He does not take into account emotion, which, problematically, many people use as a means of determining what a meaningful life is. Taylor explains in his book The Ethics of Authenticity,
“The general feature of human life that I want to evoke is its fundamentally dialogical character. We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining an identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression…No one acquires the languages needed for self-definition on their own. We are introduced to them through exchanges with others who matter to us – what George Herbert Mead called ‘significant others’. The genesis of the human mind is in this sense not ‘monological,’ not something each accomplishes on his or her own, but dialogical” (Taylor 33).
When human beings are born, they have no sense of the world. They are blank slates that come into this world needing to be taught how to behave and think. The first influence of this nature is family. Family is a term that engages not only mothers and fathers, but whomever the child lives with and loves. This could be grandparents, foster parents, adoptive parents, etc. Family teaches the essential elements of human nature through their actions and their own