Charles Taylor outlines two theories of modernity - a "cultural" theory and an "acultural" theory. A cultural theory views modernity as the rise of a new culture, distinct from but related to previous cultures. An acultural theory sees modernity as the result of culture-neutral processes like the growth of reason, science, or social changes that could theoretically impact any culture. Taylor argues that dominant theories of modernity have generally been acultural, viewing changes as arising from universal human capacities or tendencies rather than specific cultural options.
Charles Taylor outlines two theories of modernity - a "cultural" theory and an "acultural" theory. A cultural theory views modernity as the rise of a new culture, distinct from but related to previous cultures. An acultural theory sees modernity as the result of culture-neutral processes like the growth of reason, science, or social changes that could theoretically impact any culture. Taylor argues that dominant theories of modernity have generally been acultural, viewing changes as arising from universal human capacities or tendencies rather than specific cultural options.
Charles Taylor outlines two theories of modernity - a "cultural" theory and an "acultural" theory. A cultural theory views modernity as the rise of a new culture, distinct from but related to previous cultures. An acultural theory sees modernity as the result of culture-neutral processes like the growth of reason, science, or social changes that could theoretically impact any culture. Taylor argues that dominant theories of modernity have generally been acultural, viewing changes as arising from universal human capacities or tendencies rather than specific cultural options.
Source: The Hastings Center Report, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1995), pp. 24-33 Published by: The Hastings Center Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3562863 . Accessed: 03/06/2014 02:00 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . The Hastings Center is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Hastings Center Report. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 103.21.125.76 on Tue, 3 Jun 2014 02:00:05 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Hastings Center Report, March-April 1995 T w o T heories of Modernity by Charles T aylor Modernity is not that f orm of lif e tow ardw hich all cultures converge as they discardbelief s that held our f oref athers back. Rather, it is a movement f rom one constellation of backgroundunderstandings to another, w hich repositions the self in relation to others andthe good. here seem to be at large in our culture tw o w ays of under- I standing the rise of modernity. T hey are in ef f ect tw o dif f erent "takes" on w hat makes our contemporary so- ciety dif f erent f rom its f ore- bears. In one take, w e can look on the dif f erence betw een present-daysociety and, say, that of medieval Europe as analogous to the dif f erence betw een medieval Europe andChina or India. In other w ords, w e can think of the dif - f erence as one betw een civili- zations, each w ith their ow n culture. Or alternatively, w e can see the change f rom earlier centuries to today as involving something like "development," as the demise of a "traditional" society andthe rise of the "modern." Andin this perspective, w hich seems to be the dominant one, things look rather dif f erent. I w ant to call the f irst kindof understanding a "cultural" one, andthe second"acultural." In using these terms, I'm leaning on a use of the w ordculture w hich is analogous to the sense it of ten has in an- thropology. I am evoking the picture of a plurality of human cultures, each of w hich has a language anda set of practices that def ine specif ic under- standings of personhood, social relations, states of mind/soul, goods and bads, virtues and vices, and the like. T hese languages are of ten mutually un- translatable. With this model in mind, a "cultural" theory of mo- dernity is one that charac- terizes the transf ormations that have issuedin the mod- ern West mainly in terms of the rise of a new culture. T he contemporary Atlantic w orldis seen as one culture (or group of closely related cultures) among others, w ith its ow n specif ic under- standings, f or example, of person, nature, the good, to be contrastedto all others, including its ow n predeces- sor civilization (w ith w hich it obviously also has a lot in common). By contrast, an "acultural" theory is one that describes these transf ormations in terms of some culture-neutral operation. By this I mean an opera- tion that is not def ined in terms of the specif ic cultures it carries us f rom and to, but is rather seen as of a type that any traditional culture couldun- dergo. An example of an acultural type of theory, in- deeda paradigm case, w ouldbe one that conceives of modernity as the grow th of reason, def ined in various w ays: as the grow th of scientif ic conscious- ness, or the development of a secular outlook, or the rise of instrumental rationality, or an ever-clearer distinction betw een f act-f inding andevaluation. Or else modernitymight be accountedf or in terms of social, as w ell as intellectual changes: the transf or- mations, including the intellectual ones, are seen as coming about as a result of increased mobility, con- centration of populations, industrialization, or the like. In all these cases, modernity is conceivedas a set of transf ormations that any and every culture can go through-and that all w ill probably be f orcedto undergo. T hese changes are not def ined by their end point in a specif ic constellation of understandings of , say, Utarles T aylor zis Prof essor of Political Science and Philosophy, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. T his is the f irst in a series of HansJonas DistinguishedVisiting Scholar Lectures. Charles T aylor, "T w o T heories of Modernity," Hastings Center Report 25, no. 2 (1995): 24-33. 