ACCOUNTING, ACCOUNTABILITY AND RELIGION:

CHARLES TAYLOR’S CATHOLIC MODERNITY AND THE MALAISE OF A

DISENCHANTED WORLD

Glen Lehman
School of Accounting
University of South Australia

Accepted for Presentation at the

Fourth Asia Pacific Interdisciplinary Research in Accounting Conference
4 to 6 July 2004
Singapore
 ACCOUNTING, ACCOUNTABILITY AND RELIGION:
CHARLES TAYLOR’S CATHOLIC MODERNITY AND THE MALAISE OF A
DISENCHANTED WORLD

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the interconnections between accountability research and the role of
religion in the modern world. The article uses Charles Taylor’s post-liberal and
communitarian work to develop these connections thereby adding to the debates between
communitarians, liberals and postmodern accounting research. It is argued that
accountability research can benefit by considering the diverse liberal and hermeneutic strands
in his work. This framework then provides a strong theoretical basis for a critique of the
ethical and moral problems in accounting. It is argued that Taylor’s way of thinking offers
an interpretation of the ethical and moral crisis that is being experienced in the accounting
profession and thereby also opens up another pathway to reform accounting.

2
 ACCOUNTING, ACCOUNTABILITY AND RELIGION:
CHARLES TAYLOR’S CATHOLIC MODERNITY AND THE MALAISE OF A
DISENCHANTED WORLD

INTRODUCTION

The question of religion is once again at the forefront of contemporary social theory and this
article explores the relationship between accounting, accountability and religion in the
modern world (see Hamid, Craig, and Clarke, 1993). The article’s analysis is based on the
religious, post-liberal1 ideas associated with the Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor. His
work intersects sometimes directly, and at other times tangentially, with many of the pressing
problems facing modern communities and their accounting systems.

More particularly, Taylor’s interpretation of the malaise of the modern world is directly
relevant for accounting scholars concerned with understanding the direction of their
profession, the decline of its ethical standards, and the moral issues confronting it. There is a
major theme in Taylor’s work addressing the role that religion plays in the modern world and
this article uses it to critique the institutions of modernity of which accounting is one. More
particularly, with the decline of theism there has also been a tendency to move away from the
values that were once found in religious experience. Thus, Taylor states that religion in:

[t]he modern world is characterised by an: atheism and the glorification of

terrestrial powers [where] theism becomes an act of defiance and
nonconformism, of not going along with the powers that be (Mendieta,
2002, p. 6).

This article contends that Taylor’s way of confronting these issues provides a means for the
accounting profession to better understand the social forces that shape their profession. The
religious dimension in Taylor’s work is like a ‘red thread’ which connects the diverse liberal
and hermeneutic strands in his work; this thread provides a strong theoretical basis for a
critique of the ethical and moral problems in accounting. This article provides an
interpretation of the ethical and moral crisis that is being experienced in the accounting
profession and thereby also opens up another pathway to reform accounting.2 This pathway
has the potential to escape the current ethical problems experienced by accounting through
the construction of a strategy to deepen an appreciation of the moral dimensions in modern
society and thereby enable a transcendence of technical procedure as found in accounting
(see Sherer, 2002).

1 Post-liberal is a term which reflects modern communitarian attempts to reform the excessive
proceduralism in modern political philosophies. There have been few accounting studies which
analyse the role of community based thinking and this article attempts to extend it.

2 This departs from Habermas (1991) and Williams (2002) by explaining some important differences
between ethics and morals. That is, morality is viewed in terms of self-interest or of de-contextualised
‘right’. In eighteenth century terms, which many philosophers have now forgotten, the Enlightenment
collapsed ethics into morality. Morality (moralis) - being true to a role - is personal whereas ethics is
about objective value structures (as in Hegel’s Sittlichkeit). Enlightenment thinkers such as Immanuel
Kant reduced ethics (ethicus), where the focus is on what I should be, to morality where the focus is
what should I do. Kant’s categorical imperative acts as a yardstick for what I ought to do rather than
what it is good to be.

3
The argument is not just about replacing procedure, but to supplement it with a deeper
appreciation of the ethical and moral structures needed to create a good society. The aim is to
supersede the infatuation with procedural rationality and to explore the commonalities that
bring people together and nurture spirit. In doing so, this pathway explores how religious
values have been lost within a high-tide of scientific and procedural based thinking. The
issue to keep in mind is that the accounting profession, including auditing, has been the
subject of severe criticism in the face of extensive corporate collapses such as Enron in the
United States of America and HIH in Australia. As a consequence, strong and ethical
reforms in the accounting profession are needed.3

Taylor’s principal work on religion can be found in his Varieties of Religion Today and A
Catholic Modernity where he analyses the rise and decline of religion in today’s world.
According to Taylor, the religious dimension frames many people’s stance to the world and
shapes their social image of it. A community and its social systems such as accounting, it is
argued, are likely to pay a heavy price in terms of moral impoverishment in neglecting the
religious dimension. Further, the neglect in modern thought of this dimension has the
potential to limit the means through which it might generate universality and wholeness:
where universality and wholeness offers the prospect of a society committed to moral
improvement, understanding and development. Taylor’s background is that of a Roman
Catholic and this informs the moral dimension in his writing. However, he is not about
making everyone a Catholic; rather, he is concerned with regaining an understanding of the
original meaning of the word Catholic which is derived from the Greek word katholou. In
Pre-Enlightenment times, kathalou involved the recognition of difference within the plural
diversity of society, where the plural dimensions in society were given recognition as a
shared common endeavour. Taylor explains the commonalities in society and relates them to
kathalou. He explains:

Redemption happens through Incarnation, the weaving of God’s life into

human lives, but these human lives are different, plural, irreducible to each
other. Redemption-Incarnation brings reconciliation, a kind of oneness.
This is the oneness of diverse beings who come to see that they cannot
attain wholeness alone, that their complementarity is essential, rather than
of beings who come to accept that they are ultimately identical. Or perhaps
we might put it: complementarity and identity will both be part of our
ultimate oneness. Our great historical temptation has been to forget the
complementarity, to go straight for the sameness, making as many people
as possible into “good Catholics” – and in the process failing of catholicity:
failing of catholicity, because failing wholeness; unity bought at the price of
suppressing something of the diversity in the humanity that God created;
unity of the part masquerading as the whole. It is universality without
wholeness, and so not true Catholicism. (Taylor, 1999a, p. 14).

Thus, the argument is not about imposing a Catholic good on communities and devising
accounting systems to do this. Rather, it is about devising a system that respects difference
by recognizing and confronting the commonalities that exist despite the diversity in society.
Modern accounting emphasises the role of free-markets, but an emphasis on markets can lose

3
For example, see Craig (2003) and the forthcoming special issue of Critical Perspectives on
Accounting to the Enron scandal.

4
sight of the internal goods of honesty, trust and magnanimity which shape good practice.
More particularly, Taylor’s way of thinking can be used to challenge accountability theorists
such as Parker (1991), Sherer (2002) and Williams (2002). This allows a focus to be placed
on the role that religious factors play in modern society; more particularly, it provides another
means to explain how technical scientific and positivist methods such as accounting have
submerged a whole dimension of social and theistic thought.
The usefulness of Taylor’s framework, therefore, is that he illuminates the social images and
thoughts which can be constructed from the theistic perspective that exists in the world today.
It allows a re-interpretation of accounting’s role in the public interest. This role requires a
focus on the common values that institutions such as accounting might promote, report and
develop (see Gray, 1989).

