The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: A Book Review

If one states that we live in an unprecedented time, he likely has never picked up a history book. Also, he probably has never heard of the sin that has affected human existence ever since the Fall of Adam and Eve. