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Taylor, Ch. The Ethics of Authenticity. Paidós I.C.E. Spain 1994.

1.- THREE FORMS OF UNREST

I would like to refer in what follows to some of the forms of discomfort of the
modernity. I understand by such those traits of our culture and our
contemporary societies that people experience as loss or decline,
even as our civilization "develops." People have in
at times the impression that there has been a significant decline during
the last years or decades, since World War II, or the 1950s,
for example. And on some occasions, the loss is perceived from a period
much longer history, encompassing the entire modern era since the century
XVII as a temporal marker of decline. However, although the temporal scale
it can vary enormously, there is some convergence on the theme of
decline. Often these are variations on a few melodies
central issues. I wish to highlight here two central themes, and then move on to a
third that is largely derived from these two. These three themes do not
they do not exhaust the issue in any way, but they point to a good part of what we
it disturbs and confuses modern society.
The concerns I am going to refer to are well known. There is no need
to remind them to no one; they are continually the subject of discussion,
laments, challenges, and counterarguments of all kinds
media. This would seem reason enough not to speak anymore
of them. But I believe that this great knowledge hides perplexity; not
We truly understand those changes that worry us, the usual course.
the debate about them actually distorts them and therefore makes us
misinterpret what we can do about them. The changes that define
modernity is well known and perplexing at the same time, and that is the reason
for which it is still worth talking about them.
The first source of concern is individualism.
supposedly, individualism also designates what many consider the achievement
most admirable of modern civilization. We live in a world where the
people have the right to choose their own way of life for themselves,
decide in conscience what convictions they wish to adopt, to determine the
configuration of their lives with a complete variety of ways about which
their ancestors had no control. And these rights are generally...
sacrificed by our legal systems. No longer is it sacrificed, by principle, to the
people in pursuit of the demands of supposedly sacred orders that they
they transcend.
Very few wish to give up this achievement. In fact, many believe that
is still incomplete, that the economic provisions, the models of life
familiar or the traditional notions of hierarchy still restrict too much
our freedom to be ourselves. But many of us
we also show ambivalent. Modern freedom was achieved when
we managed to escape the moral horizons of the past. People used to

1
considered as part of a greater order. In some cases, it was about
a cosmic order, a 'great chain of Being', in which human beings
they occupied the place that belonged to them alongside the angels, the bodies
celestial beings and the creatures that are our kin on Earth. This order
Hierarchical was reflected in the hierarchies of human society. People were
often found confined in a place, a role and a position
determined that they were strictly their own and of which he was almost
unthinkable to stray. Modern freedom came about thanks to the discredit of
said orders.
But at the same time that they limited us, those orders gave meaning to the world
and the activities of social life. The things around us were not just
raw materials or potential instruments for our projects, but rather that
They had the meaning that their place in the chain of being bestowed upon them. The eagle
it was not just a bird like any other, but the king of a domain of the
animal life. Similarly, the rituals and norms of society had a
meaning that was not merely instrumental. To the discredit of those
orders have been called "disenchantment" of the world. With this, the
things lost part of their magic.
For a couple of centuries, an energetic debate has been developing to
to know whether this constituted an unequivocal benefit or not. But this is not what...
that I want to focus here. I want to first examine what some estimate
what have been its consequences for human life and its meaning.
Repeatedly, there has been concern that the individual lost something.
important besides those broader horizons of action, social and
cosmic. Some have referred to it as if they were talking about the loss of the
heroic dimension of life. People no longer have the feeling of having
a higher purpose, for something worth dying for. Alexis de
Tocqueville sometimes spoke in this way in the past century, referring to
the "small and vulgar pleasures" that people tend to seek in times
democratic.1In other words, we suffer from a lack of passion.
he saw the 'present time' in those terms. And the 'last men' of
Nietzsche is the final nadir of this decline; they have no more aspirations left.
the life that gives a "pathetic well-being." 2This loss of purpose was
linked to a narrowing. People lost that broader vision because
he preferred to focus on his individual life. Democratic equality, he says
Tocqueville brings the individual towards himself and finally threatens to confine him.
entirely in the solitude of his own heart.3In other words, the side
the obscurity of individualism implies focusing on the self, which flattens and narrows
at the same time our lives, impoverishes them of meaning, and makes them lose interest in
the others or by society.
This concern has recently come to the surface in relation to
the fruits of the 'permissive society', the behavior of the 'generation of me' or

1
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2 (Paris, Garnier-Flammarion, 1981), p.
385 (Spanish version: Democracy in America, Madrid, Aguilar, 1990).