CONNECTING ACCOUNTING AND RELIGION: EXPLORING ETHICAL AND

MORAL ACCOUNTING

Central to the argument of this article is the supposition that modernity’s procedural
epistemology has created a secular climate where interpretations of human motivation have
devalued theistic and cultural horizons of value. Accordingly, modern citizens are assumed
to be the sole authors of their history and guardians of their being-in-the-world. In the
modern world common endeavours, and recognition of these commonalities that emerge by
recognizing theism, are often ignored, ridiculed and suppressed.4

This article, therefore, is based on the supposition that technical accounting has lost sight of
the values that can be articulated through an analysis of the decline of religion in the modern
world. The aim of this argument is to recognize the importance of theism in the world and
how accounting can become sensitive toward a range of religions that exist today.5 Taylor’s
contribution that can be brought to accounting is a deeper analysis involving a broad and
open democratic sphere that affirms the importance of religion today. Arguably, the
continual trend of ignoring the role of religion within the technology of procedural neutrality
invariably perpetuates problems within accounting and accountability. It has been argued to
this point in the article that it is not too difficult to consider how secularity influences
procedural accounting. While there has been little work done in accounting that deals with
questions of religion, there have been attempts to broaden the accounting craft by
incorporating social and environmental information in accounting reports. For example,
Parker (1991) offers a descriptive statement concerning a Christian ethic of responsibility in
his social accounting argument. He states:

At the macro-level [accounting] is based upon the democratic notion of the

ultimate prerogative of the will of the electorate. At the micro-level it is
based on the Christian ethic of responsibility to the society of which the
individual forms a part, responsibility to the weaker brother or sister,

4 Arguably, with the harmonisation of accounting the procedural problems between accounting and
ethics become more acute. This is because local and particular cultural factors are ignored in the
endeavour to create rules which allow information to be easily transferred and interpreted between
regions. These problems become compounded when you take into account different legislative and
procedural rules across jurisdictions.
5
Some commentators have argued that Taylor’s A Catholic Modernity is necessarily restrictive, but this
is to ignore his Jamesian inspired move to recognise the role of religion more broadly.

5
 responsibility to the state, responsibility to the traveller and stranger and
ultimate responsibility to God. ([Barclay, 1971] used by Parker, 1991, pp.
27-28).

Parker’s social accounting contribution attempts to develop our understanding of accounting

and to realign it with a sense of Christian theism. As the above quotation illustrates, Parker
maintains that this leads to the advocacy claim that only a sense of Christian responsibility
will do. But one wonders why it should be a Christian sense of belief? One implication that
follows from Parker’s ‘social accounting’ argument is that it continues to separate the private
and public realms in that it does not explain the links between the macro-level of accounting
and the micro-level of individual responsibility. This article builds on Parker by providing an
analysis of the rise of secularity and how it impacts on the cultivation of magnanimity, trust
and a virtuous culture. At the very least, the argument in this article endeavours to achieve
three things. First, it explains the commonalities in the varieties of religion today. Second, it
recognises the moral values in religion which can develop the ideal of accountability. And
third it explains the costs involved in creating a strict separation between the public and
private realms of social responsibility in the public sphere (Gray, 1989).

From Taylor’s Catholic Modernity magnanimity, recognition and understanding become

integral in the creation of communities committed to moral improvement and progress.
Arguably, accounting has taken a different path in its focus on the provision of information to
markets to facilitate the allocation of scarce economic resources. Consider the following
statement from SAC 2 (the Australian adaptation of FASB (1978)):

...the objective of general purpose financial reporting is to provide

information to users that is useful for making and evaluating decisions
about the allocation of scarce resources. When general purpose financial
reports meet this objective they will also be the means by which
managements and governing bodies discharge their accountability to the
users of the reports (SAC 2, paras. 26 and 27).

Modern accounting, with its reliance on positivist methodology, tends to subsume

accountability within the definition of decision-usefulness, thus abrogating its moral
obligations by deferring to an outside mechanism (the market) (see Lehman, 1995).
‘Decision-useful’ information is inadequate as a principle for organising accounting practice
and research in that does not recognise the internal goods of honesty and trust which
empower people’s life-world (Lehman, 1995; Williams, 1987). These secular processes do
not accommodate the internal goods of virtue with external goods such as business profit and
share price maximisation (see Francis, 1990; Sherer, 2002).

Accounting procedure and accounting reports assume that focus on instrumental value, as if
such value is the only measure of a good life. For Taylor, the modern world is one where
intrinsic, theistic and personal sources of the self have been marginalised within the logic that
relies on bureaucratic procedure (Taylor, 1989). He argues that the decline of religion
together with the death of God have made us the heirs of a social structure hell-bent on
individual self-maximisation. Modern Western culture focuses on economic growth and
maximisation through the free-market. As a result of this dominant ‘economic’ and ‘laissez-
faire’ logic, there arises a diminished conception of the community’s intrinsic social goods
which aim to create ‘higher’ and ‘better’ ways to live within the community and its

6
structures. The secular phenomenon, according to Taylor, creates a malaise of modernity
where not only belief but also public deliberations are excluded. Taylor explains:

It is impossible in our days to be a Christian, atheist, or anything else,

without a degree of doubt. Our situation is characterised by this instability,
much more than by the idea that secularisation has swept away religion
(Taylor, 1998b, p.111).

The moral nihilism that Taylor observes in modernity reinforces the conditions which have
created a secular climate. The moral nihilism that grips the world reduces practical reasoning
to an instrumental focus which subsumes spirit and the processes of recognition that can be
found in belief.

Furthermore, Taylor considers that the role of belief must be given equal consideration with
instrumental reason as a source of the self that guides everyday lives. His broad reflections
on this ‘strange and partial separation’ between belief, morality and reason can be used to
explain the malaise of modernity which grips the modern world. For Taylor, these reflections
include consideration of the connections between the private and public realms, the gulf
between atheism versus theism, and why religion is always on the defensive. In offering this
account of modernity’s ethical and moral malaise, he recommends a re-enchantment in the
world to transcend the ‘affirmation of an ordinary life’. An ordinary life is Taylor’s way to
depict the limited understanding of what is involved in a person’s life. From the accounting
perspective this life has been defined in terms of instrumental value where measurement
techniques control the determination of a person’s value to profitability. This conception of
value reflects a self-interested conception of human agency which is built on a vision of a
disenchanted economic world. Ethical and moral values have been lost in a world where the
role of religion and shared social commonalities have been replaced by simplistic techniques
of measurement.

Central to a thesis built on Taylor’s work is the supposition that the processes of modernity
have created a social and business world which focuses on efficiency and effectiveness as the
good society. This world, however, ignores those factors that shape and nurture human spirit.
Arguably, this spirit has suffered heavily greatly in terms of moral impoverishment in the
quest to economically develop the world through technical procedure, bureaucratic and
technical accounting models. The processes that have shaped a technical world can be seen
in accounting’s emphasis on rule-governed and standardised behaviour. This technical
thinking has limited that space where the virtues often associated with religion have been
articulated. Moreover, virtue, trust and magnanimity are assumed to be byproducts of this
procedural conception of moral agency (see Taylor, 2001; Williams, 1999, 2002). However,
as argued in this article, this assumption simply cannot be sustained.

Intriguingly, some of the ethical problems associated with proceduralism and accounting
have been raised by the head of the International Accounting Standards Board [IASB] rule
making body, Sir David Tweedie. With respect to auditing specifically, it was reported by
Gettler and Ravic (2003) that Tweedie claimed:

It was time for auditors to dig in when clients put them under pressure to
approve dodgy accounts. If they didn’t, he warned, the auditing profession
faced extinction. (quoted in Gettler and Ravic, 2003).

7
The message implicit in Tweedie’s comment involves a need to deepen the ethical structures
on which accounting is based. For example, if the accounting profession supports
problematic accounting practices, the profession itself is unlikely to survive. A further
example of the ethical problems that confront accounting is reflected in how the auditing
profession has borne the brunt of much criticism from both regulators and the general public.
Accounting supports a rule focus at the expense of an ethical and just process (see Williams,
2002).

