The Ethics of Authenticity (Work)

Published as The Malaise of Modernity in Canada and The Ethics of Authenticity elsewhere, this compact book of fewer than 150 pages is Taylor's most accessible statement of the framework that appears in longer form in Sources of the Self. Its central argument is that the modern ideal of authenticity — being true to oneself — is a genuine moral achievement that should not be surrendered, but that it degenerates into subjectivism when severed from the horizons of significance that give authentic choices their weight. The book identifies three malaises of modernity — the loss of meaning through radical individualism, the eclipse of ends by instrumental reason, and the loss of political freedom through soft despotism — and proposes that the recovery of meaningful modern life requires articulating the moral sources that the culture of authenticity has marginalized without destroying.