What do you think?
Rate this book
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution
Modern culture is obsessed with identity.
Since the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision in 2015, sexual identity has dominated both public discourse and cultural trends--and yet, no historical phenomenon is its own cause. From Augustine to Marx, various views and perspectives have contributed to the modern understanding of self. In The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Carl Trueman carefully analyzes the roots and development of the sexual revolution as a symptom, rather than the cause, of the human search for identity. This timely exploration of the history of thought behind the sexual revolution teaches readers about the past, brings clarity to the present, and gives guidance for the future as Christians navigate the culture's ever-changing search for identity.
Since the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision in 2015, sexual identity has dominated both public discourse and cultural trends--and yet, no historical phenomenon is its own cause. From Augustine to Marx, various views and perspectives have contributed to the modern understanding of self. In The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Carl Trueman carefully analyzes the roots and development of the sexual revolution as a symptom, rather than the cause, of the human search for identity. This timely exploration of the history of thought behind the sexual revolution teaches readers about the past, brings clarity to the present, and gives guidance for the future as Christians navigate the culture's ever-changing search for identity.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2020
About the author
Carl R. Trueman
80 books430 followersCarl R. Trueman (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is the Paul Woolley Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary and pastor of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Ambler, Pennsylvania. He was editor of Themelios for nine years, has authored or edited more than a dozen books, and has contributed to multiple publications including the Dictionary of Historical Theology and The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,018 reviews
April 22, 2024
Ben Shapiro: "This is the most important book of our moment." In March 2022, Crossway published "a more accessible, much shorter version" titled Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution (see here and here).
Charles Taylor's A Secular Age asks how we got to a place where atheism is not only an option, but often the privileged option. Trueman asks a similar question: How did we get to a place where someone can say "I'm a woman trapped in a man’s body" and no one spits out his coffee? (I use this language in this book review.) The nutshell version is that the self got psychologized, then the psyche got sexualized, then sexuality got politicized.
See Trueman's related article at TGC here. I can only imagine that his concluding words in his essay in Our Secular Age form something of a segue to this book: "The psychological self is the latest stage, allowing us to claim that we are who we think we are and to repudiate all forms of external authority—even that of our own bodies. The story [Charles] Taylor tells in A Secular Age is not yet over, and the next phase is likely to be most traumatic. Human nature isn't a psychological or even merely a social construct. And our constant efforts to deny that truth can only end in disaster."
Trueman gives several related lectures at GCC: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Trueman provides a lengthy report on "expressive individualism" here.
Podcast clip here. Crossway article here. Podcast interview here. Video clips here, here, and here. More here.
Read Challies's review here. TGC review here. See another review here. CT review here. Modern Reformation review here (correction: "expressive individualism" comes from Taylor's work, not Rieff's). Brief WORLD review here, and a favorable Wilson review here.
Reformed Forum interview here. Dreher interviews Trueman here.
Al Mohler interviews Trueman (video) here. Paul Helm reviews it here (needs some proofreading). Podcast interview here. KSP interviews CRT here.
Colson Center interviews here and here. Positive interactions with some Catholics. Review at the Christian Scholar's Review blog.
After some summary, this review mentions some perceived flaws: ambiguous historical causation, some historical inaccuracies/misrepresentations (few secondary sources), lack of clear criteria for both modernity's founders and the issues addressed (e.g., sexual assault is barely mentioned), and little pastoral help for counseling. It's funny that the end of the review has a link to an interview with Trueman (by the people who published the review), and the review is entirely positive (every pastor should read this twice!). Two chapters in and you can already see a response to the first criticism, and I don't buy the final criticism (re: pastoral usefulness).
Charles Taylor's A Secular Age asks how we got to a place where atheism is not only an option, but often the privileged option. Trueman asks a similar question: How did we get to a place where someone can say "I'm a woman trapped in a man’s body" and no one spits out his coffee? (I use this language in this book review.) The nutshell version is that the self got psychologized, then the psyche got sexualized, then sexuality got politicized.
See Trueman's related article at TGC here. I can only imagine that his concluding words in his essay in Our Secular Age form something of a segue to this book: "The psychological self is the latest stage, allowing us to claim that we are who we think we are and to repudiate all forms of external authority—even that of our own bodies. The story [Charles] Taylor tells in A Secular Age is not yet over, and the next phase is likely to be most traumatic. Human nature isn't a psychological or even merely a social construct. And our constant efforts to deny that truth can only end in disaster."
Trueman gives several related lectures at GCC: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Trueman provides a lengthy report on "expressive individualism" here.
Podcast clip here. Crossway article here. Podcast interview here. Video clips here, here, and here. More here.
Read Challies's review here. TGC review here. See another review here. CT review here. Modern Reformation review here (correction: "expressive individualism" comes from Taylor's work, not Rieff's). Brief WORLD review here, and a favorable Wilson review here.
Reformed Forum interview here. Dreher interviews Trueman here.
Al Mohler interviews Trueman (video) here. Paul Helm reviews it here (needs some proofreading). Podcast interview here. KSP interviews CRT here.
Colson Center interviews here and here. Positive interactions with some Catholics. Review at the Christian Scholar's Review blog.
After some summary, this review mentions some perceived flaws: ambiguous historical causation, some historical inaccuracies/misrepresentations (few secondary sources), lack of clear criteria for both modernity's founders and the issues addressed (e.g., sexual assault is barely mentioned), and little pastoral help for counseling. It's funny that the end of the review has a link to an interview with Trueman (by the people who published the review), and the review is entirely positive (every pastor should read this twice!). Two chapters in and you can already see a response to the first criticism, and I don't buy the final criticism (re: pastoral usefulness).
December 22, 2020
This book is a restatement of the ideas of Philip Rieff, Alasdair McIntyre and Charles Taylor in a condensed form and with an undercurrent of Orthodox Christian commentary. Trueman ranges very broadly in his citations, all the way from St. Augustine to Rousseau, Nietzsche to Judith Butler. The book as a whole ties together relatively well, though the sheer breadth of analysis is somewhat difficult to pack into four hundred pages. The following is a brief synopsis of Trueman's arguments. My intention is not to pass judgement, but to portray his case as faithfully as possible.
The crux of Trueman's thesis is that the modern conception of identity is built on a highly psychologized view of human selfhood. This conception has been around three hundred years in the making and gradually replaced an older order built on human beings who defined themselves against an external reality. That reality was centered on God, nature and a community of other people who shared the same basic assumptions about this external reality. This was inevitably a world of duties and sacrifices towards others, God and to future generations not yet born. Through the influence of the Romantic thinkers, that idea gradually began to be replaced by the ideal of the expressive individual focused on the goal of inward psychological happiness. Not only did the concept of the noble savage even start to be conceivable, it was implied that this noble savage lived inside of all of us. We had simply been alienated from her by an artificial and false social order. The goal of an individual therefore is to journey within and discover their true Self, which then receives its satisfaction in expression outwardly which is recognized and validated by others.
The most powerful experience of this psychologized Self is (potentially at least) the experience of sexuality. By extension, the discovery of ones true Self will lead to the conclusion that ones sexuality defines who one is and is in fact at the core of their identity. This conclusion may seem elementary to many people in modern Western societies today. But it was not seen as such historically and still is felt as alien in traditional societies, including the Islamicate. The idea that sexuality forms the homunculus Self displaces the older Western idea that had been centered around the soul in relationship to the divine. In that older view, sexuality was an activity rather than an identity. It was based on something like Natural Law Theory, in which things were rightly ordered in a teleology leading to certain outcomes rather than being based on inward human preference or desire. Drawing from Macintyre, the present redefinition of identity makes conversations across different moral universes acrimonious and even impossible. In tracing how deeply rooted these changes have been, literally hundreds of years in the making, Trueman makes a compelling case for why these transformations of Self have been so incredibly powerful and are likely to continue gaining momentum in the West well into the future.
In his work on the so-called therapeutic society, Philip Rieff identified several different cultural worlds that a society could inhabit. In his view, a stable cultural order is always built with reference to some transcendent moral schema towards which it defines itself. In what he calls "second world" cultures this means what we would refer to as a religious order. The modern West is a "third world" (not in the political/developmental sense) culture, in that it justifies itself only with reference to itself. As such it is profoundly unstable, subject to rapid shifts in ultimate meanings. This disorientation is compounded at present by the economic and technological context of liquid modernity. As Trueman argues, we now have plastic people, those whose inner selves and identities are believed to be highly malleable, living in a liquid social order. Accordingly we can expect rapid and deeply-felt changes in cultural life to occur over an indefinite period of time.
Third and second worlds can exist in different proportion at the same time, and indeed they do today. But they are likely to remain in mortal conflict with one another. This brings us to a highly important concept that Trueman draws from Rieff which is that of the "deathworks," a reference to forms of cultural creation intentionally brought forth in order to destroy second world cultures. These would refer for instance to blasphemous art installations about Jesus Christ for Christians or derogatory caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed ﷺ for Muslims. The intention of such works, sometimes unconsciously, is to attack and ultimately destroy the second world of which these figures are intended to be lodestars. "Deathworks make the old values look ridiculous," Trueman writes. "They represent not so much arguments against the old order as subversions of it." This would explain why the reaction to such works is viewed as so deadly serious by inhabitants of second world cultures, whereas the average bemused third world observer assumes their triviality.
In a world in which moral attitudes are unanchored to any transcendent order and evolve only with reference to the existing society itself, morality becomes a matter of taste and emotive response. Accordingly, aesthetics become a strong driver of what people consider moral or not. Nietzsche himself was a supporter of such an aesthetic morality and seemed to predict a world in which such a thing comes to pass. Today, most people's morality is formed not by any solid bedrock of ideas but from cultural productions that go into forming the unconscious "social imaginary" through which they navigate the world. This could be a product of powerfully aesthetic movies, television shows, advertisements or simply images that portray an emotionally resonant image of the world they would like to inhabit. In such a world, philosophical contestation and ultimate ideas have been rendered superfluous: mass culture, particularly visual culture, is king. It is also a world in which deathworks become particularly powerful because the stakes of cultural production of popular imagery is higher than seems apparent. Trueman argues that hardcore pornography is itself an ongoing deathwork since it undermines the old conception of sexuality and the universe of human attitude and behavior that had been built around it. One way or another it trivializes a thing that had once been loaded with metaphysical meaning.
If there is a religion of modernity, then, it is one that had its seed in Rousseau's noble savage and then blossomed through a Marxian-Freudian marriage into the still-evolving creature that we see today. Freud sexualized all areas of life and Marx politicized all areas, albeit in a particular way. The old Marxist analysis about economic class struggle is now mainly about overcoming psychological oppression, using assumptions drawn from Freud and casting a glamorous moral light on the concept of victimhood. Rousseau meanwhile helped inculcate the idea of youthful knowledge and wisdom uncorrupted by societal interference that many assume as natural today. Putting all this together results in a powerful explanation for how modern Westerners have come to see themselves. Key to all of it is the idea of emotive feeling and self-discovery. The psychological feeling of inward wellness is intended as the goal of all individual striving. Total warfare against any perceived psychological repression is an imperative, and politics is increasingly organized with this goal in mind. Identity is not and cannot be private, because a critical part of the goal of the Self is receiving the validation of others.
Trueman quotes Pope Benedict to suggest that "Western culture has unraveled," as a result of this three-hundred year process of philosophical change aided by technology. This claim is challenging in my view, because the present culture birthed by Marx, Freud and Rousseau is itself uniquely and deeply Western. The culture has unraveled in the sense that it has been unchained from its old sun of the Christian God, but it continues to be the unique culture of the West and perhaps even fulfills a logical teleology that we could have foreseen seen long ago. It would be more accurate to say that the third world culture of Western Christendom has unraveled, though Christians themselves will continue to exist in a marginal sense. As Trueman argues, their role will be similar to what it was in second century Rome where they were a tightly knit, oppressed group in underground conflict with the state. Christians indeed have the theological and historical resources to draw on for such a role.
This book was useful in part because it makes accessible the notoriously opaque writing of Rieff, who accurately described the fact that we, all of us, live in a therapeutic society where experiences are primarily viewed and valued in terms of psychological categories. It is difficult to chart the future trajectory of such a world unmoored by any connection to transcendent order. All that can be said is that there will be many changes in Western culture ahead, and whatever permutations that culture takes are likely to be held onto with the same emotional intensity as the old Christian religion.
The crux of Trueman's thesis is that the modern conception of identity is built on a highly psychologized view of human selfhood. This conception has been around three hundred years in the making and gradually replaced an older order built on human beings who defined themselves against an external reality. That reality was centered on God, nature and a community of other people who shared the same basic assumptions about this external reality. This was inevitably a world of duties and sacrifices towards others, God and to future generations not yet born. Through the influence of the Romantic thinkers, that idea gradually began to be replaced by the ideal of the expressive individual focused on the goal of inward psychological happiness. Not only did the concept of the noble savage even start to be conceivable, it was implied that this noble savage lived inside of all of us. We had simply been alienated from her by an artificial and false social order. The goal of an individual therefore is to journey within and discover their true Self, which then receives its satisfaction in expression outwardly which is recognized and validated by others.