In terms of Taylor’s philosophy, the modern infatuation with procedural and technical
accounting rules excludes an appreciation of the factors of significance which shape the
construction of a civil society committed to virtue, trust and honesty. The modern trend that
emphasises managerialism and free-market thinking leaves little room for the virtues which
can be derived from religious sources. This trend has the potential not only to block an
appreciation of the role of theism in the modern world, but also to hinder the development of
high ethical standards in the accounting profession. A failure to deepen the ethical and moral
structures of accounting has the potential to leave the profession at the precipice.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT SHAPES MODERNITY AND ACCOUNTING

Arguably, notions of governance, democracy and society are based on the social images
which emanate from the ideas, theories and policies of the Enlightenment period. In
particular, Taylor’s work is about explaining how certain of these ideas, images and theories
from the Enlightenment’s scientific framework have shaped the world in which people live.
For example, the modern Western world is shaped by a rights-based way of thinking (Taylor,
1989). Thus the emphasis in modern philosophy on the technical capacity to determine what
is right shapes accounting’s focus on disclosure rules which lead to decision useful and
accountable data (FASB, 1978). A connection between technical and rights-based thinking
exists which however subsumes the ideal of virtue and shared commonalities. Taylor, in his
broader philosophical work, also turns to the work of Aristotle and Plato to whom the good
society is an explicit ethical and moral factor. The relevance of these ideas to accounting is
that they shape a way of thinking which focuses not simply on individual endeavour, but also
on the shared commonalities needed to create trust and honesty in society.

Following Taylor’s analysis, one solution to the malaise of accounting is to focus on the
construction of good ethical standards as opposed to a reliance on technical and scientific rule
governed procedures. Taylor argues that modern society assumes that procedural right
includes the value of the good in free-market strategies, together with minimal notions of
governance. Moreover, modern ethical methods assume that the good, religion and virtue can
be administered and accommodated in rational calculations perpetuating the emphasis on
science, technique and procedure.6 This way of thinking has given way to a rights-based
focus that distrusts approaches focus on the good society. The notion of the good, explored
through the dimension of religious experience, is central to an attempt to rectify the reliance
on proceduralism of which accounting is a part (Taylor, 1999a, 2001).

Furthermore, an appreciation of the common goods that processes of secularisation have

tended to exclude can be used to begin to sort out the ethical conundrums and ethical disputes

6 According to Taylor an important example of the procedural trend in modernity is the American
revolution which he identifies as a high-tide for the construction of a rights-based culture.

8
which have plagued accounting. Here it is worth pointing out that this article differs from
other approaches such as those of Sherer (2002) and Williams (2002). Sherer (2002) offers a
postmodern inspired account of ethics and one that attempts to create an accounting that
makes room for other values. While, on the other hand, Williams (2002) has used Habermas’
work on ethics and morals to develop his approach to accounting and ethics. However, a
problem with Habermas’ (1990) model is that he places procedural limits on his discourse
based framework which explicitly excludes the moral dimension that religion and theism
shape. Habermas’ emphasis on procedure might not ‘be capable of providing reasons for
why all persons should accept being subjected to accounting directives.’ (Williams, 2002, p.
2).7

A focus on the religious dimension creates a means to move beyond procedure and link moral
thinking, accounting and ethics. Modern accounting, scientific and social thinking have
preferred to emphasise objective value structures that reflect scientific and technical modes of
reasoning. Scientific and technical reasoning have seeped into the structures of institutions
such as modern technical accounting. Furthermore, it is worthwhile remembering that
morality was derived from the Greek word moralis and meant being true to a role or practice
within society (Taylor, 2003). For accounting a focus on procedure neglects the common
values that shape a civil society. Modern accounting, with its focus on efficiency and
effectiveness, tends to ignore the supposition that it is the notion of a good society which
shapes justice and fairness. Here Taylor reminds us of Aristotle’s derived example which
focuses on the higher values associated with honesty and virtue8 (Taylor, 2003, p. 309).
Taylor argues that ethics at the expense of morality creates only objective value structures
where the moral worth of actions are just subjective preferences. The point in drawing this
distinction between ethics and morality is to illustrate accounting’s artificial and superficial
stance toward the good society. A simple focus on technical issues, conceptual frameworks,
and principles of practice ignores the higher good.

Another way to think about the role of religion and its decline since the Enlightenment is to
consider how the role of virtue has also been diminished. In other words, key institutions
such as religion play a central role in the formation of a civil society committed to the highest
good in the form of honesty, trust and the cultivation of virtue. Accounting is a significant
component within civil society and should not be reduced to procedure bereft of virtue.
Technical accounting results from the dominant scientific Enlightenment which operated with
a vision of the person as self-sufficient in a world where humanity also has the capacity to
control the world. Taylor argues that Rene Descartes’ paved the way for scientific and
technical forms of reasoning (Taylor, 1989). Arguably, technical accounting is an integral
by-product and feature of this Enlightenment strand of reasoning. Its focus is on developing

7
Both approaches usefully draw out the need to account for marginalised victims of economic
rationalism, but they can be developed further. For example, Sherer’s postmodern account emphasises
the marginal practices of society, but this can leave religion and moral problems undertheorised. While
Williams’ fascinating fusion of Rawslian and Habermasian ideas might simply lexically order
difference without a full appreciation of the differences in society. A problem with modern ethical
approaches, such as those of Habermas, is that in lexically ordering different reasons the failure to
reconcile them in a spirit of commonality is perpetuated.

8 In Taylor’s more complex analysis he talks about the higher goal, to kallon or the noble as a basis for
moral thinking and the goals to which we can strive as a community. It is a set of values that cannot be
reduced to procedure with scientific precision.

9
standards and harmonisation without exploring the social and cultural implications of them.
For example, Hamid, Craig and Clarke (1993) have explained the different financial and
social needs required by Islamic cultures. More particularly, Hamid, Craig and Clarke (1993)
explained how Western cultures operate with a different understanding of property and the
common values that are associated with Islam. Here Taylor’s way of thinking offers a
framework where interpretation and analysis provides a means to incorporate different value
systems from different belief systems before imposing procedural rules.

Taylor’s interpretation of the history of modernity and its ideas are reflected in accounting
and the managerial focus on procedure that it creates and perpetuates. In the context of
accounting and accountability, the relevance of Taylor’s thesis lies deep within the structure
of his Sources of the Self. A central feature of Taylor’s argument is that with the decline of
moral and religious values an amoral climate has emerged. In that work Taylor has argued
that the modern inward focus associated with procedure reflects a strange and partial overlap
between liberal and utilitarian modes of reasoning. He argues that this can be traced back to
the time when our cultural understanding of the world replaced Judeo-Christianity as a source
of moral inspiration. Taylor observes that:

The modern picture of private Romanticism and public utilitarianism is

rather civil society run wild, a society which has become a ‘heap’. (Taylor,
1975, p. 542).

Modern life, in ‘civil’ society, is now a matter of the wherewithal of each individual which
suggests that there has been no moral improvement since Hobbes’ vision of a nasty and
brutish world. The tendency within the Enlightenment world has been to replace a theistic
way of living with a procedural way which has created a ‘loss’ in our communities (see
Taylor, 1989, p.45). The sense of moral loss identified by Taylor is reflected in accounting’s
simplistic focus on profit maximisation while being unable to predict and protect society
from disastrous financial collapses. The ‘moral’ and ‘theistic’ loss provides one response to
the call made by Sir David Tweedie that the accounting profession must dig in and forcefully
expose ‘dodgy accounts’.

This article argues that a solution to modernity’s problems can be found in Taylor’s call to re-
enchant the world, and respect and acknowledge the role that spirituality plays in appreciating
the world (Taylor, 1989, p. 545). In this respect it recognises the role that internal goods such
as honesty and trust play in contributing to a viable civil society and corporate culture (see
Nelson, 1993). Taylor argues that the secular climate in modern society can be clearly
identified in the self-sufficient humanism evident in Hobbes’ Leviathan, and in Marx’s
Communist Manifesto (Taylor, 1989). These works offered an account of the ‘higher good’
in terms of human values as essentially self-serving, rather than contributing to the common
good. While Marx certainly had a vision of the good society, it excluded a role for belief
which in turn reinforces the modern tendency to ignore significant religious sources of value.
Similar ideas denying a role for belief and virtue can also be found in modern accounting’s
infatuation with procedure that reinforces an individualistic society.

Indeed, many writers have written about what ought to be the higher order goods that are
worth pursuing in society (Tinker, 1991). However, what seems to have happened is that the
dominant climate has simply assumed that any discussion of the common good is really one
group imposing its vision on to another group thus denying them the right to choose (Berlin,
1969). Taylor’s argument does not impose a good but begins by exploring how procedural

10
trends and ideas have created a modern landscape where bureaucracy and business are the
driving force in society. The end product is an arid landscape devoid of those higher goals
that inspire people to lead a better life, contribute to the common good, and thereby transcend
self-serving consumerism.