2
"Pitiful pleasure"; Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue of Zarathustra, sec. 3
(Spanish version: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1982).

3
Tocqueville, On Democracy, page 127.

2
the preeminence of "narcissism", to take only three of the formulations with-
most known temporary ones. The feeling that their lives have become more
narrow and cramped, and that this is related to an abnormal and lamentable
self-absorption has returned in specific forms of culture
contemporary. This defines the first topic I wish to address.
The disenchantment of the world is related to another phenomenon
extraordinarily important in the modern era, which is also concerning
enormously to many people. We could call it the primacy of reason
instrumental. By "instrumental reason" I mean the kind of rationality of the
what we use when calculating the most economical application of the
means to a given end. maximum efficiency, the best ratio
cost-performance, is its measure of success.
Surely, eliminating the old orders has immensely expanded the scope of
the instrumental reason. Once society ceases to have a structure.
sacred, once the social conventions and ways of acting leave
to be settled in the order of things or in the will of God, they are in
certain sense available to anyone. They can be redefined with
all its consequences, focusing on the happiness and well-being of individuals
as a goal. The rule that applies henceforth is that of the ratio.
instrumental. Similarly, once the creatures that surround us
they lose the meaning that corresponded to their place in the chain of being, they are
open to being treated as raw materials or instruments of our
projects.
In a way, this change has been liberating. But there is also a
extended unease before the instrumental reason that not only has
increased its reach, but also threatens to take over our
lives. The fear lies in the fact that those things that should be determined by
by other criteria are decided in terms of efficiency or analysis
"cost-benefit", which the independent ends should guide.
our lives are overshadowed by the demand to achieve maximum
performance. Many things can be pointed out to highlight this
concern: for example, the ways in which growth is used
economic to justify the unequal distribution of wealth and income, or the
the way those demands make us insensitive to the needs of the
environment, to the point of potential disaster. 0 if not, we can
to think about the way in which a good part of our social planning in
crucial lands like risk assessment, is dominated by forms
cost-benefit analysis that contains grotesque calculations, assigning a
valuation in dollars of human life.4
The primacy of instrumental reason also becomes evident in the prestige and
the aura that surrounds technology and makes us believe that we should seek
technological solutions, even when what is required is something very different.
We often observe this in the realm of politics, just as
Bellah and his colleagues strongly argue in their latest book.5
But it also invades other areas, such as medicine. Patricia Benner has
argued in a series of important works that the technological approach

4
On the absurdity of these calculations, see R. Bellah et al., The Good Society (Berkeley, University of)
California Press, 1991), pages 114-119.
5
Bellah et al., The Good Society (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1991), chapter 4.

