Contemporary Political Theory, 2004, 3, (300–320)

r 2004 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1470-8914/04 $30.00

www.palgrave-journals.com/cpt

Authenticity and the Politics of Identity:

A Critique of Charles Taylor’s Politics of
Recognition
Brenda Lyshaug1
Department of Political Science and Gender Studies, 260 South Central Campus Dr., Rm. 252
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
E-mail: brenda.lyshaug@poli-sci.utah.edu

This essay evaluates Charles Taylor’s defence of a politics of recognition in light of

his broader account of modern identity and the self. I argue that his call for a
politics of recognition betrays what is most ethically promising in his own account
of modern subjectivity – namely, its emphasis on and affirmation of inner
multiplicity. The first part of the paper identifies the ways in which his account of
the self affirms inner multiplicity. The second part of the paper outlines how a
politics of recognition circumscribes this inner plurality by rendering core aspects of
personal identity rigid and by promoting attitudes that inhibit attentiveness to
multiplicity within the self. By outlining the ways in which it circumscribes inner
multiplicity, I show that Taylor’s preferred form of politics undermines two of his
own central goals: that of securing the conditions in which authentic identity can be
realized and that of promoting mutually receptive relations among diverse selves. A
form of liberalism that strives for neutrality with respect to cultural symbols and
practices more effectively facilitates the realization of these goals.
Contemporary Political Theory (2004) 3, 300–320. doi:10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300125

Keywords: Charles Taylor; identity; group rights; liberalism; proceduralism;

authenticity; individuality; recognition

Introduction
Over the past two decades, the demands of diverse cultural groups for political
recognition have become a pressing concern in liberal democratic societies.
What members of such groups often seek is affirmation and support for their
distinctive cultural identities. Such demands are not likely to diminish in the
foreseeable future and, because the injustices that motivate them are often
grave, they require a response; but, what kind of response should a liberal
democratic state make? And how should we understand or articulate the
reasons for responding to such claims for recognition? Charles Taylor’s work
has had an enormous impact on the way political theorists have addressed
these questions F even when they have disagreed with him. In this paper, I
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examine his widely influential essay, ‘The Politics of Recognition’ (1994), by

setting it in the context of his broader writings on identity and the self. My
reading reveals a number of problems in his political response to cultural
diversity that have received insufficient attention from theorists who have
focused on these questions. Taylor’s defence of a ‘politics of recognition’ rests,
in part, on the significance he attaches to the modern ideal of authenticity. A
fierce critic of predominant understandings of this ideal, he seeks to promote a
richer and more ethically satisfying conception of authenticity (Taylor, 1991a).
He does so by offering an account of modern identity that emphasizes the
diversity of the self’s ‘moral sources’ and the fluidity of inner experience
(Taylor, 1989). What Taylor wants us to recognize is that being true to
ourselves, as modern individuals, is a more complex yet potentially more
rewarding project than we typically assume. Ultimately, however, I will show
that his ‘politics of recognition’ betrays these valuable insights about the
importance of diversity and fluidity in the self; and in doing so, it jeopardizes
his own goal of enhancing the prospects for authenticity and for mutually
receptive relations among diverse selves. The form of ‘difference-blind’ liberal
politics that he rejects does greater justice to these aspects of subjectivity and
more effectively secures the conditions of authentic self-realization and mutual
receptivity.

Identity and the Self

Like many other contemporary theorists, Taylor recognizes that the ways in
which we understand our selves can have great political significance. Two such
thinkers F William Connolly (1991, 1995, 1999) and Judith Butler (1997) F
have been concerned to show, in particular, that rigid conceptions of a unified
self can promote indifference, intolerance and hostility to ‘others.’ While
Taylor is not usually grouped with these theorists, his account of the self
contains valuable resources for combating the very problems they address. In
this section of the paper, I offer an account of these resources within his theory
of the self; and in the following section, I outline how his preferred form of
politics risks undermining them.
Taylor’s account of the modern self yields a distinctive understanding of
authenticity: authenticity is characterized, here, by receptivity to difference
within and outside the self, rather than by a concern to actualize a singular
primal core within the self. His emphasis on attending to internal and external
plurality is evident in three aspects of his theory. First, he affirms the
irreducible multiplicity of the goods and ‘sources’ that constitute modern
identity; second, he embraces the modernist concern to ‘liberate experience’
from the cramping forms of unity entailed by earlier disengaged and Romantic
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conceptions of the self; and third, he insists on the multivocal or ‘dialogical’

