Charles Taylor’s Modern Identity and the “Atonement Muddle”

James Gerrie

In Charles Taylor’s exhaustive study of the historical currents that have helpedconstitute the modern identity he proposes the notion of “the affirmation ofordinary life” as a way of encapsulating the core of that identity. As he states inSources of the Self, “ordinary life is a term of art I introduce to designate thoseaspects of human life concerned with production, that is, labour, the making ofthings needed for life, and our life as sexual beings, including marriage and thefamily.”1 According to Taylor, this aspect of the modern identity gives rise to anew sense of the almost inestimable value of individuals and their quotidianexistence. This modern sense of identity is informed by a combination of atheistic vision of a created natural order and an ideal of disengaged scientificreasoning as a way of exploring that order, and also a sense of the ultimate valueof people and their dignity as moral agents.