3
medicine has often overlooked the type of care it entails
treat the patient as a complete person with a life history, and not
as a point of a technical problem. Society and the medical establishment with
frequency undervalue the contribution made by nurses, who in the
most cases are those that provide that sensitive attention and
human, in contrast to the specialists imbued with their high knowledge
technology.6
It is also thought that the dominant position that technology occupies has
contributed to that flattening and narrowing of our lives that I have been
discussing in relation to the first topic. People have echoed that
loss of resonance, depth or richness of our human environment.
Almost 150 years ago, Marx, in the Communist Manifesto, noted that one of the
results of capitalist development was that "everything that is solid gets
fades in the air.
The claim that solid, durable, expressive objects, that we
those that served in the past are being set aside for the benefit of goods
replaceable, quick, and cheap things that surround us. Albert Borgman
talks about the 'artifact paradigm', by which we abstain more and more
of the 'manifest commitment' to our environment and, on the contrary, we ask and
we obtain products intended to provide us with a limited benefit.
It contrasts what it means to have heating at home, in the form of a boiler.
central heating, with what this same function entailed in the times of
the colonizers, when the entire family had to dedicate themselves to the task of
cutting and gathering firewood for the stove or home.7Borgman seems even
echoing Nietzsche's image of the "last men" when
argues that the primitive promise of technology liberation can
to degenerate into "the attainment of a frivolous well-being" (p. 39). Hanna Arendt
focused on the increasingly ephemeral quality of modern everyday objects and
he argued that "the reality and reliability of the human world rest
primordially in the fact that we are surrounded by more things
permanent that the activity through which they are produced.8This
permanence is threatened in a world of modern commodities.
This sense of threat increases with the knowledge that this
primacy is not merely a matter of unconscious orientation, to which we find ourselves
pushed and tempted by the modern age. As such, it would be quite difficult to
to fight, although I would give in at least to persuasion. But it is clear that
powerful mechanisms of social life press us in this direction. A
management executive may be forced by market conditions to
to adopt, despite their own orientation, a maximizing strategy that
destructive judgment. An official, despite his personal intuition, can
forced by the rules under which he works to make a decision that he knows
that goes against humanity and common sense.
Marx and Weber and other great theorists have explored those mechanisms.
impersonal, which Weber referred to with the evocative term 'the cage'

6
See especially Patricia Benner and Judith Wrubel, The Primacy of Caring: Stress and Coping in
Health and Illness (Menlo Park, CA. Addison Wesley, 1989).
7
Albert Borgman, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (Chicago, University of Chicago)
Press, 1984), pages 41-42.
8
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Garden City, NJ, Doubleday, Anchor Edition, 1959), p. 83.
(Spanish version: The Human Condition, Barcelona, Paidós, 1993).

4
of iron." And some have wanted to draw the conclusion from these analyses that
that we are completely defenseless against those forces, or at least
helpless as long as we do not completely dismantle the structures
institutional ones with which we have been operating during the
last centuries, namely, the market and the State. This aspiration seems today so
unrealizable, which is tantamount to declaring ourselves powerless.
I want to revisit this issue later, but I believe that these firm theories
The fatality is abstract and erroneous. Our degree of freedom is not equal.
at zero. It makes sense to reflect on what our goals should be, and if
the instrumental reason should have less impact on our lives than
what it has. But the truth of these analyses is that it is not just a matter of
changing the attitude of individuals; it is not just a battle for
to win "hearts and minds", being as important as it is. The change
In this area, it will also have to be institutional, although it may not be so
blunt and total like that proposed by the great theorists of the revolution.
This brings us to the realm of politics, and to the feared consequences for the
political life of individualism and instrumental reason. I have already mentioned
one of them. It is about the institutions and structures of society
technological-industrial limits strictly constrain our options, which force us to
societies as well as individuals to give instrumental reason a
weight we would never grant in a serious moral reflection, and that even
it can be enormously destructive. A pertinent example is
our great difficulties in facing vital threats to
our existence stemming from environmental disasters, such as the one
it assumes an increasingly thinner ozone layer. One can observe how the
society structured around instrumental reason imposes a great
loss of freedom, both for individuals and groups, due to not
It is only our decisions shaped by these forces. It is difficult
maintain an individual lifestyle against the tide. Thus, for example, the
the planning of some modern cities makes it difficult to move around them without
car, especially where public transport has eroded in favor
of the private car.
But there is another kind of loss that has also been widely discussed,
a memorable unmatched way, by Alexis de Tocqueville. In a society in
the ones that people end up becoming those kinds of individuals who are 'in-
closed in their hearts," few will want to actively participate in their
self-governance. They will prefer to stay at home and enjoy the satisfactions of the
private life, while the government provides the means for achievement of
it distributes these satisfactions in a general way.
This opens the door to the danger of a new form specifically
modern despotism, which Tocqueville calls "soft" despotism. No
It will be a tyranny of terror and oppression like those of former times. The government
it will be soft and paternalistic. It may even maintain democratic forms,
with periodic elections. But in reality, everything will be governed by a "huge
guardian power9about which people will have little control. The only defense
against it, Tocqueville thinks, consists of a vigorous political culture in the
that participation is valued, both at the various levels of government and
in voluntary associations. But the atomism of the individual absorbed in itself