character of inner life. I will discuss each of these aspects of his theory in turn.
That Taylor affirms the multiplicity of the self’s moral sources, and criticizes
what he calls the ‘unitary self,’ signals the first way in which his theory
embraces inner plurality.2 A ‘unitary’ conception of the self is one that
exclusively emphasizes one moral source among the many that constitute
modern identity, and that thus blocks off the self’s contact with a range of its
other sources and constitutive goods. Taylor’s (1989) portrait of modern
identity reveals a wide range of constitutive commitments that the self has
accrued in the development of modern culture. Underpinning these commit-
ments is a set of moral sources that sustain or breathe life into them. Two of
the main sources on which his account of modern identity focuses are the
Enlightenment ideal of disengaged reason and the Romantic idea of
expressivist nature. The former ideal is linked to the modern commitment to
universal justice and freedom, to the reduction of need and suffering, and to
the affirmation of ordinary life; the latter ideal is linked to the modern
affirmation of authenticity as the pursuit of one’s unique inner nature or voice.
Historically, however, each of these sources has been associated with a unitary
conception of the self. The unitary self of disengaged reason ‘requires a tight
centre of control which dominates experience and is capable of constructing the
orders of reason by which we can direct thought and life’ (1989, 462). The ideal
of Romantic fulfillment arose in reaction to the self of disengaged reason,
which was thought to produce an instrumental and mechanistic self, one that is
divorced from feeling and nature. Proponents of the Romantic ideal preferred
to seek unity in ‘the alignment of sensibility and reason’ F that is, in the
reconciliation of instinct and creative imagination (1989, 462). For Taylor,
however, this alternative is also problematic because it closes off access to the
goods associated with Enlightenment reason.
By rejecting the unitary self in either of these forms as impoverished, Taylor
urges each of us to be open to the irreducibly plural sources of modern personal
identity. He writes: ‘our identities, as defined by whatever gives us our
fundamental orientation, are in fact complex and many-tiered’ (1989, 28–29).
Being true to ourselves in the fullest sense thus involves acknowledging and
attending to this plurality. However, the importance he places on such
attentiveness is further underscored by his acknowledgment of the ‘genuine
dilemmas’ that arise among the self’s diverse goods (1989, 503). Within any single
life, one will have to choose between goods that pull in different directions. Thus,
our choices will sometimes involve sacrifice: ‘our identity is deeper and more
many-sided than any of our possible articulations of it’ (1989, 29). Although it is
unlikely that we can fully realize all the facets of our identity within a single life,
what Taylor wants is for us to confront the choices in a way that acknowledges
and attends to the significance of what is lost: ‘The goods may be in conflict, but
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for all that they don’t refute each other’. What he objects to are views of the self
that ‘find their way through the dilemmas of modernity by invalidating some of
the crucial goods in contest’ (1989, 502, 503). In this concern to attend to what
our articulations of identity exclude, he affirms the value of the different
potentialities in the self that the constitution of an identity might block off.
If Taylor’s concern with the ‘differentiated’ and internally conflicted
character of modern identity signals a move away from any flattened
conception of authenticity, this move is even more strongly signaled in his
discussion of modernist art and literature. Here, he affirms what he calls the
‘decentered’ and ‘multilevelled’ character of modernist consciousness, which he
associates with a new and inestimably important moral source that we gain
access to through epiphanic experiences. Modernism, on his account, makes a
new kind of turn inward, one that seeks to overcome not only the mechanistic
conception of the self that is associated with disengaged reason, but also the
Romantic ideal of a perfect alignment of ‘inner nature and reason’ (1989, 462).
The modernists do not turn inward in search of ‘a self to be articulatedy On
the contrary, the turn inward may take us beyond the self as usually
understood, to a fragmentation of experience which calls our ordinary notions
of identity into questiony’ (1989, 462).
Modernist consciousness is decentered in the sense that it exists ‘on a duality
or plurality of levels’ (1989, 480). Modernist art and literature point to these
multiple dimensions of experience by producing a new kind of epiphanic
experience F a kind unlike that produced by Romantic art and literature.
While Romantic epiphanies sought directly to express a deeper meaning
inherent in nature, modernist epiphanies seek to bring ‘into our presence’
something that cannot be directly expressed or represented (1989, 475–482). In
this way, modernism acknowledges that ‘the epiphanic and the ordinary but
indispensable real can never be fully aligned’ (1989, 480), even though they are
connected. To deny the ‘irreducibly multilevelled’ character of human life
would be to court ‘disaster or impoverishment’, since Taylor thinks that
modernist epiphanies put us in touch with a moral source that ‘possibly
contains the key F or a key F to what it is to be human’ (1989, 480, 481).
The third way in which Taylor’s account of the self incorporates a stance of
receptivity to difference lies in its emphasis on the multivocal, or ‘dialogical’,
character of inner life. Inner life encompasses a conversation among different
voices and this conversation is what shapes one’s identity. He writes:

We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle

against, the things our significant others want to see in us. Even after we
outgrow some of these others F our parents, for instance F and they
disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as
long as we live (Taylor, 1994, 33).
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Taylor emphasizes that this inner dialogue is not simply our passive
internalization of others’ voices. While the conversation originates in the self’s
initial situation of passivity and dependence on others, ‘what gets internalized in
the mature subject is not the reaction of the other, but the whole conversation,
with the interanimation of its voices’ (Taylor, 1991, 314).3 This internalized
conversation provides the medium through which we find our own voices and
discover or ‘articulate’ ourselves (1991, 310–311). One’s identity, then, is tied to
the other voices that one contains; and being true to oneself entails being
attentive to these voices, even if and when we struggle against them.
In several ways, then, Taylor’s account of the self affirms internal
multiplicity. This affirmation is accompanied, however, by an emphasis on
the need for unity in the self. According to his theory of agency, the self’s
ability to make coherent choices presupposes the existence of an antecedent
framework or ‘horizon’ of meanings F meanings that constitute a conception
of the good. Articulating an identity necessarily involves orienting oneself in
relation to this backdrop conception of the good, since one’s choices constitute
movements toward or away from it (1989, 25–44). Moreover, because the
choices through which we realize an identity are undertaken over time,
adopting an orientation to the good ‘inescapably’ involves constructing a
narrative about the course of our life (1989, 51):

The issue of our condition can never be exhausted for us by what we are,
because we are always also changing and becomingy So the issue for us has
to be not only where we are, but where we’re goingy Since we cannot do
without an orientation to the good, and sincey our place relative to this
goody is something that must always change and become, the issue of the
direction of our lives must arise for us (1989, 46–47).
The temporal condition of existence entails that no choice or action can make
sense if it is abstracted from the broader sequence of events to whose flow or
direction it contributes: we must be able to tell a story about where a particular
action comes from, and what it is leading to.
The temporal character of life not only requires us to fit our actions into an
ongoing narrative, it calls each person to tell a comprehensive story about her
life as a whole. Taylor is emphatic about this. He insists that ‘there is something
like an a priori unity of a human life through its whole extent’ (Taylor, 1989, 51;
1997, 179–183). So we are called to construct narratives that encompass the
entire course of our lives, from their earliest to their last moments:
We want our lives to have meaning, or weight, or substance, or to grow
towards some fulness [sic]y But this means our whole lives. If necessary, we
want the future to ‘redeem’ the past, to make it part of a life story which has
sense or purpose, to take it up in a meaningful unity (1989, 50–51).
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Such encompassing unity gives ‘fullness’ and ‘sense’ to a life; it makes the
future redeem the past. To strive for such unity, then, is to strive for the richest,
fullest, or most meaningful possible mode of experience (1989, 42–43).
However, the emphasis that Taylor’s account of identity places on the need
for unity over the course of a life is too strong. As Peter Digeser (1995, 85)
points out, while our actions may rely for their intelligibility on ‘a sense of either
what went before or what will come after’, it is only necessary for us to build
‘minimal’ narratives in order to satisfy this requirement. Digeser writes that:
ya minimal level of narrativityy could be satisfied by telling very specific
stories within a very narrow time horizony A minimal narrative could be as
simple as saying that ‘I get up every morning at this time,’ or it could be as
entailed and complex as an epic poem (1995, 85).