The most powerful experience of this psychologized Self is (potentially at least) the experience of sexuality. By extension, the discovery of ones true Self will lead to the conclusion that ones sexuality defines who one is and is in fact at the core of their identity. This conclusion may seem elementary to many people in modern Western societies today. But it was not seen as such historically and still is felt as alien in traditional societies, including the Islamicate. The idea that sexuality forms the homunculus Self displaces the older Western idea that had been centered around the soul in relationship to the divine. In that older view, sexuality was an activity rather than an identity. It was based on something like Natural Law Theory, in which things were rightly ordered in a teleology leading to certain outcomes rather than being based on inward human preference or desire. Drawing from Macintyre, the present redefinition of identity makes conversations across different moral universes acrimonious and even impossible. In tracing how deeply rooted these changes have been, literally hundreds of years in the making, Trueman makes a compelling case for why these transformations of Self have been so incredibly powerful and are likely to continue gaining momentum in the West well into the future.
In his work on the so-called therapeutic society, Philip Rieff identified several different cultural worlds that a society could inhabit. In his view, a stable cultural order is always built with reference to some transcendent moral schema towards which it defines itself. In what he calls "second world" cultures this means what we would refer to as a religious order. The modern West is a "third world" (not in the political/developmental sense) culture, in that it justifies itself only with reference to itself. As such it is profoundly unstable, subject to rapid shifts in ultimate meanings. This disorientation is compounded at present by the economic and technological context of liquid modernity. As Trueman argues, we now have plastic people, those whose inner selves and identities are believed to be highly malleable, living in a liquid social order. Accordingly we can expect rapid and deeply-felt changes in cultural life to occur over an indefinite period of time.
Third and second worlds can exist in different proportion at the same time, and indeed they do today. But they are likely to remain in mortal conflict with one another. This brings us to a highly important concept that Trueman draws from Rieff which is that of the "deathworks," a reference to forms of cultural creation intentionally brought forth in order to destroy second world cultures. These would refer for instance to blasphemous art installations about Jesus Christ for Christians or derogatory caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed ﷺ for Muslims. The intention of such works, sometimes unconsciously, is to attack and ultimately destroy the second world of which these figures are intended to be lodestars. "Deathworks make the old values look ridiculous," Trueman writes. "They represent not so much arguments against the old order as subversions of it." This would explain why the reaction to such works is viewed as so deadly serious by inhabitants of second world cultures, whereas the average bemused third world observer assumes their triviality.
In a world in which moral attitudes are unanchored to any transcendent order and evolve only with reference to the existing society itself, morality becomes a matter of taste and emotive response. Accordingly, aesthetics become a strong driver of what people consider moral or not. Nietzsche himself was a supporter of such an aesthetic morality and seemed to predict a world in which such a thing comes to pass. Today, most people's morality is formed not by any solid bedrock of ideas but from cultural productions that go into forming the unconscious "social imaginary" through which they navigate the world. This could be a product of powerfully aesthetic movies, television shows, advertisements or simply images that portray an emotionally resonant image of the world they would like to inhabit. In such a world, philosophical contestation and ultimate ideas have been rendered superfluous: mass culture, particularly visual culture, is king. It is also a world in which deathworks become particularly powerful because the stakes of cultural production of popular imagery is higher than seems apparent. Trueman argues that hardcore pornography is itself an ongoing deathwork since it undermines the old conception of sexuality and the universe of human attitude and behavior that had been built around it. One way or another it trivializes a thing that had once been loaded with metaphysical meaning.
If there is a religion of modernity, then, it is one that had its seed in Rousseau's noble savage and then blossomed through a Marxian-Freudian marriage into the still-evolving creature that we see today. Freud sexualized all areas of life and Marx politicized all areas, albeit in a particular way. The old Marxist analysis about economic class struggle is now mainly about overcoming psychological oppression, using assumptions drawn from Freud and casting a glamorous moral light on the concept of victimhood. Rousseau meanwhile helped inculcate the idea of youthful knowledge and wisdom uncorrupted by societal interference that many assume as natural today. Putting all this together results in a powerful explanation for how modern Westerners have come to see themselves. Key to all of it is the idea of emotive feeling and self-discovery. The psychological feeling of inward wellness is intended as the goal of all individual striving. Total warfare against any perceived psychological repression is an imperative, and politics is increasingly organized with this goal in mind. Identity is not and cannot be private, because a critical part of the goal of the Self is receiving the validation of others.
Trueman quotes Pope Benedict to suggest that "Western culture has unraveled," as a result of this three-hundred year process of philosophical change aided by technology. This claim is challenging in my view, because the present culture birthed by Marx, Freud and Rousseau is itself uniquely and deeply Western. The culture has unraveled in the sense that it has been unchained from its old sun of the Christian God, but it continues to be the unique culture of the West and perhaps even fulfills a logical teleology that we could have foreseen seen long ago. It would be more accurate to say that the third world culture of Western Christendom has unraveled, though Christians themselves will continue to exist in a marginal sense. As Trueman argues, their role will be similar to what it was in second century Rome where they were a tightly knit, oppressed group in underground conflict with the state. Christians indeed have the theological and historical resources to draw on for such a role.
This book was useful in part because it makes accessible the notoriously opaque writing of Rieff, who accurately described the fact that we, all of us, live in a therapeutic society where experiences are primarily viewed and valued in terms of psychological categories. It is difficult to chart the future trajectory of such a world unmoored by any connection to transcendent order. All that can be said is that there will be many changes in Western culture ahead, and whatever permutations that culture takes are likely to be held onto with the same emotional intensity as the old Christian religion.
November 20, 2022
In some ways this book was so affirming—“maybe I am not crazy” kind of affirmation. In some ways it was deeply, dreadfully depressing.
In the end I liked his no nonsense approach to where we go from here. I always want to hear the bad news first. For the Good news your going to need a Bible and some faith, a lot less faith in men and a lot more faith in God.
In the end I liked his no nonsense approach to where we go from here. I always want to hear the bad news first. For the Good news your going to need a Bible and some faith, a lot less faith in men and a lot more faith in God.
June 17, 2021
I'm hoping to publish a more extensive review of this excellent—though long and at times tedious—book. I'll say here: Trueman asks an intriguing question that builds a narrative expectation and structure into his book: *How is it that average people in the West don't see "I'm a woman trapped in a man's body" as a self-evident absurdity?*
Trueman sets out to answer this question by following the work of Rieff, MacIntyre, and Taylor—but adding a lot of studious book reports of his own as he guides the (evangelical) reader through Western intellectual history.
I think Trueman delivered. He helped me see how we got here. Evil ideas don't come from nowhere, or even just "from Satan." They trace a path; they get introduced; they slowly gain traction after at first seeming ridiculous.
I'm not realistically going to sit down and read all the books Trueman read in order to build his narrative of intellectual history (Freud, Marcuse, Marx, Wordsworth, Rousseau, etc.). I feel, because I've followed Trueman for many years, and because he showed so much of his work, that he did all that reading work carefully, charitably, and incisively. I do better understand my world thanks to Trueman.
And I have a keener sense of how many desperate human needs are met by the simplest doctrines of Scripture. The doctrine of creation tells me that my body has a purpose—leading among them, faithfulness to my spouse. The doctrine of the fall explains why my desires don't always match the purposes for which my body was made. The doctrine of redemption tells me that Christ died for my sexual sins (Matt 5:27–30) and provides healing and power. I'm not at the mercy of my desires; I don't have to "find out who I truly am and be that person" without reference to any transcendent guidance for who that person is and ought to be. I'm not stuck in any of the social imaginaries that are beholden to an immanent frame.
Trueman sets out to answer this question by following the work of Rieff, MacIntyre, and Taylor—but adding a lot of studious book reports of his own as he guides the (evangelical) reader through Western intellectual history.
I think Trueman delivered. He helped me see how we got here. Evil ideas don't come from nowhere, or even just "from Satan." They trace a path; they get introduced; they slowly gain traction after at first seeming ridiculous.
I'm not realistically going to sit down and read all the books Trueman read in order to build his narrative of intellectual history (Freud, Marcuse, Marx, Wordsworth, Rousseau, etc.). I feel, because I've followed Trueman for many years, and because he showed so much of his work, that he did all that reading work carefully, charitably, and incisively. I do better understand my world thanks to Trueman.
And I have a keener sense of how many desperate human needs are met by the simplest doctrines of Scripture. The doctrine of creation tells me that my body has a purpose—leading among them, faithfulness to my spouse. The doctrine of the fall explains why my desires don't always match the purposes for which my body was made. The doctrine of redemption tells me that Christ died for my sexual sins (Matt 5:27–30) and provides healing and power. I'm not at the mercy of my desires; I don't have to "find out who I truly am and be that person" without reference to any transcendent guidance for who that person is and ought to be. I'm not stuck in any of the social imaginaries that are beholden to an immanent frame.
November 28, 2020
If I could rate this piece of homophobic garbage lower than 1 star and still affect the rating, I would.
Be warned: the blurb both here and on Amazon is 100% misleading. This is a fundamentalist conservative polemic very very thinly disguised as cultural history. Trueman recycles every anti-LGBTQ (along with a few racist and sexist classics just for good measure) straw man argument of the past forty years: gay men are pedophiles; legalization of gay marriage will lead to the legalization of incest (and pedophilia); women are too emotional to be trusted with decisions about their own bodies; black people don't know their own best interests.
This is poorly written, ahistorical nonsense. Avoid.
Edit: And just to short-cut questions.
Yes, I have read the book. How else would I know the blurb was wrong?
No, I will not give you page references for X because I've known you for two seconds, enjoyed none of them, and I won't take homework from you.
Be warned: the blurb both here and on Amazon is 100% misleading. This is a fundamentalist conservative polemic very very thinly disguised as cultural history. Trueman recycles every anti-LGBTQ (along with a few racist and sexist classics just for good measure) straw man argument of the past forty years: gay men are pedophiles; legalization of gay marriage will lead to the legalization of incest (and pedophilia); women are too emotional to be trusted with decisions about their own bodies; black people don't know their own best interests.
This is poorly written, ahistorical nonsense. Avoid.
Edit: And just to short-cut questions.
Yes, I have read the book. How else would I know the blurb was wrong?
No, I will not give you page references for X because I've known you for two seconds, enjoyed none of them, and I won't take homework from you.
Read
September 19, 2020I read this title to support my wife, who was assigned the title for a professional review.
This is a harmful anti-gay and anti-trans work.
The author is an Orthodox Presbyterian minister and professor at Grove City College. He believes that non-normative gender, sex, and sexuality are symptoms of cultural pathologies that are destroying Western civilization because they are contrary to what the author sees as God's plan. It's unclear how queer genders and sexualities are so powerful a destructive force, apart from being evidence that people have different values and make different life choices from the author himself. But the fact that we exist, and have such autonomy, is deeply upsetting to him.
As a professor of theology, Carl Trueman is in a position to do harm not only with his writing but in his classroom. If you are a queer person who has been told that your queerness is incompatible with your Christian faith (or with a healthy society) please know this is not true. Two resources that would be a good starting point for thinking about the integration of faith and queer sexuality are: http://queerituality.com/ & https://www.queertheology.com/. You are enough.
If you care for receipts, here are few illustrative examples from the text itself:
"Acceptance of gay marriage and transgenderism are simply the latest outworking, the most recent symptoms, of deep and long-established cultural pathologies." (26)
"Now, while we might hope and pray that things such as pedophilia and incest remain taboo, we cannot be sure that such will be the case because sexual codes have changed so dramatically over the last few decades." (53)
"The civil rights movement of the 1950s and the sexual identity rights movement of the present day, in fact, rest on different, even antithetical, premises, the former grounded in a notion of dignity based on a universal human nature, the latter on the sovereign right of individual self-determination." (70)
[TW misgendering] "Nevertheless, between Rousseau and our day, there has clearly been a significant change, as witnessed by the rampant ethical subjectivism of our modern culture of anarchic emotive morality and expressive individualism. There is now no consensus about what it is that should evoke our empathy and sympathy: the baby in the womb or the pregnant teenager whose life will be utterly disrupted by having a child? The transgender teen who wants to become a woman or his parents who fear he is making a terrible mistake?" (121)
"We have in recent years been treated to children and teenagers lecturing the older generation on everything from healthcare to the environment to matters such as Brexit and Donald Trump" (126)
"LGBTQ+ radicals committed to the overthrow of civilization." (388)
"To use the body sexually in ways inconsistent with its purpose and to engage in sexual activity that does not reflect the biblical purpose of sex is wrong and to be clearly confronted as such by the church in her teaching and in her application of that teaching. But the LGBTQ+ discussion is much deeper than that because it connects to matters of identity, of who we think we are at the most basic level. And the problem is that expressive individualism, manifested as sexual identity, is the way the world shapes us all." (389)
This is a harmful anti-gay and anti-trans work.
The author is an Orthodox Presbyterian minister and professor at Grove City College. He believes that non-normative gender, sex, and sexuality are symptoms of cultural pathologies that are destroying Western civilization because they are contrary to what the author sees as God's plan. It's unclear how queer genders and sexualities are so powerful a destructive force, apart from being evidence that people have different values and make different life choices from the author himself. But the fact that we exist, and have such autonomy, is deeply upsetting to him.
As a professor of theology, Carl Trueman is in a position to do harm not only with his writing but in his classroom. If you are a queer person who has been told that your queerness is incompatible with your Christian faith (or with a healthy society) please know this is not true. Two resources that would be a good starting point for thinking about the integration of faith and queer sexuality are: http://queerituality.com/ & https://www.queertheology.com/. You are enough.
