On the History of the Self

I've just finished Carl R. Trueman's important book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, and I wanted to offer some reflections on that book here.

Trueman's argument can be summarized briefly as follows: through figures like Rousseau, Shelley, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, and others, our common conception of what it means to be a 'self' has been fundamentally changed. What the change has looked like can be thought of in terms of Phillip Rieff's terminology: our culture has moved from a second-world culture where the sacred has been institutionally rooted to a third-world anticulture where the previous era's institutions and norms are in the process of deconstruction. This is similar to the account offered by Charles Taylor in his work, A Secular Age and Sources of the Self. What makes Trueman's work distinct is its tracing of the narrative arc of this change, and the specific focus on the LGBTQ+ phenomenon. Trueman argues that in the last few centuries the self was psychologized, psychology was sexualized, and sex was politicized. In broad strokes, this is the narrative offered in the book, and it seems to me to be compelling.

Trueman is careful not to overstep his expertise, or to exaggerate his claims (which says something, given the grand scope of the book's 400+ pages). He is not offering an all-encompassing story that accounts for every historical contingency and every unique aspect of modern culture. But what he sets out to do, and I think succeeds at, is to probe deeper into the question of why modernity has taken the shape it has. He states multiple times that we didn't have to end up with a culture characterized by emotivism, expressive individualism, and plastic people (all terms Trueman is careful to define). Some might quibble with the details of his argument, or think that areas of the work do not sufficiently prove his point (see this review for an example of that latter), but the narrative Trueman sets forth is quite convincing.

This isn't a full-fledged review of Trueman's book, but I want to register my appreciation in particular for the conclusion of the book, which features some incredibly prescient and concrete steps for Christians to respond to the content of the book. If the rest of the book was fascinating, this was the part I would most recommend taking notes. In particular, Trueman makes the point that churches wanting to resist the influential and invisible forces pushing us to a future further along on the continuum he narrates, one of the things they must do is pay attention to their own aesthetics. In other words, in Trueman's view, the churches that have the most hope for the future are the ones who are self-conscious of their aesthetic judgments and the way in which orthodox Christianity's gravitational pull works in a different direction than the aesthetics of the modern self. That, to me, is an incredibly helpful suggestion. We do well to pay attention to the way we use screens, what we consider beautiful, what we pay attention to, and how churches exist as churches in a distinctly Christian way. Despite the temptation in some circles to downplay aesthetics in response to the excesses of the seeker-sensitive movement, utilitarian approaches to church architecture and interiors might, in their own way, be contributing to (or at least not resisting) the steady advance of the immanent frame into religious space. (Of course, some would argue - not least Charles Taylor - that it is already quite present.) What might it mean for churches to attend to their art and architecture such that it reflects a distinctly Christian vision of reality? How can the way churches look and feel contribute to forming human imagination ordered to the new heavens and new earth? These are questions I feel are worth asking.

Another point of reflection that I would like to sit with for a bit is the subversive act of history in an age of cultural amnesia. As Trueman points out multiple times in the book, ours is a society of amnesiacs. In one particularly clear example, the cohesion of the LGBTQ+ community depends on a certain level of amnesia regarding the historical and philosophical tensions within and between each letter of the acronym. Even the alliance of the L and the G, as Trueman notes, is not obvious from a historical standpoint. From a traditional feminist perspective, the G represents the pervasive and pernicious nature of male hegemony, and the T represents the upsetting possibility of men usurping even the female experience. The current alliance represents philosophical opposition (i.e. toward heteronormativity), not cohesion per se. The best way to grasp this is to do what Trueman has done: take a look at the origins and history of these movements and their eventual coalescence and ask how and why. Clearly, this requires the decisive rejection of cultural amnesia and its tacit approval of what C. S. Lewis termed "chronological snobbery." To study history in order to understand the present is fundamentally to believe that the past has something to teach us. We have not arrived at the zenith of human wisdom, but have much to learn from our forebears. Such an approach to the present would yield fruit in areas beyond sexual ethics; as lawyers and doctors surely know, as important as it is to be up-to-date on current practice/jurisprudence, it is also important to be familiar with the development of those practices and the implications of an obscure legal ruling from 1834. In an age that prides itself on forgetting its past, wisely navigating the present means apprenticing ourselves to those who came before. 

Finally, a related, but more general point: the work of history affords us a great deal of strategic initiative for being Christian in our age. As Trueman's book demonstrates, the questions that Christians are asking (and being asked) today are very different from the ones our parents or grandparents would have been asking. But that doesn't mean that the world of our parents and grandparents has ceased to be relevant. Rather, understanding their world gives us greater insight into why ours is the way it is. The new questions being asked have not come from nowhere. They've arisen in a context generated by previous questions and the answers that were given. If we seek not only to be disciples but to make them, we do well to be attuned to this reality; we will have a clearer sense of our own tasks and responsibilities in the world in which we actually live. We will find ourselves increasing in cultural agility, so to speak, and growing in competency as Christian speakers (as well as hearers and doers). 

God loves the world. He made it, and he preserves it. In his eternity he is present to every moment of history and as such, no moment is absent of divine presence and action. Holy Scripture provides ample evidence of this. If God so concerns himself with the minutiae of history, may we who are created in his image not find benefit there? Might there be wisdom for our day in the well-worn paths of history?