MODERNITY AND IDENTITY IN CHARLES TAYLOR

This essay introduces the relationships between the conceptions of identity and modernity in the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. In the work of Charles Taylor, the concept of identity is a useful tool in order to see clearly the moral topology of the self in the context of a new vision of the entire moral domain. In his search of this moral sources of the self, Taylor centers his analysis in the modern epoch. He underlines in this period the role of the interior personality, the preeminence of the ordinary life of the family and the economy and the emergence of nature and expression, the expressivist turn. In his essays of the end of the decade of 1980 and of the decade of the 1990, Taylor assigns great importance to the expressivist ideal of authenticity and explores its relations with the idea of recognition. It is in the modern language of authenticity and recognition that we can righty interpret the reemergency of nationalism and religion as a sign of cultural identity. Other practical consequences of the works. of Taylor are in the field of multiculturalism, political philosophy and the philosophy of language. At the end of the text some criticism are mentioned, particularly the criticism of Jose Maria Gonzalez who centers in the absence of the baroque culture in Taylor.