What is Taylor's positive view of transcendence, and what role does it play in his account of the moral life in late modernity? As we saw above, Taylor often characterizes transcendence in a minimal sense as "going beyond," a sense that often includes belief in and commitment to a monotheistic creator God who transcends "this" world. Taylor's characterization of transcendence, however, falls short of insisting on strong ontological claims about the existence, or nature of deity, or the transcendent. I argue in this chapter that Taylor advances a vision of transcendence that is intended primarily to be compatible with humanism, that is, he is defending a version of religious humanism, a humanism that does not exclude transcendence. Moreover, I argue that Taylor is interested in advancing the possibility of an inclusive humanism that may take either religious, or non-religious forms, but which includes transcendence. Taylor is primarily focused on undermining, or exposing the inherent weakness of a narrow, reductive exclusive or self-sufficient humanism that requires the rejection of any good beyond humanity, which plays a role in the determination of the goodness of humanity.
The best way to get at what Taylor means by transcendence, or "the transformation perspective," is to look more closely at the way it works for his personal religious or theological view. I begin with a characterization of the picture of transcendence that emerges in A Catholic Modernity? Carlos Colorado, in particular, has offered a very clear theological reading of Taylor's view on transcendence. Like Colorado, I also draw on Steven White's characterization of Taylor's philosophical anthropology as a form of "weak ontology," and his theism as "weak ontological theism" in my view of Taylor's philosophical view of transcendence, which emphasizes the element of transformation, and the compatibility with non-religious forms. The idea that Taylor is working with a "weak ontology" helps us appreciate his resistance to making strong claims for theism in A Secular Age, something that has caused some readers to approach his work through a hermeneutic of suspicion.
Taylor sees the basic form of transcendence that he sketches to fit not only some forms of Christianity, but also Buddhism, a faith which in the relevant form implied here, does not posit a creator God. The articulation of transcendence can thus vary even to the extent that it excludes the robust, traditional theological idea of God, and immortality. It is true that in A Secular Age Taylor does define religion in terms of transcendence in a strong sense (which he recognizes to be problematic outside the western contest), and there explicitly states that "we should see religion's relation to the "beyond" in three dimensions," namely, 1) "the sense that there is something higher than, beyond human flourishing… a possibility of transformation… that takes us beyond merely human perfection." 2) "[T]he belief in a higher power, the transcendent God of faith," and finally 3) a view of "our life as going beyond the bounds of its "natural" scope between birth and death; our lives extend beyond "this life""(SA 20). But this apparently highly restrictive definition in A Secular Age, we must keep in mind, which insists on 1) self-transcendence, 2) God, and 3) immortality, is merely his working definition, as we saw above in an earlier discussion of the difficulties Taylor faces in defining religion, and the potential for confusion it has caused.
In A Catholic Modernity? Taylor offers a gloss on transcendence as follows. "The fundamental idea" Taylor explains, "one might try to grasp in the claim that life isn't the whole story" (CM 173). While he recognizes, however, that "one way to take this expression" is to read it as indicating immortality, that "life goes on after death," Taylor brings it up to point out to his Catholic audience that the view he develops in his address is compatible with the stronger view. His more general definition here hinges on the idea that "the goodness of things is not exhausted by life, the fullness of life, or even the goodness of life." "Let us agree," he suggests, by way of putting the point in higher relief, "with John Stuart Mill that a full life must involve striving for the benefit of humankind. Then acknowledging the transcendent means seeing a point beyond that" (CM 173). This is a reading of transcendence that is standardly objected to from the point of view of exclusive humanism, which is seen to be threatening, even if mistakenly.
