Recognizing Children as Agents: Taylor’s Hermeneutical Ontology and the Philosophy of Childhood

Abstract

ABSTRACT Within his earliest contributions to the human sciences, Charles Taylor challenged dominant behavioral views by advancing a hermeneutical conception of human agency. For Taylor, persons continually navigate their meaningful worlds and make sense of things and act in light of background horizons of significance and social imaginaries. Yet, conceptions of children have lagged as dominant outlooks construe young people as immature and incapable – perpetuating behavioral approaches to controlling their actions rather than hermeneutic ones that recognize them as agents. Working with Taylor’s ideas, I discuss a Childhood Ethics ontological approach to understanding children and childhood. Specifically, I: (a) draw on Taylor’s critique of naturalistic approaches to the human sciences to highlight problems that underlie universalist claims about all childhoods; (b) relate Taylor’s articulation of human agency, centered on strong evaluation and human linguistic capacity, to the Philosophy of Childhood and Childhood Studies to address current questions regarding our understanding of agency within childhood; and (c) describe a hermeneutic ontology that can inform the development of empirical research, policy-making and practices that relate to children. I close with an outline of priority questions that can orient future investigations within this area of inquiry.