The Making of the Modern Identity I

Book : The Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1989
Author : Charles Taylor.
Pages : 601

Reading Report
By Marianus T. Waang.

1 Preface
Before I give a short report on what I have got from this book, I would like to say something first. This book is a difficult book indeed. It is first of all because I am not at home in philosophy. However, it is really a very good and an important book which provides a very deep and wide insight in understanding Western (post)modern identity. Unfortunately, I am not a Western. But the world in our postmodern era now has become small technologically. So it is not impossible that the Western philosophy and culture already have influenced many in the 3rd worlds as well, e.g. my country: Indonesia. So I was not disappointed reading this book.

In my openion, this is a right book to get what is targeted in the second objective of ‘bijvak filosofie’: “De student neemt kennis van (post)moderne zelfbeeld en kent de filosofisch-antropologische hoofdlijnen die hiertoe hebben geleid.”

I am going to do my reading report this ways: 1) Preface; 2) Structures (of that book); 3) Reading Report; and 4) End notes (evaluation). I have chosen not to give any report on part i. It is important actually, but to me it is not the main point or object of this book. Another reason is that it is quite difficult to get a clear view on this part. Besides, I didn’t have anymore time to read part v and conclusion. My report than will consist only part ii, iii, iv. These three parts have helped me to have wider and deeper understanding of Western modern moral sources. Therefore I would like to thank Mr. Haarsma.

2 Structure (of the book)
The aims of writing: 1) to articulate and to write a history of the modern identity; 2) to show how the ideals and interdicts of this identity shape our philosophical thought, our epistemology and our philosophy of language; 3) to provide the starting point for a renewed understanding of modern identity.

Reason of writing: his dissatisfaction regarding the already available sources which he evaluates as on the hand “upbeat, and see us as having climbed to a higher plateau”, and on the other hand “show a picture of decline, of loss, of forgetfulness.” (ix).

Contents (of the book): Taylor divides his book based on his idea that there are three facets of modern identity, i.e. modern inwardness, affirmation of ordinary life, and expressivist notion of nature as an inner moral source. He analyses these facets in parts II-IV (part ii inwardness, part iii affirmation of ordinary life, and part iv the voice of the nature). Part I is about the relation between self and morals. Knowing this relation is needed for a better understanding of the main body of this book (part ii-iv) (x). Chapter V is about subtler languages. What it really is about, I do not have any clear idea.

3 Reading Report

Part II
Inwardness.

Structure:
Taylor describes in this part the first aspect of our (post)modern moral sources, i.e. inwardness. As the title of chapter 5, Taylor explores the root of this ‘inwardness’ from Plato to Augustine to Descartes and then to Locke. Nevertheless there are great differences among them, one thing enables them to be put in one line by Taylor is their attention on ‘inwardness’ or ‘internalization’ of the self as moral sources. He also puts Montaigne in this group. This is not because his idea of moral source rooted in that of the former four, but because of his accent on the inwardness. He ends this part with some notes on the remark whether his work a historical explanation of modern identity or not.

Chapter 5
Moral Topography.

All part ii is about the conception of ‘in side-outside’ or ‘inner-outer’ differentiation or classification in understanding the modern moral sources. Our modern notion of the self is, according to Taylor, related to or constituted by a certain sense of inwardness. The opposition such ‘in side-outside’ plays an important role here. Our thoughts, ideas, or feelings or our capacities and potentialities are regarded as being ‘within’ – or inside – us, while the objects in the world which they bear on are recognized as ‘without’ – or outside us.

Chapter 6
Plato’s Self-Mastery.

Self-Mastery means to be mastered by ‘thought’ (or reason). ‘Thought’ is offered by Plato as moral source. It is the source of ‘self-mastery’. I am good when my thought rules, and bad when my desire rules. Soul has two parts: higher and lower. The first is reason, the second is desire. To be master of oneself is to have the former rule over the latter. This means reason rules over desire. Through this table we can see the consequences of both when they rule.

Reason
Desire
· there is an order reigns in the soul
· there is a chaos
· there is a stillness or peace, satisfaction
· there is an unstillness, no peace, and no satisfaction.
· there is a self-possession or self-mastery
· there is a lack of self-mastery.

