Social Contract Theory and Moral Agency:Understanding the Roots of an Uncaring Society

Melissa MoschellaAssistant Professor of Philosophy, The Catholic University of

America

Published in Caring Professions and Globalization: Philosophical and Practical Perspectives, ed. Ana Marta Gonzalez and Craig Iffland, Palgrave MacMillan, 2014, p. 87-116

Abstract

Drawing on the work of Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre and Margaret Archer, this paper argues that the social contract theories relied on by many liberal thinkers to justify the exercise of political authority presuppose an individualist account of human nature that fails to appreciate the importance of caring relationships for the development and maintenance of moral agency. The problem with liberal theories is not primarily, as many ethics of care theorists contend, their emphasis on rationality over emotion, but rather an emaciated view of rationality that lacks an inherent connection to substantive conceptions of the good, conceptions which are formedand sustained within a social context.

I. Introduction

Proponents of the “ethics of care” frequently pinpoint

liberal individualism as one of the roots of contemporary Western

culture’s failure to appreciate the profound relationality and

interdependence of human beings.i The ideal of the free and

equal individual at the heart of liberal theories masks the

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reality of human vulnerability—physical, moral and intellectual—

and the centrality to human flourishing of both giving and

receiving care. Given the pervasiveness of liberal ideology, and

of the resulting exaltation of independence and autonomy as the

highest human values, calling attention to interdependence and

relationality requires nothing less than a paradigm shift in our

way of looking at human nature, and of approaching social and

political life. To make way for such a shift, it is important to

have a thorough understanding of precisely in what ways liberal

theory is inadequate, and of why it nonetheless has exercised

such a strong influence even to the present day.

In this paper I would like to examine one particularly

important and influential claim that underlies most liberal

political theories: that political life, and the moral values

that guide it and ground its legitimacy, finds their basis in an

actual or hypothetical social contract. Insofar as they posit

the mutual consent of free and equal individuals as the

foundation for legitimate authority and political obligation,

social contract theories presuppose an individualist view of

human nature.ii I have intentionally offered a highly

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generalized characterization of social contract theory because my

interest in this paper is not to consider any one particular

version of the theory, but to call into question one of its most

general presuppositions: that the entities which should form the

starting point of our inquiry into politics are pre-social or

asocial individuals.

What I would like to highlight in this paper are two

problems with that presupposition. The first problem is that to

become an individual capable of making a choice about the socio-

political order in which one wants to live in a way that would be

morally meaningful—to become a moral agent—is itself an

achievement that depends not only on the individual but on many

other factors including social context, upbringing and education.

In other words, caring and receiving care are essential

prerequisites for becoming a moral agent capable of entering into

a social contract. Some basic form of social organization—even

if only at the level of the family, tribe or village—is required

for these essential networks of giving and receiving to function

adequately. Therefore, positing the social contract as prior to

any organized society would imply that the individuals involved

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are not acting with full moral agency, and therefore are not

making a meaningful moral decision.

The second problem is that, as I will try to show, to be a

moral agent also implies having strong value commitments which

guide deliberation and decision-making, and which are shaped by

(although not determined by) one’s social context. These strong

value commitments are not just accessorial to human identity and

moral agency, but are partially constitutive of them, and thus

cannot be checked at the door for the purposes of engaging in

deliberation about principles of political justice. Thus, while

a Rawlsian theory avoids the first problem by thinking of the

social contract not as a historical event that occurs before the

advent of organized social and political life, but instead as a

hypothetical device of representation, it nonetheless still fails

because it does not recognize that rational deliberation cannot

be separated from one’s comprehensive conception of the good.

The force of this cannot is not merely moral or psychological,

but rather metaphysical. As I will explain more fully later in

my discussion of the prerequisites for moral agency, the defining

feature of human rationality (which distinguishes it from the

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mere means-end calculation that other mammals also engage in) is

the capacity to make decisions with a view to the good, as

distinct from the mere fulfillment of desire. Thus, the deepest

flaw of social contract theory lies in its emaciated conception

of human rationality. I believe that it is precisely this

inadequate understanding of rationality that constitutes the

ultimate cause of liberal individualism, and of the resulting

undervaluation of the importance of caring and receiving care for

a flourishing human life. This claim may sound strange or even

counterintuitive, particularly for many proponents of the so-

called ethics of care who assume that the problem is an

overemphasis on rationality to the exclusion of sentiment in

modern moral philosophy. Nonetheless, I would like to suggest

that the real issue is not rationality versus sentiment—recall

that Hume’s sentimentalism actually flows from his reduction of

rationality to the calculation of means to achieve the ends

dictated by desire—but rather an emaciated view of rationality

devoid of a capacity to know the good.

I will develop my argument in four parts. First, I will

first present Charles Taylor’s account of how social contract

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theories are rooted in an individualist view of moral agency. In

the subsequent two sections, I will explain the problems with

such a view by drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor’s

philosophical accounts of the prerequisites for moral agency.

Last, I will present Margaret Archer’s sociological research on

the ways in which human beings develop and exercise their powers

of reflexivity in order to become active agents in society,

showing how this empirical work supports the philosophical view

of agency offered by MacIntyre and Taylor.

II. The Individualist Roots of Social Contract Theory

In Sources of the Self, Charles Taylor presents modern social

contract theories as developing out of an individualist view of

moral agency. He argues that changes in conceptions of the self,

which are tantamount to changes in conceptions of what it means

to be a moral agent, are linked to new conceptions of society.

Taylor’s claim is that the notion of a “free, disengaged subject”

which originates in Descartes and is further developed by authors

such as Hobbes, Locke and Kant, corresponds to a “view of society

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as made up of and by the consent of free individuals.”iii Taylor

provides a detailed analysis of the defining characteristics of

the modern notion of the self, and how this view developed in the

history of philosophy. Here I will draw on Taylor’s account only

to emphasize a few of the characteristic features of the modern

self which are particularly relevant to understanding the view of

moral agency that underlies social contract theory.

First, modern views of agency, beginning with Descartes,

rely on a view of rationality which is procedural rather than

substantive. While for pre-modern thinkers rationality involved

contemplating the cosmos as the embodiment of a meaningful order

within which human beings must find their part, for moderns the

cosmos is “disenchanted.”iv Moral sources can therefore not be

based on a substantively correct view of reality, but on

following the proper rational procedures.v On this account,

outside sources, especially social customs and opinions, are more

likely to muddle rather than aid in one’s quest for moral truth.

Although the ancients also believed that it was necessary to

overcome the blindness of custom in order to reach the truth,

they thought that interaction with others, especially others with

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greater wisdom, was an important aid in this quest. For the

moderns, however, the process of searching for truth is radically

individual, calling into question all received knowledge and

constructing a new world-view based on the canons of rational

thought.vi There is thus a denial of the ways in which our

thinking is inevitably dialogical, language-based, and therefore

social.vii

Taylor argues that the political atomism characteristic of

modern contract theories flows naturally from this view of the

self as “disengaged” and independent, “in the sense that his or

her paradigm purposes are to be found within,” discovered through

an isolated process of rational scrutiny.viii While early

versions of contract theory can be found in pre-modern and early

modern thought—such as Stoic philosophy, medieval theories of

rights, and theories of consent developed around the conciliar

movement in the late Middle Ages—the seventeenth-century theories

of Grotius, Pufendorf, Hobbes and Locke are significantly

different. This difference lies in the fact that earlier

contract theories took for granted the existence of a community

with some authority structure and power of decision over its

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members.ix Only in the seventeenth century do theorists begin to

question how the community began in the first place, or where the

community got the power to decide the type of political authority

that should govern its members. To answer these problems, “the

new theories add to the traditional contract founding government

a second one, which precedes it: a contract of association. This

is a universal agreement which founds a political community and

confers on it the power to determine a form of government.”x

While some of these new contract theories are more

individualist than others—Hobbes’ state of nature clearly allows

for much less genuine social interchange than that of Locke—none

think that the natural state of human beings involves a community

that already has some decision-making authority over its members.