If you care for receipts, here are few illustrative examples from the text itself:
"Acceptance of gay marriage and transgenderism are simply the latest outworking, the most recent symptoms, of deep and long-established cultural pathologies." (26)
"Now, while we might hope and pray that things such as pedophilia and incest remain taboo, we cannot be sure that such will be the case because sexual codes have changed so dramatically over the last few decades." (53)
"The civil rights movement of the 1950s and the sexual identity rights movement of the present day, in fact, rest on different, even antithetical, premises, the former grounded in a notion of dignity based on a universal human nature, the latter on the sovereign right of individual self-determination." (70)
[TW misgendering] "Nevertheless, between Rousseau and our day, there has clearly been a significant change, as witnessed by the rampant ethical subjectivism of our modern culture of anarchic emotive morality and expressive individualism. There is now no consensus about what it is that should evoke our empathy and sympathy: the baby in the womb or the pregnant teenager whose life will be utterly disrupted by having a child? The transgender teen who wants to become a woman or his parents who fear he is making a terrible mistake?" (121)
"We have in recent years been treated to children and teenagers lecturing the older generation on everything from healthcare to the environment to matters such as Brexit and Donald Trump" (126)
"LGBTQ+ radicals committed to the overthrow of civilization." (388)
"To use the body sexually in ways inconsistent with its purpose and to engage in sexual activity that does not reflect the biblical purpose of sex is wrong and to be clearly confronted as such by the church in her teaching and in her application of that teaching. But the LGBTQ+ discussion is much deeper than that because it connects to matters of identity, of who we think we are at the most basic level. And the problem is that expressive individualism, manifested as sexual identity, is the way the world shapes us all." (389)
July 15, 2022
The sexual revolution of the 60’s fundamentally changed the cultural landscape in North America. Yet, percolating beneath the surface was an even more diabolical worldview; a worldview that many are unfamiliar with. Even those who have engaged with the history of Western civilization may be jolted when the implications become clear.
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl R. Trueman pulls back the veil and alerts us to the underlying ideologies that have catapulted our current views about self and sexuality in the Western world. Trueman shows readers in a precise and shocking way how men have forgotten God and presents reasons for their tragic decision.
The driving argument of Trueman’s work is this: “The issues we face today in terms of sexual politics are a symptom or manifestation of the deeper revolution in selfhood that the rise and triumph of expressive individualism represents.” The emphasis we find in Trueman bears some similarity to John Piper’s recent contention that “the essence of sin is minimizing God and making much of self.”1
Several negative reviews have been submitted that are not sympathetic to Trueman’s work. What these reviews fail to understand is that The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is neither a lament nor a polemic. It is in the words of Trueman, “an attempt to explain how the revolution of the self came to take the form it has in the West and why that is so culturally significant.” The goal of the author is achieved and is undergirded by meticulous research from multiple angles - theological, sociological, psychological, and beyond.
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self should be celebrated for its candor and penetrating analysis of the human condition. It sufficiently lays the groundwork for more study and deeper discussions in the coming days.
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl R. Trueman pulls back the veil and alerts us to the underlying ideologies that have catapulted our current views about self and sexuality in the Western world. Trueman shows readers in a precise and shocking way how men have forgotten God and presents reasons for their tragic decision.
The driving argument of Trueman’s work is this: “The issues we face today in terms of sexual politics are a symptom or manifestation of the deeper revolution in selfhood that the rise and triumph of expressive individualism represents.” The emphasis we find in Trueman bears some similarity to John Piper’s recent contention that “the essence of sin is minimizing God and making much of self.”1
Several negative reviews have been submitted that are not sympathetic to Trueman’s work. What these reviews fail to understand is that The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is neither a lament nor a polemic. It is in the words of Trueman, “an attempt to explain how the revolution of the self came to take the form it has in the West and why that is so culturally significant.” The goal of the author is achieved and is undergirded by meticulous research from multiple angles - theological, sociological, psychological, and beyond.
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self should be celebrated for its candor and penetrating analysis of the human condition. It sufficiently lays the groundwork for more study and deeper discussions in the coming days.
March 24, 2021
It isn't often that I find a new book that I recommend as a must-read. This is one such book. While Trueman does not provide anything particularly original in this book, what he does is synthesize the works of a number of other authors who have addressed exactly what lies behind our current cultural moment, and presents it in a concise and readable volume. This is the best single volume available that explains how and why we are where we are as a culture today. I highly recommend this to be read by everyone.
January 13, 2023
5.0 Stars - Top Read of 2021
Carl Trueman’s "The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self" is a phenomenal work of cultural, philosophical and historical analysis. It is probably the best work of Christian cultural analysis that I have ever read so far (though… I still have plenty more to read). Trueman’s book is essentially an explanation of how modern society has come to a place where a man can say, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body.” Trueman focuses primarily on expounding the works of Philip Rieff, Charles Taylor, and Alasdair MacIntyre and their understanding of the rise of the “psychological man” and “expression individualism.” Trueman then traces the ideas of these three intellectuals through Western history, showing how the ideas of Rousseau, the Romantics, Marx, Freud, Reich, and Marcuse have psychologized our ideas of self, how our psychologized selves have become sexualized, and then how our sexualized selves have become politicalized.
I cannot stress how great work this is. As Christians we are all swimming in the modern morass of the psychological and sexualized self – this is the water we are all swimming in. Yet, as Christians, we are often shocked when the secularized society around us charges head-long into greater sexual immorality. Yet Trueman masterfully shows us that there are intellectual developments within Western culture that have laid the groundwork for such sexualized ideas of self. And these notions go far further back than the sexual revolution of the 1960s, but back to Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau, and to the Romantics like Percy Blythe Shelly and William Wordsworth. And like a master builder, Trueman walks us through history showing us how the building of modernity has been constructed, and how the furniture of the sexualize self-have been put into place.
I cannot commend this book any more highly. The only critique that I have is that many of the philosophical and historical ideas and terms can be difficult to the casual reader. But I think this book is worth the challenge. It is worth the work of thinking through these ideas because it will better equip you as a Christian to identify where these notions of the sexualized self are coming from. Even though it is brief, Trueman ends his book by stating that the historic age that this modern one is most like is the 2nd century, where Christians were a minority in a prevalently pagan world. Thus, Trueman in this book is equipping us to be the exilic church, a Christian witness that understands the times and looks forward to the hope of heaven!
Carl Trueman’s "The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self" is a phenomenal work of cultural, philosophical and historical analysis. It is probably the best work of Christian cultural analysis that I have ever read so far (though… I still have plenty more to read). Trueman’s book is essentially an explanation of how modern society has come to a place where a man can say, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body.” Trueman focuses primarily on expounding the works of Philip Rieff, Charles Taylor, and Alasdair MacIntyre and their understanding of the rise of the “psychological man” and “expression individualism.” Trueman then traces the ideas of these three intellectuals through Western history, showing how the ideas of Rousseau, the Romantics, Marx, Freud, Reich, and Marcuse have psychologized our ideas of self, how our psychologized selves have become sexualized, and then how our sexualized selves have become politicalized.
I cannot stress how great work this is. As Christians we are all swimming in the modern morass of the psychological and sexualized self – this is the water we are all swimming in. Yet, as Christians, we are often shocked when the secularized society around us charges head-long into greater sexual immorality. Yet Trueman masterfully shows us that there are intellectual developments within Western culture that have laid the groundwork for such sexualized ideas of self. And these notions go far further back than the sexual revolution of the 1960s, but back to Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau, and to the Romantics like Percy Blythe Shelly and William Wordsworth. And like a master builder, Trueman walks us through history showing us how the building of modernity has been constructed, and how the furniture of the sexualize self-have been put into place.
I cannot commend this book any more highly. The only critique that I have is that many of the philosophical and historical ideas and terms can be difficult to the casual reader. But I think this book is worth the challenge. It is worth the work of thinking through these ideas because it will better equip you as a Christian to identify where these notions of the sexualized self are coming from. Even though it is brief, Trueman ends his book by stating that the historic age that this modern one is most like is the 2nd century, where Christians were a minority in a prevalently pagan world. Thus, Trueman in this book is equipping us to be the exilic church, a Christian witness that understands the times and looks forward to the hope of heaven!
January 23, 2023
I read this book slowly over the course of almost a year discussing each chapter with a friend once a week. In doing so, my reading experience was much more rich than I generally experience. So, I have a particular fondness of the book in that sense, but I can say even if that were not the case, I would have found this book to be quite excellent. This book was eye-opening for me, and helped to reignite in me a love for philosophy last year that hopefully continues on for some time. Trueman is much more than a mere gatherer of important philosophical thought though he is an excellent one at that. This work is genius in it's accessibility and it's intentionality to help Christians understand the philosophical underpinnings of the modern world. He precisely tackles exactly how we ended up where we are philosophically in a way that is both well executed and easily comprehended. The modern world is a complex subject, and there seems to be a marrying of many philosophical ideas together from which it was born. From Egalitarianism, utilitarianism, idealism, nihilism, existentialism, marxism, feminisms, consumerism, capitalism, and all of the numerous subsequent isms that gave birth to her. The main take-aways for me were Phillip Reiff's ideas of the "anti-culture" destroying culture through "deathworks" in his Sacred Order / Social Order series which I intend to read (hopefully this year.) As well as near the end of the book where he clarified something for me that had been bothering me for some time. Which was that if the Reformers were at fault for placing authority in the hands of the individual, thus destroying the old world of authoritative structures and ushering in a new world based upon democratic egalitarianism. Seeing as how the world that they created is unraveling now before my very eyes, how can I reconcile that as a reformed Christian? Was Chesterton right? Was the reformation a mistake? In it's wake it has caused the unfolding of a world with so many schisms that you can now choose your church as you would a new pair of shoes. Christianity has become another form of individualistic consumerism. I would say that the reformation is far more influential than even Trueman admits in this book to the modern world of the expressive individual. He only dedicates a couple of pages to this train of thought in the concluding chapters, even so what he said rang true and clear for me, and I was relieved that he brought it up,
For me this is the key. What the reformation set in motion came from a true and biblically supported idea, but just as man corrupted God's perfection in the garden, we have taken God out of the equation and placed ourselves as equals to Him. We have used the idea that all men are equal under God who is the true authority of man, and taken it to mean that we as individuals are equal to God. From this perspective the failings of our modern world can be seen as cyclical to man's sinful history with God. Just as the Jews had different societal structures in the bible all being corrupted and ultimately destroyed by sin. Just as the early church gave birth to the Roman Catholic tradition that had grown corrupt and needed reformation. We forget God, and we raise ourselves up in His place. This is the problem.
Trueman in the end claims that the modern Christian faces a similar world to that of a Christian in the 2nd century. A pluralist society that views Christianity as potentially harmful. His thinking as to how we should live is to imitate those Christians, to maintain close knit communities that are doctrinally bounded, act out our faith in our daily lives, and be good earthly citizens insofar as it is compatible with our faith.
"None of this is to argue that we should simply lament the situation, for expressive individualism is not an unmitigated evil. In some ways it marks a significant improvement on that which it replaced. One of the aspects of the modern culture of expressive individualism is the emphasis it places on the inherent dignity of the individual. The more strictly hierarchical nature of honor-based societies... contained much that a Christian might criticize, not least the notion that some human beings are worth more than others because of their positions within the social hierarchy... Yet it is here, in the idea of the equal dignity of all human beings, that one of the problems with the modern political project becomes clear. The idea that all human beings are of equal worth is rooted in the idea that all human beings are made in the image of God. The problem with expressive individualism is not its emphasis on the dignity or the individual value of every human being... it is the fact that expressive individualism has detached these concepts of individual dignity and value from any kind of grounding in a sacred order."
For me this is the key. What the reformation set in motion came from a true and biblically supported idea, but just as man corrupted God's perfection in the garden, we have taken God out of the equation and placed ourselves as equals to Him. We have used the idea that all men are equal under God who is the true authority of man, and taken it to mean that we as individuals are equal to God. From this perspective the failings of our modern world can be seen as cyclical to man's sinful history with God. Just as the Jews had different societal structures in the bible all being corrupted and ultimately destroyed by sin. Just as the early church gave birth to the Roman Catholic tradition that had grown corrupt and needed reformation. We forget God, and we raise ourselves up in His place. This is the problem.
Trueman in the end claims that the modern Christian faces a similar world to that of a Christian in the 2nd century. A pluralist society that views Christianity as potentially harmful. His thinking as to how we should live is to imitate those Christians, to maintain close knit communities that are doctrinally bounded, act out our faith in our daily lives, and be good earthly citizens insofar as it is compatible with our faith.
November 20, 2020
Carl Trueman is not merely a historian. He’s a man of letters with diverse interests. In this book, he seeks to trace our current Western culture (especially regarding the self and sex, as the subtitle states) back to their true roots. He uses the frameworks of Charles Taylor, Philip Rieff, and Alisdair MacIntyre, and the writings of Rousseau, the Romantic poets, Marx, Freud, and Darwin as chapter touchpoints.
He ties all of these disparate sources together, but in ways that bored me. His writing is less accessible than that in Cynical Theories. Essentially, this book is like a less readable Francis Schaeffer, which is too bad because I was really looking forward to his treatment of this topic.
He ties all of these disparate sources together, but in ways that bored me. His writing is less accessible than that in Cynical Theories. Essentially, this book is like a less readable Francis Schaeffer, which is too bad because I was really looking forward to his treatment of this topic.
June 25, 2021
This book is well-written for the most part and Trueman does a good job of staying within the stated scope and aim of the book. But really, it could have been a lot shorter: "Society used to be that way, but now it's this way, and what a shame (I mean, just look at trans people! Can you believe it?)."