Here Taylor’s thesis reinforces arguments concerning the role of religion, theism and the
virtues. They are as important as a free and efficient market. For accounting and
accountability purposes, Taylor’s analysis of the historical trends in modernity have created
and nurtured a self-sufficient humanism (Taylor, 1999c, pp. 161-162). He states:

So Kant’s [liberalist] thesis that moral reasoning imposes on us the

requirement of being able to universalize the maxims of our will, and
Jurgen Habermas’ discourse ethic is seen as binding on us in virtue of our
being interlocutors who seek to convince each other ... Now this too doesn’t
seem to me to work. It may leave us without any way of backing our
feeling that we have come to an ethically superior position in relation to our
ancestors of 400 years ago, with reasons ... . There is a way of proceeding,
by what I have tried to call ‘supersession arguments’, where we show that
there is a rational path from A to B, but not in the reverse direction. (Taylor,
1999c, p. 161)

Taylor’s search is to interpret what is significant in people’s lives and in turn provides an
explanation that considers the role religion plays in developing the virtues that address the
malaise of modernity. He explains the logic which has created a society that has degenerated
into a myopic rule governed system. Taylor explains the importance of moral thinking thus:

The original point of the doctrine was to combat a rival view, that knowing
right and wrong was a matter of calculating consequences, in particular
those concerned with divine reward and punishment. The notion was that
understanding right and wrong was not a matter of dry calculation, but was
anchored in our feelings. Morality has, in a sense, a voice within us.
(Taylor, 1992, p. 26)

The point of this quotation is to explain that modern ways to reason about the world have
replaced older ways of thinking associated with the creation of a culture committed to good
and virtuous values. That is, ethics and morality are not simply about dry calculations but
involve the values and structures needed to bring people together in a spirit of openness and
magnanimity. For example, in the global world order the emphasise is on profit and
individual endeavour, while collective values are considered to be an imposition on personal
freedoms.

In considering common values, Taylor is at one with most communitarians, including

Alasdair MacIntyre who is also a trenchant critic of modernity.9 It will be remembered that
the accounting theorist, Jere Francis (1990, 1994; Taylor, 1999a, 1999b), adapted
MacIntyre’s After Virtue in an accounting context and supported the proposition that
modernity has created a climate where the role of moral sources are largely discounted in the

9
Though MacIntyre does not consider himself to be a communitarian in any substantive way (see
MacIntyre, A 1995, ‘The spectre of communitarianism’, Radical Philosophy, Vol. 70, 1995 p 35).

11
endeavour to create more free-markets. Francis’s (1990) argument can be used to support the
supposition that modernity has created a modern global citizen who really is a ‘citizen of
nowhere’, adrift from any moral bearing. This critique of modernity maintains that modern
‘liberal society can appear only as a collection of citizens of nowhere who have banded
together for their common protection’ (MacIntyre, 1981, p. 156).

Though not as pessimistic as MacIntyre, Taylor shares his dissatisfaction with those
modernist structures which only critique community enterprises and then ignores the
religious values that many citizens feel are important. Often these structures are shored up by
a negative view of freedom that gives excessive weight to free markets and ignore the
adverse effects of corporate globalisation on culture and belief. Thus modern global
processes have the potential to exacerbate tensions between cultures in a world of half-
understood structural difference. For accounting reformers, the implication is that new
modes of governance and thinking are needed to foster a sense of reconciliation that respects
belief and repairs fractured identities. The fundamental sense of theism reveals a need to
reflect on our mechanisms of governance where hermeneutics is used to challenge those
advocates of free-market reforms which ignore common purposes. Taylor’s work on theism,
then, is about enhancing people’s appreciation of their freedom through a recognition that the
role of belief and how modernity’s infatuation with procedure can stifle this spirit (Taylor,
1969, pp. 281–301).

For accounting purposes it is belief, religion and values which cannot be constrained by
procedure at the expense of moral principles. Modern citizens, it is argued, are constituted by
moral and religious principles and values which in turn shape accounting systems.10
Modernity, however, has been reduced to instrumentalism by procedure where there is no or
little place for belief, with a consequential loss of spirit and belonging. The modern world,
and its accounting structures, therefore perpetuate a limited understanding and appreciation
about what constitutes a virtuous life. One result is that discussions concerning the good are
marginalised and the virtues which shape it are excluded from consideration in defining the
factors that need to be given recognition. As Taylor observes:

[T]here is no adequate description of how it is with a human being in

respect of his/her existence as a person which does not incorporate his/her
understanding. We are partly constituted by our understanding. (Taylor,
1983, p. 144).

Identity, value and culture, therefore, have meaning only in terms of social contexts. These
values associated with a good society that respects religious difference cannot be framed
solely within the parameters of free markets, instrumental notions of accounting and
accountability. The implication for accounting scholarship involves a need to regain
awareness that practical reasoning is not just procedural, but involves an understanding about
the values that constitute a good society. For accounting reform purposes, it is important that
our basic institutions such as accounting recognise that the notion of the good and also
religion cannot be reduced simply to procedure.

10
The promise of this idea is to inform a world where the value of spirituality that guides belief also
informs accounting to offer a deeper base than a procedural leviathan. This way of thinking then
explains and interprets the role of virtue in contributing to a good society.

12
Thus an investigation into the role of theism for accounting reform involves understanding
how procedural ideology has shaped our collective conscience which in turn has excluded
religious sources. Arguably, these trends have submerged principles of honesty, trust, and
mutual indebtedness in an economic structure which generates competitive market forces
rather than creating a climate that embraces difference (Taylor, 1989, 2002; Francis, 1990,
Williams, 2002). In this regard, accounting is also guided by a ‘social image’ which
emphasizes the individual agent as a self-interpreting being devoid of context and religious
sources (see Taylor, 2002). Taylor argues that how we imagine the world provides not just a
set of ‘ideas but [also] enables trust in civil society by making sense of, the practices of a
society’ (Taylor, 2002, p.1). These practices invariably involve recognising the role of
religion and theism in society, isolated as it is by procedure. The rise of procedure supports a
technical accounting at the expense of interpretation and analysis.

ACCOUNTING AND THEISM: FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS

For the craft of accounting, Taylor’s interpretation of theism focuses on the common values
which reflect trust, openness and magnanimity. Accounting’s traditional focus, on the other
hand, has been on supporting the criterion of decision-usefulness and a society committed to
individual endeavour in free -markets. However, Taylor’s reflections on theism involves
explaining how the context of religious faith has changed over the past 500 years. This
change is relevant for a ‘learned discipline like accounting searching to understand its role in
society’ (Williams, 2002, p. 2). He traces a decline that begins with the pre-modern world
where belief in God was simply a matter of faith. For some citizens these trends cause
alienation and fragmentation in this disenchanted world where our lives are shaped by a
simple focus on more consumer goods. It is probably for this reason that Taylor labelled his
critical chapter on modernity’s attitude toward nature and religion as ‘God loveth adverbs’
(Taylor, 1989). As Taylor reminds us, referring to the words of Joseph Hall, the Puritan
Revolution convinced us that ‘God loveth adverbs’ whereby the good life is attained through
the process of acting, or engaging with the world as opposed to controlling or manipulating it
(Taylor, 1989). The idea that accounting should be engaged with the world as opposed to
controlling it at least offers the possibility of treating people with dignity and respect as
opposed to calculable units (Lehman, 1995; Williams, 2002).

Therefore, Taylor’s analysis of theism and his critique of modernity is used to explain the
slide toward a culture which focuses primarily on the self. He states that when:

We impose the seal of our image on the creatures and works of God, we do
not diligently seek to discover the seal of God on things (Taylor, 1989, p.
213).