For the modern philosopher, the individual is sovereign both with

respect to the larger universe which is no longer a meaningful

order that can be the source of moral obligation, and also with

respect to political society. Being bound to any authority is

not natural; it is a condition that must be created, and the

contract theorists argued that consent is the best or only way to

offer a normative justification for this condition.xi

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It is thus that the free individual comes to be the starting

point for political philosophy. While much more could be said

about the philosophical underpinnings of social contract theory—

for example, its connection to a voluntarist notion of moral

obligation—for the purposes of this paper I have only offered

this brief analysis in order to clarify and support my claim that

modern social contract theories presuppose an individualist view

of human nature. I will now attempt to explain why I believe

that such a view cannot support an account of the consent of pre-

social individuals that is morally meaningful.

III. Moral Agency and Practical Rationality

Being a moral agent involves the capacity to make decisions

based on the outcome of practically rational deliberation. Yet

human beings do not enter the world immediately capable of

exercising their practical rationality. Nor does the passage of

time alone guarantee the successful development of this faculty.

Dramatic accounts of children raised by wolves, for example, have

shown that biological growth and development of the human

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organism may not necessarily be accompanied by the development of

an aptitude for language or for the use of other higher rational

faculties.xii Without exposure to human language and without

adequate human social interaction in infancy and early childhood,

human beings are not capable of exercising practical rationality

at a level sufficient for genuine moral agency.

Since the notions of practical rationality and moral agency

are essential for my argument, I want to begin by clarifying what

I mean by a level of practical rationality sufficient for moral

agency. Alasdair MacIntyre’s comparison between the ways in

which humans and other intelligent animals can be said to have

reasons for action can be helpful in this regard. In Dependent

Rational Animals, MacIntyre analyzes studies of dolphin behavior

(taking dolphins as representative of intelligent non-human

animals) to establish that dolphins do act for reasons, insofar

as they act to achieve goods that are constitutive of their

flourishing as dolphins. In doing so, dolphins exercise a form

of practical reason. However, dolphins’ use of practical reason

(at least as far as current studies have shown) is only

instrumental, because their actions do not involve a reflexive

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understanding of those goods as such. Rather, since dolphins’

desires instinctively point toward the goods that are

constitutive of dolphin flourishing, they exercise reason only in

determining the means to fulfill those desires. By contrast,

human beings not only have a wider range of goods than dolphins,

but they also have goods that differ in kind, because they go

beyond the fulfillment of desires. For this reason, only human

beings need to learn how to stand back from their desires in

order to evaluate them and choose among them, to decide whether

it is in fact good to act on a particular desire here and now,

and only human beings (as far as we know) have the capacity to do

so.xiii

However, while it is arguably true that all human beings

have this capacity at least in potency,xiv it is also true that

actualizing this potency requires education. Since learning to

be practically rational requires coming to understand and

appreciate the goods that are specific to human flourishing, both

moral and intellectual education are required. For other

animals, such as dolphins, this level of education is not

necessary. All that they need is what we could call technical

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training about the means to fulfill their desires, a training

achieved by watching and learning from the behavior of other

dolphins. Dolphins, like humans, therefore, need social

relationships with other dolphins in order to lead a flourishing

life, but human beings need relationships that also fill needs

specific to human flourishing. MacIntyre explains that “dolphins

can flourish without being able to argue with and learn from

others about dolphin flourishing. Humans at times cannot flourish

without arguing with others and learning from them about human

flourishing.”xv

Notice that speech is central to MacIntyre’s

characterization of the difference between human social

relationships and those of other animals. Before they have

acquired the capacity for language use, children act on their

desires as other animals do, and those desires constitute the

reasons for their actions. The acquisition of language is

therefore a necessary condition for developing specifically human

reasons for action. Yet language-learning alone is insufficient.

Properly moral education is also necessary, because to be capable

of stepping back from one’s desires, one must learn that even

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urgently felt want is not always in and of itself a sufficient

reason for action. And this lesson must be learned not only at

the intellectual level, but also at the level of desire. Habits

of self-discipline must be acquired if the child is to mature so

as to be “open to considerations regarding its good.”xvi In other

words, what the child needs is to grow in moral virtue.

If learning self-discipline implies learning that at times

one must deny or delay the gratification of a desire in the

interest of one’s overall good, and if it is practical reason

which determines what that good to be pursued is, and the means

by which to pursue it, how do young children who have not yet

developed their practical rationality grow in self-discipline?

The answer is that one must rely on the practical reason of

others—parents, teachers, and other caregivers—in order to begin

the process of acquiring moral virtue. While each person is the

ultimate authority for himself with regard to his desires, very

often another person—a physician, trainer, teacher or parent—may

know more about a person’s good than he himself does, especially

early in life.xvii For this reason, to be able to develop the

capacity for independent practical reasoning, it is necessary

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first to learn from others, and then to transition into making

“independent judgments about goods, judgments that we are able to

justify rationally to ourselves and to others as furnishing us

with good reasons for acting in this way rather than that.”xviii

This transition has three elements. The first, which has

already been mentioned, is learning to stand back from one’s

desires, “that movement from merely having reasons to being able

to evaluate our reasons as good or bad reasons and by so doing to

change our reasons for acting and in consequence our actions.”xix

This transition is not an individual affair, but necessarily

involves many others “whose presence or absence, intervention or

lack of intervention, are of crucial importance in determining

how far the transition is successfully completed.”xx Caregivers

provide the resources, both material and ethical, without which

this transformation would be impossible. Further, they also help

each person to deal with the specific difficulties or

shortcomings that impede the success of this transition either

totally or partially – serious physical disabilities and

psychological disorders, but also less dramatic physical,

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psychological and moral weaknesses from which everyone suffers,

has suffered or will suffer at some point in life.xxi

The second element of this transition is the capacity to

imagine possible futures. It is necessary to move from a

situation in which one’s relationships and place in society are

unchosen to a situation in which, as an active agent, one freely

chooses or accepts one’s position and relationships (within

limits), making a positive contribution to the building and

maintenance of one’s relationships in a way that infants and

small children do not. In other words, one must develop into a

person whose “social relationships are those of one independent

practical reasoner to other independent practical reasoners as

well as to those who in turn at some later stage become dependent

on her or him.”xxii Doing so requires an understanding of present

and future possibilities, an understanding that must also be to

some degree shared with the others with whom one relates.

Since alternative future possibilities are essentially

alternative sets of goods towards which we can direct our lives,

the third, closely related capacity necessary for becoming an

independent practical reasoner is “to learn to understand

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ourselves as directed to a range of goals that are more or less

remote from our present situation and to order our desires

accordingly.”xxiii In other words, we must learn to prioritize

among goods and to direct our desires and actions in a way that

is consistent with our priorities.

The capacity to imagine alternative realistic futures and to

order one’s desires so as to achieve those goals depends not only

on the individual, but to a large degree on the possibilities

presented to children by their caregivers and society as a whole.

