreting animals, or
strong evaluators, even though they may hold opposing theories in their
self-interpretations (cf. Abbey 2000, 4).
In a sense, Taylor’s label for his claim, which he terms a “transcendental
argument”, may seem to make heavy weather of a simple
point: without strong evaluation those aspects of life and experience
which presuppose strong evaluation would not be possible. These aspects
of life include more or less everything that is peculiarly human. The
arguments try to bring into focus these dependencies: strong evaluations
are inescapable for our lives as humans or as persons, as opposed to “mere”
animals. To be fully outside the scope of strong evaluation is to be in a
pathological state. Various disengaged theories of humans neglect this.
These are theories of human agency, subjectivity, personhood or identity
which have ignored this dimension of human life, or have not taken it to
be essential. Taylor’s arguments are directed against such views. In this
chapter I will clarify the nature of Taylor’s argument by distinguishing
different concepts (human agency, personhood, subjectivity, selfhood,
and identity) and asking what it is exactly that strong evaluation is
necessary for (2.4). The notions of personhood and identity will be
discussed in more detail in the next two chapters.
The crucial point in Taylor’s argumentation is made by the claim that
for someone capable of strong evaluation, the lack of a framework of
strong evaluations involves them in a terrible, frightening crisis, an
identity-crisis. I will distinguish several meanings of this claim and discuss
their validity in 2.5. I suggest that some “identity-crises” are not at all
what Taylor has in mind. But the point itself is valid: without a
framework of strong evaluations, human agents would be in a state of
crisis. In the last section, I defend Taylor’s view against possible counterexamples,
posed by Owen Flanagan and Paul Johnston.