TRUEMAN, THE RISE AND TRIUMPH of the MODERN SELF – A CRITIQUE
Modern life is complex. Reading and thinking across multiple disciplines and painting a broader picture of precisely what is unfolding in our world is a rare gift. THE RISE AND TRIUMPH of the MODERN SELF is an attempt at such. Working backward from the phenomenon of how the statement: 'I am a woman trapped in a man's body' makes sense to 21st Century hearers, Carl Trueman tracks the philosophical, sociological, psychological, ethical, cultural, artistic, literary, and historical shifts that underwrite such a statement as plausible.
In sum, here is his picture. Assumed, rather than argued, coming out of the Reformation, Western civilisation respects God as the author of truth, and humans are situated relative to him. Against this backdrop, the French Enlightenment thinker Rousseau reframes 'self'. The individual is born free, but enslaved by culture. The answer is to turn inwards, trust and express oneself to find happiness. Marx demonstrates all history is the history of oppression. Nietzsche agrees, but moves the focus of oppression from economic to the maintenance of power.
Following Freud, the self that is being oppressed becomes understood primarily to be a sexual self. Identity is now psychological and sexual. The 'New Left' combines these elements to create a new picture of reality: individuals will find happiness by self-expression; by contrast, the powerful will oppress, and this is now the great political battlefield; it is just to empower individuals to express their true inner sexual selves.
By the end of the book, readers begin to see these miscellaneous pieces coming together into one coherent picture. The question is: Does Trueman join the pieces appropriately to portray an accurate understanding of the present? Almost. Is his picture balanced, complete, and fair? For us, the answer is, not quite.
Defining this 'self' that rises
When does this modern 'self' begin to rise? Protagoras in the 5th Century BC proclaims "man in the measure of all things." Trueman begins his account of the 'rise' of this present incarnation of the 'modern self' with Rousseau. Why does he begin with a French 18th Century political philosopher? Why not Luther? "Here I stand, I can do no other." Or Descartes? "I think, therefore I am."
Who is this self that rises? In a book focused on the human self, Trueman fails to define what constitutes a 'self'. There are historical and occasional descriptors. What receives greater emphasis is what Trueman believes is false. The self is not merely a psychological and sexual imagining of the individual.
Foreground: the sexual revolution
Despite this being a book that tracks the emergent sexual identity, Trueman makes little reference to the creation story and humans being created in the image of God, and given a sexual role - "be fruitful and multiply." Sex is both gift and task. There is a dimension of kingdom vocation in sexual engagement.
So, are human 'selves' defined by sexuality? No. Is sexuality a dimension of their being? Yes, it is. When Trueman states: "There has been a move from understanding sex as an activity to seeing it as absolutely fundamental to identity," he could perhaps have nuanced his words to embody the Scriptural perspective more accurately.
Further, he misses some of the biblical data that gives hope to those who struggle with their sexuality. Trueman asserts that traditional Christian sexual morality calls for celibacy for all who are not married and chastity for those who are. He asserts that to abstain from sex in today's world is to sacrifice true selfhood as the world around us understands it. Yet the apostle Paul writes some 2000 years ago that it is better to marry than to burn (1 Cor 7:9).
Trueman appears to be contending that sexuality as part of identity; that sexuality pushed back to infancy; that when sexuality is denied expression it is costly – these ideas are all modern inventions that give rise to the modern sexualised self. We suggest that these may well be modern preoccupations, but perhaps they are not all new, or all wrong.
Background: The Social Sciences
Trueman's approach to history is Marxist. A Marxist reads history as fundamentally about conflict, which unfolds through a series of dialectic 'stages'. A shift from any historical stage to another occurs when one fundamental underlying factor turns.
Evidence of framing history as a 'stage' change caused by one underlying 'factor' abounds in Rise. In Taylor it is the shift from mimesis to poiesis. In Rieff it is the shift from second culture to third culture, or from culture to anticulture, or deathworks. In MacIntyre it is the shift from a theory of truth and meaning (ethics) to a theory of preference and use (emotivism).
