Deliberación práctica y vida buena. Un estudio sobre la ética de Charles Taylor

Abstract

This research discusses the philosophical grounds of the connection between the goods and the practical deliberation in the ethical thinking of Charles Taylor. To this end, it seeks to describe and examine the role of the significant frameworks and the reflection about the ends of life in the processes of ethical discernment in the complex construction of the individual's moral identity, and thus severely questions the assumptions of procedural ethics, which seek a sort of moral algorithm that will offer a foundation to strict moral standards. Taylor advocates a kind of reflection that highlights the important role of the body and the language in the way that agents relate to the objects and the world. Every form of comprehension is embodied in a story and in a language. The practical deliberation process assumes this kind of incarnation, refers to the ¿strong evaluations¿, forms of discernment that consider desires and courses of action which bring into play what assigns or deprives meaning to our lives. This research aims to show that a narrative interpretation of life allows to clarify the links between strong evaluations, choices and actions that constitute the agents¿ way of life. This "substantialist" comprehension of practical rationality involves a type of reflection which will account for the teleological structure of practical reasoning and of the own moral experience. Taylor shows that even the enlightened pursuit of a universal principle implicitly rests in reference to goods that serve as ends. Precisely, the language of the goods constitutes the element for the dialogic construction of identity in terms of perception of the location and orientation in the social space. Being a self or an ethical agent involves discerning the proper place and direction in the space and time of human relationships. The research proposes that the narrative interpretation of identity highlights the commitment to the goods and the search for the unity of life, while at the same time the agent¿s choices become intelligible. In this sense, our reading of Taylor¿s ethics of identity differs from the interpretation of Amartya Sen, who, labeling the philosopher from Quebec as a "communitarian" sustains that he defends an idea of the self that resents the capacity of the individual¿s practical reason . Our research shows that Sen overlooks the deliberative dimension of Taylor¿s ethics, which constitutes a decisive element for his theory of identity.