Charles Taylor :: essays research papers

In The Politics of Recognition Charles Taylor explores the possibility that in order to affirm item-by-items equal dignity, we must acknowledge their cultures. He claims that individual identities are amicablely and dialogically constructed. That is why recognition is important. It shows how the study of identity and its political science is very important in the effort to understand control and someway reduce the occurrence of group conflicts. The views of others may not be the detain word concerning our identities, but they are the first word. If so, misrecognition plenty damage and can be the basis of burdensomeness and domination (p 25).     Charles Taylor argues that human identity is be by heathen group membership, and an individuals sense of egotism worth is therefrom deeply tied to the value that others attach to his or her cultural group. As a result of this "new understanding of the human social condition," cultural recognition can be construed as a necessary fixings of individual recognition, and misrecognition can reasonably be considered a soma of oppression (Taylor, 1994 25-26). If cultural group attachment is a feature of the human social condition, liberal theory had better deal with cultural group rights if it is to be relevant.     Such observations form the basis of several criticisms of what Taylor terms procedural liberalism. Taylor sees this form of liberalism as rooted in a Kantian view of the self in which the essential feature of the self is autonomy procedural liberalism requires, in order to respect human dignity, a polity in which each(prenominal) person is able to conceive and pursue his or her own imaging of the good.      Taylor argues that while procedural liberalism is committed to the view that different cultures are to be tolerated and respected, it also insists that we must live according to a common put together of political rules uniformly applied. This kind of liberalism, he claims, is unable to vary elementary rights in order to accommodate the survival requirements of minority cultures.