In the absence of a spiritual dimension it is pragmatists and postmodernists who define the
parameters of the good society which for theists is devotion to God. But one wonders how a
postmodern emphasis on fragmentation and dispersed identity can provide the type of
guidance needed to reform accounting. At the very least, Taylor’s analysis of the decline of
theism provides one illustration of how modern lives have been guided by narrow and
instrumental values. The instrumental values which shape the modern world simply measure
and define the good. Therefore, understanding the varieties of religion is important in
explaining how secular cultures have created this ‘inward’ focus of calculation and control in
modernity. It is worthwhile here referring to Taylor’s detailed explanation of this process.
He explains:

13
 This arises historically out of what I have called elsewhere “the affirmation
of ordinary life.” What I was trying to gesture at with this term is the
cultural revolution of the early modern period, which dethroned the
supposedly higher activities of contemplation and the citizen life and put
the center of gravity of goodness in ordinary living, production and the
family. It belongs to this spiritual outlook that our first concern ought to be
increase life, relieve suffering, and foster prosperity. Concern above all for
the “good life” smacked of pride, of self-absorption. Beyond that, it was
inherently inegalitarian because the allegedly “higher” activities could be
carried out only by an elite minority, whereas rightly leading one’s ordinary
life was open to everyone. This is a moral temper to which it seems
obvious that our major concern must be our dealings with others, injustice,
and benevolence and that these dealings must be on a level of equality.
(Taylor, 1999, p. 22).

In this passage, Taylor’s Catholicism and Hegelianism takes a more overt stance with its
focus on the good life. He argues that proceduralism has created a secular climate that
reflects a social image, which has culminated in the death of God. This secular climate has
created a culture that frames a sense of governance and society to the exclusion of the theistic
dimension, thus causing a decline in ethics and morals. Taylor’s genealogy of the sources of
self, as they shape people’s belief structures, offers one explanation about how modern lives
have marginalised religion and rendered it redundant in the moral malaise of modernity. A
collective amnesia grips society where the role of common and shared values are forgotten;
hence, the nurturing of good practice and the provision of good reasons are needed. Taylor
sees religion as:

a pattern of practices that gives a certain shape to our social imaginary.

Religion – or, as Durkheim liked to put it, the senses of the sacred – is the
way we experience or belong to the larger social whole. Explicit religious
doctrines offer an understanding of our place in the universe and among
other human beings, because they reflect what it is like to live in this place.
Religion, for Durkheim, was the very basis of society. Only by studying
how society hangs together, and the changing modes of its cohesion in
history, will we discover the dynamic of secularization (Taylor, 1997, p. x;
found in Abbey, 2001, p. 202).

Taylor’s Varieties of Religion Today explores the dominant philosophical trends in modernity
and offers a critique of the market image which is assumed to be free. His hermeneutic
reflections on the processes of secularity provide one explanation about how modernity has
lost of the commonalities that bring people together despite their differences. The
commonalities that Taylor finds in various religious practices, moreover, are further
submerged in accountability practices which focus primarily on stakeholders’ needs in a
market economy. In asking what is ‘secularity’ he provides a useful analysis concerning how
common values of mutuality and trust have retreated from the public sphere. In one of his
first pieces on religion he observed:

When people talk about “secularization”, they can mean a host of different
things. In one sense, the word designates the decline of religious belief and
practice in the modern world, the declining numbers who enter church, or
who declare themselves believers. In another, it can mean the retreat of

14
 religion from the public space, the steady transformation of our institutions
toward religious and ideological neutrality in their shedding of a religious
identity (Taylor, 1997c, ix).

For Taylor, neither of these interpretations of the trends within modernity and its secular
processes is attractive. This is because modern secularity seems unable to acknowledge that
there exists a plural range of religious and spiritual beliefs which empower people’s lives.
These beliefs are the internal goods associated with a virtuous practice, influencing a sense of
what is virtuous and worthwhile and in turn offering an opportunity to empower and shape
social institutions such as accounting and accountability. So rather than suggesting that there
has been a straightforward decline in religious belief, Taylor depicts secularity in a different
way. He states:

Secularity closes old, and opens new, avenues of faith. What it doesn’t
seem to allow, however, is a new “age of faith”, that is a time of universal
belief, where the undeniable common experiences that no-one can escape
bespeak some commonly agreed spiritual reality. That seems no longer
possible in a secular age. (Taylor, Gifford Lecture: found in Abbey, 2000,
p. 210).

In line with Taylor’s thesis, it may be seen that within modernity’s secular sphere we lose
sight of the importance of spiritual value and virtue in society. The procedural trend that
closes off these avenues not only excludes the role of belief for many people, but also
supports a bureaucratic turn where institutions of measurement such as accounting dominate
the world. Now accounting, as one crucial institution in modernity, loses sight of universal
values such as the commonalities that are needed for society to function. A sole focus on
measuring economic value creates a secular sphere perpetuating a separation between the
private and public realms where no role for religion remains. Arguably, this implies that
modern citizens lose sight of the higher values which speak a ‘commonly agreed spiritual
language’, a distant shore in accounting scholarship. Taylor explains this contrast thus:

The Enlightenment gave rise to a new kind of indignant protest against the
injustices of the world. Having demolished the older visions of cosmic
order and exposed them as at best illusion, and perhaps even sham, it left all
the differentiations of the old society, all its special burdens and disciplines,
without justification. It is one thing to bear one’s lot as a peasant if it is
one’s appointed place in the hierarchy of things as ordered by God and
nature. But if the very idea of society as the embodiment of such a cosmic
order is swept aside, if society is rather the common instrument of men who
must live under the same political roof to pursue happiness, then the
burdens and deprivations of this station are a savage imposition, against
reason and justice, maintained only by knavery and lies. (Taylor, 1975, p.
547).

This argument suggests reasons to account for the ‘costs’ imposed by the rise of a secular
climate. In modern society it is accounting that is the institution that provides the information
which leads to the allocation of economic product, but only in accord with mechanistic rules
which disregard a sense of virtue. A simple focus on information for markets clearly neglects
an account of religious values and virtue. Following Williams (2002) a plural focus in

15
accountability has the potential to consider the values in religion, how religion has been
influenced by modernity and the role of virtue in a civil society.

Some support for this argument is evident in the assumptions underlying the accounting
conceptual framework which ignores difference and assumes that its values can be
transported through the harmonization of accounting. Such a set of assumptions in accounting
frameworks, however, provides only useful information for a narrowly constructed notion of
business decision-making as evidenced in the FASB pronouncements (1978) and SAC 2
(1992). But this narrow construction fails to satisfy broader needs of users who require
information which not only satisfies the rules but also the requirements of society for honest,
transparent and reliable information. In more recent times there has been a recognition of the
need for broader societal information in the form of social and environmental accounting
(Lehman, 1999, Gray, 2002). It will be recalled that a society built on procedure does not
fully appreciate the role of religion and any association with the role of the virtues in society.
As a consequence, therefore, society must explicitly acknowledge the need for honesty,
integrity and other systemic social values that create a sense of virtue. Modern life, however,
has been framed within a procedural leviathan which does not explicitly consider what is the
good.

Modern secular society through institutions such as accounting has not fully considered the
possibilities about what is a good life. Accounting has replaced a commitment to the good
with a calculative and rational approach that determines principles of individual right which
in turn leads to a rule focused system. This has been at the expense of the common values.

THEISM AND THE GOOD

In deepening the analysis of modern secularity it is apposite to remember that Taylor’s work
uses G. W. F. Hegel and William James’ work to explore the processes of secularity (Taylor,
2002). These themes are at odds with other Enlightenment works such as Kant’s famous
Religion Today which attempted to rationalise religious belief in terms of secular practice.
Taylor follows William James in explaining the patterns that separate religion from the public
domain (Taylor, 2002). In the spirit of James, it is argued that the separation of religion from
the public sphere was not meant to denigrate religious belief, but to create a climate where
belief was respected by political institutions and constitutions. Taylor points to the
arguments of the Founding Fathers of the American Constitution as an example of this
political strategy which focused on determining what is right according to a procedural rule
(Taylor, 2002). What the American Fathers did was to write into their Constitution the need
to separate church from the state. The net effect, however, was to create a ‘subtraction’ thesis
where the separated church and state perpetuated the trend that excludes a full consideration
of political and theistic sources of the self. Inevitably, this set in motion a bureaucratic turn
within the civilising processes of modernity, again perpetuating modernity’s infatuation with
procedure. These trends in turn elevate accounting as principle arbiter of the good, where
religion is reduced to the private sphere.