Taylor’s more ambitious view of narrative unity as all-encompassing ‘has no

monopoly on plausibility’ (Digeser, 1995, 92).
Does this insistence on an encompassing unity undermine Taylor’s
affirmation of inner plurality? Digeser not only suggests that the plausibility
of such a demanding conception of narrative identity is questionable; he
identifies various ethical costs that the pursuit of such unity can incur. For
example, he points out that after exerting a certain amount of effort to
‘[construct] a life that stands as a whole’, we may grow ‘less willing to do
anything that pushes against or challenges our current narrative identity’. As a
result, the ‘push to unity may ultimately stifle creativity, growth, and maturity’.
What is worse, this emphasis on unity can make it harder to ‘accommodate and
accept’ change in others when they ‘do things that fail to fit in their own life
stories as we understand them’. One’s focus on constructing a redemptive unity
can even result in a kind of self-centeredness F a narrow clinging to the self
that makes one ‘less concerned with other people and more concerned with
[one’s] own story’ (Digeser, 1995, 94).
These criticisms point astutely to a standing temptation in Taylor’s unified
self F a temptation to succumb to some ethically troubling problems.
However, even if minimalist narratives can satisfy the bare demands of
‘intelligibility’ and reduce this standing temptation, Digeser does not establish
that they can nurture as rich a sense of the meaningfulness of experience as
more ambitious or encompassing narratives. Moreover, he does not establish
that these ethical problems are inseparable from the form of unity Taylor
defends. It is plausible to think that the dangers of self-absorption and
decreased tolerance for others do not necessarily stem from his demanding
insistence on unity across a life, but are rather the result of a lacuna in his
theory: he fails to find ways to keep the self’s attachment to its narrative
identity dynamic and qualified. It is striking that Taylor’s theoretical portrait

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of the modern self includes no account of how one can distance oneself,
provisionally or episodically, from the very identity that one fashions out of the
many ‘sources’ furnished by one’s culture. He pays no attention, for example,
to the role of irony in the constitution of modern identity. Since irony has
played such a prominent role in the history of modern culture F as other
critics have shown (Trilling, 1972; Larmore, 1996) F this oversight is telling.
It is because he does not recognize the need to keep the self’s pursuit of
narrative identity from becoming dogmatic that Taylor’s emphasis on an all-
encompassing unity threatens to restrict the very multiplicity and fluidity that he
wishes to affirm. In the development of any narrative, there is arguably a tension
between ‘synchronic multiplicity’ and the drive toward ‘diachronic unity’, a
unity that is realized in the construction of a satisfying resolution.4 With respect
to written narratives, the greater the complexity of detail about character and
setting that an author incorporates in constructing her narrative, the harder it
will be for her to tie everything together in a satisfying resolution. Taylor clearly
wants to affirm both synchronic multiplicity and diachronic unity in the self; but
because of this tension, his failure to address the need to keep diachronic unity
from becoming a rigidly pursued or single-minded goal effectively privileges it
over synchronic multiplicity. What this account of personal identity as an all-
encompassing narrative does not allow is that the ambiguous complexity of the
self’s experience at any given moment might carry independent, if fragmentary,
significance. As he does not find ways to encourage openness within the self to
those aspects of experience that cannot be integrated into a particular narrative,
his account of narrative identity effectively blocks out the perspective on one’s
identity that can be gained from those fragmentary experiences. It deprives the
self of a set of resources for understanding the limits and exclusions that are
built into identity and, hence, for offsetting the costs that identity can incur for it
and for its relations to others.
In sum, then, Taylor’s insistence on a robust conception of narrative unity
does not, in itself, negate his affirmation of plurality or of that which is elusive
and fluid in the self. However, in not addressing the need to keep the self’s
adherence to this unity from becoming rigid or dogmatic, he does leave inner
plurality vulnerable to suppression in the self’s quest for narrative identity.
This unfortunate tendency not to make full use of the resources that his
account of the self affords for recognizing and affirming difference reappears
with a vengeance in his account of a politics of recognition.

Identity and Politics

Taylor’s call for a ‘politics of recognition’ grows out of his broader critique of
proceduralist liberalism, which seeks to abstract from citizens’ diverse
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conceptions of the good in order to establish a morally neutral form of

