Abstract

Authenticity is a crucial contemporary pathos that has immense sociopolitical currency. Charles Taylor reinterprets the Romantic authenticity of being true to one’s originality in ethical vocabulary to argue that discovering our essential self-identity does not conflict with the objective moral demands that emanate from outside the self. This article examines if the implied ontology of the higher good reconciling the subjective and objective morality in Taylor’s philosophy offers a coherent conception of authenticity. To that end we closely examine Taylor’s moral philosophy and critically evaluate its consequences for authenticity as a moral ideal. The study problematizes the dominant view that Taylor demands an interpretive opening to mere intersubjective values to fulfill authenticity. We expose the implicit non-anthropocentric ontological commitments that authenticity necessarily requires in his account through which Taylor ultimately wants to achieve a fusion of the transcendent and immanent horizons. This paper contends that such ontologised moral realism remains arbitrary, in effect, constraining individual dignity on one side and offering no clear criteria to validate authenticity from inauthenticity on the other. Finally, the pathological constitution of modern subjects poses a possible danger of legitimizing a restrictive public sphere, subverting authenticity as an ideal of public significance.