To understand these trends in modernity and its institution of accounting involves considering
not only the features of a secular temper, but also how accounting is associated with different
notions of accountability, democracy and governance. Further, the trends toward modernity
involves the ontological dimension of human agency which also requires that the moral and
theistic dimension be given consideration. Again, this involves considering the possibilities
involved in a vision of society that explicitly fosters the virtues in accounting and

16
accountability structures. This requires a conception of the good which includes business,
political and social structures recognising society’s differences in a common approach that
also acknowledges theism. Taylor’s call involves reconsidering the role of religion today and
recognising how belief constitutes human agency and what that human agency should be.
The ‘social imaginary’ that Taylor offers is at odds with pictures of society that rely on
accounting rules which drive a wedge between people’s private morality and their public
lives. The social image of a free-market guides modernity’s secular processes where ‘due
process’ and ‘decision-useful’ procedures define the good. What this does is make the role of
virtuous practice within civil society a matter of procedure. More fundamentally, the modern
and procedural way to think about the world supersedes the argument that accountability is
also a moral ideal (Francis, 1990).

Central to A Catholic Modernity and Varieties of Religion Today is the argument that there is
not a strict dichotomy between belief and unbelief. Religion and morality must also be
considered matters worthy of public debate and deliberation in society’s collective
institutions. This way to think about public deliberation involves a role for accounting which
must be connected with religion and morality. Taylor’s theism dovetails with his work on the
sources of the self to explore how a ‘depraved culture’ has imprisoned itself within an ‘iron
cage’. Modernity’s iron cage is something from which it seemingly cannot escape.
Moreover, constrained in this iron cage, modern society has lost sight of the important role of
belief as integral to culture and tradition and this has impacted on the shape of human
communities (Taylor, 1989, p. 357). Taylor’s student Ruth Abbey has taken up the
challenges proposed by his thinking in developing the critique of modernity’s tendency to
level different value systems. She asks the question of modernity: ‘[i]s that all there is?’ Her
argument develops Taylor’s work on religion within modern society and invites consideration
of human experience by questioning whether an ‘exclusive humanism’ confines the human
dimension (Abbey, 2001, p. 211). This question is equally apposite to the craft of accounting
which must also appreciate the perspective of the other’s values – the marginalised other who
does not fit the secular image of a self-sufficient human, the buffered self supposedly capable
of solving everything on his own.

Indeed, despite Nietzche’s claim that God is dead there has been a fascinating absence of
theological analysis from the accounting literature ((Goringie, Gray and McPhail, 2001).
This line of reasoning connects with Taylor’s argument that with the decline in belief our
world not only impoverishes many people’s sense of self-value, but also replaces a sense of
virtue with economic incentives. For accountability purposes the net effect is that
accounting, accountability and business research are deprived of virtuous sources which have
the propensity to empower a sense of community, justice and fairness. For Taylor, excessive
bureaucratic procedure at the expense of belief and the collective imagining is at the core of
our contemporary social malaise. Modernity’s secular climate therefore has ignored not only
theistic considerations, but also has provided only a shallow and incomplete account
concerning what it is to be a person in the modern world. At the very least, Taylor’s way of
thinking recognises the role of belief in providing a means to consider how theistic values act
as a source of the self. This recognition of belief both reflects the role of religion and in turn
empowers constitutive human motivations. In addition, Taylor also links his criticisms of
procedural rationality with an explanation about how these trends have created a justification
for a limited state which, as was noted earlier, relegated religion to the margins. This
investigation into the marginalisation of religion reveals a thin conception of the good which
effectively gives a green light for people to maximise their own wellbeing at the expense of
the community and others in a “spirit” of self-sufficient humanism. These individualistic

17
trends combine to influence the craft of accounting that reports only economic outcomes
which are invariably connected with a governance structure that is limited and minimal. The
limited role given to the state, in fact, further reflects a narrow conception of what is the good
society, thereby creating only an impoverished understanding of collective social interactions.
The collective social interactions that can be found in religious experience include the moral
sources that shape people’s sense of practice and virtue. Indeed, recent business events have
shown just how important is religion and virtue for many people.11

VARIETIES OF RELIGION TODAY: THE ROLE OF THEISM

In terms of accountability these modernist trends have been translated into a business climate
which values the short-term at the expense of the construction of deeper social relations that
would create trust and virtue in the community. Taylor’s thesis allows an analysis of the
trends which provide an image of another ‘accounting’, that is, one which transcends
instrumental and procedural ways to think about our world. Taylor’s social image, in this
regard, reflects a telos strong enough to guide the development of relationships between the
theory of accounting and its practice. The telos that guides this argument recognises that
personal sources such as religion must be given explicit and public recognition if the values
that they incorporate are to be respected. The commonalities that exist in the varieties of
religion today, it is argued, are integral to rethinking new accounting policies to govern
corporate relationships. These trends in thinking become more problematic, especially as the
globalising world economy creates new opportunities, as well as dilemmas for moral and
virtue theory. As Francis noted accounting theory impacts on ‘accountability’ as a moral
ideal (Francis, 1990).

Moving beyond Parker (1991), Sherer (2002) and Williams (2002), this article aims to move
beyond modernity’s self-serving individualism. This is to be achieved by recognising the
role of religion in developing an ethic that focuses on the common values within a public
sphere which shape a good society (Taylor, 2001). Taylor’s aspiration to re-enchant the
public sphere is built on a recognition that neutral and procedural technologies such as
accounting invariably neglect intrinsic values of significance. This is an important point
because empirical and neutral techniques do not explicitly create a role for the common
values that motivate many members of society.

The procedural and inward turn of modernity has occurred at the same time as traditional and
strong notions of religion have declined.12 More particularly, with the assumed ‘death of
God’ an exclusive humanism can also be detected in works such as those of John Stuart Mill.
He offered one explanation concerning the role of human practical reason in guiding this new
‘civilizing’ mission which was based on a form of ad hominem utilitarian reasoning.13 Taylor

11
For example, Enron, HIH, Lloyds of London, among other collapses, have been said to reflect a society
which relies on individualism at the expense of collective social values.

12 With the decline of strict religious observance in the West there has been a process which has
superseded notions of human innate evil, together with a recognition of the need for eschatological
redemption (Taylor, 2002).
13
For Taylor ad hominem modes of reasoning are seen as problematic for modern ways of thinking. Ever
since Moore’s refutation of Mill’s so-called proof of utilitarianism, the ad hominem mode of reasoning
has been defined primarily in terms of weak-form evaluations, such as pleasure and pain. A further

18
argues that modern modes of practical reasoning are seen as an alternative to theism and
develop a universal way to reason and think.14 In line with this argument, modern accounting
is assumed to reflect the truth or rational nature of particular actions as a consequence of the
rules that it follows. Modern modes of reasoning in accounting assume that to follow the rule
is all that we should do. Yet in a manner similar to Wittgenstein’s analysis of modernity it is
argued that ad hominem frameworks do not necessarily lead to the supposition that weak-
based desires, associated with basic human appetite, provide the only path to follow.
Taylor’s way to think about theism and the world, therefore, invites an explicit analysis of the
relationships between theism and culture. He offers a discourse-based pathway where the
public sphere democratically provides scope for all voices to be given consideration. That is,
Taylor’s work on the role of religion in the public sphere implies that the good emerges as a
fruit of democratic debate which offers a different role for accounting. In this role,
accounting would change from supporting individual wealth maximisation toward an
interpretative and critical analysis of the truthfulness of the accounts. This changed direction
for accounting would involve regaining a sense of reflection concerning the reasons and logic
which has shaped the current direction of accounting policy. That is, it would reflect not only
the interests of wealth-creation but would also appreciate that accounting numbers impact on
people’s lives in fundamental ways.