For example, a disabled person may be raised to see a disability

as harshly restricting his future possibilities if not surrounded

by a supportive social group.xxiv In general, a person may come

to have the view that “our lives are determined by uncontrollable

circumstances” and therefore never come to realize how many

future alternatives exist, or may fall into the opposite defect

of not knowing how to distinguish between a realistic goal and

mere wishful thinking.xxv These failures in practical reasoning

may in large part derive from failures in education, or from

living in a social setting in which such attitudes are dominant.

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MacIntyre’s analysis has provided both a clearer definition

of what practical reasoning at the properly human level entails,

and also important insights into why and how caring social

relationships are essential to the development of practical

reasoning. I will now turn to the philosophy of Charles Taylor

for a complementary analysis of how conceptions of the good are

constitutive of moral agency, and of the central place of

language in our formation of those conceptions.

IV. Moral Agency and Language

In Sources of the Self, Taylor contends that human beings

inescapably, though not always consciously, live within a certain

horizon or framework of strong qualitative distinctions that give

meaning to life, based on a vision of the good that serves as the

standard for judgment. The argument he provides is largely

phenomenological, seeking to offer the best account of our

experience – that is, the account that best enables us to “make

sense of the actions and feelings of ourselves and others.”xxvi

Taylor observes that all human beings seek meaning or fulfillment

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in relation to some aspiration such as living in accordance with

honor, contributing to the well-being of one’s family,

professional excellence, religious salvation, intellectual or

artistic expression, rational self-mastery, et cetera. While

individuals may have diverse aspirations, Taylor claims that all

such goals are “forms of a craving which is ineradicable from

human life,” a craving “to be rightly placed in relation to the

good.”xxvii These aspirations define the “frameworks” or

“horizons” within which we live.

On Taylor’s account, “living within such strongly qualified

horizons is constitutive of human agency,” such that “stepping

outside these limits would be stepping outside what we would

recognize as integral, that is, undamaged human personhood.”xxviii

For this reason, we cannot articulate or even think of our

identity as persons in the detached, neutral, objective way that

we think of objects of study in the natural sciences, because

“what I am as a self, my identity, is essentially defined by the

way things have significance for me.”xxix When Taylor speaks of

“the self” or of our identity as persons, he is not referring to

the bodily sense of self that animals also have, or of the self

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defined by the capacity to direct one’s action strategically with

respect to, for example, the maximum fulfillment of desire, but

rather of the self as moral agent.xxx In claiming, therefore,

that the self is only a self within certain moral frameworks, he

is implying that we necessarily understand ourselves and others

as moral agents, and that agency requires orienting oneself to

the good and determining one’s place in relation to it.xxxi

This orientation to the good that is constitutive of human

agency requires, as we saw in MacIntyre’s account, some level of

reflexive awareness on the part of the agent, even if this

awareness is not fully articulate. To explain this point, Taylor

asks us to imagine an animal whose behavior was “systematically

beneficent” such that “what he did always redounded to the good

of man and beast.”xxxii From a third-person perspective, one could

describe this animal’s action as following a predictable moral

standard of behavior. Nonetheless, “we still would not think of

him as a moral agent, unless there were some recognition on his

part that in acting this way he was following a higher

standard.”xxxiii Having this reflexive awareness requires the use

of language, because language is needed to mark the distinction

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between “things one just wants to do, and things that are worthy

to be done.”xxxiv Further, it is not only the case that language

makes it possible to have the reflexive awareness of moral

standards as making claims on one’s action that are distinct from

one’s desires, but also that the language which enables us to

make these distinctions cannot be entirely neutral with respect

to the content of these standards.xxxv

Like MacIntyre, therefore, Taylor argues that it is

crucially through language-acquisition that we begin to enter a

moral framework of strong evaluations about the good, and that

this process is necessarily social. Taylor points out that we

are “inducted into personhood” through language-learning, because

“we first learn our languages of moral and spiritual discernment

by being brought into an ongoing conversation by those who bring

us up.”xxxvi Although the need for others in order to learn moral

language is particularly strong for a child, it does not

disappear in adulthood, as being able to talk with others is

necessary at times to clarify one’s feelings, judgments, and

self-understanding. For this reason, “the full definition of

someone’s identity … usually involves not only his stand on moral

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and spiritual matters but also some reference to a defining

community.”xxxvii As one matures, this community, or “web of

interlocution,” need not be limited geographically or

historically, because it can also include interlocutors from

other times and places.

Taylor insists that confronting one’s own language with that

of others is not only a helpful means of clarifying one’s

thoughts or avoiding error, but is rather a “transcendental”

condition of our capacity for language and therefore of our

capacity for thought.xxxviii We must originally acquire language

from face-to-face interaction with other human beings, and

initially we must accept the meanings presented to us from those

who teach us. Only later is it possible to contest the meanings

originally learned, and even then this contestation cannot be

global, because if we cannot relate our thoughts to others at all

through a common set of meanings, we will lose “the very

confidence that we know what we mean,” and be incomprehensible

even to ourselves.xxxix Even those such as Socrates who were

famous for criticizing the accepted moral notions of their

culture still relied on dialogue with like-minded others—such as

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close friends, other members of a philosophical school—for their

self-understanding. While it is possible for human beings to

“step beyond the limits of thought and vision of their

contemporaries…., the drive to original vision will be hampered,

will ultimately be lost in inner confusion, unless it can be

placed in some way in relation to the language and vision of

others.”xl

Since our thinking depends on our language, to the extent

that our language is limited by what we have heard from others,

our moral concepts will also be limited to some extent by our

webs of interlocution. For this reason, Taylor asserts that

claims of good and right ultimately only make sense against the

social background in which we find ourselves.xli Understanding

the evaluative meaning of value terms requires both understanding

the needs and purposes of the society in which the term is used,

and also understanding the perceptions of the good on which the

term is based.xlii Although some socially-defined obligations,

such as prohibitions on killing the innocent or stealing, can be

understood with reference to the universal and minimal

requirements of social functioning, and others, such as aesthetic

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sensibility, rely on a vision of the good in a way that has

little or no direct relation to societal needs, most moral terms

can only be understood with reference to both social background

and underlying notions of the good.xliii Taylor explains, for

example, that only in a society where social norms reflect

commitments to certain goods, such as gender equality, does it

make sense that the precise division of domestic chores between

husband and wife would be considered a moral issue.xliv

The Social Origins of the Asocial Conception of the Self

This view of the self as embedded within webs of

interlocution that have a decisive influence on one’s defining

orientation to the good contrasts sharply with the “neutral” view

of personal identity typical of modern thought. Locke, for

example, reduces identity to self-consciousness, a

characterization which fails to appreciate the way in which we

understand ourselves in relation to the things that matter to us

beyond the mere experiences of pain and pleasure. Taylor

describes this notion of the self as “neutral” or “punctual”

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because it is “defined in abstraction from any constitutive

concerns.”xlv This neutral conception of identity, which has been

highly influential in the history of philosophy and which

contemporary thinkers such as Derek Parfit still draw upon, is

fundamentally problematic, as Parfit’s theory arguably makes

patent. As Taylor explains, “if we think of the self as neutral,

then it does perhaps make sense to hold that it is an ultimately

arbitrary question how we count selves,” just as whether we

describe a car as a single thing or as a collection of discrete

parts will depend on our perspective.xlvi However, if we consider

the self as defined by some orientation to the good, it follows

that this conception encompasses life as a whole, understood as a

narrative of moving toward (or away from) that good.xlvii Of

course our conceptions of the good may change over the course of

a lifetime, but with those changes we also modify our narrative

so as to conceive of our lives as a meaningful unity—for example,

coming to see our past actions as something for which we should

repent and make amends, or as learning experiences that have

enabled us to appreciate what is really worthwhile or to grow in

self-knowledge.