governance. Proceduralist liberalism strives to be ‘difference blind’, insisting
that the state secure a uniform set of rights for all citizens regardless of cultural,
religious, and other differences that exist among them. In treating citizens in a
uniform way, it aims to recognize and protect the equal dignity of all persons,
as manifested in their equal capacity to exercise agency and to live
‘autonomously’ (Taylor 1994, 57; 1998, 154).
Of the problems that Taylor identifies with this variant of liberalism, three
are directly relevant here. First, the proceduralist ideal of neutrality is
impossible to realize (Taylor, 1998, 154). What gives rights-based liberalism
moral purchase is the fact that it is rooted in a particular set of ‘moral sources’
F a framework of meanings that constitutes a conception of the good.
Moreover, because this framework is linked to Western and Christian self-
understandings, it is culturally specific (Taylor, 1994, 62). Policies produced by
proceduralist institutions also inescapably reflect the conceptions of the good
to which dominant cultural groups subscribe (Taylor, 1994a, 253). By
obscuring the moral goods that actually underpin liberal institutions, the
doctrine of neutrality contributes to a second problem: it leaves proponents of
proceduralism ill-positioned to weigh these hidden commitments against
competing goods or, thus, to make accommodations for them. Its emphasis on
individual rights makes proceduralism especially resistant to the pursuit of
‘shared goods’, which by their nature can be realized only collectively (Taylor,
1995, 127–145). Proceduralism, then, is needlessly rigid. The third problem
with proceduralism is that it discriminates against members of minority
cultures by somehow exerting pressure on them to assimilate ‘to a dominant or
majority identity’ (Taylor, 1994, 38; 60). In doing so, it enlists members of
minority cultures to an inauthentic mode of being.
In at least one respect, Taylor’s critique is compelling. It is plausible to think
that ‘difference-blind’ institutions favor some culturally inflected conceptions
of the good over others. After all, this form of liberalism aims to protect
individuals’ dignity and, specifically, it protects each person’s capacity to reflect
on and revise her life plan.5 To cling to the idea of neutrality with respect to
such fundamental values would denude liberalism of important content or
meaning. Cultures whose survival is not wholly compatible with a commitment
to the protection of individual autonomy are disfavored by such institutions. In
his recent critique of multiculturalism Brian Barry suggests that, on a proper
understanding, liberalism does not disfavor individuals whose conceptions of
the good exclude autonomy because it does not call on the state to ‘inculcate
autonomy’ in citizens. At most, liberal states make this good an option for
citizens. They merely make it possible for citizens to break free from their
cultures’ traditions whenever they themselves elect to do so.6 In a liberal polity,
for example, public schools may expose children to information about diverse
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religions so that as adults they can decide for themselves whether to adhere to
their inherited faith; but such schools may not promote a skeptical or critical
perspective on religion.
However, this distinction between inculcating autonomy and merely making
it an option underplays the indirect and non-deliberate way in which liberal
institutions promote this individualist good. Liberal institutions do more than
simply enable individuals who already desire to break free from their culture to
do so. By embodying a non-negotiable commitment to the facilitation of
autonomy, such institutions have an indirect ‘educative’ effect: they teach
citizens that the ability to question and revise one’s life projects is an extremely
important thing. Liberal institutions encourage a heightened awareness among
citizens that their lives are their own to shape and, thus, they indirectly elicit a
mindset that leaves citizens less inclined to defer automatically to others when
making important decisions in their lives.7 In this way, such institutions do
disfavor groups whose survival and flourishing rely on their members’
deference to tradition or to authorities within the group.
Taylor is right, then, to reject the idea that liberalism can be neutral with
respect to basic values that are, in some degree, culturally inflected. However,
he takes a further and more troubling political step. He also relinquishes the
idea that a liberal state should be neutral with respect to cultural ‘symbols’
(e.g. languages, festivals, or holidays), embracing instead a more permissive
liberalism that accommodates the shared good of ‘cultural survival’. Under
this revised liberalism, the state may directly promote cultural survival by
bestowing affirmation on citizens’ distinctive cultural practices and by
adopting policies that distribute powers and resources on the basis of cultural
differences (Taylor, 1994, 61). Quebec’s controversial language laws
exemplify this kind of policy. These laws require the use of French on
commercial signs and they require francophone and immigrant parents to
send their children to French-speaking schools. In addition to such laws,
Taylor supports self-government for Canada’s First Nations people, and
nothing in his theory precludes the use of racially exclusive measures to
secure such autonomy (Taylor, 1994, 39–40; 1998–1999). In practicing the
politics of recognition, a state might sometimes even try to accommodate
a minority group’s drive for cultural recognition at an international level.8
In short, this revised liberalism permits F and thereby in effect encourages
F large cultural groups to use government institutions to preserve their
collective identities and to secure affirmation for that which distinguishes
them from the wider society.
Taylor’s willingness to accommodate the good of cultural survival stems
from his view that it is a crucial condition of the pursuit of authenticity.
Proceduralism, in ignoring the pressure that minority cultures feel to
‘surrender’ their identities and to conform to a dominant culture, fails to
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facilitate the pursuit of authentic identity for every citizen. It inadvertently

makes this good more readily available to members of the dominant culture.
By contrast, in protecting minority cultures from assimilationist pressures, his
politics of recognition facilitates authentic self-realization for members of such
groups.
When a state ‘recognizes’ and promotes a particular group’s identity, it
invariably enhances the power of that group’s leaders to interpret their group’s
culture and to determine which of its aspects will be safeguarded. Critics have
argued that, in doing so, a politics of recognition is bound to undermine the
liberty and autonomy of group members F despite Taylor’s insistence that
certain ‘fundamental rights’ must never be sacrificed for collective goods.9 I am
sympathetic to the thrust of these criticisms, although they are not my focus
here. Instead, what I want to emphasize is that a politics of recognition also
undermines the very conditions of authenticity itself, despite the fact that
securing these conditions is a goal on which Taylor’s case for such a politics
largely rests. His rejection of neutrality with respect to cultural symbols incurs
important costs for liberalism. In particular, it undermines citizens’ prospects
for authentic self-realization because it betrays some of the central insights of
his own theory of the self. A form of liberalism that refrains from directly
promoting identities (beyond encouraging a minimal regard for liberal
institutions) more fully honors these insights and more effectively secures the
conditions of authenticity.
Before outlining the costs of a politics of recognition, let me acknowledge
that neutrality is clearly impossible in the case of one especially important
cultural ‘symbol’. Every state must choose a language (or two) in which to
conduct official business; and thus, no state can completely avoid conferring
recognition on a particular culture’s symbols or ‘artifacts’. However, if
neutrality with respect to cultural symbols cannot be fully achieved, it
nevertheless remains important and meaningful as an ideal. It remains
important because it allows liberalism to avoid the problems I will outline
below; it remains meaningful because it requires liberal states to accept the
burden of alleviating any disadvantages that cultural minorities suffer as a
result of a state’s inability to achieve neutrality in particular instances.
To see why a liberal state more effectively secures the conditions of
authenticity when it adheres as much as possible to this limited form of
neutrality, it is necessary to evaluate Taylor’s positive reasons for embracing
‘cultural survival’ as a component of authenticity. Why does the recognition of
cultural identities take on such importance in his politics, when his account of
the self places as much emphasis as it does on that in the self which exceeds
articulation and which, therefore, exceeds social recognition? He offers two
types of philosophical justification for this emphasis; but neither ultimately
establishes the desirability of a difference-based politics of recognition.
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Authenticity and Intersubjectivity

