찰스 테일러의 윤리사상 연구 : 실천학으로서 윤리학의 재건과 관련하여 = A Study on Ethical Thought of Charles Taylor: in terms of a reconstruction of ethics as practical philosophy|RISS 상세보기

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study aims to explore ethical thought in Charles Taylor(1931～) and to disclose its significance in terms of a reconstruction of ethics as practical philosophy. The characteristics of modern cultures have a decisive effect on shaping the mainstream ethics since the modern age. But that kind of ethics has been criticized recently for overly weighting toward theory-centered speculative philosophy to solve our practical predicaments. Taylor's is one of such critical views. This paper makes clear the main assumption that his views of ethics pursues to reconstruct ethics as practical philosophy. The result of the study is as follows:
(1) According to Taylor, a concept of procedural rationality has been highlighted since the modern age. It has made various works of ethics focused on only the field of normative ethics in which rational actions are right. Morality in modern ethics is understood in the very narrow sense of the deduction of universal norms and its observance. This means that the moral is like a guide of actions. At the moment, the inquiry of the good has been neglected, and we are forced to do obligations that are far away from our real lives. Only by the conception of the moral, in Taylor's minds, it is impossible to explain the essential connection between the self and the good. This is a fatal weak point of modern ethics. For him, the good is the essential feature of our self-identity and also source of our moral lives.
Taylor sees that modern people’s blind faith in procedural rationality is originated by an influence of the modern epistemology. According to him, it is dualism which rigorously separates between subjects and objects, such as mind-body, agent-world, and individual-community. Modern dualism, ever since 17C, has been developed mostly by R. Descartes, J. Locke, T. Hobbs and so on. But, he thinks that human nature cannot be explained as an agent, in dualistic perspective so that it is impossible to figure out what desirable lives are. That is to say, he views a wrong premise of dualism from the start, by which there are three malaises today. For instance, he says that, firstly, isolated individualism brings about the loss of the meanings of life, secondly, procedural rationalism does ruling of instrumental reason, and finally, distorted liberalism does the loss of the true liberty. Thus he wishes to overcome them in the distortion of dualism.
(2) Taylor tries to integrate modern separate properties. He is particularly influenced by the ideas of G. W. H. Hegel, J. G. Herder, and Aristotle, who all have a kind of aspiration for integration earlier than him.
Specially, the self-realization theory of embodied subject in Hegel is the mainstay of Taylor’s thought. The concept of embodied subject means an agent whose mind is embodied in a lively body and that of self-realization means Hegel’s ideal that human lives be a process of realizing a potential nature in the body through the autonomy of reason. Taylor establishes his own views by grafting the ideas of Hegel and his heirs who are existentialist phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty and M. Heidegger. That is, he considers humans as (a) embodied agents and (b) engaged agents. And he provides a moral ideal that one expresses and realizes one's own nature in one's lifetime.
Another mainstay in his thought is Herder’s romantic expressivism. With I. Kant’s conception of moral freedom(autonomy), it had an immediate and vital influence on Hegel’s philosophical synthesis. But it seems that Herder’s insights of language is directly succeeded by Taylor. For he takes over an expressive function of language, a concept of the framework understanding(as holistic-meaning-system) and the linguistic capacity(Besonnenheit) from Herder, and then builds his own language-meaning theory.
From Taylor’s point of views, Hegel and Herder have a common point in that they try to overcome dualism. And it seems that in Aristotle’s thought, there is a clue of their aspiration for integration. Because Aristotle insisted on the inseparability between the subject and the object in terms of self-realization of nature. But beyond Hegel and Herder directly impacting on Taylor, we can find similarities between Taylor and Aristotle. So to speak, they are similar in that they accept, as a basic of their own ethical views, the importance of ordinary lives, the good as the end of life, the capacity to distinguish life goods and the importance of community life. These features can be seen of important because Taylor efforts to make ethics different from modern ethics. In other words, it is suggested that Taylor has interests similar to Aristotle and takes alike criticisms and efforts, as though Aristotle established ethics as practical philosophy by criticizing Plato’s excessive idealism and focusing on practical troubles in real life.
(3) With this background, Taylor newly defines the concept of human nature as that of agent. Firstly, he argues that an agent is necessarily a being who stands in moral space, in a sense that the self-identity is shaped by being orientated to certain goods. According to him, goods recognized as the highest by a certain qualitative discrimination are the end of life which such agent has to realize by oneself in one's lifetimes. Goods are permeated in everyday lives. Or in other words, they are implied in ethical realities. It characterizes the self-identity of agents because they are differently pursued in accordance with one's in trinsic nature and one' special position in the world. But individual goods, which mean goods sought by each person, essentially have social properties. That is, it can never be reduced into individual, because the concept of certain goods is the object of a common-understanding and its validity can be recognized only in community sharing a certain culture.
