Taylor’s Conception of Persons and His Theory of Personal Identity

Abstract

In this chapter, I explain the conception of personal identity that communitarians seem to endorse. This explanation is useful because communitarians generally fail fully to explain their conception of personal identity, and because the conception serves as the basis for their criticisms of Rawls. This conception of identity is supposed to be problematic for Rawls in two ways: metaphysically and normatively. In order to assess and respond to these objections, we must have an account of this conception of personal identity. I explain what seems to be the most plausible communitarian conception of personal identity, Charles Taylor’s “practical-moral” conception of persons. This view is complex, but it can be summed up with the two following claims. First, the society in which we live at least partially determines various morally relevant aspects of our lives, like our conceptions of what is intrinsically valuable, and our capacity to act as autonomous moral agents. Second, the aspects of our lives that are partially determined by society are a part of our identity. Also, to a lesser extent, I draw on writings of Michael Sandel and Alasdair MacIntyre.