The importance of culture as a system of meanings
For Taylor, the process of articulating an identity involves adopting a
relationship to the good; and one’s conception of the good, in turn, is
connected to one’s membership in a language community (1989, 34–35). The
language that one speaks constitutes the framework of evaluative categories
that make meaningful choice F and therefore self-definition F possible. Since
any given language is sustained within a community whose members
commonly identify with it, preserving this common identification through
political measures secures an important resource for individual self-
development. For Taylor, however, the significance or value of any language
is not reducible to its importance for individuals. His thinking is deeply
influenced by Herder’s ‘holistic’ conception of language as an organically
evolved system of meanings F the natural repository of a culture’s age-old
understandings (Taylor, 1995, 79–99). He seems to accept Herder’s view that
authenticity is an attribute both of individuals and of cultures as a whole, and
this holistic strand of his thinking partly accounts for his defence of a politics
of recognition. While an individual’s quest for authenticity can clearly be at
odds with attempts to preserve her culture’s integrity or survival, Taylor sees
no reason to think that the two goods necessarily conflict. Indeed, in
emphasizing that an individual’s prospects for self-realization depend on her
being attentive to her cultural context, he asks us to proceed on the assumption
that these goals can potentially be reconciled; and he appeals to a politics of
recognition as a means of facilitating the realization of both individual and
cultural authenticity. It is not within the scope of this paper to determine if
these two forms of authenticity are, in principle, reconcilable.10 What I will
outline here are a number of ways in which a state’s practice of directly
affirming cultural symbols in fact undermines the prospects of individual
authenticity.
Taylor’s politics of recognition assumes that individuals and society more
generally owe a debt of affirmation and support to the cultural communities
that provide individuals with crucial resources for defining themselves. It also
assumes that the boundaries of these communities are clear and distinct (and,
hence, are readily ‘recognizable’), mapping neatly onto the boundaries of the
language community in which an individual is born and raised. However, this
presupposes an implausible view of the cultural sources on which individuals in
diverse societies draw in articulating their identities. The different sets of
backdrop meanings that are available to such selves are not always clearly
demarcated: they shift and converge, compete and blend together in
unanticipated ways. Any cultural or linguistic community to which an
individual may belong is set within a broader social context that contains
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diverse cultural communities and, as Jeremy Waldron argues, it necessarily

interacts with these other communities. It is also set within larger national and
international ‘cultural’ communities on which it typically depends and with
which it necessarily interacts (Waldron, 1995, 102–105). Invariably, these
interactions influence and enrich the backdrop meanings on which the group’s
members draw in articulating an identity.
Judgments about how one might authentically integrate such diverse sources
of meaning into one’s identity must be complex, contextually sensitive, and
fine-grained. Yet, it is difficult to see how the state, or its proxies in large social
groups, could sort out different citizens’ diverse cultural debts, weigh them,
and give due institutional acknowledgement to each cultural source F
especially in cases where the claims they make on citizens conflict. Indeed, by
encouraging individuals to think that their identities emanate most fundamen-
tally from a neatly bounded cultural community, and by encouraging
individuals to affiliate primarily with that community, a politics of recognition
elicits an inappropriate and even an inauthentic response to the diversity of
forces that typically shape modern personal identity. By contrast, a form of
liberalism that refrains from promoting a specific set of collective identities in
effect acknowledges that the state is not well-positioned to make such
judgments about citizens’ complex personal identities. In doing so, it
establishes a clearer field for the pursuit of authenticity and more fully
acknowledges the complexity and multiplicity of the self’s sources.
Using the power of the state to shore up the boundaries of existing cultural
communities can undermine the conditions of authentic self-realization in a
second way as well. Such efforts can have the effect of rendering key
dimensions of personal identity rigid F in part by creating an incentive for
political entrepreneurs to reify cultural identity. Indeed, David Miller argues
that the desire to ‘fix’ identities is the crucial ‘impetus behind the politics of
recognition’ (Miller, 2000, 70–71). By allowing groups to institutionalize their
identities, Taylor’s politics of recognition would entrench, for members of such
groups, what Anthony Appiah calls a ‘script’ F a set of ‘loose norms or
models, which play a role in shaping the life plans of those who make these
collective identities central to their individual identities’ (Appiah, 1994, 159).
The political entrenchment and celebration of cultural scripts cannot but exert
pressure on members of the groups in question, a pressure that helps bind them
more tightly to the expectations, attributes and norms encoded in their
culture’s script. This effect cuts against the freedom that individuals would
otherwise feel they had to appropriate their culture’s norms and attributes in
their own distinctive ways, whether whole-heartedly or ironically, entirely or in
part, with a conservative or innovative bent.11 Thus, a politics of recognition
has a subtle tendency to narrow the space within which an individual might
alter or invent her identity. It has a tendency to turn personal identity into a
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less revocable and open-ended entity than it would otherwise be and, thus, it
betrays the inner fluidity that Taylor himself prizes.
Not only does a politics of recognition inadvertently minimize the
multiplicity of the self’s ‘external’ sources and render its identity more rigid
or fixed, it can also discourage the self from exploring its internal complexity
and multiplicity. By rewarding individuals for identifying with a large-scale
group identity, thus tightening their attachment to a particular culture’s script,
this form of politics can unintentionally circumscribe the attentiveness of
individuals to idiosyncratic aspects of their own subjectivity. It can encourage
individuals to suppress those aspects of subjectivity that diverge from the
culture’s particular norms and narrative self-understandings. For example, if a
culture’s distinctive norms and practices incorporate gendered ideals, which
function to govern the behavior and social roles of men and women, a politics
of recognition could make it costlier for individual members to attend to
aspects of their inward experiences that transgress these ideals, even when their
fundamental rights are not being violated. Moreover, by privileging a
single axis of differentiation as the source of identity most worthy
of affirmation F even in advance of an individual’s own efforts to articulate
her identity F Taylor’s preferred politics encourages members of ‘recognized’
groups to experience identity as something standardized F as something
akin to a ‘prepackaged deal’. In these ways, a politics of recognition
inadvertently betrays the inner plurality that his theory of the self so insistently
affirms.12