24 This content downloaded from 103.21.125.76 on Tue, 3 Jun 2014 02:00:05 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Hastings Center Report, March-April 1995 person, society, good; they are rather describedas a type of transf ormation to w hich any culture could in principle serve as "input." For instance, any cul- ture could suf f er the impact of grow ing scientif ic consciousness; anyreligion could undergo seculari- zation; any set of ultimate ends couldbe challenged by a grow th of instrumental thinking; any meta- physic couldbe dislocated by the split betw een f act andvalue. So modernity in this kindof theory is understood as issuing f rom a rational or social operation that is culture-neutral. T his is not to say that the theory cannot acknow ledge good historical reasons w hy this transf ormation f irst arose in one civilization rather than another, or w hy some mayundergo it more easily than others. T he point rather is that the operation is def inednot in terms of its specif ic point of arrival, but as a general f unction that can take any specif ic culture as its input. T o grasp the dif f erence f rom another angle, the operation is not seen as supposing or ref lecting an option f or one specif ic set of human values or un- derstandings among others. In the case of "social" explanations, causal w eight is given to historical de- velopments, like industrialization, that have an im- pact on values but are of ten not seen as ref lecting specif ic options in this domain. When it comes to explanations in terms of "rationality," this is seen as the exercise of a general capacity that w as only aw ait- ing its proper conditions to unf old. Under certain conditions, human beings w ill just come to see that scientif ic thinking is valid, that instrumental ration- alitypays of f , that religious belief s involve unw ar- ranted leaps, that f acts and values are separate. T hese transf ormations may be f acilitated by our hav- ing certain values and understandings, just as they are hamperedby the dominance of others; but they aren't def ined as the espousal of some such constel- lation. T hey are def ined rather bysomething w e come to see concerning the w hole context in w hich values and understandings are espoused. It shouldbe evident that the dominant theories of modernity over the last tw o centuries have been of the acultural sort. Manyhave explainedits devel- opment at least partlyby our "coming to see" some- thing like the range of supposed truths mentioned above. Or else the changes have been explained partlyby culture-neutral social developments, such as Durkheim's move f rom "mechanical" to dif f er- entiated, "organic" f orms of social cohesion; or T ocqueville's assumption of creeping "democracy" (by w hich he meant a push tow ard equality). On one interpretation, "rationalization" w as f or Weber a steadyprocess, occurring w ithin all cultures over time. But above all, explanations of modernity in terms of "reason" seem to be the most popular. Andeven the "social" explanations tendto invoke reason as w ell, since the social transf ormations, like mobility andindustrialization, are thought to bring about intellectual and spiritual changes because they shake people loose f rom oldhabits and belief s--in, f or example, religion or traditional morality--w hich then become unsustainable because they have no independent rational grounding in the w ay the be- lief s of modernity-in, f or example, individualism or instrumental reason-are assumedto have. But, one might object, how about the w ide- spread and popular negative theories of modernity, those that see it not as gain but as loss or decline? Curiouslyenough, they too have been acultural in their ow n w ay. T o see this, w e have to enlarge some- w hat the description above. Insteadof seeing the transf ormations as the unf olding of capacities, nega- tive theories have of ten interpreted them as f alling prey to dangers. But these have of ten been just as aculturally conceived. Modernity is characterized by the loss of the horizon; by a loss of roots; by the hubris that denies human limits and denies our dependence on history or God, w hich places unlim- itedconf idence in the pow ers of f rail human reason; by a trivializing self -indulgence w hich has no stom- ach f or the heroic dimension of lif e, andso on. T he overw helming w eight of interpretation in our culture, positive and negative, tends to the acul- tural. On the other side, the voices are f ew er if pow erf ul. Nietzsche, f or instance, of f ers a reading of modern scientif ic culture that paints it as actu- ated by a specif ic constellation of values. AndMax Weber, besides of f ering a theory of rationalization w hich can at any rate be taken as a steady, culture- independent f orce, also gave a reading of the Prot- estant ethic as def ined by a particular set of religio- moral concerns, w hich in turn helped to bring about modern capitalism. T he Distortions of the Acultural So acultural theories predominate. Is this bad? I think it is. In order to see w hy, w e have to bring out a bit more clearly w hat these theories f oreground andw hat they tendto screen out. Acultural theories tendto describe the transition in terms of a loss of traditional belief s and alle- giances. T his may be seen as coming about as a result of institutional changes: f or example, mobility and urbanization erode the belief s andref erence points of static rural society. Or the loss may be supposed to arise f rom the increasing operation of modern scientif ic reason. T he change may be positively val- ued--or it may be judged a disaster by those f or 25 This content downloaded from 103.21.125.76 on Tue, 3 Jun 2014 02:00:05 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Hastings Center Report, March-April 1995 w hom the traditional ref erence points w ere valuable andscientif ic reason too narrow . But all these theo- ries concur in describing the process: oldview s and loyalties are eroded. Oldhorizons are w ashed aw ay, in Nietzsche's image. T he sea of f aith recedes, f ol- low ing Arnold. T his stanza f rom his "Dover Beach" captures this perspective: T he Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the f ull, androundearth's shore Lay like the f olds of a bright girdle f urled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, w ithdraw ing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-w ind, dow n the vast edges drear Andnaked shingles of the w orld. T he tone here is one of regret and nostalgia. But the underlying image of erodedf aith couldserve just as w ell f or an upbeat story of the progress of triumphant scientif ic reason. From one point of view , humanity has sheda lot of f alse andharmf ul myths. From another, it has lost touch w ith crucial spiritual realities. But in either case, the change is seen as a loss of belief . What emerges comes about through this loss. T he upbeat story cherishes the dominance of an empirical-scientif ic approach to know ledge claims, of individualism, negative f reedom, instrumental ra- tionality. But these come to the f ore because they are w hat w e humans "normally" value, once w e are no longer impeded or blinded by f alse or supersti- tious belief s andthe stultif ying modes of lif e that accompany them. Once myth anderror are dissi- pated, these are the onlygames in tow n. T he em- pirical approach is the only valid w ay of acquiring know ledge, andthis becomes evident as soon as w e f ree ourselves f rom the thraldom of a f alse meta- physics. Increasing recourse to instrumental ration- ality allow s us to get more andmore of w hat w e w ant, andw e w ere only ever deterredf rom this by un- f ounded injunctions to limit ourselves. Individual- ism is the normal f ruit of human self -regard absent the illusory claims of God, the Chain of Being, or the sacred order of society. In other w