The Modern Moral Order

Charles Taylor's account of the social imaginary that underwrites Western modernity: a shift from hierarchical, mediated, complementary social forms to an egalitarian, horizontal, 'direct-access' order in which individuals are imagined as bearers of equal rights who associate for mutual benefit. It is institutionalised in three key forms — the market economy, the public sphere and the sovereign people — and supplies the background sense of legitimacy that makes modern political and built environments intelligible.