Countering misrecognition: the importance of affirmation and approval

Taylor’s theory of intersubjectivity not only emphasizes the self’s dependence
on a framework of meanings that is embedded in its culture and mediated
through its language. He emphasizes the fact that, in order to articulate and
sustain an identity, the self needs to win approval for its identity from others.
We need affirmation and we need it most from those who matter most to us:
our parents, our intimate partners, those with whom we regularly interact.
Taylor writes that in forming our own identities we are influenced by the
identities that these ‘significant others’ see in us: sometimes we internalize and
sometimes we struggle against these projected identities, but we can never
escape them entirely (Taylor, 1994, 32–33). Citing the examples of sexism and
racism, he emphasizes that being systematically misrecognized by those around
us can inflict a grave injury since it can warp the way we see ourselves (Taylor,
1994, 25ff; also see, Honneth, 1995, 131–139). A politics of recognition is
desirable, then, because it can offset the damaging effects of the forms of
misrecognition that often mark citizens’ interactions. Since cultures are so
integral to their members’ self-understandings, fostering the strength and
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vibrancy of cultures that have been systematically misrecognized or denigrated

can help to secure the self-esteem of their members.
It is surely true that selves can be harmed by systematic misrecognition. And
it is also true that the state should counteract the disadvantages that minority
groups suffer as a result of such misrecognition. However, we can agree with
these points and still question the wisdom of turning the affirmation of identity
into a direct goal of policy. A politics of recognition, by teaching citizens that
they owe a debt of enduring loyalty to their inherited culture, promotes a costly
mindset. It encourages individuals to live as if by the permission of their
ancestors F or of leaders who claim to speak for their ancestors. A politics of
recognition promotes, among citizens, a sense of ‘living by permission’ because
it encompasses policies that embody the following message: individuals, in
certain instances, must defer to the imperatives of their culture even if doing so
goes against deeply held aspirations of their own. After all, such a politics
permits policies that prohibit individuals from making important choices about
their lives simply because these choices could inadvertently undermine their
culture’s long-term chances of survival. When such policies cannot be justified
in terms of the needs or interests of the existing individuals whose choices they
curtail, the lesson about living in accordance with one’s ancestors’ wishes is all
the more powerfully conveyed. In his discussion of Quebec’s language laws,
Taylor makes this aspect of his justification for a politics of recognition
explicit. By restricting parents’ choices about the language their children will be
educated in, these laws ‘actively seek to yassur[e] that future generations
continue to identify as French speakers. There is no way that these policies
could be seen as just providing a facility to already existing people’ (Taylor,
1994, 58–59). He even acknowledges that such policies may promote deference
to ancestral authority at the expense of ‘those who might want to cut loose in
the name of some individual goal of self-development’ (Taylor, 1994, 58).
Whereas proceduralism indirectly encourages the development of a questioning
mindset among citizens, then, a politics of recognition habituates citizens to
defer to ancestral authority and, thus, it inadvertently promotes the sense that
one lives one’s life ‘by permission’.
Turning the affirmation of particular identities into a good that is formally
distributed by public institutions also raises the stakes of the individual’s
struggle for recognition. In doing so, it can amplify the perceived need for such
affirmation and thereby increase the incentive for political entrepreneurs to
reify cultural identity. Recognition F as Rousseau’s historical account of
amour-propre so vividly suggests F is an ambivalent good; and the need for it
F although universally present in people F can have various intensities or
forms under different social conditions (Rousseau, 1993). A form of politics
that amplifies our perceived need for affirmation can entice individuals to rely
too heavily on external sources for the definition and validation of their selves.
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It can reinforce any internal pressure that an individual already feels to take
account of the opinions of others in fashioning her life’s script and identity.
Taylor here overlooks the cautionary insight in Rousseau’s account of how
modern social conditions transform self-regard into an alienating form of
vanity. Rousseau’s insight is that a world built on an inflamed need for
recognition from others is not likely to be one in which the individual can
recognize herself. Taylor gives us no assurance that his politics of recognition
will avoid inflaming our perceived need for recognition, thereby promoting
excessive deference and conformity to the opinions of others (cf. Reisert, 2000,
326–330).
The disposition to defer to others and the feeling that one lives ‘by
permission’ are inimical to the ideal of authenticity. Both attitudes under-
mine the elements of spontaneity and inwardness that are central to the
pursuit of this good.13 By promoting such a mindset, a politics of recogni-
tion can diminish the self’s attentiveness to its own deepest feelings,
aspirations, and needs. By contrast, liberal institutions that refrain from
shaping citizens’ cultural identifications indirectly encourage a sense of
independence and a degree of reflection in citizens. Hence, they facilitate an
openness to change and perhaps even to experimentation. Such attitudes are
more compatible with the goal of authentic self-realization in a pluralistic
modern context.
The harm of misrecognition is not only inflicted on individuals by their
fellow citizens. In arguing that proceduralist liberalism homogenizes difference,
requiring minorities to surrender their identities, Taylor implies that the
proceduralist state itself practises a form of misrecognition. It is true that a
liberal state that strives for neutrality with respect to cultural symbols does
promote the value of autonomy in an indirect way (as I conceded above); and
in doing so, it can be said to exert indirect pressure on members of minority
cultures to conform to certain aspects of a dominant, culturally inflected ideal.
However, Taylor expresses agreement with Quebec nationalists who believe
that: ‘a society can be organized around a definition of the good life, without
this being seen as a depreciation of those who do not personally share this
definition’ (Taylor, 1994, 59) F as long as this society respects the
fundamental rights of minorities. Consistency, here, requires him to acknowl-
edge that a form of liberalism whose fundamental good is individual autonomy
does not denigrate or misrecognize those who are fiercely attached to cultural
identities that do not incorporate this value.
It is impossible for any set of institutions to be perfectly neutral, as Taylor
himself emphasizes. The important question, then, is: which form of liberal
politics is more capacious with respect to the kinds of identity that its citizens
can readily pursue? Which liberalism leaves open as much space as possible for
difference and does as little as possible to hamper citizens’ attentiveness to the
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complexity of their own attachments, debts, and aspirations in their efforts to

articulate an identity. There are several reasons to think that a form of
liberalism that remains neutral with respect to cultural symbols (and that
simultaneously accepts an obligation to combat discrimination) is more
capacious than one that engages in the direct promotion of a delimited set of
cultural identities. Since the former type of liberalism avoids creating incentives
for the reification of cultural identity, encouraging citizens to have a greater
sense of freedom about how they might honor their particular debts to their
culture, it can more easily accommodate the mixing of cultural identities and
the emergence of new or unanticipated categories of identity (cf. Miller, 2000,
273). It can also more easily accommodate those who wish to reject significant
aspects of their culture’s past.

