46 Chapter 1 the obvious, to counteract the layers of suppression of modern moral consciousness’ (Taylor, 1989, p. 90). Exactly like MacIntyre (2007), Taylor (1989) sought for his intended retrieval of tradition from before Descartes and his rationalism, which he identified as ‘disengaged’ (p. 12). He also criticised the subsequent ‘disenchantment’ of the world, in the Weberian sense of the word, which led to the modern perspective of the cosmos not as a pregiven order (filled with logos, as an embodiment of meaningful order) but as a neutralised instrument, system or mechanism that can be dominated by reason and technology (Taylor, 1989, p. 148). During the course of his book, Taylor (1989) becomes increasingly outspoken in his argument that, in modernity, the sources of the human self are shifting from the meaningful order or framework (which is stated even stronger than MacIntyre [2007] with his ‘narrative unity of human life’) to the interiority of the human being: Thus if we follow the theme of self-control through the vicissitudes of our Western tradition, we find a very profound transmutation, all the way from the hegemony of reason as a vision of cosmic order to the notion of a punctual disengaged subject exercising instrumental control. And this, I would argue, helps to explain why we think of ourselves as ‘selves’ today (p. 174). Both philosophers showed themselves critical about individualism. Taylor (1989) repeatedly spoke of ‘atomism’, which refers to society as a group of extremely separated individuals. In this regard, disengagement has gone so far that, of the human being nowadays, it can be said: ‘He is on his own’ as a ‘sovereign individual’ (Taylor, 1989, p. 193). Returning to MacIntyre (2007), it becomes visible that both philosophers view moral fragmentation as a source of alienation of people from those who hold other opinions or convictions than their own, a trend that leads to what the one (Taylor) called atomism and the other (MacIntyre) termed radical individualism. Both perceived certain historical aspects of this dynamic as irreversible, which prompted the more dismal MacIntyre (2007) to deduce: My own conclusion is very clear. It is that on the one hand we still, in spite of the efforts of three centuries of moral philosophy and one of sociology, lack any coherent rationally defensible statement of a liberal individualist point of view; and that, on the other hand, the Aristotelian tradition can be restated in a way that restores intelligibility and rationality to our moral and social attitudes and commitments. (p. 259) For this study, it seems proper to conclude that fragmentation is a term that does justice to the complexity of pluralistic societies within a rapidly globalising world. The problem these societies encounter due to lacking social cohesion
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