He says it is not intended as lament or polemic. But clearly he is upset that traditional conservative values around family and sexuality no longer enjoy the same unquestioned dominance in Western society they once did and he wants to undermine ideas and cultural shifts that have led to acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities (which he repeatedly and condescendingly refers to as "pathologies"). Trueman frequently insists that LGBTQ+ identities are only plausible in a world where people can create or decide who they are based on nothing more than how they feel and not on any authority outside themselves, but he never explains why he believes this. Maybe he thinks it should be obvious, but I really don't think that can be taken for granted.
Trueman's lament that the laws and sexual codes of our present society are not based on absolute truth but on "the contemporary tastes of the wider culture" is a bit surprising. It has always been that way. It's just that in the past, the contemporary tastes of the wider (Western) culture were more aligned with traditional Christian values. His real disappointment is likely that his team (white heterosexual conservatives) is losing power and privilege and no longer able to make all the decisions about how other people think and behave.
But even though many of Trueman's assumptions are laughable and his conclusions irrelevant and unconvincing, this book still concerns me. Given that the intended audience is conservative evangelical Christians, this book is a step in precisely the wrong direction, promoting a condescension towards and invalidation of the LGBTQ+ community and, to a lesser degree, people suffering with mental health problems (he seems to assume that psychological realities are not as "real" as physical ones, which implicitly invalidates the concept of mental illness) and women (see his discussion of abortion and the way he condescendingly dismisses or criticizes almost every female he refers to throughout the book). We really need to do better.
For me, the saddest part is that when Trueman finally comes to offer his thoughts on how the Christian church should respond to the situation he describes and explains (the psychologizing and sexualization of the self), he advocates for digging in our heels and coming together as a community around doctrine. No mention whatsoever about actively loving the people we may disagree with or don't understand. The closest he came was to say it's ok to be compassionate as long as it doesn't distract or lead us away from our dogma. Ouch. Jesus would be rolling over in his grave (if he was still in it).
Christians who care about loving their neighbours and working for justice for the oppressed (you know, the stuff Jesus talked about?) should avoid this book.
He says it is not intended as lament or polemic. But clearly he is upset that traditional conservative values around family and sexuality no longer enjoy the same unquestioned dominance in Western society they once did and he wants to undermine ideas and cultural shifts that have led to acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities (which he repeatedly and condescendingly refers to as "pathologies"). Trueman frequently insists that LGBTQ+ identities are only plausible in a world where people can create or decide who they are based on nothing more than how they feel and not on any authority outside themselves, but he never explains why he believes this. Maybe he thinks it should be obvious, but I really don't think that can be taken for granted.
Trueman's lament that the laws and sexual codes of our present society are not based on absolute truth but on "the contemporary tastes of the wider culture" is a bit surprising. It has always been that way. It's just that in the past, the contemporary tastes of the wider (Western) culture were more aligned with traditional Christian values. His real disappointment is likely that his team (white heterosexual conservatives) is losing power and privilege and no longer able to make all the decisions about how other people think and behave.
But even though many of Trueman's assumptions are laughable and his conclusions irrelevant and unconvincing, this book still concerns me. Given that the intended audience is conservative evangelical Christians, this book is a step in precisely the wrong direction, promoting a condescension towards and invalidation of the LGBTQ+ community and, to a lesser degree, people suffering with mental health problems (he seems to assume that psychological realities are not as "real" as physical ones, which implicitly invalidates the concept of mental illness) and women (see his discussion of abortion and the way he condescendingly dismisses or criticizes almost every female he refers to throughout the book). We really need to do better.
For me, the saddest part is that when Trueman finally comes to offer his thoughts on how the Christian church should respond to the situation he describes and explains (the psychologizing and sexualization of the self), he advocates for digging in our heels and coming together as a community around doctrine. No mention whatsoever about actively loving the people we may disagree with or don't understand. The closest he came was to say it's ok to be compassionate as long as it doesn't distract or lead us away from our dogma. Ouch. Jesus would be rolling over in his grave (if he was still in it).
Christians who care about loving their neighbours and working for justice for the oppressed (you know, the stuff Jesus talked about?) should avoid this book.
March 27, 2022
Trueman’s book feels a lot like Francis Schaeffer’s How Should We Then Live, fleshed out for the 21st century. He specifically addresses how Enlightenment thought brought us to our current place in Western culture, especially in viewing ourselves as psychological and individual at our core, and how that’s affected the way we view sexuality.
He offers some wisdom at the end of the book as to how believers should respond, and I find it interesting that one of his main points is that Christians need to cultivate community with one another— also one of Rod Dreher’s top conclusions in Live Not By Lies.
This is a book every believer needs to read. I also understand there is a condensed version, Strange New World, that was published recently, and which may be a good option for many.
He offers some wisdom at the end of the book as to how believers should respond, and I find it interesting that one of his main points is that Christians need to cultivate community with one another— also one of Rod Dreher’s top conclusions in Live Not By Lies.
This is a book every believer needs to read. I also understand there is a condensed version, Strange New World, that was published recently, and which may be a good option for many.
August 25, 2021
Carl Trueman's scholarship in tracing the intellectual development of "psychologized man" and "expressive individualism" from the Late Enlightenment/Romantic period to the present. I would recommend this book highly simply for the eye-opening insights into where many of our cultural commonplaces originated.
The one star I took off was for the fact that this work is, at least on the surface, merely dispassionate historical scholarship, and Trueman ignores the role that human depravity and sin plays in the intellectual trends of the last 300 years. He remedies this a bit in his final chapter, but the question of how the church ought to respond really deserves much more development.
The one star I took off was for the fact that this work is, at least on the surface, merely dispassionate historical scholarship, and Trueman ignores the role that human depravity and sin plays in the intellectual trends of the last 300 years. He remedies this a bit in his final chapter, but the question of how the church ought to respond really deserves much more development.
April 2, 2024
In the Foreword to this book, Rod Dreher praises The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self for the lucid way it explains the theory of twentieth century writers like Philip Rieff. And all I can say is that Rieff must be pretty unintelligible because Trueman's work is not for the faint of heart.
Don't get me wrong, it is worth it. I walked away with a much better understanding of modernity and the political underpinnings of the LGBTQ+ movement. This is one of those books that follows the philosophical roots of many ideas we take for granted today. In doing so, it actually provides a surprisingly cohesive narrative to explain "how we got here." To quote from the introduction:
"The task of the Christian is not to whine about the moment in which he or she lives but to understand its problems and respond appropriately to them."
And I believe this book really does help with the "understanding the problems" part.
It just does so with sentences like:
"The triumph of the therapeutic represents the advent of the expressive individual as the normative type of human being and of the relativizing of all meaning and truth to personal taste."
This is not one of those books you skim.
At the same time, because it forces slower and more thoughtful reading, I think there is quite a bit to gain from this work. It isn't perfect. The ending feels a little scattered as it attempts to convey all the ways the modern marriage of Marx and Freud informs contemporary understandings of self. But it really sets a foundation for thinking about it, especially as Christians in the 21st century.
I definitely want to return to this one, perhaps with a physical copy I can mark up. Well worth reading at least once, and probably more than that.
Don't get me wrong, it is worth it. I walked away with a much better understanding of modernity and the political underpinnings of the LGBTQ+ movement. This is one of those books that follows the philosophical roots of many ideas we take for granted today. In doing so, it actually provides a surprisingly cohesive narrative to explain "how we got here." To quote from the introduction:
"The task of the Christian is not to whine about the moment in which he or she lives but to understand its problems and respond appropriately to them."
And I believe this book really does help with the "understanding the problems" part.
It just does so with sentences like:
"The triumph of the therapeutic represents the advent of the expressive individual as the normative type of human being and of the relativizing of all meaning and truth to personal taste."
This is not one of those books you skim.
At the same time, because it forces slower and more thoughtful reading, I think there is quite a bit to gain from this work. It isn't perfect. The ending feels a little scattered as it attempts to convey all the ways the modern marriage of Marx and Freud informs contemporary understandings of self. But it really sets a foundation for thinking about it, especially as Christians in the 21st century.
I definitely want to return to this one, perhaps with a physical copy I can mark up. Well worth reading at least once, and probably more than that.
September 3, 2021
This is probably the most important book that I have read in the last twenty years.
Trueman does an excellent job of explaining how we got to our current cultural and ethical moment. Armed with that kind of knowledge, finding a way forward is more likely. The book is descriptive, not prescriptive. Trueman makes a few predictions and offers some initial ideas on what is necessary for the church in the last twenty pages.
I can't recommend this book enough.
It will be our ThM Colloquium book in the spring.
Trueman does an excellent job of explaining how we got to our current cultural and ethical moment. Armed with that kind of knowledge, finding a way forward is more likely. The book is descriptive, not prescriptive. Trueman makes a few predictions and offers some initial ideas on what is necessary for the church in the last twenty pages.
I can't recommend this book enough.
It will be our ThM Colloquium book in the spring.
February 16, 2021
This is a greatly hyped book at present, and others more qualified than me have done plenty of engagement already, so, though this is longer than my typical 1-liner goodreads summaries, it is by no means a full or academic review.
Where this book is good, it is very good. As an intellectual history of the rise of expressive individualism (Charles Taylor's phrase) from Rousseau to Obergefell, it traces of streams of thought through Romanticism, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, and the Frankfurt School. As a parallel history of the rise of "deathworks" and "anticulture" (Philip Rieff's terms), it does a good job of connecting the dots through those same streams to show how the destruction of social and sexual norms (rather than building toward a common good) came to be seen as the key to a liberated, flourishing society by many on the political left. In this, he provides a deep and wide context for the sexual revolution of the second half of the 20th century, helping us see quite clearly that it did not spring up de novo in the 1960s—as casual narratives about "the good old days" are wont to assume—but is a long, slow confluence of many cultural influences.
These threads of inquiry are familiar to me, thanks to a worldview-heavy curriculum in my undergraduate education, but might be new to many. On this score, Trueman offers a good synopsis, engaging well with his chosen interlocutors (though those better versed in Marx, Freud, et al. might take issue with his survey-level discussion and the conclusions he draws). He is also (as I've said in comments on other of his works) a very fine writer, with expert command of the language. He also has a teacher's spirit, desiring to make what is dense and obscure interesting and graspable for readers.
Where the book is bad, though it feels not so much incorrect as incomplete. Trueman is very forward with his own caveat that he sees this project as prolegomena to a larger discussion on the modern self and its implications for the life and ministry of the church. He could have easily made this 400 page book into an 800-1000 page treatise and still have left much more to say. Further, he is a historian, and so some of my critiques have more to do with his failure to bring in insights from other disciplines than any failing in his given task as a historian. I offer these grains of salt with which to take my disagreements below.
At times, it feels as though the intellectual history Trueman presents—rather one-sided in tracing the development of expressive individualism and sexual identity—is meant to be taken as a more sweeping review of post-Enlightenment moral philosophy. But the history of the last 300 years is not a steady stream, but a turbulent river of points and counterpoints that push the channel both left and right at varying points. For every Rousseau there is a Kant or Burke. For every Shelley or Wordsworth there may be a Dickens, Thackeray, or Trollope. For Marxes, Darwins, and Nietszches, there are also Kuypers, Bavincks, and Chestertons. For a Riech or Marcuse, there is a Lewis or Buckley. Yes, there is ample evidence that the leftward bow of the riverbed is ascendant, but it has not been a uniform journey, nor is it guaranteed to continue apace. The absence of such historical countermovements in Trueman's narrative may strengthen the force of his argument, but leaving them out neglects to provide nuance that could help readers see what tools might be available to stem the tide he is so concerned about.
Further, He seems to treat this intellectual history as a sufficient explanation of the sexual revolution and the understanding of selfhood that makes it necessary. This follows a fairly standard academic conceit of privileging the life of the mind over other contributing factors (a habit of which I am also frequently guilty). That contemporaneous developments such as the industrial revolution, scientific revolution, world wars, economic upheavals, and globalization barely register in his narrative is frustrating. Most people do not think first and then act, but rather the reverse. However frustrating or unwise this habit may be, it is the lay of the land. To assume that the rank and file of humanity have been moved to action by the musings of philosophers and academics does not speak to a deep understanding of human behavior—even granting his point that the influence of such thinkers on the creators of pop culture artifacts is a major means of their influence.
Trueman's focus (following Rieff) on the triumph of the therapeutic as a negative social development leads him to ignore many of the glaring social realities that led to the need for more therapeutic constructs in the first place. To be sure, assuming that no one should be required to feel unhappy or unfulfilled at any point is no realistic basis for cultivating healthy social contracts in a fallen world. To deny that human happiness is a good (among many) that ought to be taken into consideration is equally a fool's errand. Trueman at times seems too quick to dismiss real human suffering under this rubric, assuming that gracious accommodation of people's brokenness is a dangerous slippery slope. Engagement with findings of trauma-informed psychology and neurobiology might have tempered some of his stridency here.
I'll concede that I've majored on criticisms out of a degree of fear. I do hope that the book finds a wide readership, as its strengths are real and disagreements with its premises that rise to its same level of erudition and eloquence would go far to raise discourse about complex and difficult topics out of our present mire of sound bites and hot takes. As Trueman's desired prolegomenon for deeper discussion on the issues he addresses and a healthy response to them, it is a fine effort. I fear, though, that many in the church will use the book instead as an open-and-shut case to prove that anyone who seeks to extend hospitality and grace to those with whom they disagree, advocate for political reform in favor of marginalized groups, seek justice for the oppressed, or ameliorate suffering in the world is guilty of privileging the therapeutic or oversimplifying the world's complexity through the lens of some critical theory or other—no matter how much they lean on Scripture and a robust biblical anthropology to make their case. Indeed, Trueman himself falls into this trap in an article on evangelicals and critical race theory in First Things.