Put in another words: when the reason rules, these three fruits are produced: unity with oneself, calm, and collected self-possession. Reason is, then, a power to see things aright and a condition of self-possession. ‘To be rational is to be master of oneself.’ According to Taylor the ‘self-mastery’ of Plato still influences us (modern people). p. 115-16

But it has found some challenges: 1) in the time of Plato, there were warrior (or latter warrior-citizen) morality and manic inspiration in poets. The former sees fame and glory as the aims of the life. ‘The higher moral condition here is when one is filled with a surge of energy, an access of strength and courage – e.g., on a battlefield.’ The latter sees their poets not as a work of wisdom (reason), but as by some instinct and/or by god, who posses them (as reported by Aristotle). These two challenges cause Plato changing his mind by giving one more part to the soul i.e. spirit (thumos). So, he changes from dichotomy to trichotomy. p. 117. 2) besides, there also were/are challenges from Christianity and romanticism. For Christianity radically conversion is needed and this has to do with the will. ‘Reason by itself could … be the servant of the devil, that indeed, to make reason the guarantor of the good was to fall into idolatry. For romanticism ‘rational hegemony and rational control may stifle, desiccate and repress us.’ Rational self-mastery may be self-denomination or enslavement. p. 116

In Plato’s teaching of moral sources there is dualism: soul vs. body, immaterial vs. material, eternal vs. changing. This dualism appears in any sense in the dualism of Paul, Augustine, Descartes and Locke.

Plato’s localization of tripartite soul and Homeric psychology, which observes a human as a being of psyche and soma, are still evident nowadays. ‘… we are still tempted to talk of special localization but another character: we speak of a person being ‘carried away’, or ‘beside herself, swept off as it were to someplace outside.’ But according to Taylor, there should be no division in the soul. Soul is a single locus. ‘The soul must be one if we are to reach our highest in the self-collected understanding of reason, which brings about the harmony and concord of the whole person.’

Chapter 7
“In Interiore Homine”

In this chapter Taylor talks about Plato’s influence on Augustine. Augustine stands between Plato and Descartes. Christian opposition between flesh and soul derived from Platonic distinction between bodily and non bodily. The Idea of the Good in Plato became God in Augustine. Creation ex nihilo is married with Platonic notion of participation: everything has being as long as it participates in God. Platonic ontology then became Augustine ontology. This idea brings about some consequences: 1) everything is like God. So, participation or likeness is the key principle of everything. But the archetype of likeness-to-God can only be God’s Word itself: begotten from him and of one substance with him: Jesus; 2) the universe is an external realization of a rational order; 3) everything which is, is good; and the whole is organized for the good. A meeting between Jews theism and Greek philosophy occurred here.
Beside the Idea of the Good, Plato’s teaching of the sun as the light giving became God in Augustine as the source of knowledge.

There are some points of junction between Plato and Augustine: 1) Vision of cosmic order is the vision of reason; 2) The good for humans involves their seeing and loving this order; 3) The soul has to change the direction of its attention or desire to get the Good (God).

Alongside these similarities there are some distinctions as well, e.g.:
· For Plato, attention and love prescribe humans’ direction, while for Augustine it is love, not attention, the primarily or ultimately deciding factor. There are two loves: charity and concupiscence.
· Plato distinguishes human in higher/lower, spirit/matter contradiction. Augustine prefers to use inner/outer.
· For Plato, to know the highest principle is to turn to the domain of objects which it organizes: the field of Idea. For Augustine, our principle route to God is not by turning to the object domain, but in ourselves: inwardness, the care for our selves.

Plato’s contradiction of higher and lower similar to Augustine’s two loves, but there is a tremendous difference in the way knowing and loving are related. The way of knowing and loving in Plato is toward, but in Augustine it is inward. In Augustine, perhaps inevitably as a Christian thinker, there is a developed notion of the will. But two important changes have occurred. The first is from the Stoic thinkers, who give a central place to human capacity to give or to withhold assent, or to choose. The second change emerges out of a Christian outlook (rooted in Augustine). This change posits that humans are capable of two radically different moral dispositions: good and bad. Augustine’s doctrine of the two loves implies that there are two possibilities: to do good or to do bad. But because of the Fall, human’s will becomes incapable to choose the good. Therefore we need grace. These two master ideas of the will grow together in the Western Christendom.