ords, w e moderns behave as w e do because w e have "come to see" that certain claims w ere f alse---or on the negative reading, because w e have lost f rom view certain perennial truths. What this view reads out of the picture is the possibility that Western modernity might be pow ered by its ow n positive visions of the good, that is, by one constellation of such visions among available others, rather than by the only viable set lef t af ter the old myths and legends have been exploded. It screens out w hatever there might be of a specif ic moral direction to Western modernity, beyond w hat is dic- tated by the general f orm of human lif e itself , once olderror is show n up (or oldtruth f orgotten). For example, people behave as individuals, because that's w hat they"naturally" do w hen no longer held in by the old religions, metaphysics, and customs, though this may be seen as a glorious liberation, or a purblindenmiring in egoism, depending on our perspective. What it cannot be seen as is a novel f orm of moral self -understanding, not def inable simplyby the negation of w hat preceded it. Otherw ise put, w hat gets screened out is the possibility that Western modernity might be sus- tained by its ow n original spiritual vision, that is, not one generated simply and inescapably out of the transition. T he Attraction of the Acultural Bef ore trying to say how bador good this is, I w ant to speculate about the motives f or this pre- dominance of the acultural. In one w ay, it is quite understandable w hen w e ref lect that w e Westerners have been living the transition to modernity f or some centuries out of the civilization w e usedto call Christendom. It is hardto live through a change of this moment w ithout being partisan, andin this spirit w e quite naturally reach f or explanations that are immediately evaluative, on one side or the other. Now nothing stamps the change as more unproble- maticallyright than the account that w e have "come to see" through certain f alsehoods, just as the expla- nation that w e have come to f orget important truths brands it as unquestionablyw rong. T o make such conf ident judgments on the basis of a cultural ac- count w ould presuppose our having carried through a complex comparative assessment of modernity's original vision, over against that of the Christendom that preceded it, to a clear unambiguous conclu- sion-hardly an easy task, if realizable at all. Indeed, since a cultural theory supposes the point of view in w hich w e see our ow n culture as one among others, andthis at best is a recent acquisition in our civilization, it is not surprising that the f irst accounts of revolutionarychange w ere acultural. For the most part our ancestors looked on other civilizations as made up of barbarians, or inf idels, or savages. It w ouldhave been absurdto expect the contemporaries of the French Revolution, on either side of the political divide, to have seen the cultural shif t w ithin this political upheaval, w hen the very idea of cultural pluralism w as just daw ning in the w ritings of , say, Herder. But even w hen this standpoint becomes more easily available, w e are draw n by our partisan attach- 26 This content downloaded from 103.21.125.76 on Tue, 3 Jun 2014 02:00:05 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Hastings Center Report, March-April 1995 ments to neglect it. T his is partly because an imme- diately evaluative explanation (on the right side) is more satisf ying-w e tendto w ant to glorif y moder- nity, or vilif y it. Andit is partly because w e f ear that a cultural theorymight make value judgments im- possible. T he latter notion is, I believe, a mistake; but mistake or not, it plays a role here. But another thing acultural theories have going f or them has been the vogue f or "materialistic" ex- planations in social science and history. By this I mean, in this context, explanations that shyaw ay f rom invoking moral or spiritual f actors in f avor of (w hat are thought to be) harder andmore dow n to earth causes. Andso the developments I advertedto above, the grow th of science, individualism, negative f reedom, instrumental reason, andthe other strik- ing f eatures of the culture of modernity, have of ten been accountedf or as byproducts of social change: f or instance, as spinof f s f rom industrialization, or greater mobility, or urbanization. T here are cer- tainlyimportant causal relations to be traced here, but the accounts that invoke them f requently skirt altogether the issue w hether these changes in cul- ture andoutlook ow e anything to their ow n inher- ent pow er as moral ideals. T he implicit answ er is of ten in the negative.' Of course, the social changes that are supposed to spaw n the new outlook must themselves be ex- plained, andthis w ill involve some recourse to hu- man motivations, unless w e suppose that industriali- zation or the grow th of cities occurred entirely in a f it of absence of mind. We needsome notion of w hat moved people to push steadily in one direction-f or example, tow ardthe greater application of technol- ogy to production, or tow ard greater concentrations of population. But w hat is invokedhere are of ten motivations that are nonmoral. By that I mean mo- tivations that can actuate people quite w ithout connection to any moral ideal, as I def ined this earlier. So w e very of ten f indthese social changes explained in terms of the desire f or greater w ealth, or pow er, or the means of survival or control over others. Of course, all these things can be w oven into moral ideals, but theyneednot be. Andso explana- tion in terms of them is considered suf f iciently "hard" and"scientif ic." Andeven w here individual f reedom andthe en- largement of instrumental reason are seen as ideas w hose intrinsic attractions can help explain their rise, this attraction is f requently understoodin non- moral terms. T hat is, the pow er of these ideas is of ten understoodnot in terms of their moral f orce, but just because of the advantages they seem to bestow on people regardless of their moral outlook, or even w hether they have a moral outlook. Free- dom allow s you to do w hat you w ant; andthe greater application of instrumental reason gets you more of w hat you w ant, w hatever that is.2 It is obvious that w herever this kindof explana- tion becomes culturally dominant, the motivation to explore the original spiritual vision of modernity is very w eak; indeed, the capacity even to recognize some such thing nears zero. And this ef f ectively takes cultural theories of f the agenda. Unif orm andInevitable Modernities So w hat, if anything, is bad about this? T w o things. First, I think Western modernity is in part basedon an original moral outlook. T his is not to say that our account of it in terms of our "coming to see" certain things is w hollyw rong. On the con- trary: post-seventeenth-century natural science has a validity, andthe accompanying