Taylor's solution to the problems associated with transcendence takes form as a solution especially when he re-describes transcendence in terms of "transformation," and "change in identity." This description, or re-description, of transcendence builds on Taylor's moral ontology from Sources of the Self. In A Secular Age, Taylor calls this view of transcendence the "transformation perspective." There he contrasts it with views that explicitly take account of transcendence in terms of specific beliefs about the existence of supernatural entities (SA 430). With the move to the transformation perspective, it is clear that Taylor is now taking the discussion in a very different direction, and that he is focusing on the importance, and relevance, of religious experience. The transformation perspective involves what in Sources of the Self he calls "moral orientation," and that he argues is the definitive feature of selfhood, without which self-identity would be close to impossible. For Taylor, self-identity requires some unity of moral direction, which is provided in each case by a moral source, a good, transcending the self. A person without any understanding of the good such that identity is organized in relation to it (through reflection and "articulation") would be pathological. Taylor's view of moral ontology here construes the "good as the object of our love or allegiance, or as Iris Murdoch portrayed it in her work, as the privileged focus of attention and will" (SS 3). In the case of religious transcendence the change in identity is brought about by a change in will and given orientation by the understanding of God. Taylor offers the example of (Catholic) Christianity that involves "a radical decentering of the self, in relation to God," but he also includes Buddhism as a paradigm case of the transformative perspective, whereby "the change is quite radical, from self to 'no self'" (CM 173).
From the transformation perspective the paradox of transcendence is also re-articulated in terms of self-transformation. Taylor's re-articulation of transcendence in terms of a change in identity, or transformation, he points out, "brings out a similar point to my first way [going beyond human flourishing] in that most conceptions of a flourishing life assume a stable identity, the self for whom flourishing can be defined" (CM 173). In this case, however, the concept of transcendence is much more open than in the earlier case, more flexible, and amenable to a broader realization even outside of religious contexts. Here the relationship between the divine and human flourishing is reconceived in terms of the philosophical anthropology, the ontology of the self that emerges from Sources of the Self. The moment of renunciation of the transformative view is conceived of as a decentering of the self in relation to the good, however understood, as a moral source and (re-)orienting transformative power outside or beyond the self, though not necessarily beyond the world. Renunciation of life involves a transformation or conversion of identity by changing one's moral allegiance. The moment of return and affirmation in Taylor's understanding of transcendence becomes possible only in the face of the decentering source of meaning, or identity-orienting "source of the self." Of course, for the purposes of Taylor's main thesis in A Secular Age he needs to maintain a link with the dominant understanding of religion, and the religious, with the central connection to the supernatural. There is, however, in principle no reason that the initial moment of self-transcendence may not be realized in experiences that lie outside the traditionally understood range of "religious experience." The affirmative moment clearly depends upon the specific form or forms of acknowledgement and articulation of the source, not all of which allow for an affirmation of life. Concentrating on the transformation perspective also allows Taylor to focus the question of transcendence on self-understanding, and to move away from the stickier metaphysical questions about the existence of God.
Summing up his position in A Catholic Modernity?, Taylor states that "acknowledging the transcendent means aiming beyond life or opening yourself to a change in identity" (CM 173). Jeffrey Stout, commenting on this sentence in his review of A Catholic Modernity? takes issue with the "or." "Or?," he asks rhetorically, following up with his objection:
One can aim for a change in identity, and in that sense aim for transcendence of one's self, without aspiring to a metaphysical state that transcends life. The possibility of self-transcendence would seem to be sufficient to avoid the stifling of the human spirit.
The first sentence of Stout's objection is entirely correct, but it is hardly an objection to Taylor's view on the matter. Taylor is a pluralist with respect to moral sources and their potential adequacy for motivating a change in identity. Taylor is careful never to argue philosophically for his personal vision in this regard. This is partly due to his dedication to certain philosophical principles of argument, and in part due to his sensitivity to criticism motivated by the "post-revolutionary climate" of modernity. Taylor acknowledges the possibility for a plurality of directions that the desire to transcendence may take. Taylor is a careful philosopher, and a straightforward reading, which Stout gives, shows that Taylor has no specific ontological commitments in mind. Besides non-western religions (Buddhism), Taylor also mentions deep ecology as a way "to reconstruct a non-exclusive humanism on a non-religious basis" (SA 19).