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Since self-consciousness at the level of sense perception

does not depend on interaction with others, this view of selfhood

goes hand in hand with individualism. As Taylor argues, “the

very idea of an individual who might become aware of himself, and

then only subsequently, or at least independently, determine what

importance others have for him and what he will accept as good,

belongs to post-Cartesian, foundationalist fantasy.”xlviii

Further, early modern nominalist theories of language, such as

those of Hobbes and Locke, made it possible to deny social

relationships as essential to the development of personal

identity and agency, because they considered private language a

real conceptual possibility.xlix Together with a view of the good

as determined by will or desire—recall MacIntyre’s point that

each person is the final authority with regard to his desires,

but not necessarily with regard to his good—we here have the

building blocks of an individualist view of agency that underlies

the contract model of society.l

Taylor’s point is not simply that contract theories rely on

an individualist conception of the self, but that this conception

itself is shaped by changes in social practices and the

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development of new kinds of “social imaginary,” unarticulated

understandings of self and society that exist on the level of

images.li Some important changes include the development of

modern natural science and the new technologies and ways of

thinking to which it gave rise, the transition from an

agricultural to an industrial economy, urbanization, the

appearance of new forms of public space, etc.lii Just as children

first observe patterns in the world around them and then learn to

articulate them and explain the reasons for them, in society as a

whole change usually comes first at the level of embodied

practice and social imaginary, and only later is there an attempt

at articulation and reflection on those practices.liii Therefore,

although “the human of the ‘state of nature’ was, indeed, an

important constituent of the early modern imaginary, … we mustn’t

make the mistake of understanding the people who imagined it in

this light.”liv Rather, Taylor contends that “modern

‘individualism’ is coterminous with, indeed, is defined by a new

understanding of our placement among others, one that gives an

important place to common action in profane time, and hence to

the idea of consensually founded unions, which receives

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influential formulation in the myth of an original state of

nature and a social contract.”lv In other words, modern

individualism itself has a basis in social practices. The denial

of that social basis is simply a myth that is itself part of the

modern social imaginary.

Perhaps it has been unfair for me, then, to criticize social

contract theory by arguing that the parties to the contract,

insofar as they exist in a pre-social state, cannot have

sufficient agential capacities to make a morally meaningful

decision. For what now becomes clear is that the real

disagreement lies in the conception of agency—and thus of

practical rationality—itself. I have criticized the modern

conception of agency or selfhood from several angles. Drawing on

the work of MacIntyre and Taylor, I have argued that some sort of

organized society (even if it is only a family or group of

families) is a prerequisite for the development of moral agency.

This is because only within such a community can children develop

moral virtue, learn the language of morality and acquire at least

the building blocks for forming a vision of the good that goes

beyond the mere fulfillment of desire. And, as I have also

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argued, the capacity to step back from desire and act based on

considerations of the good is constitutive of moral agency. From

a different angle, I have used Taylor’s analysis to show that

even the neutral, atomistic self-understanding typical of modern

theories arises as a result of certain features of the modern

social context, and that it is therefore not really neutral or

atomistic at all. If all of this is true – that is, as Taylor

would put it, if this account provides a better explanation of

our judgments, intuitions and experience—then social contract

theory does fall short precisely because it rests on an

inadequate conception of the self and of human rationality. To

provide empirical support for the claim that the view of agency

offered by Taylor and MacIntyre is indeed superior to that which

lies at the roots of modern social contract theory, I will now

turn to a descriptive sociological account.

V. A Sociological Account of Agency

Margaret Archer’s recent work on the relationship between

personal identity and social structures offers a compelling

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sociological counterpart to the philosophical analyses of Taylor

and MacIntyre, thus lending credibility to the claim that their

socially-embedded and normatively substantive account of agency

is superior to the individualist, neutral account that serves as

the basis for social contract theory. Since Archer’s theoretical

aims are different from those of Taylor and MacIntyre, she does

not speak about the requirements for the development of moral

agency or of independent practical reasoning capacities.

Nonetheless, her explanation of how individuals come to acquire

what she calls a strict personal identity can be understood as an

account of how individuals become moral agents. Archer contends

that personal identity is formed in relation to what she calls

the natural, practical and social orders. Each order has its

corresponding concerns – physical well-being in the natural

order, performative achievement in the practical order, and self-

worth in the social order.lvi Personal identity is forged

precisely by establishing a harmony among them, ordering them in

relation to one’s “ultimate concerns” established through a

reflective process of discernment, deliberation and decision-

making that Archer calls the “internal conversation.”lvii The

30

internal conversation is what enables individuals to mediate the

structural and cultural forces that act upon them in order to

direct their lives and shape their identities as active agents.

Personal identity and agency are therefore inseparable in

Archer’s theory.

Although expressed with different terminology, Archer’s

delineation of how personal identity is formed through the

integration of emotion and reason coincides remarkably with

MacIntyre’s ethical theory, in which human beings develop the

capacity for independent practical reasoning in part by building

good habits or virtues which enable the person to be open to

considerations about the good, and which over time mold one’s

desires to respond in accordance with the goods one has

rationally chosen to pursue. Archer’s account also parallels

Taylor’s view especially in her claim that establishing a

harmony among first-order desires, which is a prerequisite for

the development of strict personal identity, requires a

commitment to “ultimate concerns” in accordance with which one

prioritizes certain desires over others. Here, however, I will

not dwell on Archer’s theoretical account of the development of

31

agency, simply because it matches MacIntyre’s and Taylor’s views

so closely (although her views are in no way based on theirs)

that it will not add anything significantly new to what has

already been discussed. I have only mentioned them here in

synthesis because they constitute the theoretical backdrop for

Archer’s empirical findings regarding how individuals actually

go about the deliberations that lead to decision-making and to

the effective exercise of agency.

Archer’s analysis, based on extensive interviews and

questionnaires, shows that the way people conduct their internal

conversations can be divided into significantly distinct

patterns, which she calls communicative reflexivity, autonomous

reflexivity and meta-reflexivity.lviii What is particularly

interesting is that these patterns are based on the nature of

individuals’ ultimate concerns, are shaped by the individuals’

social contexts, and result in different ways of relating to

social structures. Also crucial is the general observation that

the successful exercise of reflexivity cannot be taken for

granted, as about one-fourth of the individuals interviewed were

described by Archer as fractured reflexives because their inner

32

conversations failed to establish clear priorities in accordance

with which they could harmonize their first-order concerns and

direct themselves actively toward their goals. What these

empirical observations seem to indicate is that commitment to

some good or set of goods is indeed necessary for the exercise

of moral agency, that the nature of the goods to which one is

most committed is related to the way in which one exercises

one’s reflexivity and to the nature of one’s social

relationships, and that adequate relationships with parents and

other caregivers in infancy and early childhood are a

prerequisite for the development of agency. I will highlight

these connections as I describe the characteristics of each

pattern of reflexivity based on Archer’s analysis.

The first group, which Archer calls “communicative

reflexives,” consider relationships, particularly with family

and close friends, to be their most important concern, and make

decisions in accordance with this priority.lix Their exercise of

reflexivity is characterized by the fact that they mistrust

their own internal conversations and constantly seek advice and

confirmation from trusted friends and family members. Their

33

internal conversations are almost entirely externalized in

dialogue with others, and require completion and confirmation by

others before resulting in courses of action.lx Those who fall

into this category tend to remain in the social context into

which they are born, both in terms of geographical location,

social class, and value commitments. As Taylor would

characterize it, they remain firmly embedded in their original

‘web of interlocution.’

