In Charles Taylor's exhaustive study of the historical currents that have helped constitute the modern identity he proposes the notion of "the affirmation of ordinary life" as a way of encapsulating the core of that identity. As he states in Sources of the Self, "ordinary life is a term of art I introduce to designate those aspects of human life concerned with production, that is, labour, the making of things needed for life, and our life as sexual beings, including marriage and the family." 1

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... ccording to Taylor, this aspect of the modern identity gives rise to a new sense of the almost inestimable value of individuals and their quotidian existence. This modern sense of identity is informed by a combination of a theistic vision of a created natural order and an ideal of disengaged scientific reasoning as a way of exploring that order, and also a sense of the ultimate value of people and their dignity as moral agents. As Taylor states: If we look for the constitutive goods of this outlook, if we ask what it is whose vivid presence to our understanding empowers us to act for the good, two features spring to mind, the goodness and wisdom of God as shown in the interlocking order, and our disengaged reason as our way of participating in God's purpose. But this picture of disengaged reason is linked as we saw to a conception of human dignity. In particular, it incorporates a sense of self-responsible autonomy, a freedom from the demands of authority. 2 1 Charles Taylor,