But is "the possibility of self-transcendence" without the other two dimensions of transcendence that Taylor lists, namely, God and immortality, "sufficient to avoid the stifling of the human spirit" as Stout suggests? Part of the problem here is the vagueness of the phrase "stifling of the human spirit." I think Taylor would agree with the suggestion that self-transcendence is sufficient for "fullness," as Taylor uses this term in A Secular Age. Likewise, Taylor's use of the phrase "stifling the human spirit" refers to exclusive humanism, and that his sense of pluralism is robust enough to accommodate a fairly wide range of non-exclusive humanisms. But not all ways of transcending are equal for Taylor. The bigger problem here is that some ways of transcending, in spite of the spiritual fulfillment they may bring, may still be inadequate.
As potential counterexamples Stout suggests Emerson and Dewey as among those who have explored "self-transcending religious possibilities that do not involve commitments to transcendent metaphysics," and points out that "it is far from clear whether Taylor would want to classify them as exclusive humanists." I think Taylor would certainly not discount Emerson, or Dewey's ideals of self-transcending as a form of transcendence in line with the basic outline of the transformation perspective. However similar these positions may be in this respect, there is still much room for contention regarding the adequacy of the sources of self-transcendence.
Returning to Taylor's solution to the problem of transcendence, we can now explore how Taylor fills in the basic picture of transcendence as a change in identity, or transformation. For Taylor, the content that he fills in to complete his personal picture of transcendence in a way that brings together renunciation and human flourishing is love, specifically love understood in terms of the Christian concept of ἀγάπη. On Taylor's religious understanding of this concept, "renouncing–aiming beyond life–not only takes you away but brings you back to flourishing… renunciation decenters you in relation with God, [but] God's will is that humans flourish, and so you are taken back to an affirmation of this flourishing, which is biblically called agape " (CM 22). As Guido Vanheeswijck points out, Taylor believes that there is a kind of transcendence that does not thwart human flourishing; on the contrary, there remains the possibility of an openness to agapeic transcendence that promotes the very affirmation of ordinary life." Vanheeswijck's term "agapeic transcendence" excellently captures what is distinctive about Taylor's understanding of Christian transcendence, his theological interpretation of transcendence as transformation. Emphasizing the moment of affirmation, it also points to the difficulty inherent in transcendent perspectives between renunciation and affirmation, and his understanding of how Christian sources may be articulated to solve the paradox.
It is also clear that Taylor is a pluralist with respect to the variety of forms that this "full-hearted love for some good beyond life" (SA 639) may take, so long as love of God (or the Good as a moral source) returns one to an enlarged love of, and affirmation of life and human flourishing. He also suggests, for example, the Buddhist concepts of metta (loving kindness) and karuna (compassion) might also work in their own context (or different "civilizational sites" as he sometimes puts it). However overdetermined by various contexts of articulation, and self-interpretation, on this reading life renounced out of a love beyond life returns you to a love of others, and a loving concern for their welfare.
If Vanheeswijck's reading of Taylor on transcendence as agapeic focuses on the moment of affirmation, Carlos Colorado develops a reading of Taylor on transcendence that emphasizes the moment of renunciation. Colorado's interpretation Taylor's emphasis on self-decentering, or change in identity, is read through the lens of the New Testament concept κÎνωσις, often explained in terms of "dispossession," or emptying. These are both technical terms from Christian theology, and refer to the surrender of the will in a total act of obedience. This reading of Taylor does seem to capture one way to fill out his understanding of transcendence as transformation in more theologically weighted language than either my account or Vanheeswijck's. Colorado argues that it is the dispossessive, or kenotic reading of transcendence that allows Taylor to hold a difficult position. On the face of it, Taylor's commitment to transcendence, especially a strongly transcendent monotheistic God, is in conflict with his commitment to pluralism. Thus, the question is whether or not Taylor's theism gets in the way of his pluralism, and the answer to this hinges on an account of the foundational role (if any) that theism plays in Taylor's moral ontology.
In order to support Taylor on this question Colorado defends Stephen White's characterization of Taylor's ontology as "weak ontology." Another way of putting this is in terms of the relationship between Taylor's theism and moral value. To what extent does Taylor's conception of God determine moral value? Colorado convincingly argues that Taylor is a weak ontologist in the specific sense developed by Stephen White, and further, that Taylor's conception of transcendence is in effect "weak" transcendence because it is underwritten by a weak ontology.