It is important to note, however, that this lack of social

mobility is not the result of passivity, but rather is actively

sought out, as opportunities for upward mobility are

intentionally avoided precisely because the cost of such

mobility—leaving behind one’s inherited social context—is judged

to be too high.lxi One sign that this social immobility or

downward mobility is based on the free choice of an active agent

and not simply on unfortunate circumstances or social pressure

is that the interviewees who made objective sacrifices in terms

of career possibilities for the sake of their families showed no

signs of bitterness, but “usually regard these past decisions as

integral to their present contentment.”lxii

34

For those who follow this pattern of reflexivity, the

successful development and exercise of moral agency requires

“the constancy of an objective contextual reference point and

the continuous supply of tried and trusted interlocutors.”lxiii

The presence of caring relationships—of others upon whom they

can rely for a sympathetic ear and with whom they feel

comfortable externalizing their internal conversations—is

therefore crucial for the overall well-being of communicative

reflexives. It is so crucial, in fact, that they actively avoid

opportunities for social or professional advancement that might

endanger or disrupt these relationships.

The opposite seems to be the case for the autonomous

reflexives, who mistrust and avoid the “intrusions” of others

into their internal conversation. Their deliberations tend to

be self-contained, leading directly to action with little or no

input from others.lxiv They are therefore much less influenced by

the values of their family and community, and tend to question

dominant normative conventions. This independent mode of

deliberation is in part made possible by autonomous reflexives’

prioritization of performative achievement as their ultimate

35

concern. Since practical activities involve standards of

excellence based on subject-object relations, those standards

are relatively independent of the social order even though the

activities take place in a social context.lxv For example,

although golf can only be understood within a social context

which defines its rules, provides venues for playing, etc.,

excellence as a golfer is ultimately dependent on objective

properties of the ball, the clubs, one’s muscles, the weather,

the conditions of the golf course and the laws of physics.lxvi

Since success in practical activities is determined more by

objective properties than by subjective values, it therefore

makes sense that someone who prioritizes practical achievement

will be able to deliberate in a relatively isolated manner.

The most important social condition for the development of

autonomous reflexivity is discontinuity with one’s original

social context which deprives the subject of those similar

enough to act as trusted interlocutors. This discontinuity is

in part imposed by circumstances beyond the subject’s control,

and in part promoted actively. Among the interviewees, there

are two underlying scenarios common to those who fall into this

36

category. In the first scenario, subjects developed an

autonomous internal conversation by successfully confronting

experiences and situations for which their natal context

provided no guidelines. This success generated an attitude of

confidence and self-reliance, thus encouraging the subjects to

continue seeking new experiences that further distanced them

from their original social milieu. In the second scenario,

dysfunctionalities within the natal context, such as the death

of a parent, a serious illness or harsh sibling rivalry forced

the subjects to rely on their own resources, and to seek a non-

relational basis for their sense of self through practical

achievement.lxvii However, the relationship between having these

experiences of discontinuity and developing an autonomous mode

of reflexivity is not deterministic. Interviewees who

experienced similar discontinuities can also be found in the

meta-reflexive category, and in other cases being forced to rely

on one’s own resources because of a lack of trusted

interlocutors led to fractured reflexivity.

Among the three groups, the autonomous reflexives seem to

best fit the modern individualist picture of agency reflected in

37

social contract theory, both because they carry out their

deliberations in relative isolation, and because they seem to

direct themselves in accordance with individual rational self-

interest in the way that contract models predict. Their

involvements with the community “are motivated by their personal

concerns rather than by any sense of obligation, and they

perceive of society “as constituted by fellow atomistic

individuals.”lxviii Nonetheless, the existence of this mode of

reflexivity does not contradict either MacIntyre’s or Taylor’s

portrayals of the development of agency as requiring adequate

social relationships. Once a child has developed language

abilities and learned at least minimally to step back from

desires and act based on the conclusions of practical reasoning

about the good, the role of social relationships is less

crucial, though never entirely unimportant even for autonomous

reflexives. While the development of autonomous reflexivity is

fostered by contextual discontinuities in early childhood—such

as frequent changes in geographical location, parental

separation or the death of a parent—or by being given a lot of

freedom and independence by parents, the stories of those who

38

successfully exercise autonomous reflexivity (as opposed to

those whose capacity for moral agency is lacking or

significantly underdeveloped) indicate that they had healthy

caring relationships with parents and/or other family members,

friends or caregivers during their childhood.

Indeed, it is reasonable to conjecture that the self-

confidence which enabled autonomous reflexives to become self-

reliant decision-makers in response to stressful circumstances,

rather than ending up as fractured reflexives, was made possible

by the sense of security that children derive from stable caring

relationships in early childhood. This conjecture is borne out

by the fact that those who lacked such healthy caring

relationships as children tended to develop into fractured

reflexives, and that those who, later in life, were able to

successfully develop their moral agency along the autonomous

reflexive pattern after many years as fractured reflexives were

only able to do so after finding a supportive spouse and/or a

healthy network of friends.lxix MacIntyre, drawing on the

psychological studies of D.W. Winnicott, notes that children’s

unqualified trust in parents and/or other caregivers—trust which

39

is fostered by the consistent attentiveness and affection of

those caregivers—is a prerequisite for the acquisition of “a

sense of self sufficient for an increasing degree of

independence in practical reasoning.”lxx In other words, the

successful development of autonomous reflexivity itself requires

healthy caring relationships especially in early childhood.

The third group which Archer discusses are the meta-

reflexives. They are distinguished by their strong commitment

to an ideal – they value values more than family or professional

success – and by their constant self-monitoring regarding the

coherence of their lives with that ideal. Like autonomous

reflexives, they conduct their internal conversations largely in

isolation, and are therefore relatively insulated from

conventional normativity, although the values that they endorse

are themselves made available to them from within the larger

culture.lxxi Their values may originate from their family, but

can often come from encounters outside the family or be formed

as a reaction to difficulties or challenges experienced within

their original social context, similar to the types of

discontinuities experienced by autonomous reflexives. Even when

40

the family is the original source of the values which constitute

meta-reflexives’ ultimate concerns, there is always a clear

individual commitment to take those values much more seriously

than their parents did, and their commitment to those values

becomes more important to them than the family relationships

themselves.lxxii

With regard to the influence of caring relationships on

their development and in their current exercise of agency, meta-

reflexives are similar to autonomous reflexives in their

experience of contextual discontinuity, but they differ in that

they do actively seek the support of “at least a small group of

colleagues or friends who are on the same ‘wavelength’.”lxxiii

This pattern of reflexivity therefore helps to underscore

Taylor’s point, mentioned earlier, that although—as is the case

of the meta-reflexives, who are idealistic and critical

conventional norms—it is possible for human beings to “step

beyond the limits of thought and vision of their

contemporaries…., the drive to original vision will be hampered,

will ultimately be lost in inner confusion, unless it can be

placed in some way in relation to the language and vision of

41

others.”lxxiv Further, it is arguable that meta-reflexives are

moral agents or independent practical reasoners in the fullest

sense, insofar as the goods or strong value commitments which

guide their individual choices and the overall direction of their

lives are not simply drawn from an uncritical acceptance of

broader social norms—be they the norms of one’s family or local

community, or the norms that govern professional success in the

broader economy—but have been adopted after much scrutiny and

critical reflection. Their reliance on a community of like-

minded friends is therefore particularly important in showing

that caring relationships are important for the full exercise of

moral agency not only insofar as a prerequisite for the initial

development of moral agency in childhood, but also to sustain

full moral agency in adulthood.