technology an ef - f icacy, that w e have established. Andall societies are sooner or later f orcedto acquire this ef f icacy, or be dominated by others (and hence have it imposed on them anyw ay). But it w ouldbe quite w rong to think that w e can make do w ith an acultural theory alone. It is not just that other f acets of w hat w e identif y as modern, such as the tendency to try to split f act f rom value, or the decline of religious practice, are f ar f rom reposing on incontestable truths that have f inally been discovered-as one can claim f or modern physics, f or example. It is also that science itself has grow n in the West in close symbiosis w ith a certain culture in the sense I'm using that term here, namely, a constellation of understandings of person, nature, society, andthe good. T o rely on an acultural theory is to miss all this. One gets a distorted understanding of Western mo- dernity in one of tw o w ays: on one side, w e misclas- sif y certain changes, w hich ultimately ref lect the cul- ture peculiar to the modern West, as the product of unproblematic discovery or the ineluctable conse- quence of some social change, like the introduction of technology. T he decline in religious practice has f requently been seen in this light. T his is the error of seeing everything modern as belonging to one Enlightenment package. On the other side, w e f ail altogether to examine certain f acets of the modern constellation, closely interw oven w ith our understandings of science and religion, that don't strike us as being part of the transf ormation to modernity. We don't identif y them as among the spectacular changes that have producedcontemporarycivilization, andw e of ten f ail to see even that there have been changes, read- ing these f acets f alsely as perennial. Such is the usual f ate of those (largelyimplicit) understandings of 27 This content downloaded from 103.21.125.76 on Tue, 3 Jun 2014 02:00:05 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Hastings Center Report, March-April 1995 Exclusive reliance on an acultural theory locks us into an ethnocentric prison, condemnedto project our ow n f orms onto everyone else and blissf ully unaw are of w hat w e are doing. human agency that I have grouped under the port- manteau term "the modern identity"3--such as the various f orms of modern inw ardness, or the af f irma- tion of ordinary lif e. We all too easilyimagine that people have alw ays seen themselves as w e do, in respect, f or example, of dichotomies like inw ard/out- w ard. Andw e thus utterly miss the role these new understandings have played in the rise of Western modernity. I w ant to make a claim of this kindbelow in relation to the rise of the modern public sphere. Andso a purely acultural theory distorts and impover- ishes our understanding of ourselves, both through mis- classif ication (the Enlighten- ment package error), and through too narrow a f ocus. But its ef f ects on our under- standing of other cultures is even more devastating. T he belief that modernity comes f rom one single universally applicable operation im- poses a f alsely unif orm pattern on the multiple en- counters of non-Western cultures w ith the exigen- cies of science, technology, andindustrialization. As long as w e are bemused by the Enlightenment pack- age, w e w ill believe that they all have to undergo a range of cultural changes draw n f rom our experi- ence-such as "secularization" or the grow th of atomistic f orms of self -identif ication. As long as w e leave our ow n notions of identity unexamined, so long w ill w e f ail to see how theirs dif f er, andhow this dif f erence crucially conditions the w ay in w hich theyintegrate the truly universal f eatures of "mo- dernity." Moreover, the view that modernity arises through the dissipation of certain unsupportedreligious and metaphysical belief s seems to imply that the paths of dif f erent civilizations are boundto converge. As they lose their traditional illusions, they w ill come together on the "rationallygrounded" outlook that has resistedthe challenge. T he march of modernity w ill end up making all cultures look the same. T his means, of course, that w e expect they w ill end up looking like us. In short, exclusive reliance on an acultural the- ory unf its us f or w hat is perhaps the most important task of social sciences in our day: understanding the f ull gamut of alternative modernities in the making in dif f erent parts of the w orld. It locks us into an ethnocentric prison, condemnedto project our ow n f orms onto everyone else and blissf ully unaw are of w hat w e are doing. Background andHabitus So the view f rom Dover Beach f oreshortens our understanding of Western modernity. But it also gives us a f alse and distorted perspective on the transition. It makes us readthe rise of modernity in terms of the dissipation of certain belief s, either as its major cause ("rational" explanations), or as in- evitable concomitant ("social" explanations). What is beyond the horizon on Dover Beach is the possibil- ity that w hat mainly dif f eren- tiates us f rom our f orebears is not so much our explicit belief s as w hat I w ant to call the background under- standing against w hich our belief s are f ormulated. Here I am picking up on an idea that has been treated in the w ork of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, and Michael Polanyi, and been f urther elaborated recentlybyJohn Searle andHubert Drey- f us.4 T he notion is that our explicit belief s about our w orldandourselves are held against a background of unf ormulated (and perhaps in part unf ormu- lable) understandings, in relation to w hich these belief s make the sense they do. T hese understand- ings take a variety of f orms, and range over a num- ber of matters. In one dimension, the background incorporates matters that couldbe f ormulatedas belief s, but aren't f unctioning as such in our w orld (and couldn't all f unction as such because of their unlimited extent). T o take Wittgenstein's example f rom On Certainty, I don't normally have a belief that the w orlddidn't start only f ive minutes ago, but the w hole w ay I inquire into things treats the w orldas being there since time out of mind.5 Similarly, I don't usually have the belief that a huge pit hasn't been dug in f ront of my door, but I treat the w orld that w ay as I emerge in the morning to go to w ork. In myw ays of dealing w ith things is incorporated the backgroundunderstanding that the w orldis stable andhas been there a long time. In other dimensions, I have this kindof under- standing of myself as an agent w ith certain pow ers, of myself as an agent among other agents, on cer- tain, onlypartlyexplicit f ootings w ith them. And I w ant to add: an agent moving in certain kinds of social spaces, w ith a sense of how both I andthese spaces inhabit time, a sense of how both I and they relate to the cosmos andto Godor w