It is, of course, possible to develop links between religion and management and there are
many organisations claiming to provide for the needy. It seems, however, that by far the
majority of professing believers leave their faith at home and take on a different stance at
work. Taylor’s argument is important in reasserting the role of faith together with providing
a critical means to explore the current roles that religion and religious institutions play within
late capitalism. The reflective stance that this analysis offers has the potential for creating a
critical theology that contributes to the development of new forms of accounting and
accountability. In the work environment where chargeable hours are everything, spirit is a
distant shore. In his theoretical analysis Taylor offers a similar explanation. He states:

We used to live in societies in which the presence of God was unavoidable;

authority itself was bound up with the divine, and various invocations of
God were inseparable from public life. But there was more than one form
of this in our past. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, we
moved from an original model, which was alive in the Middle Ages, and in
a number of nonwestern cultures, to another, very different one. The earlier
one was connected to what one might call an “enchanted world”, an
antonym to Max Weber’s term “disenchanted”. In an enchanted world
there is a strong contrast between sacred and profane. By the sacred, I
mean certain places, like churches: certain times, like high feasts; certain
actions, like saying the Mass, in which the divine or the holy is present. As
against these, other places, times, actions count as profane. In an enchanted
world, there is an obvious way in which God can be present in society: in
the loci of the sacred. And the political society can be closely connected to

problem with utilitarianism is that it cannot judge between weakly valued and the strongly valued
goods as they frame our choices and influence our beliefs. Thus, strongly valued goods are something
different from weak-order goods which people hold on to irrespective of other more desirable goods
(such as wanting an ice-cream).
14
In technical terms this is an apodeictic form of reasoning which is assumed to apply to all rational
people.

19
 these, and can itself be thought to exist on a higher plane…Or to talk a
slightly different language, in these earlier societies the kingdom existed
not only in ordinary, secular time, in which a strong transitivity rule held,
but also in higher time. (Taylor, 2001, p. 65).

Taylor defines another feature of secularity which reflects a changed view of time. For
accounting researchers, it is time which is often a variable left under-theorised because it is
assumed that profit is measured in financial years. The Enlightenment also changed our
understanding of time where the higher values associated with religious days also offered
another means to rethink moral and ethical values in society (Abbey, 2001). That is, a
society built around secular time offers only ordinary values and downplays the values that
can be found in belief or higher time (kairos).15 According to Taylor, secular time amounted
to the difference between ordinary and higher time. This is where secular time reflects all
that is linear, regular and fixed which loses sight of the common values that can be found
through an appreciation of religion.16 With this change in how we understand time there
comes a new means to live and act in the world. However, the focus on secular time is
associated with accumulation and maximisation where the role of practical reasoning is
limited to the here and now. Yet much more is going on within the possibilities of society as
theorists such as Taylor, as well as Craig Calhoun, Michel Foucault, and Max Weber, have
explained. All these thinkers share a commitment to unravelling how one particular ‘social
imagining’ has dominated our contemporary social landscapes. An individualistic and self-
seeking culture has seeped through the pores of society. It is intriguing, then, that so many
people are surprised when directors act only in their own interests, when corporate collapses
seem more frequent, and when bankruptcies act as the best means to escape one’s obligations
in a self-serving culture of accumulation.

Alisdair MacIntyre has suggested that to escape the unpleasantness associated with modernity
we shut our curtains and roll down our blinds. Taylor however is not so pessimistic and is
aware of the ‘equally pervasive modalities of late capitalism which has rendered belief in an
independent, omniscient yet knowable God almost unbelievable’ (Goringie, Gray and
McPhail, 2001). Taylor does not argue for the existence of God, but does argue for political
space that recognises the importance of kairos for those people who do believe. More
particularly, the decline of theism has enabled procedural modernity to assume a dominant
position in society. As a result there has been a consequent diminution of the role of kairos
which reflects the loss of shared cultural values and a resulting loss of a common spirit.
Arguably, as a consequence of the elevation of procedural modernity there has also been an
increase in the prevalence and severity in the rate of corporate failure. These phenomena
invite us to consider how accounting is to be reformed and whether it has the base on which
to create the highest standards of corporate governance and vigilance possible. It is therefore

15
Taylor defines higher time as kairotic which is the dimension outside of our normal experience of time.
He connects this with the supposition that external reasons allow us to see the normative dimensions
associated with the construction of a good society. A good society, therefore, is one which builds the
common values that are associated with a civil society.
16
Secular or synchronic time reflects all that is ordinary and basic in time which is often reduced to
diachronic moments in time. These diachronic moments in the measurement of time reinforce the
dualistic methods associated with modernity’s naturalistic turn which perpetuates the divisions between
the private and public realms. In the public realm the dominant ethos is one that emphasises ‘appetite’
where the good life is reflected in continuing escalations in living standards.

20
not difficult to understand that the major thrust of modernity has been to focus on the
individualistic aspects of human behaviour at the expense of common values which create a
sense of virtue.

For accounting and accountability purposes, the loss of common purposes and virtue are
reflected in the modern accounting framework which is focussed on maximising shareholder
wealth and protecting the interests of management. According to Taylor, with the increasing
development of this focus on an exclusive humanism, together with the death of God, a
procedural strand of liberalism has become prevalent, creating the current malaise of
modernity. Taylor explains:

Mill plainly had some intuition to this effect when he deployed the
argument in Utilitarianism. One of the things he was trying to show is that
everybody else’s commitment collapses into his. But the argument is
botched because of a crucial weakness of the doctrine of utility itself, which
is based on a muddled and self-defeating attempt to do away with the whole
distinction between strong and weak evaluation. The incoherence of Mill’s
defence of the ‘higher’ pleasures, on the grounds of mere de facto
preference by the ‘only competent judges’, is also a testimony to the
muddles and contradictions which this basically confused theory gives rise.
(Taylor, 1993, p. 211).

For Taylor, part of any solution to modernity’s contemporary ills involves appreciating how a
monistic and self-seeking culture has acted as a leviathan over our lives. The essentially
utilitarian focus in modern society, as a means to determine what is right, reduces value to
market monetary calculations. Taylor’s critique of utilitarian ideology within modern society
is trenchant:

But when one moves from opposition to government, from attack to

building a new order, then it has repeatedly been manifest how thin and at
the same time how threatening the utilitarian outlook is. Thin, because
building requires some sense of the goods one is for and not only what one
is against. Threatening, because the refusal to define any goods other than
the official one of instrumental efficacy in the search for happiness can lead
to appalling destruction in a society’s way of life, a levelling and
suppression of everything which doesn’t fit that tunnel vision, of which the
modern consequences of bureaucratic rationality offer ample testimony, all
the way from the Poor Law of 1834 to the catastrophe of Chernobyl.
(Taylor, 1989, p. 340).

For Taylor, these ideas are ingrained in modernity’s moral decline which he traces to the rise
of secularity, together with its denigration of the common endeavours in communities.
Moreover, a critique of instrumental reasoning’s excessive influence in modern society
means that we should take seriously the varieties of religion today. God is not dead, nor is the
role of religion simply the opiate of the masses.

RECOGNITION OF DIFFERENCE AND THEISM

In conclusion, this article has returned to the original meaning of Catholic (katholou) to
recognise and reinterpret the role of theism in the modern world. It was argued that through a

21
recognition of theistic sources of the self an improved an understanding of the moral claims
in society can be developed. It was then argued that in a more general sense the
proceduralism in modern thought has dominated modern thinking such that a rights based
culture has developed. The infatuation with rights and procedure excludes other value system
and perpetuate an ethical system committed to the construction of more rules and
bureaucracy.

Taylor’s way of thinking criticises those modern universal frameworks that do not recognise
the role that difference and theism play in our world. At the very least, Taylor’s framework
provides a means to glimpse the otherness of being a person through a broad and inclusive
moral theory that stands against modernity’s culture committed to accumulation and
unbridled consumption. Taylor’s conception of political decision-making is based around
deliberative democratic notions where the good emerges as the fruit of debate and discussion.
This article offers two steps. First, Taylor’s hermeneutic method offers a new way to think
about civil society and the means through which accounting information is processed in
democratic societies. Second, through expanded networks in civil society different religious
values are provided with space to flourish in a manner which respects those different sources
of the self thereby teasing out a social imagining which finds common ground between them.
These steps combine in a spirit of reconciliation that is built on a common ground guided by
processes of equal facilitation and respectful practices.

