The issue of identity in postmodernity: authenticity and individualism in Charles Taylor

Abstract

The collapsing of communitarian relations and the increasing isolation of individuals in relation to each other figure prominently in the studies of various authors who sought to describe contemporary ways of life. We address this issue as presented by Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self and in The ethics of authenticity. The author identifies three “malaises” that are present in modern society: individualism, the primacy of instrumental reason and the alienation of individuals from the political sphere. Proposing to avoid a restrictively negativist reading of such phenomena, Taylor presents them as transformations of the dynamic frameworks that constitute the modern identity. We undertook a study of the notions of identity and authenticity as presented in those books, aiming at a synthetic comprehension of this issue and investigating the possibilities of overcoming it, that is, of recovering the meanings lost by an individualist fragmentation.