hatever I rec- ognize as the source(s) of good. 28 This content downloaded from 103.21.125.76 on Tue, 3 Jun 2014 02:00:05 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Hastings Center Report, March-April 1995 Godin the Background In my addition here, I have enteredcontroversial territory. While perhaps everyone can be got easily to agree on the kinds of backgroundunderstandings I citedf rom Wittgenstein, andit is arguably obvious that I have some sense of myself as agent, the notion that dif f erent modes of social belonging, dif f erent understandings of time, andeven more, of God, the Good, or the Cosmos, shouldbe part of the back- groundmay arouse resistance. T hat is because w e easily can believe that w e have background under- standing in the inescapable dimensions of our lives as agents, f unctioning in a physical andsocial w orld. But w hen w e come to our supposed relations to God, the Good, or the Cosmos, surely these things only enter our w orld through our being inductedinto our society's culture, and they must enter in the f orm of belief s that have been handeddow n to us. But this is in f act not how it w orks. Of course, in any theistic culture there w ill be some belief s about God, but our sense of him andour relation to him w ill also be f ormed by modes of ritual, by the kinds of prayer w e have been taught, by w hat w e pick up f rom the attitudes of pious and impious people, and the like. A similar point can be made about the dif f erent kinds of social space. T here may be some doctrines f ormulated about the nature of society and the hierarchical rankings that constitute it w hich are explicitlyprof f ered f or our adherence, but w e also come to understandw hole volumes in the w ays w e are taught, f or example, to show def er- ence to certain people or at certain times and places. A social understanding is built in to w hat Pierre Bourdieu calls our "habitus," the w ays w e are taught to behave, w hich become unref lecting, secondna- ture to us.6 We know our w ay around society somew hat the w ay w e know our w ay aroundour physical environ- ment, not primarily and principally because w e have some map of either in our heads, but because w e know how to treat dif f erent people andsituations appropriately. In this know -how there is, f or exam- ple, a stance tow ardthe elders that treats them as having a certain dignity. What it is about them that is f elt to command this stance may not yet be spelled out: there may be no w ordf or dignity in the vocabu- lary of the tribe. But w hatever it is that w e w ill later w ant to articulate w ith this w ord is already in the w orld of the youngsters w ho bow in that particular w ay, address their elders in low tones andw ith the proper language, and so on. "Dignity" is in their w orld in the sense that they deal w ith it, respond to it, perhaps revere it or resent it. It is just not f ormu- lated in a description, andhence does not f igure in an explicit belief . Its being in their w orldis part of their backgroundunderstanding. It is in similar w ays that Godor the Goodcan f igure in our w orld. Surrounding express doctrines w ill be a richer penumbra of embodiedunderstand- ing. We can imaginatively extendthe example of the previous paragraph. Suppose that one of the things that makes the elders w orthy of respect is just that they are closer to the gods. T hen the divine too, w hich w e revere through these old people, w ill be in our w orldin part through our know ing how to treat them. It w ill be in our w orld through the ap- propriate habitus. We might in f act distinguish three levels of un- derstanding that have been invokedin the above discussion. T here is the level of explicit doctrine, about society, the divine, the cosmos; andthere is the level of w hat I called, f ollow ing Bourdieu, the habitus, or embodied understanding. Somew hat be- tw een the tw o is a level w e might call (w ith some trepidation, because this is a semantically over- loaded term) the symbolic. I mean by this w hatever understanding is expressed in ritual, in symbols (in the everydaysense), in w orks of art. What exists on this level is more explicit than mere gesture or ap- propriate action, because ritual or w ork can have a mimetic or an evocative dimension, andhence point to something that it imitates or calls f orth. But it is not explicit in the self -conscious w ay doctrinal f or- mulations, w hich can be submittedto the demands of logic, permit of a metadiscourse in w hich they are examinedin turn, andthe like. We can see w hy it might be a big mistake to think that w hat distinguishes us f rom our premodern f ore- bears is mainly a lot of belief s of theirs that w e have shed. Even if w e w ant, f ollow ing "Dover Beach," to see their age as one of a Faith w hich w e have lost, it might be verymisleading to think of this dif f erence in terms simply of doctrines to w hich they subscribe andw e do not. Because below the doctrinal level are at least tw o others: that of embodied background understanding, andthat w hich w hile nourishedin embodied habitus is given expression on the sym- bolic level. As w ell as the doctrinal understanding of society, there is the one incorporated in habitus, and a level of images as yet unf ormulated in doctrine, f or w hich w e might borrow a term f requently used bycontemporary French w riters: l'imaginaire social- let's call it the "social imaginary." Why does it matter to see the changeover as more than doctrinal? Because otherw ise w e may have a very distorted picture of it. When people undergo a change in belief , they shif t their view s betw een already f ormulated possibilities. Formerly, they thought that God exists. But in f ormulating this 29 This content downloaded from 103.21.125.76 on Tue, 3 Jun 2014 02:00:05 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Hastings Center Report, March-April 1995 belief they w ere quite aw are that there w as another option; indeed, usuallythey are aw are that others have already taken the atheist option, that there are arguments f or and against it, etc. Now w hen they sw itch to atheism, they move w ithin positions al- ready in their repertory, betw een points already w ithin their horizons. But some of the major changes in embodied understanding andsocial imaginary alter the very repertory, and introduce new possibilities that w ere not bef ore on the horizon. I w ill sketch in a minute w hat this might involve in con- nection w ith the rise of the public sphere. Modernity in- volves the coming to be of new kinds of public space, w hich cannot be accounted f or in terms of changes in explicit view s, either of f ac- tual belief or normative principle. Rather the transi- tion involves to some extent the def inition of new possi- ble spaces hitherto outside the repertory of our f orebears, and beyond the limits of their social imaginary. T he consequence of seeing these changes as al- terations