Abstract

That moral orders infiltrate social imaginaries is the focus of Taylor’s study. A social imaginary is “the [way] people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations”. Taylor carefully notes that imaginaries are constituted by practices and norms that are both ideal and material; changes occur on both levels.