The Cultural Amnesia of Expressive Individualism and the Triumphant Road to Sexual Revolution: Examining the Rise of the Modern Self

Paul Charbonneau: Carl Trueman clearly explains the historical long road to where we find ourselves today. His insights help to explain not only the traction that the LGBT+ movement is making today but also the lightning fast change in attitude towards end of life issues (in particular Medical Assistance in Dying.) The Church will need to depend on the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to navigate through these challenges at the same time staying true to the Lord.

Canada on Jul 05, 2023

Simon Jones: Lots of promise but let down by the execution. Long-winded summaries of key intellectuals and a lack of critical comment from the author. The postscript at the end is probably the best part, but it takes a long slog to get there.

The book delivers as a predominantly descriptive historical survey of key intellectuals in the formation of the modern concept of the self. But with more scrupulous editing, and more space for the author’s critical commentary, this could’ve been a much more satisfying package.

United Kingdom on May 29, 2023

Cody AllenCody Allen: In today’s modern culture, we have come to think about ourselves differently than ever before. Society is more psychological, secular, and sexual than in any other time period from our history. It has been a slow progress of development going back hundreds of years. Our author investigates many contributing philosophers like Nietzsche, Marx, Rousseau and Freud, to name a few. Not only have ideas shaped us, so have modern advancements in science and technology.

It is no secret that we have become a society of psychological beings. For previous generations, job satisfaction was “empirical, outwardly directed, and unrelated” to one’s psychological state: if you had a job that could provide for your family, you were happy (or, if you were a woman, if you had healthy children and a happy husband, you were likewise happy). For our generation, “the issue of feeling is central.” We need to feel good and valued in the things we do, otherwise we are unhappy and depressed. Self-expression and individual psychological well-being are now at the heart of what it means to be human.

When societies were religious, and we all believed in a God greater than ourselves, we...

United States on May 02, 2023

Reader: Of Carl Trueman’s work, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, I regret to say that my assessment of it has to be: “weighed in the balances and found wanting.”

It seeks to present a “grand unified theory” of the genesis and development of current thinking on sexuality. It is certainly a major endeavor. Yet despite the panegyric chorus of most of its reviewers (coming mostly from a fairly narrow spectrum of readers, comprised mostly of those already affiliated with his commitments), the effort falls short.

Trueman can often be informative and insightful, especially in his discussion of Nietzsche, Marx, Darwin, Freud, and all those then influenced by their thought, often unwittingly (which these days, like it or not, think it good or not, at least to some extent includes almost all of us).

In an age when hyper-specialized, atomistic approaches are more often the norm than not in academia, seeking “the big picture” is a noble intention. However, Trueman’s overall analysis just won’t hold. He has pressed together different batches of clay to produce a sculpture which, upon examination, fractures. He has conflated causation with correlation,...

United States on Oct 25, 2022

Niklas Morgan: Dieses viel zu wenig bekannte Buch ist mit Sicherheit eines der besten Philosophie bzw Psychologiebücher, die ich in den letzten Jahren gelesen habe.
Brilliante und auch faire Analyse, statt den sonst oft üblichen Polemiken und Strohmann Debatten.

Hier hat jemand gründlich gelesen und nachgedacht und er erklärt den modernen „psychologischen Menschen“. Er spannt einen grossen Bogen von der Aufklärung über die Romantik, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Reich, bis zu Marcuse und den postmodernen Feministinnen und Butler.
Danach versteht man die Komplexität der aktuellen Reizthemen des aktuellen Zeitgeists, von Gender über Homoehe bis Transgender.

Erstaunlich, dass ein religiöser Theologe so analytisch fundiert die Position der Gegenseite erklären kann, ohne dabei unfair oder herablassend zu werden. Sehr bemerkenswert. Werde es aufgrund der Informationsdichte sicherlich bald nochmals lesen.

Germany on Dec 08, 2021

Cjbevan: 21 07 15 the rise and triumph of the modern self
The phrase ‘I am a woman trapped in a man’s body’ epitomises our arrival at a point in time where public discourse seems to have changed out of all semblance, not only to our past, recent and distant, but even out from a firm anchor in reality itself. This phrase previously would have been considered nonsensical, or as symptom of mental disorder, but now has credence in public life and even controversially in medicine. This has not happened overnight, nor even particularly quickly, but is the most recent manifestation of trends that have been going on for centuries. Trueman in this book describes how we have come to this point, the world of emotivism and the world of deathworks.
He traces the history of thought and assumption to the present construct of the Psychological Man of Phillip Reiff , living out the Expressive Individualism of Charles Taylor, from the Reformation, via Rousseau ; then the Romantics Wordsworth, Shelley and Blake ; and then the overtly political and iconoclastic Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin ; and finally the politicisation of sex, of Freud being appropriated into Marxism by the Gramsci, and then the...

United Kingdom on Jul 15, 2021

IC: The book basically tracks the shift from general belief in the externality of truth and the values of Western culture were gradually replaced with the present belief that inwardness and private "authenticity" are the determinants of truth and morality. Working from Rousseau to Foucault, touching such noteworthiness as Shelley and Blake, Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, Darwin, Gramsci and Marcuse, the author explains how the current dominant mindset became alienated from truth, facts, evidence and science, and how the current political climate became irrationally polarized.

This is quite a readable book. It doesn't hurt to have some background in the humanities in higher education, if you want to get the most out of this. But the ordinary person could also read through, even if he/she had to take some information for granted. And it's well worth the price.

Canada on Apr 14, 2021