Cultural Diversity and Human Self-Understanding

Taylor’s appeal to the intersubjective character of selfhood, then, does not
sustain his call for a politics of recognition; but he offers a second reason for
attaching political significance to cultural identity. Taylor believes that human
enrichment and the highest forms of human self-understanding are made
possible only by mutually transforming encounters among genuinely diverse
and flourishing cultures or ‘ways of being’. Diverse cultural modes of existence
hold important pieces of the puzzle of humanity (Taylor, 1994, 66). If we can
come to know a transcendent humanity, we can do so only through knowing
the particular cultural forms in which human being manifests itself. And
knowing these forms entails cultivating a robust openness to them. Only
opening ourselves to a ‘fusion of horizons’ with other flourishing cultures will
lead us to grasp the universally human (Taylor, 1994, 67–73). A form of
politics that helps diverse cultures to flourish thus facilitates human enrichment
and self-understanding.
Taylor believes that selves who cleave to robustly expressed collective
identities are called to reach out across the boundaries of their carefully
guarded identities; they are called to pursue a deep understanding of other
cultures through mutually affirming encounters with both artifacts and
individual members of these carefully maintained cultures. Individuals who
align themselves with a vibrant collective identity are ‘complemented’ and even
‘completed’ by such interaction (Taylor, 1998, 153–154), and Taylor seems to
believe that the promise of complementarity and self-completion can draw
selves into crosscultural engagement. This is an attractive hope: at their best,
crosscultural encounters might indeed promote genuine self-understanding.
While we should hold onto this hope, we must recognize that as a matter of fact
such engagement can lead to very different outcomes as well. It is absurd to
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focus only on the bright side of cultural attachment and to say little or nothing
about its darker possibilities F especially since there is much in the history and
psychology of cultural affiliation that underscores these negative possibilities.14
Yet, Taylor does not address these negative possibilities in any sustained or
systematic way, even though he signals his awareness of them. In an essay on
nationalism (Taylor, 1997a), for example, he briefly refers to pernicious
instances of nationalist sentiment and he suggests that they differ from benign
instances in kind rather than simply in the degree of fervor that animates them.
However, he does not then give sustained attention to the nature, origins, or
dynamics of pernicious forms of nationalism. As a result of such omissions, he
fails to establish that the admirable goal of understanding ‘the human’ through
open-ended forms of crosscultural contact is more likely to be furthered by a
politics of recognition than it is to be undercut by such a politics.
The troubling dimensions of group identification are present at both the level
of the self and the level of politics. As I noted above, the encouragement and
intensification of group affiliation discourages the self’s exploration of internal
differences. Discouraging the self’s responsiveness to inner plurality can
undermine the basis of sympathy within the self for those who are different. If
adopting an attentive stance toward the differences that one contains is part of
what makes one able to claim kinship with others F and to extend
understanding and sympathy across external differences F then the freezing
of identity, by inhibiting such attentiveness to internal differentiation, is likely
to undercut the vision that Taylor optimistically associates with a politics of
recognition. Indeed, undermining the basis of sympathy for otherness within
the self clears the ground for the kind of problems that group identification can
give rise to in politics F problems which in turn undermine the kind of
receptive intercultural conversation that Taylor intimates.
The problems that a politics of recognition could engender are those that
critics of identity politics more generally have described (Gitlin, 1993;
Whitaker, 1997; also Miller, 2000, 75). Politicizing the significance of cultural
attachment could lead to fragmentation and insularity among certain groups
and ultimately could generate resentment, tension and hostility among them.
Taylor’s failure to give sustained attention to these problems or to explain how
a politics of recognition would handle them is surprising in light of how large
these problems loom on the political horizon, even in the case that is closest to
home for him. He supports the idea that Canada’s federal arrangements
should be revised to reflect the ‘deep diversity’ of Canada’s cultural groups
(Taylor, 1993, 183). He is sympathetic to the quebecois demand for autonomy
in Quebec; and he supports, as well, the rights of aboriginal peoples to self-
government. However, these two sets of identity claims are directly in tension
with each other. In the past, Quebec’s separatist party has rejected the
possibility of dividing the province’s territory, should secession occur. Nor has
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it been willing to say that it would share sovereignty with the aboriginal peoples
who live within this territory. Unsurprisingly, then, Quebec’s northern First
Nations people have been overwhelmingly opposed to the province’s
independence.15 Such conflicts between identity claims are often less amenable
to resolution through negotiation, compromise, and trade-off than are conflicts
between competing material interests, in which the parties to the conflict need
not see its stakes as involving their core being (Hardin, 1995; Kukathas, 1998,
692–693). The democratic institutions associated with proceduralist liberalism
typically focus on accommodating diverse interests rather than diverse identities,
and they do so through a combined process of bargaining, deliberation,
negotiation and compromise. While such institutions also form the basic
framework for Taylor’s politics of recognition, he does not establish that they
are well-suited to handling deep-seated conflicts between identity claims. His
failure to address how a politics of recognition would handle such conflicts is
symptomatic of the determined optimism of his account of group identification.
Granting concessions to a group on the basis of its collective identity can
engender resentment and tension between groups as they come to see
themselves as competitors for a society’s limited public resources. One
instructive example here is the case of so-called ‘coloreds’ in post-Apartheid
South Africa.16 In the new South Africa, ‘coloreds’ feel some pressure because
of strong Africanist forces within the governing ANC party. There is a
perception among individuals of mixed racial origins that affirmative action
policies in both the private sector and some public institutions give black South
Africans favored status not only over whites but also over them. Such practices
are justified partly because of relative disadvantage among the groups.
However, a prominent debate in political circles about the need to ‘Africanize’
political and social institutions by making them more ‘authentically’
representative of indigenous African culture is perceived to be a factor in the
country’s affirmative action policies.17 This is a case in which one group’s talk
about authenticity in politics has produced a fear of marginalization in another
group. This fear has in turn fueled friction between the groups, which has even
contributed in the past to hostility and violence (Hess, 1997). This case
illustrates how resentment and group-based competition can reinforce group
affiliations in a way that undermines the basis of respect for non-members. We
see this not only in instances of hostility and violence, but in the racially
divisive, antiblack rhetoric to which certain so-called ‘colored’ leaders have at
times resorted (Brummer, 1995; Johnson, 1997). Since Taylor’s work gives little
attention to such troubling cases, it provides inadequate assurance that
encouraging ethnic affiliation among citizens in a liberal democratic state will
lead to the kind of vivid and harmonious conversation among cultures that he
envisions, rather than to relations marked by competition, resentment, and
hostility.
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Conclusion
In rejecting the ‘politics of recognition’, I mean neither to deny that
misrecognition can constitute a serious injury nor to dissuade liberals from
addressing claims about this form of injury. Indeed, I think liberals must
respond to such claims. As I have shown, however, Taylor’s response has costly
consequences. A politics of recognition threatens the multiplicity and fluidity of
the self that Taylor himself is so concerned to affirm. In defending such a
politics, he fails to take up an important insight from his own account of
modern identity: pluralistic modern selves are necessarily somewhat alienated
from all of their social identities. A form of politics that facilitates authentic self-
realization would honor rather than overlook the residual distance between
such a self and its linguistically mediated, socially recognized identities. As it
tends to rigidify identity, and because it can encourage the development of a
deferential mindset among citizens, a politics of recognition fails to honor this
distance. Owing to this failure, it undermines the conditions of authentic self-
realization and also risks depleting the resources within the self for embracing
diversity. If ‘fairness’ and ‘autonomy’ are casualties of a politics of recognition,
as many critics have suggested, they are not the only ones: individual
authenticity and attentiveness to difference are also endangered.