In the spirit in which the book is offered, I too would welcome engagement on my critique.
Where this book is good, it is very good. As an intellectual history of the rise of expressive individualism (Charles Taylor's phrase) from Rousseau to Obergefell, it traces of streams of thought through Romanticism, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, and the Frankfurt School. As a parallel history of the rise of "deathworks" and "anticulture" (Philip Rieff's terms), it does a good job of connecting the dots through those same streams to show how the destruction of social and sexual norms (rather than building toward a common good) came to be seen as the key to a liberated, flourishing society by many on the political left. In this, he provides a deep and wide context for the sexual revolution of the second half of the 20th century, helping us see quite clearly that it did not spring up de novo in the 1960s—as casual narratives about "the good old days" are wont to assume—but is a long, slow confluence of many cultural influences.
These threads of inquiry are familiar to me, thanks to a worldview-heavy curriculum in my undergraduate education, but might be new to many. On this score, Trueman offers a good synopsis, engaging well with his chosen interlocutors (though those better versed in Marx, Freud, et al. might take issue with his survey-level discussion and the conclusions he draws). He is also (as I've said in comments on other of his works) a very fine writer, with expert command of the language. He also has a teacher's spirit, desiring to make what is dense and obscure interesting and graspable for readers.
Where the book is bad, though it feels not so much incorrect as incomplete. Trueman is very forward with his own caveat that he sees this project as prolegomena to a larger discussion on the modern self and its implications for the life and ministry of the church. He could have easily made this 400 page book into an 800-1000 page treatise and still have left much more to say. Further, he is a historian, and so some of my critiques have more to do with his failure to bring in insights from other disciplines than any failing in his given task as a historian. I offer these grains of salt with which to take my disagreements below.
At times, it feels as though the intellectual history Trueman presents—rather one-sided in tracing the development of expressive individualism and sexual identity—is meant to be taken as a more sweeping review of post-Enlightenment moral philosophy. But the history of the last 300 years is not a steady stream, but a turbulent river of points and counterpoints that push the channel both left and right at varying points. For every Rousseau there is a Kant or Burke. For every Shelley or Wordsworth there may be a Dickens, Thackeray, or Trollope. For Marxes, Darwins, and Nietszches, there are also Kuypers, Bavincks, and Chestertons. For a Riech or Marcuse, there is a Lewis or Buckley. Yes, there is ample evidence that the leftward bow of the riverbed is ascendant, but it has not been a uniform journey, nor is it guaranteed to continue apace. The absence of such historical countermovements in Trueman's narrative may strengthen the force of his argument, but leaving them out neglects to provide nuance that could help readers see what tools might be available to stem the tide he is so concerned about.
Further, He seems to treat this intellectual history as a sufficient explanation of the sexual revolution and the understanding of selfhood that makes it necessary. This follows a fairly standard academic conceit of privileging the life of the mind over other contributing factors (a habit of which I am also frequently guilty). That contemporaneous developments such as the industrial revolution, scientific revolution, world wars, economic upheavals, and globalization barely register in his narrative is frustrating. Most people do not think first and then act, but rather the reverse. However frustrating or unwise this habit may be, it is the lay of the land. To assume that the rank and file of humanity have been moved to action by the musings of philosophers and academics does not speak to a deep understanding of human behavior—even granting his point that the influence of such thinkers on the creators of pop culture artifacts is a major means of their influence.
Trueman's focus (following Rieff) on the triumph of the therapeutic as a negative social development leads him to ignore many of the glaring social realities that led to the need for more therapeutic constructs in the first place. To be sure, assuming that no one should be required to feel unhappy or unfulfilled at any point is no realistic basis for cultivating healthy social contracts in a fallen world. To deny that human happiness is a good (among many) that ought to be taken into consideration is equally a fool's errand. Trueman at times seems too quick to dismiss real human suffering under this rubric, assuming that gracious accommodation of people's brokenness is a dangerous slippery slope. Engagement with findings of trauma-informed psychology and neurobiology might have tempered some of his stridency here.
I'll concede that I've majored on criticisms out of a degree of fear. I do hope that the book finds a wide readership, as its strengths are real and disagreements with its premises that rise to its same level of erudition and eloquence would go far to raise discourse about complex and difficult topics out of our present mire of sound bites and hot takes. As Trueman's desired prolegomenon for deeper discussion on the issues he addresses and a healthy response to them, it is a fine effort. I fear, though, that many in the church will use the book instead as an open-and-shut case to prove that anyone who seeks to extend hospitality and grace to those with whom they disagree, advocate for political reform in favor of marginalized groups, seek justice for the oppressed, or ameliorate suffering in the world is guilty of privileging the therapeutic or oversimplifying the world's complexity through the lens of some critical theory or other—no matter how much they lean on Scripture and a robust biblical anthropology to make their case. Indeed, Trueman himself falls into this trap in an article on evangelicals and critical race theory in First Things.
In the spirit in which the book is offered, I too would welcome engagement on my critique.
January 22, 2021
Wow. Christian, it is worth your time and energy to read this book. It’s heady and technical but it’s an essential read for us to understand how we got here. Our culture is driven by emotion and therapeutics. It seems our purpose in life, according to the world we now live in, is to achieve total psychological well-being. This well-being, according to culture, cannot be achieved without full sexual satisfaction and expression. Our sexuality has become who we are, in the deepest sense. And unfortunately, this has become political and unavoidable for Christians. It’s not enough to just ignore the sexual revolution and its implications. Trueman gives a thorough historical account of how we got here and, in the end, poses some strategies for the church to consider and predictions about where we are headed. If anything, this book opens us up to a whole world of further discussion and action. Christians can no longer be content in their own little bubbles. In many ways, we participate in this therapeutic age. We have to engage with the reality we now live in in a biblical manner and, to do that, we have to understand more than mere categories. This book allows us to truly understand the modern self, expressive individualism, and the sexual revolution.
January 21, 2021
A thorough diagnosis of today’s culture and a historical and philosophical analysis on how we got here. However this is a book that left me with a a sense of, “Ok. I understand, but what is the cure? Is there even a cure?”
I would say read these instead:
1) Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexually by Nancy Pearcey -Excellent!
2) You Who: Why You Matter and How to Deal With It by Rachel Jankovic-Granted, her treatment of the philosophy of the self is shorter, but not less accurate. However, it points to Christ in a much clear and powerful way.
I would say read these instead:
1) Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexually by Nancy Pearcey -Excellent!
2) You Who: Why You Matter and How to Deal With It by Rachel Jankovic-Granted, her treatment of the philosophy of the self is shorter, but not less accurate. However, it points to Christ in a much clear and powerful way.
December 14, 2020
Wow. Review is forthcoming at FTC.co. In short, I would require every pastor and influential Christian leader to read this book if I could. It is important, and provides explanatory power for a great deal of the behaviors and norms of our present civilization.
May 27, 2023
“But as I noted in the introduction, this book is neither a lament nor a polemic. It is rather an attempt to explain how the revolution of the self came to take the form it has in the West and why that is so culturally significant.”
I read this for a seminary class and found it an insightful journey toward understanding some historical and philosophical elements of the sexual revolution.
I read this for a seminary class and found it an insightful journey toward understanding some historical and philosophical elements of the sexual revolution.
June 28, 2022
The first words of the introduction reached out and immediately piqued my mind:
"The origins of this book lie in my curiosity about how and why a particular statement has come to be regarded as coherent and meaningful: 'I am a woman trapped in a man's body.' My grandfather died in 1994, less than thirty years ago, and yet, had he ever heard that sentence uttered in his presence, I have little doubt that he would have burst out laughing and considered it a piece of incoherent gibberish. And yet today it is a sentence that many in our society regard as not only meaningful but so significant that to deny it or question it in some way is to reveal oneself as stupid, immoral, or subject to yet another irrational phobia."
Trueman lays the groundwork for his outstanding tome in the introduction regarding the path he would take his readers on. Sentences such as "The sexual revolution is as much a symptom as it is a a cause of the culture that now surrounds us everywhere we look, from sitcoms to Congress," and others made me sit up straighter and take notice. Those of us who are preachers & teachers of the Bible had an inkling of some of the underlying truths he brings to light, but the author shows us the history long before the movement in the 60s, the "free-love," drug-induced culture that many of us have pointed to as the beginning of the downward moral slide of recent years. However, Trueman shows us with overwhelming proof from writers, poets, and well-known influencers of yesteryear that the seeds were planted LONG before the 60s.
He then will bring us along to where we are today. For instance, in his introduction, he states the following: "Acceptance of gay marriage and transgenderism are simply the latest outworking, the most recent symptoms, of deep and established cultural pathologies." He follows this statement later in the introduction with a timestamp of eroding culture: "The groundwork for rejecting traditional morality, both philosophical and scientific, is therefore in place by the end of the nineteenth century."
Far from being a sad, less-than-hopeful outlook on what is happening today, the author ends the introduction with these words: "Every age has had its darkness and dangers. The task of the Christian is not to whine about the moment in which he or she lives but to understand its problems and respond appropriately to them...Understanding the times is a precondition of responding appropriately to the times."
A warning: Although the subject matter is brilliant, needed, and on-point especially in light of current cultural happenings, this is not a book for the faint of heart! The author's vast use of the English language had me scrambling for a dictionary quite a few times to define a word. This is not a bad thing as I learned many new words, but it did make for a much slower read than the books I typically read.
Trueman then plunges into his four part book. He begins by showing us how self has been reimagined in society. This book is well notated and footnoted. It is obvious that the author has a firm grasp on the subject matter and has done extensive research.
Personally, I would have never known that the foundations of the current "sexual revolution" and its many iterations go back hundreds of years. I'm assuming I'm not the only one. Although I believe in the biblical principle of the fallen human nature and that there is "nothing new under the sun," I would have not known where things really started to begin to take a turn to lead us to where we are today.
Trueman shows us how Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1700s) planted the seeds of modern selfhood. He then does a deep dive on the poets Wordsworth, Shelley, and Blake and the monumental influence they had in ushering along society to embrace the self above all. Trueman then transitions to the far-reaching influences of Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin. Each of these men pushed society to embrace the self in different ways.
The author then moves into showing the sexualization of the revolution by taking a deep dive into how Sigmund Freud largely influenced the civilization of his day regarding all things sexual and continues to have far-reaching effects on the thinking of today. In this section, Trueman also shows how today's left wing has politicized all things sexual to make strides to exalt self and minimize traditionally held beliefs or standards.
In the last section, Trueman shows the "Triumphs of the Revolution" by showing how the erotic, therapeutic, and transsexual movements have all played a part in ushering us to where we are today.
The author's Concluding Unscientific Prologue offers hopeful suggestions on how the church can address or face these issues going forward.
Often in my reviews, I include large snippets of quotes, sections, and paragraphs from books I have read. Since this is a longer read (400+ pages) and much of the material builds on itself, it is hard to quote much of Trueman's work without having the context or the framework on which it hangs. Suffice it to say, my copy is marked up with highlights, notes, and comments that will help me now and well into the future.
I wholeheartedly recommend that you acquire a copy of this book and read it. Just make sure you set aside a good chunk of time to do so!
"The origins of this book lie in my curiosity about how and why a particular statement has come to be regarded as coherent and meaningful: 'I am a woman trapped in a man's body.' My grandfather died in 1994, less than thirty years ago, and yet, had he ever heard that sentence uttered in his presence, I have little doubt that he would have burst out laughing and considered it a piece of incoherent gibberish. And yet today it is a sentence that many in our society regard as not only meaningful but so significant that to deny it or question it in some way is to reveal oneself as stupid, immoral, or subject to yet another irrational phobia."
Trueman lays the groundwork for his outstanding tome in the introduction regarding the path he would take his readers on. Sentences such as "The sexual revolution is as much a symptom as it is a a cause of the culture that now surrounds us everywhere we look, from sitcoms to Congress," and others made me sit up straighter and take notice. Those of us who are preachers & teachers of the Bible had an inkling of some of the underlying truths he brings to light, but the author shows us the history long before the movement in the 60s, the "free-love," drug-induced culture that many of us have pointed to as the beginning of the downward moral slide of recent years. However, Trueman shows us with overwhelming proof from writers, poets, and well-known influencers of yesteryear that the seeds were planted LONG before the 60s.
He then will bring us along to where we are today. For instance, in his introduction, he states the following: "Acceptance of gay marriage and transgenderism are simply the latest outworking, the most recent symptoms, of deep and established cultural pathologies." He follows this statement later in the introduction with a timestamp of eroding culture: "The groundwork for rejecting traditional morality, both philosophical and scientific, is therefore in place by the end of the nineteenth century."
Far from being a sad, less-than-hopeful outlook on what is happening today, the author ends the introduction with these words: "Every age has had its darkness and dangers. The task of the Christian is not to whine about the moment in which he or she lives but to understand its problems and respond appropriately to them...Understanding the times is a precondition of responding appropriately to the times."
A warning: Although the subject matter is brilliant, needed, and on-point especially in light of current cultural happenings, this is not a book for the faint of heart! The author's vast use of the English language had me scrambling for a dictionary quite a few times to define a word. This is not a bad thing as I learned many new words, but it did make for a much slower read than the books I typically read.
Trueman then plunges into his four part book. He begins by showing us how self has been reimagined in society. This book is well notated and footnoted. It is obvious that the author has a firm grasp on the subject matter and has done extensive research.