of (f actual or normative) belief is that w e unw ittingly make our ancestors too much like us. T o the extent that w e see ourselves asjust dif f ering f rom them in belief w e see them as having the same doc- trinal repertory as ours, but just opting dif f erently w ithin it. But in order to give them the same reper- tory w e have to align their embodied understanding and social imaginary w ith ours. We f alsely make them in this sense our contemporaries, and griev- ously underestimate the nature and scope of the change that brought our w orldabout. So an acultural theory tends to make us both miss the original vision of the goodimplicit in West- ern modernity, andto underestimate the nature of the transf ormation that brought this modernity about. T hese tw o draw backs appear to be linked. Some of the important shif ts in culture, in our un- derstandings of personhood, the good andthe like, w hich have brought about the original vision of Western modernity, can only be seen if w e bring into f ocus the major changes in embodiedunderstand- ing andsocial imaginary that the last centuries have brought about. T hey tendto disappear if w e f latten these changes out, readour ow n background and imaginary into our f orebears, and just concentrate on their belief s, w hich w e no longer share. Modernity involves the coming to be of new kinds of public space, w hich cannot be accountedf or in terms of changes in explicit view s, either of f actual belief or normative principle. Cultural Convergence T hese connections w ill, of course, have to be made in detail, andI haven't got space to do that here. Just to give a taste of w hat is involved, I could invoke the modern understanding and reality(the tw o are linked) of a "public sphere" of open debate and exchange through media. T his is thought to be an essential f eature of any mature and legitimate society-so much so that dic- tatorial andtotalitarian re- gimes tendto try to f ake it, of f ering supposedly objec- tive new s broadcasts, editori- als in partynew spapers that purport to be the communi- cation of someone's opin- ion, "spontaneous" demon- strations, andthe like. Now the modern public sphere is a strange kindof reality in an important re- spect. It is supposed to be a space of discussion linking everyone in principle or po- tentially, even though its manyparticipants never meet all together in one place. T his space has to be sustained by a particular kindof social imaginary, one that is in manyrespects rather dif f erent f rom premodern modes of imaginary, andthat has a lot to do w ith specif ically modern understandings of secular time and simultaneity.7' Or so, anyw ay, I w ant to claim that closer study w oulddemonstrate. Such a study w ould reveal, I believe, just how our under- standing of our relations to society, time, the cosmos, the good, andGodhave been transf ormedw ith the coming of our era. Now if this is true, then w e can see how inade- quate and misleading acultural accounts can be. In my sense of this term, these are explanations of Western modernity that see it not as one culture among others, but rather as w hat emerges w hen any "traditional" culture is put through certain (rational or social) changes. On this view , modernity is not specif ically Western, even though it may have started in the West. It is rather that f orm of lif e tow ardw hich all cultures converge, as theygo through, one af ter another, substantially the same changes. T hese may be seen primarily in "intellectual" terms, as the grow th of rationality and science; or primarily in "social" terms, as the development of certain insti- tutions and practices: a market economy, or ration- alizedf orms of administration. But in either case, the changes are partly understoodin terms of the loss of traditional belief s, either because they are 30 This content downloaded from 103.21.125.76 on Tue, 3 Jun 2014 02:00:05 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Hastings Center Report, March-April 1995 undermined by the grow th of reason, or because they are marginalizedby institutional change. Even the social explanations assume that these belief s suf f er f rom a lack of rational justif ication, since the solvent ef f ect of social change is heldto lie in the f act that it disturbs old patterns that made it possible to holdon to these earlier belief s in spite of their lack of rational grounding. For instance, the continuance of a static, agricultural w ay of lif e, largely at the mercy of the vagaries of climate, sup- posedly makes certain religious belief s look plausi- ble, w hich lose their holdonce humans see w hat it is to take their f ate in their ow n hands through industrial development. Or a largely immobile soci- ety leads individuals to see their f ate as bound up closely w ith that of their neighbors, andinhibits the grow th of an individualism that naturally f lourishes once these constricting limits are lif ted. T he acultural theory tends to see the process of modernity as involving among other things the shucking of f of belief s and w ays that don't have much rational justif ication, leaving us w ith an out- look many of w hose elements can be seen more as hard, residual f acts: that w e are individuals (that is, beings w hose behavior is ultimately to be explained as individuals), living in prof ane time, w ho have to extract w hat w e needto live f rom nature, andw hom it behooves theref ore to be maximally instrumen- tally rational, w ithout allow ing ourselves to be di- vertedf rom this goal by the metaphysical andreli- gious belief s that heldour f oref athers back.8 Instru- mental rationality commands a scientif ic attitude to nature andhuman lif e. T he Homogeneity of Kernel T ruths At the heart of the acultural approach is the view that modernity involves our "coming to see" certain kernel truths about the human condition, those I have just advertedto. T here is some justif ication f or talking of our "coming to see" the truth w hen w e consider the revolution of natural science that be- gins in the seventeenth century. But the mistake of the acultural approach is to lump all the supposed kernel truths about human lif e into the same pack- age, as though they w ere all endorsed equallyby "science," on a par, say, w ith particle physics?. I have been arguing that this is a crucial mistake. It misrepresents our f orebears, andit distorts the process of transition f rom them to us. In particular, seeing the change as the decline of certain belief s covers up the great dif f erences in background un- derstanding andin the social imaginary of dif f erent ages. More, it involves a sort of ethnocentrism of the present. Since human beings alw ays do holdtheir explicit belief s against a background andin the con- text of an imaginary, f ailure to notice the dif f erence amounts to the unw itting attribution to them of our ow n. T his is the classic ethnocentric projection. T