The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Carl Trueman)

In The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Professor Carl Trueman looks at "how we got here"—how today's society has at its root a radically different notion of selfhood. His ultimate task is “to demonstrate how many of the ideas now informing both the conscious thinking and the instinctive intuitions of Western men and women have deep historical roots and a coherent genealogy that helps explain why society thinks and behaves the way it does.” An outline follows.

Part 1: Basic Concepts

Trueman starts with basic concepts that he will use for exploring history, focusing on the ideas of three modern philosophers (Philip Rieff, Charles Taylor, and Alasdair MacIntyre). Collectively, these three made several observations, including:

• We’ve moved from a mimetic to poietic view of the world—from viewing “the world as having a given order and a given meaning and thus sees human beings as required to discover that meaning and conform themselves to it” to seeing “the world as so much raw material out of which meaning and purpose can be created by the individual.”
• Culture historically “directs the individual outward,” to “something that is given and learned” and “we learn who we are by learning how to conform ourselves to the purposes of the larger community to which we belong.” But now it is more the opposite; “outward institutions become in effect the servants of the individual and her sense of inner well-being.”
• From the first two points, emotivism follows, which “presents preferences as if they were truth claims.” An emotivist is “one who (mistakenly) grants his own personal preferences the status of universal moral imperatives.” (And others rejecting them is framed as irrational or bigoted.)
• And if it really is all about us, we will reject what has come before, resulting in “a basic repudiation of history as a source of authority and wisdom.”

Part 2: Psychologizing of the Self
Here Trueman evaluates important developments in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a key thinker here. Rousseau said “all I need to do, as I have done up until now, is to look inside myself.” He argued the following:

• Human nature is corrupted by society; we are innately good
• “One who is truly free is the one who is free to be himself.” Our access to truth and our true identity is inward.
• Key to ethics is empathy/pity; aesthetics is key to morality
• Culture, society, age and experience are corrupt; the young and natural things are better.
• Since society corrupts, studying it “becomes the history of the corruption and oppression of human nature”

How did such ideas get into the mainstream? Through artists, those "unacknowledged legislators." Romanticism (including Wordsworth, Shelley, and others) embraced these ideas. And it included a sexual turn: to them, happiness is the foundation of morality “so the liberating of love is a moral and political imperative.” “Unnatural constraints on love effectively prevent human beings from being truly human.”

Another aspect is a change in how we viewed human nature. Formerly it was viewed as something that was fixed and authoritative; here there was a shift to view it as something we can shape and determine. Three men shaped how we view human nature: Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Charles Darwin.

• Nietzsche recognized and called the bluff of the Enlightenment. If you do away with God, you “destroy the very foundations on which a whole world of metaphysics and morality has been constructed and depends.” We abolish God—and thus become him. Thus we are “suspicious of any claims to absolute moral truth.” He also felt “personal satisfaction, the basic element of the therapeutic ideal,” is “what it means to truly live.” We live for the here and now and can create ourselves.
• Marx “saw the vital connection between social and economic conditions and the constitution of the world.” He provides a foundation with his dialectical materialism and a critical spirit: “the suspicion that metaphysical claims are not as innocent or as morally neutral as the may appear.” And he makes all human activity political.
• Darwin dealt a blow “to those systems that granted special essential status and significance to humanity.” Per him, humans are not significant nor intended for some higher end. 

Thanks to these three, we have deep suspicion of traditional authority. We live for the present. We are about self-creation. And history is about oppression.

Part 3: Sexualizing of Psychology and Politicizing of Sex

Here Trueman looks at how ideas from the aforementioned thinkers started trending towards the sexual. The first focus is Sigmund Freud, who “made plausible the idea that humans, from infancy onward, are at core sexual beings. It is our sexual desires that are ultimately decisive for who we are.” His thoughts are taken by Marxist thinkers like Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse and mixed with politics.

With Freud, sex moved from an activity to fundamental to identity. He argued that “the goal of human existence was to be happy" and put “sex and sexual expression at the center of human existence.” Earlier thinkers put the focus on feelings and happiness; Freud said happiness is sexual pleasure. He also extended sexuality to infancy and argued civilization is produce of sexual repression.

Marx and Freud were brought together by the Frankfurt School (Erich Fromm and others, most notably Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse).

Reich argued that the traditional family is unit of oppression, and with Freudian influence, the family represses sexual instincts. His book The Sexual Revolution (1936) talks about importance of sexual identity for political struggle, and included his belief that the state had the right to intervene in family because family represses through policing of sexual codes. 

The story so far:

• Rousseau: identity is psychological
• Freud: psychology/identity is sexual
• Mesh these with Marx: identity is political

Marcuse saw the result: “to transform society politically, then, one must transform society sexually and psychologically . . .” 

Another important thinker is Simone de Beauvoir (1949): she separated gender and sex. “The latter is biological, while the former is psychological.” She argued “one is not born, but rather becomes, woman.” And that society coerces people into conformity. She saw biology as a form of tyranny: “The body is something to be overcome.” This furthers aforementioned thoughts on human nature. If that is not something inherent/given but something we determine, “why should we tie gender identity to an objective physiological basis?”

Part 4: How Modern Self has Triumphed

Here Trueman looks at how our modern culture has been transformed by these ideas. Examples:

• Education has moved from transformation to affirmation of self.
• We understand selfhood in psychological and sexual terms.
• We must be true to ourselves—our inner feelings. These are to be trusted above society, culture, history, and family. 
• Any attempts by authorities (from family to culture) to stymie our inner feelings is oppressive; victimhood is a key virtue.
• If it is all about feelings, then no other authority can be used in argument. Anecdotes and personal experience/feelings win the day.
• There is noting in history or elders worth learning; these are oppressive. Self rules the day.
• Our teleology shifts from future-focused to present happiness. It's all about the therapeutic and making me feel good now.

Where to from here? The current state is unstable; what if what makes me happy conflicts with what makes you happy? If there are no commonly accepted premises, arguing about who is right becomes impossible; we resort to accusations. “Once oppression becomes primarily psychological, it also becomes somewhat arbitrary and subjective.” The future is murky.

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This book has profoundly important insights into who we are today as a society and how we got here. It gets repetitive but is highly worthwhile.

Rating: A