Date submitted: 10 October 2001

Date accepted: 15 April 2002

Notes

1 For helpful comments and discussions, I would like to thank Farid Abdel-Nour, Jonathan
Allen, Mark Button, George Kateb, Jeff Spinner-Halev, Alan Ryan, Cindy Stark, and two
anonymous reviewers.
2 For an excellent account of Taylor’s critique of the unitary self, and of his views about unity in
the self more generally, see Digeser (1995, 61–95).
3 Although Taylor cryptically distances himself from Mead, an earlier articulation of this idea of
the dialogical self is provided in Mead’s (1934) Mind, Self, and Society.
4 Digeser (1995, 88) also employs these terms. For an alternative formulation of this point, see
Frank Kermode (1967).
5 See Larry Siedentop’s account (1989) of how liberalism’s core values grew out of a Christian
world-view.
6 Barry (2001, 119–121.) Indeed, Barry (2001, 121ff.) thinks that liberal institutions can be
justified without any recourse to the value of autonomy. However, pointing to the existence of
independent reasons to support liberal institutions does not negate the importance of this
central value or change the fact that such institutions do in effect protect autonomy, by
preserving the conditions under which it might flourish even at the expense of hostile goods.
7 Many commentators have explored the indirect but powerful effect that liberal democratic
institutions and practices have in shaping the attitudes and dispositions of citizens.

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Communitarians, like Mary Ann Glendon (1991), have looked with disapproval on these effects,
while liberals like George Kateb (1992, 2003) and Stephen Macedo (1991) have celebrated them.
8 Although he does not explicitly argue that a cultural group’s aspiration to be recognized
internationally should in some circumstances be accommodated, Taylor (1993, 52–53) seems to
express deep sympathy for this aspiration and nothing in his revised liberalism precludes its
accommodation.
9 In her feminist critique of cultural rights, Susan Okin (1999) emphasizes the dangers of ignoring
the power group leaders exercise over vulnerable group members. From two different
perspectives, see Barry (2001, 125) and Kukathas (1992, 113–115).
10 Two thinkers who question this assumption are Lionel Trilling (1972) and George Kateb (1994).
11 Cf. Todd Gitlin’s (1993, 172) discussion of the ‘thickening’ trend in identity politics.
12 Mark Redhead’s (2003) ‘rooted cosmopolitan’ adaptation of Taylor’s politics of recognition
would allow the state to ‘promote’ cultures through the provision of subsidies but not to
‘preserve’ cultures. Redhead argues that his variation on a politics of recognition would avoid
undermining autonomy and reifying cultural identities. However, he ignores the fact that
providing subsidies to promote cultural distinctiveness creates powerful incentives for the
reification of cultural groups by political entrepreneurs within them.
13 See Taylor’s (1991a, 25ff. 47–38; 1992) own discussion of the importance of inwardness to
authenticity.
14 Russell Hardin’s (1995, especially 72–106 and 142–182) analysis of the logic of group
identification sheds light on this darker dimension of cultural affiliation.
15 The Inuit and the James Bay Cree of Quebec’s northern regions voted approximately 95%
against Quebec’s separating from Canada in referenda that they held immediately prior to
Quebec’s 1995 vote on separation (Aubry, 1995).
16 ‘Colored’ was the term used by the Apartheid regime to designate individuals of mixed racial
origins. Despite misgivings I will, for lack of a more acceptable term, continue to use this one.
17 ANC publications on the government’s affirmative action policy deny that it sanctions any
distinctions between non-white groups. A 1998 ‘Parliamentary Bulletin’ on the Employment
Equity Bill (www.anc.org.zalancdocs/pubs/whip/whip32.html) states that the Bill ‘defines black
as meaning Africans, Coloreds and Indians’. This Bulletin stands in contrast however to a 1996
‘Parliamentary Bulletin’, (www.anc.org.zalancdocs/pubs/whip/whip07.html) which claims that
‘affirmative action policies are ensuring that black job applicants get a better chance of
competing against white and colored applicants for the work that is available’.

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