What White has in mind is a subtler shift in the focus of ontology in late twentieth century philosophy. The relevant "entities" under discussion in the turn to ontology that White has in mind are those presupposed not by our theories (social or scientific), but by our late modern ways of being-in-the-world. White argues that Taylor is among a loose group of contemporary philosophers who have turned to ontology, but without taking on a full commitment to an ontology which rejects any relationship between moral and political intuitions and commitments (such as Rortian irony). These thinkers nevertheless admit the instability and contestability of former certainties thought to determine our commitments. Rather, these late twentieth century thinkers allow for an ontology of the self that accepts the need for stability, but falls short of determining morality in a strong sense. White argues that what he sees as an "ontological turn" in recent philosophy stems from the dawning "sense of living in late modernity," in that our former unreflectively accepted certainties are contingent, mere convention.
The sense of living in late modernity implies a greater awareness of the conventionality of much of what has been taken for certain in the modern West. The recent ontological shift might then be characterized generally as the result of a growing propensity to interrogate more carefully those "entities" presupposed by our typical ways of seeing and doing in the modern world.
At the same time White finds that philosophers such as Taylor, in spite of this contingency and conventionality, argue that some stability is necessary to make sense of ourselves and our moral life. Accordingly, White argues that weak ontology "shift[s] the intellectual burden here from a preoccupation with what is opposed and deconstructed, to an engagement with what must be articulated, cultivated, and affirmed in its wake." Weak ontologists accept the weakness, the contestability of our fundamental understanding of what it means to be a human being in the world, but also argue that such a foundation may be contestable without requiring a stance such as Rorty's, which recommends an unproblematic acceptance of an ironic stance toward even our most cherished moral and political commitments.
Thus White introduces the concept of "weak ontology" as a description of what he takes to be a distinct philosophical position in contemporary thought, one that he contrasts with "strong ontology," on the one hand and what is often called postmodernism on the other. The idea of weak ontology offers what White refers to as "figurations" of self, other, and world that resist returning strong ontological solutions to late modern problems, such as God, which ground moral and political life. "Strong are those ontologies," White explains, "that claim to show us "the way the world is," or how God's being stands to human being, or what human nature is…[and] [f]or strong ontologies the whole question of passages from ontological truths to moral-political ones is relatively clear." Strong ontologies, in contrast to weak ontologies, "carry an underlying assumption of certainty." Against anti-foundationalism, or anti-metaphysical gestures from the "postmodern" camp, weak ontology re-emphasizes that there remain pressing moral and political concerns in need of the immediate constructive concern of philosophy.
My own understanding here is that what White calls weak ontology is a working, or interim, position between modernity and a genuine postmodernity. Neither modern, nor properly postmodern, our age is "late modern". Late modernity is a liminal stage; we are at the threshold of the next. White takes this as a presupposition of his understanding of the turn to weak ontological conceptions of subjectivity in contemporary thought. It is a powerful vision; it does justice to what Taylor captures with the idea of a generalized malaise of modernity, and it also offers legitimate hope for the future.
It is the late modern "disengaged self," what White often refers to as the "Teflon subject," that is a primary focus of weak ontologies. The Teflon metaphor is intended to get at the idea of the isolation, or separation of the modern sense of self. White contrasts it with a "stickier self" suspended between modern and pre-modern senses of the self. This self is separated from both its background understanding (now destabilized in the wake of late-modernity), but also from what White calls the "foreground," the external world of nature, including other subjects. All of this goes to make up a picture of modern subjectivity as in a state of skeptical anxiety and paints a picture of the self as alienated, distanced. Nothing sticks. Weak ontologists want something in-between, something stickier than the modern, though not as "porous" as the pre-modern (to use Taylor's descriptor for this in A Secular Age).