Particularly illuminating with regard to the ways in

which caring relationships are essential for moral agency is

Archer’s discussion of ‘fractured reflexivity,’ often caused by

a lack of or serious deficiency in caring relationships,

especially in childhood. Archer qualified as ‘fractured

reflexives’ those whose internal conversations failed to mediate

42

efficaciously between social structure and personal agency,

because they lacked clear priorities with which to harmonize

their concerns and take control of their actions and of the

situations in which they found themselves. The result was

passivity in the face of social and cultural circumstances.lxxv

The most extreme case is that of Jason, who exhibits only

minimal reflexivity. A seventeen-year-old with a rough family

background who took to the streets at the age of thirteen and at

various points in time was kicked out of the house by both his

father and his mother (his parents are divorced), Jason focused

much of his internal conversation on discerning the

trustworthiness of others. When asked about instances in which

he engages in internal conversation, Jason gave the following

example: “‘Well, like people talking to me and I just think more

about what they’re saying and just try to see if they’re lying

or telling the truth, I suppose. Because I’ve got a problem

with trust. That’s about the only thing I ever think about –

whether I can trust them or not’.”lxxvi As a result, Jason (along

with the other fractured reflexives, although his case was the

most extreme) lacked a capacity for active agency, and tended to

43

be thrown about passively by circumstances. Jason clearly lacks

the sense of security about himself and his goals, derived from

trusting relationships, that constitutes a prerequisite for

developing full moral agency.

Jason seems to be an excellent example of a Hobbesian

individual in the state of nature whose relationships with other

human beings are marked by fear, and who is capable of

deliberation regarding the relationship of means to ends – with

the ends being largely reduced to what is necessary for self-

preservation – but not of deliberation about the ends

themselves, because the ends are simply the objects of desire.

One of the only two mental activities that Jason reports

engaging in is ‘planning’ in a restrictive sense, trying to

match his objective skills with job requirements.lxxvii As Archer

comments, rather than “deliberating upon himself as subject to

object, Jason treats himself as an object with occurrent

desires, the source of intuitions which require no inspection or

evaluation, and therefore no internal conversation.”lxxviii Jason

does not engage in mental activities such as ‘deciding’ or

44

‘prioritizing,’ activities which seem necessary for the exercise

of practical reason that is constitutive of full moral agency.

With this argument I do not mean to imply that people like

Jason will never be capable of exercising genuine moral agency.

Fractured reflexives can gain (or regain) their ability to

direct their lives actively toward their goals, often as a

result developing a healthy caring relationship with someone

else.lxxix Unlike the cases of feral children which I mentioned

earlier, Jason was raised in a human family and exposed to human

language, including at least some basic moral concepts.

Nonetheless, his case does seem to support MacIntyre’s and

Taylor’s arguments that the social influence on identity is so

important that without an adequate social environment one may

not develop—or develop only in a minimal way—the distinctly

human capacity for rational reflection and deliberation. In a

personal conversation, Archer commented to me that her

interviews with Jason led her to doubt whether he even really

acted as a subject, rather than merely as an object capable of

interacting in practical ways with other objects in order to

carry out his work and perform other necessary tasks. If this

45

observation is accurate, it would imply that in extreme cases,

the lack of adequate care in infancy and childhood could result

in the ability to achieve only a minimal sense of self that

remains at the level of object-object relations.

Archer’s analysis seems to confirm MacIntyre’s and Taylor’s

views of moral agency. Her account of all three successful

types of reflexivity, and especially her description of

fractured reflexivity, indicate that caring relationships are

prerequisites for the exercise of moral agency in several ways.

In all cases, individuals’ ultimate concerns and moral values

did have a clear connection to their webs of interlocution, both

inherited and chosen. Communicative reflexives espoused the

values of their interlocutors within their natal social context,

autonomous reflexives took as their own the values of skill,

efficiency, rational planning, independence and performative

excellence that underlie modern economic structures, and meta-

reflexives committed themselves to values that were available in

the overall cultural system, values that usually implied a

critique of prevailing norms, and surrounded themselves with a

close group of friends who shared the same values. These

46

observations support Taylor’s claim about the importance of the

moral languages to which one has been exposed for the formation

of one’s own views about the good, be they implicit or explicit.

Further, Archer’s overall picture of how individuals define

themselves in relation to their ultimate concerns perfectly

corroborates Taylor’s claim that human beings live within

frameworks or horizons constituted by goals and aspirations.

Just as Taylor claims, those who seem to live outside the

horizon of such strong qualitative distinctions, whose lives do

not seem to make sense with reference to any clear goal, appear

to lack something we judge integral to “undamaged human

personhood.”lxxx This is the case for the fractured reflexives.

What they lack is precisely full moral agency, and in the most

extreme cases the cause of this lack can be traced to highly

insufficient care and education in their childhood—to extremely

defective webs of interlocution. In MacIntyre’s terms, one

might say that the type of care received by extremely fractured

reflexives like Jason would have been sufficient for a nonhuman

animal like a dolphin—Jason did obtain at least the minimal care

necessary for physical survival, as well as some technical

47

training—but not the specifically human care that involves

education in moral virtue and dialogue with trusted family

members, friends, teachers, et cetera about the meaning of human

flourishing.

Archer’s analysis of the three patterns of human

reflexivity is problematic for social contract theory not only

insofar as it confirms that the development of any individual

into a moral agent is in part a social achievement, but also

because it implies that the content of one’s ultimate concerns

is influenced by the type of social experiences which one has

had, and influences in turn the way in which one exercises one’s

practical rationality. As mentioned earlier in the discussion

of MacIntyre’s account of agency, the capacity to imagine

possible futures—among which one could include possible socio-

political orders within which one would like to live—is shaped

and limited by what one has seen and heard from others, either

directly or vicariously. To divest oneself completely of the

notions of the good obtained from society is not even

hypothetically possible, because to do so would be to divest

oneself of something that is constitutive of moral agency. It is

48

therefore impossible to conceive of “rational individuals” or

“rational self-interest” in a universal, abstract, asocial and

normatively neutral way that is divorced from a particular

conception of the good. Yet this is precisely what social

contract theory attempts to do. Indeed, as Taylor’s analysis

has indicated, social contract theorists’ view of agency and the

types of socio-political order that social contract theories

have attempted to justify seem at least in part to be

explainable by the theorist’s own experience of social life, as

well as by the philosophical currents that were most influential

at the time.

VI. Conclusion

To finish, I would briefly like to explain the distinction

between my argument and the so-called communitarian critique of

liberalism. If a communitarian is anyone who objects to the

liberal conception of the person, and particularly its asocial

individualism, then of course my critique falls into this

camp.lxxxi However, if the ‘communitarian’ position is defined by

49

its opposition to liberals regarding “the importance of the

individual’s right to choose her own way of life and to express

herself freely, even where this conflicts with the values and

commitments of the community,”lxxxii or if it is viewed as a

specific political platform,lxxxiii then I do not consider myself a

communitarian. MacIntyre and Taylor themselves both resist the

communitarian label, although few who write about them seem to

respect this resistance. A recognition of the social

requirements for moral agency and therefore of the crucial

importance of community for human flourishing is not

incompatible with a respect for reasonable pluralism and

individual freedom.