his projection gives support to the implicit Whiggism of the acultural theory, w hereby moderns have "come to see" the kernel truths. If you think of premoderns as operating w ith the same back- ground understanding of human beings as mod- erns, namely, as instrumental individuals, and you code their understandings of God, cosmos, andmul- tidimensional time as "belief s" held against this background, then these belief s do indeed appear as arbitrary and lacking in justif ication, andit is not surprising that the social changes dislodged them. But an examination of the rise of the public sphere w ould show , I believe, that this is not w hat happened. It is not that w e sloughed of f a w hole lot of unjustif ied belief s, leaving an implicit self -under- standing that had alw ays been there, to operate at last untrammelled. Rather one constellation of im- plicit understandings of our relation to God, the cosmos, other humans, and time, w as replacedby another in a multif acetedmutation. Seeing things this w ay not onlygives us a better handle on w hat happened. It also allow s us to understandourselves better. As long as w e think that our implicit self - understanding is the universal human one, as long as w e f ail to note its contrast w ith others, so long w e w ill have an incomplete anddistortedunderstand- ing of it. T his is alw ays a price of ethnocentrism. From a standpoint immuredw ithin any culture, other cultures look w eird. No doubt w e w ouldlook strange-as w ell as blasphemous andlicentious-to our medieval ancestors. But there is a particularly high cost in self -misunderstanding that attaches to the ethnocentrism of the modern. T he kernel truths of the acultural theoryincorporate an of ten unre- f lective methodological individualism, anda belief in the omnicompetence of natural science. Im- pelledby the latter, its protagonists are f requently tempted to cast our "coming to see" the kernel truths as a sort of "discovery" in science. But the discoveries of natural science are of "neutral" f acts, that is, truths that are "value-f ree," on w hich value may be subsequentlyplacedby human beings, but w hich themselves are devoidof moral signif icance. Belonging to the range of such "natural" f acts is that w e are individuals, impelled to operate by instru- mental reason, maximizing our advantage w hen w e are not deterredf rom doing so by unf oundedbe- lief .'0 Selves, Society, andthe Good Now this hides f rom view tw o important connec- tions. First, the w ay in w hich our implicit under- 31 This content downloaded from 103.21.125.76 on Tue, 3 Jun 2014 02:00:05 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Hastings Center Report, March-April 1995 standing of ourselves as agents alw ays places us in certain relations to others. Because of the very na- ture of the human condition-that w e can only de- f ine ourselves in exchange w ith others, those w ho bring us up, andthose w hose society w e come to see as constitutive of our identity-our self -under- standing alw ays places us among others. T he place- ments dif f er greatly, and understanding these dif f er- ences andtheir change is the stuf f of history. We can see a goodexample of w hat this involves in the speculative sketch I of f ereda f ew pages back of the rise of the public sphere. T his andother similar modes of social imag- ining are closely tied up w ith the rise of modern "indi- vidualism." T he account I w ould like to of f er w ould have us see the rise of this new individual identity as in- extricably linkedto the new understandings of time and society. Individualism is one side of a coin, of w hich the f lip side is new modes of so- cial imaginary. By contrast, a w ide- spread alternative view sees individualism as involving a completely self -ref erential identity; one in w hich agents are f irst of all aw are of andf ocusedon themselves, and onlysubsequently discover a need f or, andde- termine their relations to, others. T he human of the "state of nature" w as, indeed, an important constitu- ent of the early modern imaginary, but w e mustn't make the mistake of understanding the people w ho imagined it in its light. Modern "individualism" is coterminous w ith, indeed, is def ined by a new un- derstanding of our placement among others, one that gives an important place to common action in prof ane time, andhence to the idea of consensually f ounded unions, w hich receives inf luential f ormula- tion in the myth of an original state of nature and a social contract. Individualism is not just a w ith- draw al f rom society, but a reconception of w hat hu- man society can be. T o think of it as pure w ithdraw al is to conf use individualism, w hich is alw ays a moral ideal, w ith the anomie of breakdow n. Similarly, our understanding of ourselves alw ays incorporates some understanding of the good and our relation to it. Here too, there are radical dif f er- ences. T he goodmay be conceived theistically or as in the cosmos (as w ith Plato's Idea of the Good). But it may also be understoodas residing in us, in the inherent dignity of the human person as a rea- T he very idea of an individual w ho might become aw are. of himself , and then onlysubsequently, or at least independently, determine w hat im- portance others have f or him and w hat he w ill accept as good, belongs to post-Cartesian, f oundationalist f antasy. soning being, f or instance, as w e f indw ith Immanuel Kant. How ever understood, the notion of a human identity w ithout such a sense brings us close to the unimaginable limit of total breakdow n." All this is occluded, indeed doubly. Seeing the evolution of instrumental individualism as the dis- covery of a "natural" f act not only involves project- ing our background onto our ancestors. In addition, the naturalist, scientistic outlook that generates this error has been heavily intricatedw ith the repre- sentational, f oundationalist epistemology that de- scends f rom Descartes andLocke. T his epistemol- ogy has suppressed all recog- nition of the background. It conceives our know ledge of the w orld as consisting of particulate, explicit repre- sentations. T his means that w e not onlyproject our ow n background backw ard, but also render this error invis- ible byrepressing all aw are- ness of backgrounds as such.'2 T he ethnocentric col- onization of the past cannot be brought to light, because the very terms in w hich it might appear have been abolished. T he very idea of an indi- vidual w ho might become aw are of himself , and then onlysubsequently, or at least independently, determine w hat importance others have f or him andw hat he w ill accept as good, belongs to post- Cartesian, f oundationalist f antasy. Once w e recog- nize that our explicit thoughts only can be enter- tained against a background sense of w ho andw here w e are in the w orldand among others andin moral space, w e can see that w e can never be w ithout some