A Marxist approach to history is appealing in that it offers a comprehensive and comprehensible view. Trueman offers his readers the same, yet in the process almost corals readers towards an unsophisticated conclusion. There was a stage where we had things 'right', and now we have them 'wrong'. To 'canonise' any point in history as having it right is perilous. All our knowledge is contextual, partial, provisional, fallible and partially flawed.
We suggest Trueman has misread sociology and the social sciences. Trueman's choice of Phillip Rieff is intriguing. Rieff is a little known Sociologist, who, by and large, declines interaction with others from within his discipline. In short, Rieff tracks the regression from 'religious man', to 'economic man', and now, 'psychological man.' This trend results in a widespread loss of shared meaning and self-absorption. Trueman adopts the Rieffian terms 'deathworks' and 'anticulture', and they function like social diagnoses of what has gone wrong with the West.
Trueman couples Rieff together with Taylor's concept of the 'social imaginary'. Rounding out his trinity, Trueman adds MacIntyre's notion of emotivism. One has the impression, reading Trueman, that there is within the social sciences a prophetic voice (even if only a voice in the wilderness) of theorists who denounce popular modern social theories as deathworks, anticulture, imagination, as merely subjective preference and feeling. That the subjective turn is a wrong turn, and inevitably leads to death and decay.
Not so. In the social sciences, the emerging consensus is that any contemporary (dare I say 'modern') social theory must account for the fact that persons, in the very act of appropriating (that is listening, reading, or understanding) information, interpret. All appropriation of the objective, is subjectively imbibed through the subjective consciousness.
Furthermore, none of these approaches inherently deny the presence of the real, or the objective, or ideal, or structure, or the text with authorial intent therein, or actual historical events. Nor does the acknowledgment of the subjective necessarily lead to post-modern relativism, or radical critical theory.
A brief thought experiment will help ground this conversation. Trueman suggests the statement 'I am a woman trapped in a man's body' is a subjective nonsense. One his grandfather, and everyone before him, might laugh at. Perhaps. But so is the statement 'There will come a time when a sequence of numbers on a computer, called a Bitcoin, will be worth tens of thousands of dollars.' People define Bitcoin as real, so they are real in their consequences. Society interacts with the symbol ₿ as if it is wealth, and even though in some sense it is nothing more than a sequence of numbers, in another sense it is real wealth.
Our point is twofold. Such arguments have a sophistication and a ring of truth to them that Trueman's use of Rieff/Taylor/MacIntyre fails to acknowledge, let alone engage with. Second, if Rise fails to engage with mainstream social science as it is, then this magnum opus is perhaps not quite the inter-disciplinary omnibus it initially appears to be.
A selective representation
We also asserted that Rise offers a selective account of matters. Consider his tenth chapter on transgenderism. The argument is clever, cogent, persuasive and, at times, insightful. Yet it has gaps, including psychological findings of people who do experience gender dysphoria. Recent neuropsychology can now demonstrate that some who have male genitalia, have brains that process in more typically female ways. The gaps include children born with both sets of genitalia, where medical specialists make decisions about gender and sex. They include the gap of working out who, and how many, are presenting as transgender.
For some persons at least, there is evidence behind their claim to feeling like they are a woman trapped in a man's body. Their claim is more than just imagination, poiesis, emotion driven preferences, and politics. Rise fails to interact with this.
Finally, we suggest Rise fails to biblically and theologically engage with current social theories. Trueman argues modern culture has got it all wrong. Is there nothing redeemable in this season? Might God use this moment to reveal "more truth yet to break forth out of His Holy Word"? We suggest there is.
