“We need to do a work of retrieval, in order to get a fruitful struggle going in our culture and society. . . . We don’t want to exaggerate our degrees of freedom. But they are not zero. And that means that coming to understand the moral sources of our civilization can make a difference, in so far as it can contribute to a new common understanding. We are not, indeed, locked in.” (96, 100-101)

Charles Taylor believes that we can dig down into the moral and ideological sources that got us where we are and bring those out again for purposes of critique. He builds a case for an ethic hidden under the solipsist individualism created by modernity, the ethic or ideal of authenticity. In The Malaise of Modernity he wants to discover a place from which such authenticity can engage in political debate in the face of soft despotism and the temptation of instrumental reason.