Augustine put the emphasis on the radical reflexivity, the importance of cogito, the proof of God’s existence from ‘within’. These notions came up again in Descartes. His language of inwardness produces a radical new doctrine of moral sources: the route to the higher passes within. The doctrine of radical reflexivity takes on a new status here, because it is the space in which we come to encounter God. It is the place where we effect the turning from lower to higher.

Chapter 8
Descartes’ Disengaged Reason

Descartes is Augustine’s successor because he also accentuates radical reflexivity, the important of cogito and the proof of God from within. But he makes a change: the moral sources within us. We are moral sources, not something outside: the Idea of the Good (Plato) or God (Augustine). For Augustine, going inward is moving upward: to God. The agent is lack of sufficient. For Descartes, going inward is to achieve a quite self-sufficient certainty (not by stepping upward but by following the right method). I gain knowledge not when I turn to God in faith (Augustine), but rather it is self-generated. God is a stage in my progress toward science thru certain canons of evident insight: the road to Deism is opened. This new conception of inwardness – an inwardness of self-sufficiency, of autonomous powers of ordering by reason – prepared the ground for modern unbelief.

Descartes and Plato: Plato’s rational order of the cosmos is rejected. There is no ontic logos. The universe is understood mechanically (he follows Galileo). … 144. This way of thinking brings about some consequences: 1) Changing in scientific theory (include anthropology), 2) Galileo’s teaching of representation is accepted: to know reality is to know representation of things, 3) The order of Ideas is not something we find (Plato) but something we build, 4) The order of representation generates certainty, thru a chain of clear and distinct perception.

Descartes’ view of knowledge and cosmos is different from that of Plato (Soul/body dualism): Plato sees things surround me as participating the Idea which gives them being. Descartes sees things surround me as representation. We must free ourselves from them: disengage ourselves from our usual embodied perspective. The material world must be objectified. Body is part of the material world. This means that the material world needs to be observed mechanically and functionally: we know the material world not because we can sense or touch it (they are embodied in us), but because we understand it (objectifying). Material world is no longer being a sort of medium of spiritual world. There is no presence of eternal in the temporal. Cartesian dualism needs the bodily because there is a certain stance (ontological cleft), thru which we can realize our immaterial essence. Plato realizes the eternal nature of the soul by becoming absorbed in the supersensible while Descartes does it by objectifying the body.

This difference (ontology and epistemology) causes a turn in understanding Plato’s notion of self-mastery wrought by reason. There is no rational cosmic order. So, being rational is not being ordered by the Good which presides over the cosmic order. Rather, rationality or the power of thought is a capacity we have to construct orders which meet the standards asked by knowledge, or understanding, or certainty.

Descartes and Stoicism: Descartes’ moral view is … stoically: our conducts are directed by prohairesis exists in us: the will (free will). But there is a radical shift of interpretation:
· For stoicism: the hegemony of reason was that of a certain vision of the world: God’s providence. For Descartes: hegemony of reason means reason controls: it instrumentalizes the desires.
· For stoicism (and also for Plato): the move from slavery to passion to rational sf-possession was … the acquisition of insight into the order of things. Passions are … wrong opinions. For Descartes: rational mastery requires an insight, of course, but this insight is not into an order of the good; rather it is a complete separation of mind from a mechanic universe of matter. Insight is essential to … ‘disenchanting’ the world: neutralizing the cosmos. Thus, the rational mastery or the hegemony of reason is a matter of instrumental control. To free oneself from passions and obey reason is to get passions under this instrumental control (rational mastery).
· For stoicism: passion is opinion. For Descartes: Passions are functional devices (instruments) that the Creator has designed for us to help preserve the body-soul substantial union. Passions are emotions in the soul, caused by movements of the animal spirits … to strengthen the response which the living being requires in a given situation. So, we do not need to be freed from passions (as stoicism suggests).

The shift of the moral sources: The new definition of the mastery of reason brings about an internalization of the moral sources: a move from outside us (traditional) to inside us (on the natural level). The agent’s sense of his own dignity of human being is the source of: 1) the sense of the superiority of the good life, and 2) the inspiration to attain it.


