The art of interpretation and Nature
Key perspectives - modernity's baggage
The preceding chapter considered criticisms of classical rights-based liberalism and market approaches and their implications for the environment. I must now devote a lengthy part of the book to a discussion of the ideas of Charles Taylor because he does not fall into either category. Taylor (1989d), of course, is a trenchant critic of market-based approaches and utilitarianism.2 Despite the affirmations of some of his admirers, however, his starting point is not simply community but intuition. Intuition, it will be remembered, may also be an important element in interpretivist accountability. Taylor, however, is certainly not a proceduralist.
Taylor started his political journey with a concern for behaviour in psychology and decision-making in ethics, and eventually explained important environmental and theistic values in A Secular Age (2007a). His interpretivism and analysis of secularism challenges the political theory behind rights-based and market-based liberalism. He questions why these liberal environmental and sustainability approaches gradually bracketed off the metaphysical from the political. ’ However, or in Taylor’s terms moving away from advocacy to deep ecology and theism, he left the way open for ontological thinking which supplements his work. More generally, he moved in an interpretivist direction. Does he bridge the liberal-interpretivist divide? (Taylor, 1989d, pp. 159-182). Some scholars have argued that such a bridge is vital in the face of a changing world.
The ethics of political ‘character’ must address 'new saliences’, to learn ‘how to see that the moral facts have changed’ (Herman, 1996, p. 51). Obviously, ecological concerns have developed a new salience. The book explores environmental challenges to the view that Nature is there simply to be consumed. The argument doubts whether humanity is capable of mastering the natural environment which is far more intractable than most liberal assumptions allow.4 Far from mastering Nature, we may perhaps never fully understand it but at least interpretivist proposals for informed discussion might highlight what we do know about Nature’s processes. Arguably, communities will need to explore limits to growth and the
The art of interpretation and Nature 21 possible shape of steady-state communities (Latouche, 2009; Taylor, 1978a, pp. 157-184; Zuckert, 2016).
The argument concurs with ecologists, deep and shallow, though I prefer to concentrate more on developing ways to think about how to organise modern communities so that citizens are aware of the decisions being made on their behalf. Therefore, democratic and non-imperialistic discourses must recognise the cultural and environmental values of significance that have shaped modern accountability criteria. This is to be achieved through the art of interpretation which is associated with Weber’s notion of an ideal type, Taylor’s work on philosophical expressivism, and the view that Nature contains meaning and value.
