The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman Robert Benne The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. By Carl Trueman. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2020. 425 pp. Carl Trueman is one of America’s most important rising Christian public intellectuals. Scottish born and educated, Trueman is currently professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College. Earlier he taught at the Ministerial Training Institute of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. His columns are published regularly in Public Discourse and First Things. Most importantly, he has written several significant books, including The Creedal Imperative (2012) and Luther on the Christian Life (2015). I taught the latter in an adult class at church and found it very well-written and informative. Though an orthodox Presbyterian, he is almost persuaded by Luther on the liturgy and sacraments. Trueman starts with the assessment of the modern self by two major theorists, Philip Rieff and Charles Taylor, both of whom see “expressive individualism” as the essence of the modern self. The modern self is no longer guided by the sacred order of great religions, the obligations to others in the given stations of life, or the virtues that solid traditions have formed in their adherents. Rather, the modern self aims at “authenticity,” the untrammeled expression of whatever inner definition or inclination the self wants to express. Modern societies are not only to tolerate such expressive [End Page 474] individuals; they are to affirm and embrace them. Criticizing them or their actions amounts to “hate speech.” Trueman devotes the main part of his book to tracing the intellectual pedigree behind the phenomenon of the modern self. Ideas have consequences and the author wants to examine the chain of ideas that have brought us to the current state. In “Foundations of the Revolution” he traces the impact of Rousseau, the Romantic poets, and the really big theorists: Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin. He then moves to the “Sexualization of the Revolution,” in which he surveys the thought and impact of Freud. He concludes that section by conjuring up thinkers of the recent past, whom many of us remember from the 1960s—Marcuse and Reich—who “politicized sex.” Throwing off the sexual restraints of the old Christian bourgeois order would be the first step to revolution. The last major section deals with the triumphs of the erotic, the therapeutic, and the “T,” which stands for transgenderism. In the latter section he deals with the incongruities and contradictions of the powerful LGBTQ movement. All sorts of “expressive individualism” do not fit together so easily. In a concluding “Unscientific Prologue,” he reflects on the possible futures of a society so destabilized by rampant individualism, and what it means for the church. This book is a bracing survey of intellectual history and makes a compelling case for understanding the current situation in the light of major thinkers of the past. But there are problems. A major one has to do with the role of ideas in historical change. Are they as important as he makes them out to be? He admits that he is not doing a comprehensive account, but it would have been helpful to have touched on the major economic, social, and political changes that are perhaps just as important as ideas in the unfolding of history. Further, he implies that the emerging notion of the human self is drastically different than Christian views of the self but does not explain how it is different. The lay folks I taught kept asking about the Christian anthropology that is being jettisoned by the triumph of the modern self. The teacher had to supply the answers! Another oddity is that he does not mention Robert Bellah, whose Habits of the Heart (1985, re-issued 2007) made “expressive and utilitarian individualism” part of the intellectual landscape. Indeed, more attention [End Page 475] to the utilitarian version of individualism, as well as to the identity politics, to which extreme individualism inadvertently leads, would have been very helpful. Nevertheless, this formidable work lends great understanding to our current chaos...