Chapter 9
Locke’s Punctual Self

Plato to Augustine to Descartes: Taylor has been speaking about these three extraordinary key figures in understanding our modern identity in chapter 6, 7 and 8. Plato has rational order (the Idea of the Good), Augustine has inwardness or radical reflexivity, and Descartes has disengaged reason. Now he is coming to tell something about the fourth key figure, i.e. John Locke. The Cartesian disengagement or objectification denies the teaching of cosmic order as the embodiment of Idea (Plato) and the ontology of Augustine (participation or likeness). The subject of disengagement and rational control – which Descartes suggests - develops to its full form thru Lock. Taylor calls this as the ‘punctual’ self.

About John Locke: his teaching of disengagement.

Locke and Descartes: Locke refuses the doctrine of innate ideas. Why? It is because it proposes a kind of authority on reason. Reason must be free from any rule of innate principles. He is following more Baconian or Gassendian model of what science is than … the rationalism of Descartes. (p. 231, 240). He denies teleological view of human nature, of both knowledge and morality: we are not naturally tending to or attuned to the truth, whether in the sense of ancient rational order of things (Plato) or in the modern variety of innate ideas (Descartes and Leibnis). Locke argued that the mind is in fact devoid of all knowledge or ideas at birth; it is a blank sheet or tabula rasa. He argued that all our ideas are constructed in the mind via a process of constant composition and decomposition of the input that we receive through our senses. His notion is that our conceptions of the world are syntheses of the ideas we originally received from sensation and reflection. But under the influence of passion, custom and education, these syntheses are made without good grounds. So, there must be a demolition and rebuilding. Locke proposes a radical disengagement: ideas of experience, sensation and reflection are not the products of activity (reason or mind) at all. Mind is ‘wholly passive in respect of its simple ideas’. Locke reifies the mind to an extraordinary degree: 1) he embraces an atomism of mind: our understanding of things is constructed out of the building blocks of simple ideas. The brain is linked to ‘the mind’s presence room’ or ‘a dark room’. 2) These atoms come into existence by a quasi-mechanical process: a kind of imprinting on the mind through impact on the sense. “Ideas are produces in us … by the operation of insensible particles on our senses”. 3) a good part of the assembly of these atoms is accounted for by a quasi-mechanical process of association. The aim of this assembly is a reassembling of our picture of the world … on a solid foundation.

Locke’s procedure of reason is radically a reflexive one: the first-person standpoint involves here. But in contrast to Descartes, the first person must be disengaged from his own spontaneous belief and syntheses. Why? Because they need to be evaluated or examined. Reason is then exclusive of authority. This anti-teleological objectifying view of the mind: 1) rules out theories of knowledge which suppose an innate attunement to the truth. 2) denies moral theories which see us tending by nature toward the good.

Locke’s hedonist theory: Locke adopts a hedonist theory (and gives a transposition): things are good or evil, only in reference to pleasure or pain. They motivate us. But what moves us is not directly the prospect of the good, i.e. pleasure, but ‘uneasiness’ (e.g. desire, pain of the body, disquiet of the mind). The good motivates us by arising uneasiness in us. This uneasiness determines the will. The will reform our relish so that it will gain motivational weight. This reforming enables us to remake ourselves in a more rational and advantageous fashion: we have formed certain habit, but we can break from them and re-form them. So, radical disengagement bears the way of self-remaking.

Locke’s God: Where is God in Locke’s theory? God is the lawgiver: the natural law. This law conduces to our greatest happiness. We ought to do this law morally. Joys and terrible pains are rewards and punishments of God. The law of God is the highest moral course. Why? That is because it is laid down by a lawgiver who can attach pains to his commands. … 171

Locke’s punctual self: Locke’s rational disengagement is a radical self-objectification: we see ourselves as objects and the power to objectify and remake. Rational control can extend to the re-creation of our habits: re-creation of ourselves. This is what Taylor calls the ‘punctual’ self. But what is the self? The real self is ‘extensionless’. It is nowhere but it is the power to fix things as objects. And where is the place of this re-making power? Consciousness.

Locke’s influence:
· In science: philosophy and psychology
· In practice: Politics and disciplinary practices (bureaucratic control and organization, and military, hospitals, school).

