"The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self" 1.1

The first in an occasional series. These comments will be limited to the Introduction and Chapter 1 (Reimagining the Self) of Carl Trueman's latest book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Crossway 2020).

Weighing in at 407 pages of measured prose with scores of footnotes, Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self initially strikes the reader as a work of original scholarship. It is not. Rather, it is a skillful reworking and application of the earlier works of three recent scholars: Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Philip Rieff. 

Not without good reason, Trueman chooses the sexual revolution as the epitome of a 300-year progression on the road to the hallmark of our current age of expressive individualism, that is, a way of living where "each of us finds our meaning by giving expression to our own feelings and desires." (46) The indefectibility of one's chosen--not given--identity. Or, as Trueman puts it a few pages earlier echoing Plato, the triumph of poiesis over mimesis: the creation of the self out of the raw materials at hand instead of conforming oneself to the given order of the world. We--and by "we" Trueman means both contemporary Progressives and most conservatives--"are characterized not so much by finding identity in outward directed activities ... but rather in the inward quest for personal psychological happiness." (45)

I have made fruitful use of Taylor and MacIntyre in this blog and in my legal scholarship. From Taylor, Trueman draws from the concept of social imaginary ("the way people think about the world, how they imagine it to be, [and] how they act intuitively in relation to it."). Rieff, in turn, provides insight into what makes contemporary Westerns tick, the turn to the psychological. What increasingly characterizes most Americans is "the inward quest for personal psychological happiness." MacIntyre does not feature in Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self until Chapter 2.

Trueman also explains why this inward psychologizing turn has outward social and political ramifications. The liberal test of a legal wrong, John Stuart Mills's harm principle, is psychologized. In other words, individuals are as equally harmed when their identities are subject to critical judgment as when their bodies are injured. Thus,

The intuitive moral structure of our modern social imaginary prioritizes victimhood, sees selfhood in psychological terms, regards traditional sexual codes as oppressive and life denying, and places a premium on the individual's right to define his or her own existence. (63)

Hence, safe spaces and pronoun policing.

Trueman affirms that the turn to expressive individualism is not a simplistic question of worldview. The contemporary social imaginary cannot be reduced to "a set of identifiable ideas." (37) Ideas are a part of the picture but do not function as arbiters of truth or guideposts to life for most people most of the time. Phenomena including technology and the increasing penetration of the market economy are more important than ideas. It is the forms of living that make previously incomprehensible ideas ("a girl trapped in a boy's body") plausible. As I suggested some years ago here, a social imaginary like expressive individualism need not be taught to be caught. 

In conclusion, Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is off to a solid start.