Indeed, as MacIntyre, Taylor and others (including liberals

such as Brian Barry) have argued, liberalism itself fails to

offer a sufficient foundation for the value of freedom or a

clear account of its limits.lxxxiv Further, the above analysis

shows that freedom understood not just as the absence of

external constraints but as the positive capacity to direct

oneself toward the good as one understands it—that is, freedom

understood as inextricably tied to moral agency—actually

50

requires and relies upon caring relationships. To claim that

human beings are social and political by nature (in the

Aristotelian sense of the phrase), and that giving and receiving

care are central to a flourishing human life in all its aspects

and stages, does not imply that individuals should uncritically

or unreflectively adopt the values and practices of the

communities in which they are raised, as shown by the case of

the meta-reflexives. Nor does it imply that individual rights

should be subordinated to the good of the community, or that the

modern state should aspire to be a close-knit moral community

with shared values and a strong sense of common purpose. In

fact, both Taylor and MacIntyre provide arguments to the

contrary.lxxxv Moreover, by highlighting the importance of caring

relationships for full human flourishing at all stages of life,

and recognizing that the state as such cannot provide the sort

of community that human beings need, Taylor and MacIntyre show

why it is important for the state to protect, support and

respect the relative autonomy of the family, the church and the

great variety of voluntary associations.

51

Perhaps Taylor’s and MacIntyre’s accounts can actually

offer a stronger theoretical basis for the defense of individual

freedom and rights than social contract theories can, precisely

because their “thick” view of human rationality enables them to

conceive of rights (and their corresponding obligations) as pre-

consensual. Although I cannot offer a defense of this claim

here, I only mention it in order to emphasize that my critique

of social contract theory in no way implies a failure to

appreciate liberal political institutions such as limited

government, separation of powers, representation, rule of law,

and the separation of church and state. On the contrary, it is

precisely because I value the freedom and rights that have often

been associated with the social contract tradition and with

liberalism more broadly that I believe it is important to

establish them on firmer theoretical foundations—in particular,

on a conception of the human person whose freedom as a moral

agent is substantive enough to be worthy of the name—and to

recognize that such freedom can only develop and be sustained

within the context of caring communities.

52

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Cambridge University Press, 2000).

-------Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2003).

-------Making Our Way through the World (Cambridge: Cambridge

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University Press, 2013).

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Bowlby, John, A Secure Base (London: Routledge, 1988).

Held, Virginia, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political and Global (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2006).

MacIntyre, Alasdair, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the

Virtues (London: Duckworth, 1999).

-------“Social Structures and their Threats to Moral Agency,”

Ethics and Politics: Selected Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2006

53

Meyers, Diana, “Frontiers of Individuality: Embodiment and

Relationships in Cultural Context,” History and Theory 42 (May

2003): 274-278.

Mulhall, Stephen and Adam Swift, Liberals and Communitarians

(Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992).

Taylor, Charles, Human Agency and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1985).

-------Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

1989).

-------“Two Theories of Modernity,” The Hastings Center Report 25, 2

(Mar.-Apr. 1995).

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trans. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1946).

54

i See, for example, Virginia Held, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political and

Global (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

ii Admittedly, there are important variations in social contract

theories. Early modern versions such as those presented by

Pufendorf, Hobbes and Locke differ significantly from one another, as

well as from contemporary formulations such as that of Rawls and

Scanlon. Each theory offers a different account of the contract’s

actual or hypothetical genesis, and of the type of society that all

individuals would or should agree to establish. Notwithstanding the

sometimes dramatic differences among them, however, modern social

contract theories share one crucial feature: they attempt to provide

some normative justification for the exercise of political power

based on a view of the type of socio-political order free and equal

rational individuals would agree to if they were indeed to act in

their rational self-interest, broadly understood.

iii Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 1989), 106.

iv Weber, Max, “Science as Vocation,” in From Max Weber, ed. and trans.

H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press,

1946).

v Sources of the Self, 156.

vi Ibid., 168.

vii I will further explain the connection between moral agency,

language, and social interaction in Section IV.

viii Ibid., 192-193.

ix Ibid., 193.

x Ibid. See Samuel Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and Citizen, Book II,

Chapter 6, Sections 7-8; Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace,

Preliminary Discourse, Section XVI; John Locke, The Second Treatise of

Government, Chapter 8, Sections 95-99.

xi Taylor points out that the alternative justification of authority

in the seventeenth century, the doctrine of the divine right of

kings, is likewise a “quintessentially modern doctrine,” because “it

took for granted that there were no natural relations of authority

among men, and it then argued that only a special grant of divine

power to kings could avoid the chaos of anarchy” (Sources of the Self,

195).

xii Examples of such extreme situations could include that of the Wild

Boy of Aveyron and of children brought up in Romanian orphanages

during the Ceausescu regime, who exhibited a range of emotional,

cognitive, and motor impairment as a result of the atrocious

conditions in which they were raised. In the case of the Romanian

orphans, some improved after being incorporated into a loving family,

but the difficulties were less remediable for those who had spent

more time in the orphanage. The Wild Boy of Aveyron – who was almost

murdered and then abandoned at the age of six and survived on his own

for three to five years in the forest before reentering society –

never learned how to speak, read or write. (Diana Meyers, “Frontiers

of Individuality: Embodiment and Relationships in Cultural Context,”

History and Theory 42 (May 2003): 274-278.)

xiii Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the

Virtues (London: Duckworth, 1999), 24-27, 50-56.

xiv This is admittedly a matter of significant philosophical

controversy. For a defense of this position, see, for example:

Patrick Lee and Robert P. George, “The Nature and Basis of Human

Dignity,” Ratio Juris 21(2) (2008): 179–93; Robert P. George and

Christopher Tollefsen, Embryo (Princeton: Witherspoon Institute,

2011), especially Chapter 3. For a critique, see Rob Lovering, “The

Substance View: A Critique,” Bioethics 27(5) 2013: 263–270.

xvIbid., 67-68.

xvi Ibid.,70.

xvii Ibid., 71.

xviii Ibid.

xix Ibid., 71-72.

xx Ibid., 73.

xxi Ibid.

xxii Ibid.,74.

xxiii Ibid.

xxiv Ibid., 75.

xxv Ibid.,76.

xxvi Sources of the Self, 57.

xxvii Ibid., 44.

xxviii Ibid., 27.

xxix Ibid., 34.

xxx Ibid., 32-33.

xxxi Ibid., 52.

xxxii Charles Taylor, Human Agency and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1985), 102.

xxxiii Ibid.

xxxiv Ibid., 103.

xxxv Ibid.

xxxvi Sources of the Self, 35.

xxxvii Ibid.,36.

xxxviii Ibid.,39.

xxxix Ibid., 38.

xl Ibid., 38.

xli Ibid., 56.

xlii Ibid., 54.

xliii Ibid., 55.

xliv Ibid., 56. Taylor emphasizes that to say that our commitments to

certain goods can only make sense in light of certain social contexts

does not imply cultural relativism. It simply means that moral

arguments cannot be conducted in the same way as arguments in

mathematics or physics. Rather, debate about morality has to begin

from some shared moral intuition, and proceed to show that one’s own

account can better explain one’s own and others’ moral intuitions and

experiences better than the rival account. Practical reasoning thus

differs from theoretical reasoning in that “it aims to establish, not

that some position is correct absolutely, but rather that some

position is superior to some other” (72).

xlv Ibid., 49.

xlvi Ibid., 50.

xlvii Ibid., 51.

