Identity, politics and public policies

Abstract

Political philosophy has a long tradition of questioning how the notion of the Ego is constructed. However, the subject has acquired a new relevance in the last decades since the emergence of recognition policies, the appreciation of the construction of identities and multiculturalism. The new paradigm emerged as a reaction to abstract liberalism, a doctrine that seemed insufficient to satisfy its own standards of equality by marginalizing worldviews different from those that dominate political structures. In 1992 Charles Taylor published Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition, an essay criticizing Kantian liberalism that had prevailed for two hundred years and its emphasis on universal morality, individual autonomy, and the capacity for "agency." That work had a great impact on the debate on cultural identities and recognition. Taylor argued, among other things, that Kant's derived universalism leaves no room for the fundamental need for authenticity that every human being experiences. Without authenticity, he pointed out that autonomy becomes an unrealizable ideal. He argued that the supposed neutrality with respect to the different substantive conceptions of the good was illusory, and concealed a hegemonic notion of the good and the collective objectives, under the pretext of being a mere proceduralism.