Personally, I would have never known that the foundations of the current "sexual revolution" and its many iterations go back hundreds of years. I'm assuming I'm not the only one. Although I believe in the biblical principle of the fallen human nature and that there is "nothing new under the sun," I would have not known where things really started to begin to take a turn to lead us to where we are today.
Trueman shows us how Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1700s) planted the seeds of modern selfhood. He then does a deep dive on the poets Wordsworth, Shelley, and Blake and the monumental influence they had in ushering along society to embrace the self above all. Trueman then transitions to the far-reaching influences of Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin. Each of these men pushed society to embrace the self in different ways.
The author then moves into showing the sexualization of the revolution by taking a deep dive into how Sigmund Freud largely influenced the civilization of his day regarding all things sexual and continues to have far-reaching effects on the thinking of today. In this section, Trueman also shows how today's left wing has politicized all things sexual to make strides to exalt self and minimize traditionally held beliefs or standards.
In the last section, Trueman shows the "Triumphs of the Revolution" by showing how the erotic, therapeutic, and transsexual movements have all played a part in ushering us to where we are today.
The author's Concluding Unscientific Prologue offers hopeful suggestions on how the church can address or face these issues going forward.
Often in my reviews, I include large snippets of quotes, sections, and paragraphs from books I have read. Since this is a longer read (400+ pages) and much of the material builds on itself, it is hard to quote much of Trueman's work without having the context or the framework on which it hangs. Suffice it to say, my copy is marked up with highlights, notes, and comments that will help me now and well into the future.
I wholeheartedly recommend that you acquire a copy of this book and read it. Just make sure you set aside a good chunk of time to do so!
February 17, 2021
Carl Trueman’s “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self” is an extended answer to the question of how the statement “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” came to be “regarded as coherent and meaningful.” (p.19) Trueman leans heavily upon the works of Phillip Rieff, Charles Taylor, and Alasdair MacIntyre to formulate his answer. In Part 1, Trueman examines how the works of these three men help provide “categories for analyzing the pathologies of this present age…” (p. 102) He then goes back to the Rousseau, where he finds the genesis of the modern ‘self’. He traces the modern self through the Romantics: Wordsworth, Shelley, and Blake, and then through Darwin, Marx, and Nietzsche in Part 2. In Part 3 he looks at Freud and the “politicization of sex.” And finally, in Part 4, he brings it all together to show how the modern self has metastasized in the “triumph of the erotic…therapeutic…and transgenderism”.
There are many ways that one could attempt to come to answer that original question that Trueman poses in the Introduction. He chooses to look through the lens of three recent thinkers. Trueman does a good job of introducing the relevance of these three thinkers to the question at hand.
Charles Taylor’s “social imaginary” offers a concept that helps discuss the way in which “people think about the world, how they imagine it to be, how they act intuitively in relation to it.” (p.37) Additionally, Taylor shows how culture has moved away from teleology—“a specific, given end.” Having abandoned the idea of “the world possessing intrinsic meaning,” (p.39) we find ourselves able to “manipulate by our own power to our own purposes.” (p.41)
Phillip Rieff brings insight into culture—namely his three stages of culture. We find ourselves in a “third world culture” today—a “therapeutic culture”—a psychologized culture. Those in this psychologized “third world culture” can have no dialogue with those in a first, or second world culture, because they share “no common authority on which they might agree to the terms of debate in order to determine exactly what it is they are debating.” (p.81) The “third world culture” has abandoned “a sacred order”—meaning there is no greater “transcendent” authority. (p.77)
Alasdair McIntyre’s insight “offers...a basis for understanding the chaotic nature of modern ethical discourse because there is no longer a strong community consensus on the nature of the proper ends of human existence.” (p.83) Out of this chaos emerges “the language of personal preference based on nothing more rational or objective than sentiments or feelings.” (p.85) In a word, we’re left with “emotivism.”
Going back to Rousseau offers the philosophic foundation for what these three thinkers diagnosed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Trueman helpfully compares the way Augustine talks of ‘the self’ in his “Confessions” to ‘the self’ in Rousseau’s “Discourse” and “Second Discourse.” Augustine, as an orthodox Christian, “blames himself for his sin because he is basically wicked from birth.” (p.111) Whereas Rousseau, “has come to understand that people are not monsters by nature but by virtue of their social conditioning.” (p.113)
Trueman points out that Rousseau “sees empathy as having a universal stability because it is grounded in his confident assertion of a universal human nature possessing a conscience that is the same for everyone.” (p.122) He quotes Rousseau’s “Emile”:
“There is in the depths of souls, then, an innate principle of justice and virtue according to which, in spite of our own maxims, we judge our actions and those of others as good or bad. It is to this principle that I give the name conscience.”
It is here, in Rousseau, that we find articulated a rejection of original sin. Rousseau rejects the depravity of man, instead, arguing that “individuals are intrinsically good, with sentiments that are properly ordered and attuned to ethical ends, until they are corrupted by the forces of society.” (p. 123) Rousseau sees “the eternal laws of nature and order…written in the depth of [the wise man’s] heart by conscience and reason.” (p.124)
This is one area I wish that Trueman had developed more, as it seems that Rousseau and those that follow in his thought, have rejected God’s law word, and exalted natural law. Rousseau discovered the conscience of man as the great arbiter of good and evil. Man has become judge, having godlike power. It is the exaltation of natural law over the law of God that has born anarchy into the world, ascribing to men the power to define right and wrong.
Trueman does lay responsibility regarding the “modern transgender movement” at the feet of Rousseau, writing, “it is the inner voice, freed from any and all external influences…that shapes identity for the transgender person… a position consistent with Rousseau’s idea that personal authenticity is rooted in the notion that nature, free from heteronomous cultural constraints, and selfhood, conceived of as inner psychological conviction, are the real guides to identity.” (p.126)
The Romantic movement, as characterized by William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, and William Blake develops Rousseau’s philosophy by beginning with the principle that man, in his original state, is good. It is society that corrupts men, using “means of manipulation by which the powerful keep others subjugated and which is perpetuated primarily by the self-interest of those who have used it to gain the power they enjoy.” (p.149) It is primarily religion that is used to exercise this power over men. Religion is not “wrongheaded or benign” but is “essentially evil.” (p. 155)
Nietzsche picks up and builds upon these ideas and takes them further toward their logical end. Darwin, of course, “legitimizes” the idea that “the world as we have it does not need a designer or divine architect. It can be explained without any reference to the transcendent.” (p.187) Trueman, synthesizing these ideas, writes, “When teleology is dead and self-creation is the name of the game, then the present moment and the pleasure it can contain become the keys to eternal life.” (p.190) So when Freud comes along and writes these ideas in “scientific idiom” he was able to deliver “rhetorical power in this modern age.” (p. 202)
Freud “provided the West with a compelling myth… that sex, in terms of sexual desire and sexual fulfillment, is the real key to human existence, to what it means to be human.” (p.204) He too, targets religion, calling it an “infantile neurosis.” (p.215) Freud establishes a “scientific” connection between the so-called civilizing of the “sexual instinct”, arguing it “comes at significant cost, for it means that it is impossible for the civilized ever to be truly happy” because “happiness depends on the fulfillment of personal sexual desires.” As Trueman writes, concerning Freud’s conclusions, “Civilization thus has at its very core the impossibility of human beings ever being truly happy and content.” (p.219)
These ideas are then picked up and synthesized by Marxists and consequently politicized. “Sex is no longer a private activity because sexuality is a constitutive element of public, social identity…It is only through public acknowledgement of their legitimacy that those identities are recognized and legitimated. To outlaw, for example, gay sex or merely to tolerate it, is to outlaw or merely tolerate a certain identity.” (p.239) It is this politicization that then begins to threaten free speech. He writes, “it becomes necessary to make sure that good words and ideas are not simply promoted but are, if possible, enforced and given a monopoly in public discourse. Why, after all, would bad words and ideas be allowed when their only purpose is to inflict psychological damage on and cause oppression of the marginalized, the dispossessed, and other victims of the ruling class’s practices of domination?” (p.252)
It is now becoming clear how the philosophy of the modern self is a threat not only to religious liberty, but an existential threat to orthodox Christianity which is understood by this new understanding of “the self” to be not only an oppressor, but fundamentally evil. As these ideas have developed and advanced, the culture and law have begun to reflect the new ideology and accept it in the legal code of western nations. Trueman examines several of the key Supreme Court decisions that have begun to advance this new ideology.
Trueman rightly notes that these Supreme Court decisions are “an easy matter to sell to the wider culture on the grounds that the bases for objecting to it have already been conceded.” Some things have yet to gain traction, such as polygamy and pedophilia, but this is the case “because society simply has not had enough time to accustom itself to the idea…” (p. 313)
In Part 4, Trueman gives a short and insightful history into the history of the LGBTQ+ movement, with a particular emphasis on how such diverse and competing interests grouped together to fight the hegemony of the heterosexual culture. This is an interesting section, which exposes the fragility of the movement. It is also interesting to note that the movement defines itself in traditional, binary, heterosexual categories. The very ideology depends entirely upon the idea that God made them “male and female.” Each letter in the acronym is an inversion of a biblical category. Trueman notes this “internal incoherence” in Rieffian categories as an “anticulture.” He writes, “it is defined negativily, by its rejection of past norms and the destruction and erasure of the same.” (p.373)
Trueman concludes “that the LGBTQ+ issues that now dominate our culture and our politics are simply symptoms of a deeper revolution in what it means to be a self… The problem is that we are all part of that revolution, and there is no way to avoid it.” (p.384-385) He argues that “The church has to address the matters that the sexual revolution and expressive individualism raise in a far more thoroughgoing fashion.” (p.393)
Trueman offers three ways the church must respond to this ideology. First, “the church should reflect long and hard on the connection between aesthetics and her core beliefs and practices.” This means we must not fight ideological battles the way the world does—namely winning on “the basis of moral principles, not on the attractiveness and appeal of the narratives of the people involved.” He adds, “pastoral strategies…must always rest on deeper, transcendent commitments.” (p.403)
Secondly, he writes the church “must also be a community.” This new definition of self and its consequent expression “being preached from every commercial, every website, every newscast, and every billboard… is, humanly speaking, likely to provoke despair.” The church can act as an antidote and place of respite. (p.404-405)
Finally, “Protestants need to recover both natural law and a high view of the physical body.” He does not mean natural law to “persuade the wider world” but “for the church herself. She needs to be able to teach her people coherently about moral principles.” (p.405)
Trueman only spends a few pages at the end on these solutions. It is admittedly, not a focus of the book. The book, again, is meant to answer the question of how the statement “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” came to be “regarded as coherent and meaningful.” (p.19)
Reflecting on this now, upon completion of the book, it seems that Christians must do a better job of building culture, not merely settling for baptized versions of secular culture. We’re in the position we’re in, having surrendered much to Rousseau’s philosophy, and letting much of the psychologized ideology of self into the church. Trueman writes, “Protestantism has often failed to reflect the historical concerns of the church in its liturgy and practice, most obviously in the megachurch movement and the manner in which it has frequently adopted the aesthetics of the present moment in its worship is arguably a sign of the penetration of the anticulture into the sanctuary of historic Christianity. Christians today are not opponents of the anticulture. Too often we are a symptom of it.” (p.389)
I wish Trueman had spent more time developing that idea, as it seems to me the central failure of the church. The church hasn’t been the church. As Jesus admonishes us, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” (Matt. 6:33) We must focus our efforts on the kingdom of God, and in so doing, we will find the solutions for today’s crisis and prepare for tomorrow’s.
There are many ways that one could attempt to come to answer that original question that Trueman poses in the Introduction. He chooses to look through the lens of three recent thinkers. Trueman does a good job of introducing the relevance of these three thinkers to the question at hand.
Charles Taylor’s “social imaginary” offers a concept that helps discuss the way in which “people think about the world, how they imagine it to be, how they act intuitively in relation to it.” (p.37) Additionally, Taylor shows how culture has moved away from teleology—“a specific, given end.” Having abandoned the idea of “the world possessing intrinsic meaning,” (p.39) we find ourselves able to “manipulate by our own power to our own purposes.” (p.41)
Phillip Rieff brings insight into culture—namely his three stages of culture. We find ourselves in a “third world culture” today—a “therapeutic culture”—a psychologized culture. Those in this psychologized “third world culture” can have no dialogue with those in a first, or second world culture, because they share “no common authority on which they might agree to the terms of debate in order to determine exactly what it is they are debating.” (p.81) The “third world culture” has abandoned “a sacred order”—meaning there is no greater “transcendent” authority. (p.77)
Alasdair McIntyre’s insight “offers...a basis for understanding the chaotic nature of modern ethical discourse because there is no longer a strong community consensus on the nature of the proper ends of human existence.” (p.83) Out of this chaos emerges “the language of personal preference based on nothing more rational or objective than sentiments or feelings.” (p.85) In a word, we’re left with “emotivism.”
Going back to Rousseau offers the philosophic foundation for what these three thinkers diagnosed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Trueman helpfully compares the way Augustine talks of ‘the self’ in his “Confessions” to ‘the self’ in Rousseau’s “Discourse” and “Second Discourse.” Augustine, as an orthodox Christian, “blames himself for his sin because he is basically wicked from birth.” (p.111) Whereas Rousseau, “has come to understand that people are not monsters by nature but by virtue of their social conditioning.” (p.113)
Trueman points out that Rousseau “sees empathy as having a universal stability because it is grounded in his confident assertion of a universal human nature possessing a conscience that is the same for everyone.” (p.122) He quotes Rousseau’s “Emile”:
“There is in the depths of souls, then, an innate principle of justice and virtue according to which, in spite of our own maxims, we judge our actions and those of others as good or bad. It is to this principle that I give the name conscience.”