Secondly, he argues that an agent is naturally a self-interpretative being who can articulate goods which matter to oneself by self-interpretation. It is activity to have the meanings of things by practical reason that can understand and articulate a background (the context of ordinary lives) surrounding one by using certain languages. In this sense, practical reasoning means interpreting and articulating in the best way a situation one is in. Therefore, its rationality cannot be judged by merely inconsistency in a procedure or ways. Rather it can be discerned only by a substantive content and consequence of moral decisions. With it, an agent is able to draw a practical change which means a fully reasonable growth in a sense that one solves troubles of life. One can continuously grow by extending one’s own background-understanding. Such a growth is what one can be attainable in all one’s life long, but it can be only where there is one’s intentionality or will.
Thirdly, Taylor argues that an agent is a social being, in that the meanings of goods related to a self are originated in cultures and such cultures are shaped by a horizon of interlocution. In his views, both of language and culture(which give its meanings) are a common-knowledge that is shared in certain communities. Agents entered into a community first gain and gradually modify such knowledge in daily interlocution. Here, 'interlocution' means internal self-interpretation or self-reflection as well as one-to-one conversations. One can have a talk because of standing on a same space, that is, 'a horizon'. On it, they understand and recognize goods mattered to each. By doing so, they can make self-realization. In this sense, interlocution is not different from the articulations of goods.
With this, Taylor indicates a moral ideal of ‘authenticity’. It is a kind of self-realization theory. In his scheme, we pursue differently goods as the ends of life in accordance with our own nature and special position in the world. But the meanings of goods are originated and developed in the horizons of ‘interlocution’, which exist not connected with our will and have a direct influence in shaping and realizing our identities. So we need to appreciate it and then actively participate in interlocution. To sum up, he states the completion of each moral life depends upon a participation in community life.
(4) In this context, Taylor's ethical thought has three features different from modern ethics. First, the good has priority over the right. He regards the good as the sources of moral lives. However, he doesn't ignore moral rightness. He sees that rightness can be identified only by the articulations of goods. As it were, he thinks that it is implicit in certain goods. Accordingly, he suggests that we can complete moral practices when first considering and articulating the good implicit in ethical realities rather than the right. And he believes that such tries enable us to grasp hidden meanings implicit in moral practices and, further, to be motivated to do really.
Second, in his thought, the dissolution problem of social conflicts caused by value variance is treated positively. We can understand various meanings of goods by exercising our own practical reason. As we understand its meaning by comparing different goods, we can recognize each good as reasonable and furthermore respect each other. And, then, at individual level or at social level, the growth of moral consciousness is to be realized, as well as social conflicts are to be disappeared. In this respect, he implies that if we really want to complete our own moral life, we have to actively participate in social conflicts.
Finally, ‘horizon’ is a crucial concept that shows its property as practical philosophy, as well as the originality of Taylor's ideas. It means an essential dimension where we acquire language and its meanings-background(culture) that are necessary to constitute our mind. By virtue of it, we can have a talk and recognize a difference between each other. In other words, since we stand inside the same space and the horizon of interlocution, we cannot only create moral controversies, but we can also resolve conflicts and then grow practically. So, we need to be aware of such an outside horizon in order to complete our moral life. But a horizon means ordinary lives which we experience really, and communal lives. Therefore, we have to pay attention to morally difficult situations we are in and take an active part in it.
In the discussion above, we can find the attributes of ethics as practical philosophy in Taylor’s ethical thought. That is to say, it seems that it has a possibility to reconstruct ethics as practical philosophy which have been collapsed for a fairly long time, in the way that it justifies ‘a moral life’ and leads us to practice it, by making up for the abstractness of modern ethics.
Most of all, Taylor describes a more realistic and less mysterious human nature by regarding both passion and reason as the main factor of human action. With this, we can re-understand our morality different from animals, machines, or god, and gain its justification.
Also, conversations as a practical way which Taylor suggests show such attributes. It seems that conversations make individuals in the east or west free from existential crisis. Of course, Taylor focuses mainly on isolated western individuals. But, there is no need to restrict his suggestion to the west only. For, as Taylor says, all change and harmony ultimately depend on autonomy and practical will on each of us. If so, east or west, no matter where we are, the most important thing is that we ought to preferentially recognize both the inside potential of ours and the outside horizons.
However, to contribute substantially to making perfect a moral life of individual, the next two problems must be settled. First of all, it needs to consider specific strategies inducing individuals or groups to join conversations, because actually, it is not easy to have doubts about beliefs in goods or values. The next thing is to refer and examine real obstacles to conversations. For it is doubtful to have conversations for an equal recognition, even if a conversation starts, subjects have really asymmetric or discriminative positions in the process of a conversation according to economic, political, and military dynamics relations. Perhaps, if Taylor's ethical thought fails to overcome this limits, it will remain as an abstract theory like existing modern ethics. Therefore, it is necessary that the study to overcome this problem will be maintained continuously, by those who agree with Taylor’s views as well as Taylor himself.

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