The idea of global solidarity and global civil society has become a regulative idea without which many of us would find it hard to hope at all, but it remains to be seen whether it is an idealistic pipe dream or the only realistic future we have. Perhaps it is too much to ask that Taylor in this marvelous and richly informative book answer this question, but that he doesn’t finally even seem to ask it is a problem.” (From Bellah’s post “After Durkheim“)

What I think is happening here is that both of these extraordinarily influential thinkers (Taylor and Habermas) are implying that the common consciousness that must undergird any viable society can no longer be limited to the boundaries of that society“. (From his post “What holds us together“)

Possibly he is barking up the wrong tree…

In any event, I for one would like to see that “other” issue developed, difficult as it is, not avoided.

Writes Professor Bellah in his latest post:

…what Taylor offers us sounds, when he speaks of “abstracting from” previous particularisms, very close to what Jürgen Habermas calls “abstract constitutional patriotism.” I guess I just don’t believe that anything abstract, lacking in symbols drawn from either the religious or the political ideological past, can ever provide enough energy to succeed in “holding us together.”

I rather gather that Profesor Taylor would like to say that he has been misunderstood by his colleague; that “consitutional patriotism” of the sort he wants to affirm walks arm in arm with “ethnicity” and thick and particular “historical projects”–legitimately so in many places including Quebec. One thinks of contemporary states like Israel, Germany, and France in this connection as well.

It would be nice to hear from Professor Taylor more “concretely” what ethnicity (or a “historical project”) could look like in the public space, given the challenge quoted above, however. Perhaps this would begin to clarify what gap there is, if any, between Professor Bellah’s sense that liberal democracies need the energy a public religion gives off and Professor Taylor’s own position.

Charles Taylor replies with the closest thing to a tautology: He lives in a country and a province with “modern charters of rights” and he is not only loyal to his country and his province, but he is “rooting for all of them”, namely “any such democratic society”. Adding that his loyalty to his own has “extra motivation” because it is “THIS particular project”.

“This kind of patriotism” (to my country with its modern constitution and to any other country with a similar constitution) “is the only game in town for democracies…” says Taylor, sounding a little like a State Department spokesperson. A mystifyingly narrow answer from a famous philosopher to a broad thesis about global solidarity.