Taylor argues that Locke’s theory of demolishing and rebuilding are not new. It has already being propounded by Plato and Descartes. And also his proposal to reconstruct on the basis of sense experience is not entirely new: Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition has this idea as well. Locke’s theory is the basis of mature Freudian … ego, which belongs to the procedural one (of Descartes). So, there is a transmutation in our understanding of the self: from the hegemony of reason (as a vision of cosmic order: Plato), to inwardness of Augustine, disengagement of Descartes and the punctual self of Locke. The modern teaching of disengagement demands a self-introspection: a (radical) reflexive stance: a stressing on the moral agent responsibility. We need to turn inward and become aware of our own activity and the processes which form us. We have to be responsible for the constructing of our own representation of the world, and the processes by which associations form and shape our character and outlook. The idea of disengagement demands us radical reflexivity: 1) to stop simply living in the body, traditions or habits, 2) to view them as objects for us, and 3) to subject them to radical scrutiny and remaking.

Reflexivity of the ancient moralists brings us toward an objective order. Modern disengagement calls us to a separation from ourselves thru self-objectification. In the ancient world view: object is something there (outside the agent); modern: we are objects as well. The self-objectifying subject or the punctual agent is … the ‘self’, an ‘I’.

Chapter 10
Exploring “L’humaine Condition”

Taylor is describing another branch of thought about the moral sources in this chapter. It is about self-exploring or self-examining from the Franch humanist Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). So, until now he has been talking about ‘internalization’ (from Plato’ self-mastery Augustine’s inwardness or radical reflexivity Descartes’ disengaged reason Locke’s punctual self). This is one facet of the modern self (e.g. Augustine’s inwardness was tremendously influential in West from Middle Ages to Renaissance). In part 3 he will be speaking about another facet, i.e. affirmation of the ordinary life. But the inwardness of Montaigne is different from the internalization of the former four figures. His going inward means self-explanation.

Montaigne’s l’humaine condition: differences between Montaigne and Descartes.

Radical reflexivity of Augustine which takes it secular form in Descartes has become central to our modern culture. Montaigne has an idea of radical reflexivity as well, yet not in the sense of that of the former two. His reflexivity is a self-explanation to get self-knowledge. It is more than objectifying our own nature. It is the exploration of what we are in order to establish our identity. Why? Because there is an assumption that we do not know yet who we are.

This self-exploration (or explanation) is entirely a first-person study; with a little help from … third-person observation, and none from ‘science’. This is another kind of individualism. It differs from Descartes both in aim and method. Montaigne’s aim is to identify the individual in his/her unrepeatable difference: I need to understand my own demands, aspirations, and desire in their originality; while Cartesian’s aim is to give us a science of the subject in its general sense. Montaigne is an originator of the search for each person’s originality: each turns us … inward and tries to bring some order in the soul. This produces conflict. Descartes argues for an individual’s responsibility: each must build an order of thought for himself, in the first person singular. But he must follow universal criteria: he must reason as anyone and everyone – through certain structure or canon.

The Cartesian seeks for an order of science … as the basis of instrumental control. Montaigne tends not to find intellectual order…, but rather, to find some mode of expression which will allow the particular (individual) not to be overlooked. The Cartesian calls for a radical disengagement from the ordinary life. Montaigne requires a deeper engagement in our particularity.

Montaigne’s idea of self-explanation resonates until now. This provides another reason to think ourselves in reflexive terms: to question our identity. Identity is what I essentially am. This ‘I am’ can no longer sufficiently be defined by some universal description of human agency such as soul, reason or will. The full modern question of identity belongs to the post Romantic period, which marked by the idea that … each person has his or her own original way of being.

Chapter 11
Inner Nature

I think this chapter can be observed as a conclusion of part 2. By the turn of the 18th century something recognizable like the modern self is in process of constitution, holding together two kinds of radical reflexivity/inwardness, both from Augustinian heritage:1) self-exploration (Montaigne); 2) self-control (Descartes). These two facets are the ground of the nascent modern individualism: 1) self-responsible independence (Locke?); 2) recognized particularity (Montaigne). But the third facet must also be mentioned: The individualism of personal commitment: we have power or capability to give or withhold assent ((neo)-Stoicism and Protestant Reformation).

Three Principle Features of the Modern Identity: These three aspects, then, bring together three features of modern individualism:
The first feature is modern localization: in general - concerns modern localizations of the properties and nature of things as ‘in’ the things themselves (but not in the sense of traditional localizations of Plato: ontic logos, and of Aristotle’s Form: forms are in the things they inform; there is no independent existence in some immaterial realm). In particular, it locates the thought ‘in’ the mind. p.186.