More generally it has been argued by Taylor’s critics that his communitarian and post-liberal
perspective is limited by its Hegelian conservatism and fails to offer a critical perspective on
the current social and political malaises gripping the business world and society more
generally. These criticisms, however, do not come to terms with Taylor’s commitment to
fundamental human rights at the advocacy level which includes the domain of accounting.
Taylor’s work takes a different turn to that of procedural liberalism and maintains that theistic
values have an important role in creating a moral sense that has been ignored in both
accounting scholarship and practice.

Taylor offers a stronger sense of reconciliation than the dominant framework which focuses
on enforcing rights and procedure. This is an important point that must be taken seriously if
we are to understand processes of reconciliation between accounting and the good society.
Here, Taylor’s work on secularity provides an argument that the ‘social imaginings’ in the
world must be given space in such a way that the role of religion in the modern world can be
explored. This way of thinking provides a different mode of reasoning which works to find
points of intersection so that society might liberalise and provide an account of cultures on its
own terms. These moral and religious arguments are now more important than ever before,
given the need to debate the increasingly dominant thesis that Samuel Huntington has
famously referred to as a clash of civilisations. The clashes between values can be found in
the practice of accounting which has come under intense scrutiny in recent history. Taylor’s
reflection on religion offers a way to reform the practice of accounting through a process of
reasoning which respects the role of theism in the original meaning of the term, katholou. It
offers a series of ideas and values which ought to guide practice, shape standard setting and
provide accountants and auditors with a sense of their moral responsibility in a community
committed to procedural neutrality. Of course this is all far easier to suggest than to effect.
But any serious debate requires it, nevertheless.

22
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abbey, R. Charles Taylor, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001.

Abbey, R., ‘Taylor as a postliberal philosopher’, in Perspectives On The Philosophy of

Charles Taylor, (edited by Arto Laitinen and Nicholas H. Smith), Acte Philosophica
Fennica, Vol. 71, 2002, pp. 149-165.

American Accounting Association, Committee on the Future Structure, Content, and Scope
of Accounting Education, ‘Future Accounting Education: Preparing for the Expanding
Profession’, Issues in Accounting Education, Spring, 1986.

American Institute of Certified Practicing Accountants, ‘Report on Auditors’

Responsibilities’, Report, Conclusions and Recommendations, (Cohen Commission),
1978.

Amernic. J. H. and R. J. Craig, ‘The Rhetoric of Teaching Financial Accounting on the

Corporate Web: A Critical Review of Content and Metaphor in IBM's Internet
Webpage Guide to Understanding Financials’, Critical Perspectives on Accounting,
Vol. 11, No.3, 2000, pp. 259-287.

Francis, J. ‘After Virtue? Accounting as a Moral and Discursive Practice’, Accounting,

Auditing and Accountability Journal, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1990, pp. 5-17.

Francis, J. (1994). Auditing, Hermeneutics, and Subjectivity. Accounting, Organizations and

Society,Vol. 19, No.4, pp. 235-269.

Gadamer, H.G. (1975). Truth and Method. fifth reproduction, (trans Garrett Barden and John
Cummings), Sheed and Ward Ltd: London.

Gorringe, T. Gray, R. H. and K. McPhail, (2001). ‘Special Issue Of Accounting Auditing &
Accountability Journal’, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, no page
number.

Gettler, G and Ravic, T. (2003). ‘Spineless’ auditors could off the profession: standards
chief’, The Age, http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/06/1060145725008.html.

Gray, R.H., ‘Review of Models of Democracy’, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability,

Volume 2, Number 3, 1989, pp. 52-56.

Gray, R.H., ‘Accounting and Environmentalism: An Exploration of the Challenge of Gently

Accounting for Accountability, Transparency, and Sustainability’, Accounting,
Organizations and Society, Vol. 17, No. 5, 1992, pp. 399-425.

Gray, R. H., The Social Accounting Project and Accounting, Organizations and Society
Privileging engagement, imaginings, new accountings and pragmatism over critique?,
Vol. 27, No. 7, 2002, pp. 687-708.

23
Habermas, J., ‘Morality and Ethical Life’, in Habermas, J., Moral Consciousness and
Communicative Action, trans. by Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen,
Oxford, Polity Press, 1990.

Hamid, S., Craig, R. and Clarke, F. ‘Religion: A Confounding Cultural Element in the
International Harmonization of Accounting?’ Vol. 29, Issue 2, 1993, pp.131-149.

Hegel, G.W.F., Philosophy of Right, (Trans. T.M. Knox), Oxford, Oxford University Press,
first impression, 1952.

Lehman, G., ‘A Legitimate Concern for Environmental Accounting’, Critical Perspectives on

Accounting, Vol. 6, No. 5, 1995, pp. 393-413.

Lehman, G., ‘Disclosing New World: Social and Environmental Accounting’, Accounting,
Organizations and Society, Vol. 24, No. 3, 1999, pp. 217-241

Lehman, G., ‘Globalisation and the Authentic Self: Cosmopolitanism and Charles Taylor’s
Communitarianism’, Global Society, Vol. 16, No. 4, 2002, pp. 419-431.

Lehman, G., ‘Perspectives on Taylor’s Reconciled Society: Community, Difference and

Nature’, Philosophy and Social Criticism, forthcoming, 2004.

MacIntyre, A., After Virtue, London, Duckworth, 1981.

Mendiata, E., ‘Introduction’, in Habermas, J., (ed.) Mendiata, E., Religion and Rationality,
Polity, 2002.

Nelson, J. S. (1993). Account and Acknowledge, or represent and control? On post-modern

politics and economics of collective responsibility. Accounting, Organizations and
Society, Vol, 18, No. 2/3, pp. 207-231.

Parker L. D., ‘External social accountability: Adventures in a maleficent world’, Advances in

Public Interest Accounting, Vol. 4, 1991, pp. 23-34.

Sherer, T., ‘Ethics and Accountability: from the for-itself to the for-the-other’, Accounting,
Organizations and Society, Vol. 27, 2002, pp. 541-575.

Taylor, C., ‘Responsibility for Self’, in Rorty, A. O. (ed.), The Identities of Persons,
California, University of California Press, 1969, pp. 281-301.

Taylor, C., Hegel, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Taylor, C., ‘The Significance of Significance: The Case of Cognitive Psychology’, in

Mitchell, S. and Rosen, M. (eds.), The Need for Interpretation: Contemporary
Conceptions of the Philosopher’s Task, London, The Athlone Press, 1983, pp. 141-
169.

Taylor, C., Sources of the Self, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Taylor, C., The Ethics of Authenticity, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992.

24
Taylor, C., ‘Explanation and Practical Reason’, in Nussbaum, M. and Sen, A. (eds.), The
Quality of Life, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993, pp. 208-232.

Taylor, C., ‘A Catholic Modernity’, in Heft, J. L. (ed.), A Catholic Modernity?: Charles

Taylor’s Marianist Award Lecture, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999a.

Taylor, C., ‘Concluding Reflections and Comments’, in Heft, J. L. (ed.), A Catholic

Modernity?: Charles Taylor’s Marianist Award Lecture, Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 1999b, pp. 105-127.

Taylor, C ‘Comment on Jurgen Habermas’ ‘From Kant to Hegel and Back Again’, European
Journal of Philosophy, vol 7, no. 2, 1999c, pp 158-160.

Taylor, C., ‘What’s Wrong with Foundationalism?: Knowledge, Agency and World’, in
Wrathall, M. A. and Malpas, J. (eds.), Heidegger, Coping and Cognitive Science,
Massachusetts, University of Massachusetts Press, 2000, pp. 115-134.

Taylor, C., Varieties of Religion Today, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Taylor, C., ‘Ethics and Ontology’, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. C, No. 6, 2003, pp. 305-
321.

Tinker, T., ‘The Accountant as Partisan’, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Volume 13,
Number 2, pp.165-189, 1991.

Williams, P.F., ‘The Legitimate Concern with Fairness’, Accounting, Organizations and
Society, Volume 12, Number 2, 1987, pp. 169-189.

Williams, F. F. (2002). “Accounting and the moral order: Justice, Accounting and Legitimate
Moral Order’, Accounting and the Public Interest, (Internet Journal), 2002.

25