9
Tocqueville, On Democracy, p. 385.

5
the same fights against this. When participation decreases, when it
they extinguish the lateral associations that operated as a vehicle for it,
the individual citizen is left alone in front of the vast bureaucratic State and
feels, understandably, helpless. This further demotivates the citizen, and it
close the vicious circle of soft despotism.
Is there something similar to this alienation of the public sphere and the consequent
political loss of control is taking place in our political world,
highly centralized and bureaucratic. Many contemporary thinkers have
Tocqueville's work is considered prophetic.10If this is the case, what
we are in danger of losing control of our destiny, something that
we could act together as citizens. This is what Tocqueville
called "political freedom". What is threatened here is our dignity.
as citizens. The aforementioned impersonal mechanisms can
to reduce our degree of freedom as a society, but the loss of freedom
politics would mean that even the options that are left to us no longer
they would be the object of our choice as citizens, but of that of a power
irresponsible tutelary.
These are, therefore, the three forms of discomfort regarding modernity that
I wish to discuss in this book. The first fear lies in what we could call
loss of meaning, the dissolution of moral horizons. The second
it concerns the eclipse of ends, in the face of an unbridled instrumental reason.
And the third refers to the loss of freedom. Of course, these ideas do not
they are free from controversy. I have talked about concerns that are general and I have
mentioned influential authors, but without reaching any agreement. Until
those who share these concerns in a certain way discuss
energetically about the way they should be formulated. And there is a lot of
people who wish to discard them just like that. Those who are deeply situated
immersed in the 'culture of narcissism' believe that those who show ob-
objections to it long for a previous era, more oppressive. The followers of the
modern technological reason believe that the critics of the primacy of
instrumental are reactionary and obscurantist, projecting to deny the world
the benefits of science. And there are defenders of mere freedom
negative, they believe that the value of political freedom is overrated, and
that a society in which political management is combined with maximum
independence for each individual is what we should aim for as
Meta. Modernity has its detractors and defenders.
There is no agreement on any of this, and the debate continues. But in the course
of this debate, the essential nature of these changes, which are, at times
censored, now praised, is often misunderstood. And as a result,
the real nature of the moral options that must be taken remains
obscured. In particular, I will argue that the right path to take
it is neither the one recommended by categorical defenders nor the favored one by the
full-fledged detractors. A simple
exchange between the advantages and the price to be paid for individualism, the
technology and bureaucratic management. The nature of modern culture is more
subtle and complex. I want to affirm that both defenders and detractors have
reason, but in a way that cannot be justly addressed by a

10
See, for example, R. Bellah and others, Habits of the Heart (Berkeley, University of California Press,
1985), (Spanish version: Habits of the Heart, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1989).

6
simple exchange between advantages and costs. In reality, there is a lot of
admirable and much of degradation and terrifying in the developments I have gone through
describing, but understanding the relationship between both is understanding that the
the issue does not lie so much in knowing what part of the price needs to be paid in
harmful consequences due to Positive outcomes, but rather in how
guide these changes towards their greatest promise and prevent them from slipping towards
degraded forms.
I do not currently have the space I would need to address these topics.
As they deserve, I propose to take a shortcut. I will initiate the discussion.
of the first topic, regarding the dangers of individualism and the loss of
meaning. I will continue this discussion at some length. Having derived
any idea on how this issue should be approached, I will suggest the way in which
could proceed with a similar treatment for the other two. Most of
The discussion will therefore focus on the first axis of this concern.
Let's examine in more detail how it appears today.