xlviii Charles Taylor, “Two Theories of Modernity,” The Hastings Center Report

25, 2 (Mar.-Apr. 1995), 32.

xlix Sources of the Self, cit., p. 38.

l Ibid., 105. For example, Taylor points out that “Hobbes’s political

atomism is plainly linked with his nominalism and with his view that

the good is determined for each person by what he desires” (82).

li “Two Theories of Modernity,” 29.

lii While he offers few specific examples in this article, in Sources of

the Self Taylor makes a similar point that may help us to see what

types of social changes he has in mind. He writes: “The modern

identity arose because changes in the self-understandings connected

with a wide range of practices – religious, political, economic,

familial, intellectual, artistic – converged and reinforced each

other to produce it: the practices, for instance, or religious prayer

and ritual, of spiritual discipline as a member of a Christian

congregation, of self-scrutiny as one of the regenerate, of the

politics of consent, of the family life of the companionate marriage,

of the new child-rearing which develops from the eighteenth century,

of artistic creation under the demands of originality, of the

demarcation and defense of privacy, of markets and contracts, of

voluntary associations, of the cultivation and display of sentiment,

of the pursuit of scientific knowledge” (206).

liiiIbid., 204.

liv “Two Theories of Modernity,” 32.

lv Ibid.

lvi For a full account, see Margaret Archer, Being Human: The Problem of

Agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) especially

Chapters 6-7.

lvii Ibid., 242.

lviii Twenty people were interviewed for the preliminary study which

was the basis for Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2003), and 128 for the more expanded

follow-up study, the results of which are partially presented in

Making Our Way through the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2007). A third book, The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2013), completes the analysis, with a

longitudinal study of undergraduate sociology students at Warwick

University. This is obviously a less representative sample than the

one used for Making Our Way through the World, but has the advantages of

being longitudinal and of offering a more focused look at the modes

of reflexivity exercised by the younger generation. The most

significant details of Archer’s methodology are the following:

Subjects were asked if, when, how and with regard to what themes they

engaged in internal conversation, which was characterized (based on

discussion with an informal pilot group) as involving the following

ten mental activities (though not everyone necessarily engages in all

ten): planning, rehearsing, mulling-over, deciding, reliving,

prioritizing, imagining, clarifying, imaginary conversations, and

budgeting (Structure, Agency, and the Internal Conversation, 161-162). Archer

did not begin the project with the assumption that people exercise

their reflexivity in different ways, and in fact all of her

interviewees were convinced that “everyone else’s internal

conversation was much the same as their own” (163). The possibility

that there might be distinct modes of exercising reflexivity emerged

from the content of the interviews, and was further supported by the

emergence of the same patterns in the larger sample set used for

Making Our Way Through the World. Since the first set of twenty

interviews were only meant to be a preliminary study, the subjects

were chosen on a relatively ad hoc basis, with some attempt at

diversity in terms of age, gender and social class (Structure, Agency, and

the Internal Conversation, 159-160). In the second, 128-subject study,

Archer ensured that the major demographic categories would be covered

in the sample, and an attempt was made to maximize diversity (Making

Our Way Through the World, 326-327). All subjects for both studies were

drawn from the metropolitan area of Coventry in the West Midlands in

England.

lix It is not simply that these individuals are outgoing or

extroverted, but that the family “occupies uncontested centre-stage

[sic] as their ultimate concern.” One indication that this is not

simply the result of a psychological tendency is that those in this

group value family relationships “to the exclusion of any other

serious form of social involvement” (Making Our Way through the World,

239; Cited hereafter as Making Our Way).

lx Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation, 167-168. (Cited hereafter as

Structure.)

lxi Making our Way, 185-187, 276-277. Many in this group were even

willing to embrace downward social mobility for the sake of

maintaining or improving strong family relationships (280-281).

lxii Making Our Way, 281.

lxiii Structure, 190. It is also important to note that this relationship

is not deterministic, in that others who grew up in similar contexts—

including siblings of some of the communicative reflexives—did

challenge and move away from the shared meanings of their inherited

social context.

lxiv Structure, p. 210.

lxv Interestingly, autonomous reflexives tend to approach the human

relationships that are part of their work as a matter of “personnel

management,” as just another practical challenge to be faced by using

the appropriate skills and techniques (Making Our Way, 296).

lxvi Making Our Way, 287-288.

lxvii Making Our Way, 195-196.

lxviii Making Our Way, 298-299.

lxix Margaret Archer, The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity, 290; Making our

Way, 198, 226.

lxx Dependent Rational Animals, 185. See also John Bowlby, A Secure Base

(London: Routledge, 1988) for further psychological research related

to this point.

lxxi Making Our Way, 301.

lxxii Making our Way, 232.

lxxiii Structure, 278.

lxxiv Sources of the Self, 38.

lxxv Structure, 298-299.

lxxvi Ibid., 336.

lxxvii The other mental activity that Jason engages in is ‘rehearsing,’

usually to plan what he will say when he sees his girlfriend in order

to test her trustworthiness. (Ibid., 337.)

lxxviii Ibid., 338.

lxxix Such is the case of Abigail, who suffered from a childhood family

breakdown—her mother left Abigail and her father when she was only

six years old—and almost committed suicide after her second failed

marriage. It is clear that she would have fallen into the fractured

reflexive category had Archer interviewed her earlier in life.

However, Archer interviewed Abigail at age 48, after she had formed a

happy marriage with a supportive husband, at which point she had

developed successfully into an autonomous reflexive. Meeting and

developing a healthy caring relationship with her third husband was

obviously a turning point in Abigail’s life. (Marking our Way, 198-199

and 226.)

lxxx Sources of the Self, 44.

lxxxi In Liberals and Communitarians, Mulhall and Swift describe the

communitarian critics of liberalism as taking issue with its

conception of the person, its asocial individualism, its

universalism, its subjectivism or objectivism, and its anti-

perfectionism or neutrality. The authors categorize both Taylor and

MacIntyre (along with Michael Sandel and Michael Walzer) as

communitarian thinkers, and devote a chapter to each of their

theories (Stephen Mulhall and Adam Swift, Liberals and Communitarians

(Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992)).

lxxxii Ibid., xi.

lxxxiii See, for example, the website of The Communitarian Network,

http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/index.html. Although a number of important

philosophers and public officials have endorsed The Communitarian

Network’s platform, MacIntyre and Taylor have not.

lxxxiv Recognizing this weakness, Barry has attempted to provide such a

foundation in Justice as Impartiality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

lxxxv For example, MacIntyre is in fact concerned that contemporary

social structures may impede the development of habits of critical

reflection that would enable individuals to challenge the norms

implicit in their society, and views this incapacity as a genuine

threat to the full exercise of moral agency. Based on these

reflections, MacIntyre formulates a moral maxim particularly crucial

for contemporary society: “Ask about your social and cultural order

what it needs you and others not to know” (“Social Structures and

their Threats to Moral Agency,” Ethics and Politics: Selected Essays

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 203). He also states

unequivocally in Dependent Rational Animals that, in his view, the

individual good is not subordinated to the common good, nor is the

common good subordinated to the individual good, nor is the common

good the sum of individual goods. Rather, “the pursuit of the common

good of the community is, for all of those contributing to it, an

essential ingredient of their individual good,” and “the good of each

individual is more than the common good” (p. 109). Finally,

MacIntyre warns against thinking that the modern state as such could

provide the sort of community life that human beings need in order to

flourish. Instead, he thinks this can be found in small-scale

communities with very diverse aims and institutional forms (132).