He than compares the old and the new, with regard to the location of the ‘thought’ and ‘feeling’. As long as the order of things embodies an ontic logos, then ideas and valuations are also seen as located in the world, and not just in the subject. Thus, their paradigm location is in reality. True knowledge and valuation only arise when we connect ourselves rightly to the significance things already have ontically.
But all this changes when we receive the disengage reason of Descartes (p. 187). This means that we now have not just a new localization of thought, valuation, - even feeling (in chapter 15 and 16) – but a new kind of localization. According to Taylor this new localization then has some implications such as: 1) a new strong localization: a new understanding of subject and object. They are separable entities: subject against object. a new subjectivism came into being here (Heidegger); 2) the fixing of a clear boundary between the psychic and the physical. Our modern ideas of psychosomatic or of psycho-physical correlation depend on this boundary. Ex.: Melancholy is black bile. 3) the nature of a thing localized ‘in’ the thing. But this is not in the sense of Aristotle’s Forms. P. 188-90

The second feature is a new notion of individual independence. Both disengagement and understanding of the nature (and properties) of things as ‘within’ themselves … generate a new understanding of individual independence: the disengaged subject is an independent being. … 192-93.

This bears a new political atomism … in the 17th century. Two kinds of contracts came into being here: 1) social contract (of Grotius, Pufendorf, Locke, etc). But this is not new. It has root in Stoics philosophy, in theories of consent in the Middle Ages (primarily in the church). 2) a contract of association: a universal agreement which founds a political community and confers on it the power to determine a form of government. The shift between these two kinds of contract theory reflects a shift in the notion of the human moral predicament.

This atomist contract theory bears two facets of new individualism: first, consent. Human was no longer understood as an element in a larger, meaningful order: he is his own; politically (and also spiritually?), a human is a sovereign individual, who is ‘by nature’ not bounded to any authority. The condition of being under authority … has to be created. But the question is, what can create it? The answer must be consent. But this was not the only answer offered in the 17th century. This leads to the second facet: personal commitment. The second facet was evident in Calvinist, particularly Puritan, societies: every believer should be personally committed. There was a division between the regenerated and the damned. The society of the godly ought to be one of the willed consent. The central significance of personal commitment meant that all these communities (of godly and of damned) were now understood in a more consensual light. Ex.: marriage comes to be seen more as a free contractual relation between the parties.

The new sense of the role of contract and consent combined with the idea of the free, disengaged individual … has produced the doctrine of consent. P. 194-95
Where doctrines of personal commitment were less developed, there had to be a notion of authority as something natural, something given in the order of things or the community. Ex.: the doctrine of the divine right of the king. But this divine right differs from the medieval doctrines of the divine constitution of authority. Divine right in the modern sense is atomistic, i.e. there were no natural relation of authority among men, but divine power of the king need to taken into account to avoid the chaos of anarchy.

The third feature concerns the ‘poeitic’ powers: the new centrality of constructed orders and artifacts in mental and moral life. This is in a sense identical to the new notion of procedural reason of Descartes, i.e. that knowledge comes not from connecting the mind to the order of things we find (Plato) but in framing a representation of reality according to the right cannons. Because thinking is something we do, we can achieve certainty about it. Thinking is a constructive activity. This leads to a new understanding of language: … see p. 197-98

Chapter 12
A Digression On Historical Explanation.

What Taylor is doing in this chapter is to clarify whether his work a historical explanation of the modern identity or not. His argument is that his work is distinct from a historical explanation, yet relevant to it.

Taylor’s work. (p. 202ff).
Why is Taylor’s work distinct from, yet relative to a historical explanation? Because he is asking different questions:
1) a diachronic causation question: a question to which an explanation is the answer, i.e. what brought the modern identity about? A question about the precipitating condition, for example, of Western civilization, industrial revolution, the rise of capitalism, the rise of representative democracies, or any other major features particular to emerging modern Western civilization. It is difficult to give a satisfactory, fully fleshed-out answer.
2) A less ambitious question: an interpretative one. Answering it involves giving an account of the new identity which makes clear what its appeal was. What drew people to it? What draws today? What gave it its spiritual power? These questions are asking for an interpretation of the identity.

Taylor is primarily dealing with the second, but he acknowledges that they can’t be entirely separated? “The answer to the less ambitious one has an important bearing on the … more ambitious one”. p.203.