© Jesper Ahlin Marceta 2024
This is an excerpt from a manuscript on moral individualism. Charles Taylor develops his theory of authenticity in light of individualism as a “source of worry” (Taylor 1991, p. 2). The rise of individualism has given people a right to “choose for themselves their own pattern of life, to decide in conscience what convictions to espouse, to determine the shape of their lives in a whole host of ways that their ancestors couldn’t control” (ibid). Before individualism, people “were often locked into a given place, a role and station that was properly theirs and from which it was almost unthinkable…