Individualism in Charles Taylor’s social philosophy

Abstract

The paper describes Charles Taylor’s views concerning the notion of individualism in social and political philosophy. Taylor’s position in this matter is presented against Nozick’s theory of entitlement, Berlin’s concept of negative freedom, as well as the idea of state neutrality regarding the concept of the good life put forward by such contemporary liberal thinkers as Rawls, Dworkin, and Ackerman. The focal point of the paper is to show that the remedy for the public malaises resulting from individualism (the atomization of social bonds, the threat of loosing political freedom) does not have to lie in the discreditation of individualism but can be found in a certain interpretation of it. According to Taylor, individualism can be seen as a moral ideal whose proper fulfillment has the following conditions of possibility: the demands posed by our dialogical nature and by the horizon of meaning.