Besides the emphasis on a "stickier self" there are other features shared by weak ontologies that emerge. Briefly, weak ontologies refuse the dichotomy of "no ground," and "absolute ground," opting for a via media that affirms fundamental conceptualizations of a human being's self, world and the other, while recognizing their contestability. Weak ontologies accept contestability, but also believe in the necessity of fundamental conceptualizations for morality. As White points out, the need for an "adequately reflective moral and political life… demands from us the affirmative gesture of constructing foundations," while owning the contestability "prevents us from carrying out this task in a traditional fashion." Thus weak ontologies face considerable difficulty articulating the affirmation of humanity. White argues that a final feature of weak ontologies is "cultivation." The idea here is that the appeal of any particular weak ontological "figuration" (to use White's term) is necessarily oblique, and that the moral and political demands made by a weak ontology requires the cultivation of spiritual engagement with the source. In terms taken from Taylor's ontology of the self, this is the idea that articulation brings us closer to the good as a source.
Colorado's defense of both the consistency of Taylor's ontological commitments and his commitment to moral pluralism hinges upon whether White is correct in his assertion that Taylor is a "weak ontologist," in the specific sense that White understands this philosophical position. Colorado argues that White is correct to read Taylor as a weak ontologist, and this in spite of his avowed commitment to theism. White calls Taylor a "weak ontological theist," that is, his theism informs his moral and political life without allowing it to determine absolutely in a way that excludes all margin of contestability.
Colorado also recognizes that Taylor often sounds like a strong ontologist, especially when he is speaking to his fellow Roman Catholics, but that "his theistic formulations must be contextualized within his wider anthropological and moral vision. He consistently discusses Christianity and scripture, and even theism in general, as a best account of what it is to be human and to live the good life, an account that issues forth from the hermeneutical stance and that takes history seriously."
In fact, Taylor's appeals to transcendence are even weaker than Colorado suggests here. In Sources of the Self Taylor appeals to what he calls the "best account principle" (or "BA principle" for short) in his argument for moral realism, that is, for the reality of moral value. Taylor offers a kind of transcendental argument, or an argument from conceptual necessity, such that until there is a better account of the ontological status of moral sources that is true to our moral experience–faithful to the phenomenology of being a moral agent–we should take them to be real, to be features of the world (notwithstanding that these "sources" come into being with humanity). The BA principle is intended to make a stronger claim than Taylor makes regarding theism, for theism is not necessary to any account, only to some self-interpretations. The BA principle defends ontological claims, though weak, which are aimed at convincing the skeptic–it aims at universal agreement.
When Taylor invokes what sounds like the BA principle in his defense of transcendence in the strong sense he is not offering a best account, but (in the terms of Sources of the Self) an exploration of objective order through personal resonance (SS 510-512). The BA principle is supposed to incline one to accept the ontological status of values, that is, moral sources. Because there is no longer a publically accessible moral order our only access to sources is through personal resonance, and articulating these brings us into closer proximity, or fuller contact with the source. This doesn't mean that everyone will, or should, feel their way to an objective moral order in the same way. In fact, the subjective element here precludes a uniform approach as each individual explores sources in their own way. For Taylor, his Christian faith doesn't have the appeal as a best account of what it is like to be a moral agent, but makes the best sense of the life he is living. So much so, in fact, that he can claim that it is "inconceivable that [he] would abandon [his] faith" (SS 53).
Colorado's account of Taylor's sense of transcendence supports my own reading, and although his focus on κÎνωσις emphasizes the decentering moment of renunciation in Taylor's vision of transcendence, he does recognize the affirmative moment as well. Colorado is surely correct to note that "Taylor argues that Buddhism and Christianity present us with complementary notions of how an encounter with transcendence initiates a decentering movement away from the self or atman that leads to an inevitable return to immanence that upholds human flourishing."
My understanding of inclusive humanism is supported by a weak ontology such as Taylor's. The picture that emerges here is a view of ontology compatible with a wide range of possible claimants for our allegiance, which need be understood in a strongly transcendent sense. Indeed, if White is correct in his reading of Taylor as a weak ontologist, even faith commitments are questionable as to their objective validity, if not their spiritual strength to power practical dedication to high standards.