It is here, in Rousseau, that we find articulated a rejection of original sin. Rousseau rejects the depravity of man, instead, arguing that “individuals are intrinsically good, with sentiments that are properly ordered and attuned to ethical ends, until they are corrupted by the forces of society.” (p. 123) Rousseau sees “the eternal laws of nature and order…written in the depth of [the wise man’s] heart by conscience and reason.” (p.124)
This is one area I wish that Trueman had developed more, as it seems that Rousseau and those that follow in his thought, have rejected God’s law word, and exalted natural law. Rousseau discovered the conscience of man as the great arbiter of good and evil. Man has become judge, having godlike power. It is the exaltation of natural law over the law of God that has born anarchy into the world, ascribing to men the power to define right and wrong.
Trueman does lay responsibility regarding the “modern transgender movement” at the feet of Rousseau, writing, “it is the inner voice, freed from any and all external influences…that shapes identity for the transgender person… a position consistent with Rousseau’s idea that personal authenticity is rooted in the notion that nature, free from heteronomous cultural constraints, and selfhood, conceived of as inner psychological conviction, are the real guides to identity.” (p.126)
The Romantic movement, as characterized by William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, and William Blake develops Rousseau’s philosophy by beginning with the principle that man, in his original state, is good. It is society that corrupts men, using “means of manipulation by which the powerful keep others subjugated and which is perpetuated primarily by the self-interest of those who have used it to gain the power they enjoy.” (p.149) It is primarily religion that is used to exercise this power over men. Religion is not “wrongheaded or benign” but is “essentially evil.” (p. 155)
Nietzsche picks up and builds upon these ideas and takes them further toward their logical end. Darwin, of course, “legitimizes” the idea that “the world as we have it does not need a designer or divine architect. It can be explained without any reference to the transcendent.” (p.187) Trueman, synthesizing these ideas, writes, “When teleology is dead and self-creation is the name of the game, then the present moment and the pleasure it can contain become the keys to eternal life.” (p.190) So when Freud comes along and writes these ideas in “scientific idiom” he was able to deliver “rhetorical power in this modern age.” (p. 202)
Freud “provided the West with a compelling myth… that sex, in terms of sexual desire and sexual fulfillment, is the real key to human existence, to what it means to be human.” (p.204) He too, targets religion, calling it an “infantile neurosis.” (p.215) Freud establishes a “scientific” connection between the so-called civilizing of the “sexual instinct”, arguing it “comes at significant cost, for it means that it is impossible for the civilized ever to be truly happy” because “happiness depends on the fulfillment of personal sexual desires.” As Trueman writes, concerning Freud’s conclusions, “Civilization thus has at its very core the impossibility of human beings ever being truly happy and content.” (p.219)
These ideas are then picked up and synthesized by Marxists and consequently politicized. “Sex is no longer a private activity because sexuality is a constitutive element of public, social identity…It is only through public acknowledgement of their legitimacy that those identities are recognized and legitimated. To outlaw, for example, gay sex or merely to tolerate it, is to outlaw or merely tolerate a certain identity.” (p.239) It is this politicization that then begins to threaten free speech. He writes, “it becomes necessary to make sure that good words and ideas are not simply promoted but are, if possible, enforced and given a monopoly in public discourse. Why, after all, would bad words and ideas be allowed when their only purpose is to inflict psychological damage on and cause oppression of the marginalized, the dispossessed, and other victims of the ruling class’s practices of domination?” (p.252)
It is now becoming clear how the philosophy of the modern self is a threat not only to religious liberty, but an existential threat to orthodox Christianity which is understood by this new understanding of “the self” to be not only an oppressor, but fundamentally evil. As these ideas have developed and advanced, the culture and law have begun to reflect the new ideology and accept it in the legal code of western nations. Trueman examines several of the key Supreme Court decisions that have begun to advance this new ideology.
Trueman rightly notes that these Supreme Court decisions are “an easy matter to sell to the wider culture on the grounds that the bases for objecting to it have already been conceded.” Some things have yet to gain traction, such as polygamy and pedophilia, but this is the case “because society simply has not had enough time to accustom itself to the idea…” (p. 313)
In Part 4, Trueman gives a short and insightful history into the history of the LGBTQ+ movement, with a particular emphasis on how such diverse and competing interests grouped together to fight the hegemony of the heterosexual culture. This is an interesting section, which exposes the fragility of the movement. It is also interesting to note that the movement defines itself in traditional, binary, heterosexual categories. The very ideology depends entirely upon the idea that God made them “male and female.” Each letter in the acronym is an inversion of a biblical category. Trueman notes this “internal incoherence” in Rieffian categories as an “anticulture.” He writes, “it is defined negativily, by its rejection of past norms and the destruction and erasure of the same.” (p.373)
Trueman concludes “that the LGBTQ+ issues that now dominate our culture and our politics are simply symptoms of a deeper revolution in what it means to be a self… The problem is that we are all part of that revolution, and there is no way to avoid it.” (p.384-385) He argues that “The church has to address the matters that the sexual revolution and expressive individualism raise in a far more thoroughgoing fashion.” (p.393)
Trueman offers three ways the church must respond to this ideology. First, “the church should reflect long and hard on the connection between aesthetics and her core beliefs and practices.” This means we must not fight ideological battles the way the world does—namely winning on “the basis of moral principles, not on the attractiveness and appeal of the narratives of the people involved.” He adds, “pastoral strategies…must always rest on deeper, transcendent commitments.” (p.403)
Secondly, he writes the church “must also be a community.” This new definition of self and its consequent expression “being preached from every commercial, every website, every newscast, and every billboard… is, humanly speaking, likely to provoke despair.” The church can act as an antidote and place of respite. (p.404-405)
Finally, “Protestants need to recover both natural law and a high view of the physical body.” He does not mean natural law to “persuade the wider world” but “for the church herself. She needs to be able to teach her people coherently about moral principles.” (p.405)
Trueman only spends a few pages at the end on these solutions. It is admittedly, not a focus of the book. The book, again, is meant to answer the question of how the statement “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” came to be “regarded as coherent and meaningful.” (p.19)
Reflecting on this now, upon completion of the book, it seems that Christians must do a better job of building culture, not merely settling for baptized versions of secular culture. We’re in the position we’re in, having surrendered much to Rousseau’s philosophy, and letting much of the psychologized ideology of self into the church. Trueman writes, “Protestantism has often failed to reflect the historical concerns of the church in its liturgy and practice, most obviously in the megachurch movement and the manner in which it has frequently adopted the aesthetics of the present moment in its worship is arguably a sign of the penetration of the anticulture into the sanctuary of historic Christianity. Christians today are not opponents of the anticulture. Too often we are a symptom of it.” (p.389)
I wish Trueman had spent more time developing that idea, as it seems to me the central failure of the church. The church hasn’t been the church. As Jesus admonishes us, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” (Matt. 6:33) We must focus our efforts on the kingdom of God, and in so doing, we will find the solutions for today’s crisis and prepare for tomorrow’s.
July 15, 2023
Carl Trueman does an amazing job in providing context to current thought patterns around identity which dominate current culture.
Walking through key influential thinkers and events in the lead up to the sexual revolution, Carl highlights that today’s seemingly strange events and secular mindset can be seen as a symptom of the culture rather than a cause in itself.
“The sexual revolution is simply one manifestation of the larger revolution of the self that has taken place in the West. And it is only as we come to understand that wider context that we can truly understand the dynamics of the sexual politics that now dominate our culture.”
Finishing with some great recommendations about how we should live as Christian’s in today’s world, this book is a long but worthwhile read.
Walking through key influential thinkers and events in the lead up to the sexual revolution, Carl highlights that today’s seemingly strange events and secular mindset can be seen as a symptom of the culture rather than a cause in itself.
“The sexual revolution is simply one manifestation of the larger revolution of the self that has taken place in the West. And it is only as we come to understand that wider context that we can truly understand the dynamics of the sexual politics that now dominate our culture.”
Finishing with some great recommendations about how we should live as Christian’s in today’s world, this book is a long but worthwhile read.
January 10, 2021
A lucid and well-researched work of intellectual history presenting the social realities affecting western culture in the opening decades of the 21st century. The confluence of various iterations of philosophical individualism and nihilism since a the Enlightenment has resulted in social and political movements that challenge any/most vestiges of a past marked by spiritual virtue or traditional ethics. Trueman helpfully lays out the history of ideas undergirding current social and cultural trends. The material in the introduction, part one, the epilogues, and “Concluding Unscientific Prologue” is particularly useful for Christians and church leaders.
January 21, 2021
Brilliant diagnosis. Just wanted more prescription beyond the final few pages.
March 2, 2021
Summary: Traces the intellectual history of what Charles Taylor calls expressive individualism and Philip Rieff calls the psychological man that the author argues explains the modern understanding of self contributing to a revolution in human sexuality.
Carl R. Trueman offers in this work something of an intellectual tour de force. It is important to understand the audience for which this book is written. It is written for Christians who embrace classic orthodoxy who are trying to understand the rapid changes in society, moving from Defense of Marriage Acts to the Obergefell ruling granting gay and lesbian couples the right to marry to contemporary discussions normalizing transgender persons in society. These are changes that have occurred in the last few decades, but which reflect a movement of thought spanning centuries, going back at least to the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Trueman derives his thinking from two key thinkers–Charles Taylor and Philip Rieff. Both trace a transformation in our understanding of the self, and of our understanding of culture. Both trace a movement from an understanding of self and culture rooted in a transcendent order, in which the idea was conforming and imitating this order in one’s ethic and the shape of society. Modernity has resulted in the shift from this idea to one in which the self is created and contemporary society is conceived as an anti-culture resisting an oppressive classic order. A particularly important concept for Rieff is that of deathworks which Rieff defines as “an all-out assault upon something vital to the established culture. Every deathwork represents an admiring final assault on the objects of its admiration: the sacred orders of which their arts are some expression in the repressive mode.”
The assault begins with Rousseau who sees evil not in the fallen self but a misshapen society. He then traces the rise of the modern self through Romantic writers like Wordsworth, Shelley, and Blake, all emphasizing an emotive intuition of reality. He explains the politicization of these impulses in the works of Nietzsche and Marx and the sexualization of the self by Freud and Wilhelm Reich, where sex moves from act to identity. Finally, Trueman arrives at the present day, the rise of the therapeutic self and the constructs of sexual and gender identity.
I’ve given an extremely truncated version of a long argument (400+ pages with postscript–although shorter than any of Charles Taylor’s books). The history of ideas and their implications offer a credible case for a number of contemporary phenomena. Yet I found it troubling, for all its logical coherence, for several reasons. One is that I could see someone who is a person of color or who identifies as LGBTQ who would say, “You have given the account of our liberation from repressive and oppressive ideas and rationale for our resistance to the powers who invoke them. What you consider a negative development, we consider a triumph–liberation from a repressive and abusive sexuality and racist, colonizing political structures.” And despite the “anti-historical” tendencies Trueman would attribute to these interlocutors, they might answer with historical record of their own. They would agree with Trueman’s basic account minus his criticisms and consider it a narrative of their liberation.
The second thing troubling to me is that, although Trueman disavows that his explanation is either lament or polemic, it comes off as polemical to someone accustomed to work in the public university setting. You will remember that I noted the importance of the audience for which he writes–classic orthodox Christians. While I identify with this group, I also am aware that this account would be received as polemical, and indeed offensive at points to the people with whom I engage. The use of the term “transgenderism” which Trueman consider the outcome of his genealogy of ideas, is not typically a term used by those who identify as transgender, but rather by those who oppose them. I sense, however, that Trueman’s intended audience would be nodding their heads in agreement. To that audience this would not be polemic, but simply a compelling explanation of what has occurred in a culture with which they are uneasy.
Part of the offense of “transgenderism” is that Trueman is writing adversarially and dispassionately about real people whose sense of gender and their assigned sex at birth are at variance. No matter how one construes the self, the lived experience is often deeply confusing and troubling, particularly for the children or adolescents facing this. Only once, in the last few pages, does Trueman mention compassion. Through the remainder, transgenderism is the “other,” a faceless, invidious movement that represents the ultimate expression of the modern self.
Finally, only in the last few pages, does Trueman gesture toward a Christian response. He emphasizes the importance of doctrinal instruction, including understanding the aesthetic logic used by the modern self, the importance of community and a recovery of both an understanding of natural law and a high view of the body. Some of this is similar to what Rod Dreher recommends in The Benedict Option. His recommendations in part reflect the conviction that expressive individualism has invaded the church, with which I would concur. But this feels like circling the wagons to me. I can’t help but think that a better approach would be to start by recognizing the failures of Christian belief and practice that led to the rise of the modern self–a low view of the body and human sexuality, the alliance of the church with oppressive political structures, the exchange Christendom for the faithfulness of Christ, and the justification of the subjugation of human beings that denied the imago dei in all persons. Then, the challenge is to offer a better account, rather than just critique, and models of community that live this account.
What Trueman offers in this survey of intellectual history is an understanding both of how we got to where we are and why we often speak past one another. We really are working from different understandings of the world, the self, and the ground of ultimate reality. Furthermore, a biblically grounded, theologically acute account of a Christian vision has been vitiated by this modern view of the self. I hope in the future this scholar will move beyond explanation and critique to retrieval and re-articulation of an account of Christian truth not merely for a Christian audience but for a public unsatisfied with the modern self. This, it seems to me is both the harder and more important work, for which, as Trueman rightly notes, this book is only prolegomenon.