relation to the crucial ref erence points I enumer- atedabove: w orld, others, time, the good. T his rela- tion can, indeed, be transf ormedas w e move f rom one culture or age to another, but it cannot just f all aw ay. We cannot be w ithout some sense of our moral situation, some sense of our connectedness to others. T he naturalistic account of the discovery of the kernel truths, implicit in the acultural theory, misses all these connections. When the old metaphysical and religious belief s crumble, w e f indas a matter of neutral f act that w e are instrumental individuals, andw e needto draw f rom elsew here our values and acceptable grounds f or association w ith others. In contrast, I w ant to describe the change as moving us f rom one dense constellation of background un- derstanding and imaginary to another, both of 32 This content downloaded from 103.21.125.76 on Tue, 3 Jun 2014 02:00:05 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Hastings Center Report, March-April 1995 w hich place us in relation to others andthe good. T here is never atomistic andneutral self -understand- ing; there is only a constellation (ours) w hich tends to throw up the myth of this self -understanding as part of its imaginary. T his is of the essence of a cultural theory of modernity. Notes 1. Of course, f or a certain vulgar Marxism, the negative an- sw er is quite explicit. Ideas are the product of economic changes. But much non-Marxist social science operates implicitly on similar premises. Andthis in spite of the orientation of some of the great f ounders of social science, like Weber, w ho recognized the crucial role of moral and religious ideas in history. 2. Individualism has in f act been usedin tw o quite dif f erent senses. In one it is a moral ideal, one f acet of w hich I have been discussing. In another, it is an amoral phenomenon, something like w hat w e mean byegoism. T he rise of individualism in this sense is usually a phenomenon of breakdow n, w here the loss of a traditional horizon leaves mere anomie in its w ake, and every- body f ends f or himself -as in some demoralized, crime-ridden slums f ormed bynew ly urbanized peasants in the T hirdWorld (or in nineteenth-century Manchester). It is, of course, cata- strophic to conf use these tw o kinds of individualism, w hich have utterly dif f erent causes and consequences. Which is w hyT ocque- ville caref ullydistinguishes individualism f rom egoism. 3. See Charles T aylor, Sources of the Self T he Making of the Modern Identity(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). 4. Martin Heidegger, Sein undZeit (T iibingen: Niemeyer, 1927); Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenominologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945); Ludw ig Wittgenstein, Philosophical In- vestigations (Oxf ord: Blackw ell, 1953); Michael Polanyi, Personal Know ledge (New York: Harper, 1958); John Searle, Intentionality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Hubert Drey- f us, What Computers Can't Do (New York: Harper, 1979). 5. Ludw ig Wittgenstein, On Certainty(Oxf ord: Blackw ell, 1977), paragraphs 260 f f . 6. See Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a T heoryof Practice (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); andhis Le Sens pra- tique, (Paris: Minuit, 1980). "On pourrait, def ormant le mot de Proust, dire que les jambes, les bras sont pleins d'imperatif s engourdis. Et l'on n'en f inirait pas d'6numerer les valeurs f aites corps, par la transsubstantiation qu'opere la persuasion clandes- tine d'une pedagogie implicite, capable d'inculquer toute une cosmologie, une ethique, une metaphysique, une politique, 'a travers des injonctions aussi insignif iantes que 'tiens-toi droit' ou 'ne tiens pas ton couteau de la main gauche' et d'inscire dans les details en apparence les plus insignif iants de la tenue, du maintien ou des manieres corporelles et verbales les principes f ondamentaux de l'arbitraire culturel, ainsi places hors des prises de la conscience et de l'explicitation" (Le Sens pratique, p. 117). 7. T here is an interesting discussion of this in Benedict An- derson's Imagined Communities, 2ded. (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 28-31. 8. T his development of instrumental rationality is w hat is f requently described as "secularization." See, f or instance, Gabriel AlmondandG. Bingham Pow ell, Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little Brow n, 1966), pp. 24-25: "A village chief in a tribal societyoperates largely w ith a given set of goals anda given set of means of attaining these goals w hich have grow n up andbeen hallow ed by custom. T he secularization of culture is the process w hereby traditional orientations and attitudes give w ay to more dynamic decision-making processes involving the gathering of inf ormation, the evaluation of inf or- mation, the laying out of alternative courses of action, the selection of a given action f rom among those possible courses, andthe means w hereby one tests w hether or not a given course of action is producing the consequences w hich w ere intended." Andlater: "T he emergence of a pragmatic, empirical orien- tation is one component of the secularization process" (p. 58). 9. Even Ernest Gellner, w ho is light years of sophistication aw ay f rom the crudities of Almondand Pow ell, puts himself in the acultural camp, f or all his interesting insights into modernity as a new constellation. He does this bylinking w hat I am calling the supposed "kernel truths" w ith w hat he calls "cognitive ad- vance," in a single package. T he modern constellation un- chained science, andthat in his view seems to conf er the same epistemic status on the w hole package. "Specialization, atomiza- tion, instrumental rationality, independence of f act and value, grow th and provisionality of know ledge are all linkedw ith each other." See Plough, Sw ordandBook (Chicago: University of Chi- cago Press, 1988), p. 122. 10. T hus Gellner includes "independence of f act andvalue" in his package, along w ith "grow th and provisionality of know l- edge." 11. I have triedto argue this point at greater length in Sources of the Self , chaps. 1-4. 12. I have discussedthe nature of this modern epistemology andits suppression of the background at greater length in "Overcoming Epistemology," in Af ter Philosophy: Endor T ransf or- mation? ed. Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman, and T homas McCarthy(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987); andin "Lichtung oder Lebensf orm," in "Der Ldw e spricht ... undw ir k6nnen ihn nicht verstehen" (Frankf urt: Suhrkamp, 1991). 33 This content downloaded from 103.21.125.76 on Tue, 3 Jun 2014 02:00:05 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
(Religion and Spirituality Series) Gregory H. Franco and Scott L. Cervantes (Editors) - Islam in The 21st Century-Nova Science Publishers, Inc. (2010) PDF