We agree that God speaks ultimate and otherwise unknowable truths, revealing them to humanity. Yet following God speaking (Gen 1), his vice-regent also speaks. Adam's naming of the creatures (Gen 2.19-20) is the profoundly human work of providing meaning. It is the work of interpretation, language, naming, and stepping into human authority over.
Human words create order in other ways. The gospel comes from God, but must be announced by man (1 Cor 9:16-17). Pronouncing the law defines, even empowers sin (Gal 3:19-24; 5.21-24). Ezekiel must proclaim judgement over Israel (Ez 3:1-11; 33:1-20). Peter is called to bind things and earth and they will be bound in heaven (Matt 16.19).
At this point, such biblical themes resemble Symbolic Interactionism. There is something of critical theories, which emphasise the power of the subject to construe and construct meaning, which overlaps with Biblical themes. Are we not called to dialogue with this generation so that we might save some (1 Cor 9:22), rather than just retreat?
Other smaller issues
There are numerous "smaller" issues in Rise. According to Trueman, psychological man is a plastic person. Neuroplasticity is now an accepted biological reality. We might agree that humans cannot create themselves, but we also know the mind adapts. Rather than viewing this as sinful regression, perhaps plasticity allows humans to continue to express their God-given roles of dominion, stewardship, and charity in a changing world.
His analysis of Wordsworth, Shelley and Blake is helpful. Trueman outlines how these Romantic authors popularise and disseminate the ideas of Rousseau. Again, our rebuttal is, who is missing? Why does he fail to mention the influence of the Romantic Movement on John Wesley, and Jonathon Edwards? And what of the impact of the Great Awakening on Western culture? (Religious) affections are not all bad. On the contrary, the individualism of Luther and Descartes, and the "strangely warmed" heart of Wesley are part of the Christian tradition. Individualism and emotions are part of our story, not just the evolution of the modern secular self.
And where is the Biblical analysis? Many passages in Scripture suggest that the heart is at the centre of a person's spirituality and being. "Blessed are the pure in heart" (Matt 5.8); "the mouth speaks what the heart is full of" (Matt 12.34); "you have come to obey from your heart" (Rom 6:17); "I will put my law in their hearts" (Heb 10:16). Absent is any engagement with the Biblical theme of spirituality as the individual expressing their heart.
A contradictory assumption?
Pulling these pieces together, one might ask if the thesis and conclusion of Trueman is not partially contradictory. Trueman tracks the shift away from a 16th Century corporate trust in a rational God who speaks through his word, to a 21st Century individual who trusts their emotional intuitions. But Trueman is himself a child of the Enlightenment he critiques. Following Descartes, he seeks to claim certainty, founded on God, rationality, and the objectivity of his created knowable order. Yet for Descartes, certainty is located in the mind of an individual. Trueman strives to re-establish our capacity to know truth with certainty, takes for granted that it is knowable by an individual, and then rules out individual emotion and intuition as a way of knowing. Apparently I can trust my thoughts when I am interpreting the bible, but not my intuition when I am interpreting my self.
Conclusion
Trueman's conclusions create a conundrum. Has Western culture regressed from having it right, through deathworks, anticulture, the social imaginary, and emotivism, and she now has it wrong? Do "we currently face an indefinite future of flux, instability, and incoherence", as Trueman suggests?
Deist (but not Christian) historian, Tom Holland thinks not. At the conclusion of his omnibus Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, he concludes that "The West… had become skilled in repackaging Christian concepts for non-Christian audiences." Holland acknowledges that in terms of allegiance, the West is post-Christian. But in terms of underlying conceptual frameworks, the West has a modified repackaged but still identifiably Christian fabric.
We started the book with great expectations. Parts of it are excellent. The basic thesis of Rousseau to Marx to Nietzsche to Freud to New Left is an incisive distillation. In the end, though, we concluded that it is an exceptionally well-written modernist construct with a vision of the future found more in the past, and not so much in Jesus and his constantly breaking in kingdom.
David and John Rietveld
© David Rietveld 2021