____________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
Carl R. Trueman offers in this work something of an intellectual tour de force. It is important to understand the audience for which this book is written. It is written for Christians who embrace classic orthodoxy who are trying to understand the rapid changes in society, moving from Defense of Marriage Acts to the Obergefell ruling granting gay and lesbian couples the right to marry to contemporary discussions normalizing transgender persons in society. These are changes that have occurred in the last few decades, but which reflect a movement of thought spanning centuries, going back at least to the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Trueman derives his thinking from two key thinkers–Charles Taylor and Philip Rieff. Both trace a transformation in our understanding of the self, and of our understanding of culture. Both trace a movement from an understanding of self and culture rooted in a transcendent order, in which the idea was conforming and imitating this order in one’s ethic and the shape of society. Modernity has resulted in the shift from this idea to one in which the self is created and contemporary society is conceived as an anti-culture resisting an oppressive classic order. A particularly important concept for Rieff is that of deathworks which Rieff defines as “an all-out assault upon something vital to the established culture. Every deathwork represents an admiring final assault on the objects of its admiration: the sacred orders of which their arts are some expression in the repressive mode.”
The assault begins with Rousseau who sees evil not in the fallen self but a misshapen society. He then traces the rise of the modern self through Romantic writers like Wordsworth, Shelley, and Blake, all emphasizing an emotive intuition of reality. He explains the politicization of these impulses in the works of Nietzsche and Marx and the sexualization of the self by Freud and Wilhelm Reich, where sex moves from act to identity. Finally, Trueman arrives at the present day, the rise of the therapeutic self and the constructs of sexual and gender identity.
I’ve given an extremely truncated version of a long argument (400+ pages with postscript–although shorter than any of Charles Taylor’s books). The history of ideas and their implications offer a credible case for a number of contemporary phenomena. Yet I found it troubling, for all its logical coherence, for several reasons. One is that I could see someone who is a person of color or who identifies as LGBTQ who would say, “You have given the account of our liberation from repressive and oppressive ideas and rationale for our resistance to the powers who invoke them. What you consider a negative development, we consider a triumph–liberation from a repressive and abusive sexuality and racist, colonizing political structures.” And despite the “anti-historical” tendencies Trueman would attribute to these interlocutors, they might answer with historical record of their own. They would agree with Trueman’s basic account minus his criticisms and consider it a narrative of their liberation.
The second thing troubling to me is that, although Trueman disavows that his explanation is either lament or polemic, it comes off as polemical to someone accustomed to work in the public university setting. You will remember that I noted the importance of the audience for which he writes–classic orthodox Christians. While I identify with this group, I also am aware that this account would be received as polemical, and indeed offensive at points to the people with whom I engage. The use of the term “transgenderism” which Trueman consider the outcome of his genealogy of ideas, is not typically a term used by those who identify as transgender, but rather by those who oppose them. I sense, however, that Trueman’s intended audience would be nodding their heads in agreement. To that audience this would not be polemic, but simply a compelling explanation of what has occurred in a culture with which they are uneasy.
Part of the offense of “transgenderism” is that Trueman is writing adversarially and dispassionately about real people whose sense of gender and their assigned sex at birth are at variance. No matter how one construes the self, the lived experience is often deeply confusing and troubling, particularly for the children or adolescents facing this. Only once, in the last few pages, does Trueman mention compassion. Through the remainder, transgenderism is the “other,” a faceless, invidious movement that represents the ultimate expression of the modern self.
Finally, only in the last few pages, does Trueman gesture toward a Christian response. He emphasizes the importance of doctrinal instruction, including understanding the aesthetic logic used by the modern self, the importance of community and a recovery of both an understanding of natural law and a high view of the body. Some of this is similar to what Rod Dreher recommends in The Benedict Option. His recommendations in part reflect the conviction that expressive individualism has invaded the church, with which I would concur. But this feels like circling the wagons to me. I can’t help but think that a better approach would be to start by recognizing the failures of Christian belief and practice that led to the rise of the modern self–a low view of the body and human sexuality, the alliance of the church with oppressive political structures, the exchange Christendom for the faithfulness of Christ, and the justification of the subjugation of human beings that denied the imago dei in all persons. Then, the challenge is to offer a better account, rather than just critique, and models of community that live this account.
What Trueman offers in this survey of intellectual history is an understanding both of how we got to where we are and why we often speak past one another. We really are working from different understandings of the world, the self, and the ground of ultimate reality. Furthermore, a biblically grounded, theologically acute account of a Christian vision has been vitiated by this modern view of the self. I hope in the future this scholar will move beyond explanation and critique to retrieval and re-articulation of an account of Christian truth not merely for a Christian audience but for a public unsatisfied with the modern self. This, it seems to me is both the harder and more important work, for which, as Trueman rightly notes, this book is only prolegomenon.
____________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
December 31, 2023
This book was really, really good. Definitely a bit of a grind at times because it’s so packed with heady philosophy and tracks where those philosophies came from, but it was interesting to read about where a lot of our current cultural narratives originated and how they’ve formed over time.
I read this book because I couldn’t understand how societal views on sexuality have changed so much from my grandparent’s generation to now. Waiting to live together until marriage, for example, was commonplace in broader society in the 50’s, but is generally the exception today. How did something that was the expectation for over 1,000 years in the West become something that is unfathomable to so many in a matter of 50-60 years?
I thought Truman did a great job of tracing the history of thought regarding expressive individualism and how that has turned into extremely politicized views and discourse on sexuality today.
A worthy book to be #2 of 2023!
I read this book because I couldn’t understand how societal views on sexuality have changed so much from my grandparent’s generation to now. Waiting to live together until marriage, for example, was commonplace in broader society in the 50’s, but is generally the exception today. How did something that was the expectation for over 1,000 years in the West become something that is unfathomable to so many in a matter of 50-60 years?
I thought Truman did a great job of tracing the history of thought regarding expressive individualism and how that has turned into extremely politicized views and discourse on sexuality today.
A worthy book to be #2 of 2023!
March 22, 2021
Despite the wonkishly polysyllabic title, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is a cogent and accessible contribution to the “How Did We Get Here” genre. Carl Trueman, a Reformed seminary professor, begins his survey of the development of the modern mind by posing a simple question: how has it become possible for someone to say, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body”, and be understood, believed, and taken seriously? Such a statement would have been incomprehensible to most people even a few decades ago; that it has become a cultural commonplace, not only credited in academic journals of sociology and critical theory but fiercely acclaimed by the media megalith, accommodated by the masses, and encoded in our laws and public institutions, reflects a profound shift in our collective understanding of identity. When and how did this transformation occur?
Trueman utilizes the work of three twentieth century thinkers to identify the conspicuous nature of the modern self. The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor characterized the modern social paradigm as one of expressive individualism. Whereas under previous social orders, an individual was understood to achieve maturity and fulfill his fundamental purpose by conforming to the normative values and expectations of his society, modernity insists that society must instead accommodate the full expression of the individual’s own self-generated will and identity. While premodern cultures embodied mimesis, or the notion that life should conform itself to external realities, the modern mind is stridently poietic, viewing the exterior world not as something we must subordinate ourselves to, but rather as something we create. Our ancestors inhabited a world that was constituted in relation to a transcendent order from which it derived its legitimacy and its social logic; our world is circumscribed in the immanent frame, referring only to itself for its value judgments.
Taylor’s immanent frame corresponds to the Third World of American sociologist Philip Rieff, as does his expressive individual to Rieff’s Psychological Man and the therapeutic society that serves him. Add to this mixture moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s emotivism, the modern understanding that every prospective moral judgement is nothing more than an expression of personal sentiment or taste rather than an appeal to a coherent and intelligible system of verifiable truths, and we have a rough outline of the modern sensibility. So, what are the historical roots of the modern self?
As Trueman has it, the revolution occurred in three broad stages. In the first, the self was psychologized; in the second, psychology was sexualized; and in the third, sex was politicized.
The first stage is personified by Rousseau, who argued contrary to most of his contemporaries and nearly all of his predecessors that the origins of oppression, strife, and inequality lay in the formation of human societies, and that these were not present in a contented and pacific pre-political state of nature. Whereas Catholic and Reformed thought regarded the human being as fundamentally sinful and in need of external authorities—namely, scripture and the church that interpreted it—for its moral edification, Rousseau turned this picture upside down. The task of any social order was no longer to make people good—or at least less evil—but instead to make space for the natural goodness of the naïve person to follow its course unimpeded. Every institution, from politics to the arts to education, was to be reframed as a theater for self-actualization rather than a mechanism for forming people in accordance with a social ideal. Rousseau’s Romantic successors, poets like Wordsworth, Shelley, and Blake, elaborated on this psychologistic understanding of human fulfillment and its implications for ordinary life, taking to task well-established social institutions like religion and the nuclear family as so many impositions on personal fulfillment and pathologizing distortions of a natural and appropriate social freedom.
Rousseau and the Romantics were critical of organized religion, but they nonetheless relied upon an effectively Christian moral sensibility; believing merely that this proper ethic was innate in every person prior to their social instruction. Nietzsche called their bluff, reimagining the ideal man not as one who lived in accordance with a natural ethic but as one with the will and courage to overcome inherited moral paradigms and create his own—the poietic turn.
The second stage, of course, was the age of Freud, who placed sexuality at the heart of human identity and argued that civilization was created through a sublimation of erotic desire. No longer was sex thought of as merely an act; sexuality was now the most fundamental constitutive element of the human person, but one which was tragically alienated from him by the social order, just as, according to Marx, the surplus-value generated by workers was alienated from them under capitalism. Social theorists like Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse combined the libidinal self of Freud with the political historicism of Marx. All social relations could now be thought of as historically-conditioned systems of power that suppressed every conceivable “marginal” sexual identity and prevented the flourishing and self-actualization of every marginalized person. Thus were the pieces in place for “Queerness” to become an incredibly powerful political ideology in the West, as indeed it has done.
There are few truly original insights in the book, but it is nonetheless a valuable work of consolidation for those trying to find their bearings in the debate over LGBTQ politics.
Trueman utilizes the work of three twentieth century thinkers to identify the conspicuous nature of the modern self. The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor characterized the modern social paradigm as one of expressive individualism. Whereas under previous social orders, an individual was understood to achieve maturity and fulfill his fundamental purpose by conforming to the normative values and expectations of his society, modernity insists that society must instead accommodate the full expression of the individual’s own self-generated will and identity. While premodern cultures embodied mimesis, or the notion that life should conform itself to external realities, the modern mind is stridently poietic, viewing the exterior world not as something we must subordinate ourselves to, but rather as something we create. Our ancestors inhabited a world that was constituted in relation to a transcendent order from which it derived its legitimacy and its social logic; our world is circumscribed in the immanent frame, referring only to itself for its value judgments.
Taylor’s immanent frame corresponds to the Third World of American sociologist Philip Rieff, as does his expressive individual to Rieff’s Psychological Man and the therapeutic society that serves him. Add to this mixture moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s emotivism, the modern understanding that every prospective moral judgement is nothing more than an expression of personal sentiment or taste rather than an appeal to a coherent and intelligible system of verifiable truths, and we have a rough outline of the modern sensibility. So, what are the historical roots of the modern self?
As Trueman has it, the revolution occurred in three broad stages. In the first, the self was psychologized; in the second, psychology was sexualized; and in the third, sex was politicized.
The first stage is personified by Rousseau, who argued contrary to most of his contemporaries and nearly all of his predecessors that the origins of oppression, strife, and inequality lay in the formation of human societies, and that these were not present in a contented and pacific pre-political state of nature. Whereas Catholic and Reformed thought regarded the human being as fundamentally sinful and in need of external authorities—namely, scripture and the church that interpreted it—for its moral edification, Rousseau turned this picture upside down. The task of any social order was no longer to make people good—or at least less evil—but instead to make space for the natural goodness of the naïve person to follow its course unimpeded. Every institution, from politics to the arts to education, was to be reframed as a theater for self-actualization rather than a mechanism for forming people in accordance with a social ideal. Rousseau’s Romantic successors, poets like Wordsworth, Shelley, and Blake, elaborated on this psychologistic understanding of human fulfillment and its implications for ordinary life, taking to task well-established social institutions like religion and the nuclear family as so many impositions on personal fulfillment and pathologizing distortions of a natural and appropriate social freedom.
Rousseau and the Romantics were critical of organized religion, but they nonetheless relied upon an effectively Christian moral sensibility; believing merely that this proper ethic was innate in every person prior to their social instruction. Nietzsche called their bluff, reimagining the ideal man not as one who lived in accordance with a natural ethic but as one with the will and courage to overcome inherited moral paradigms and create his own—the poietic turn.
The second stage, of course, was the age of Freud, who placed sexuality at the heart of human identity and argued that civilization was created through a sublimation of erotic desire. No longer was sex thought of as merely an act; sexuality was now the most fundamental constitutive element of the human person, but one which was tragically alienated from him by the social order, just as, according to Marx, the surplus-value generated by workers was alienated from them under capitalism. Social theorists like Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse combined the libidinal self of Freud with the political historicism of Marx. All social relations could now be thought of as historically-conditioned systems of power that suppressed every conceivable “marginal” sexual identity and prevented the flourishing and self-actualization of every marginalized person. Thus were the pieces in place for “Queerness” to become an incredibly powerful political ideology in the West, as indeed it has done.
There are few truly original insights in the book, but it is nonetheless a valuable work of consolidation for those trying to find their bearings in the debate over LGBTQ politics.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,018 reviews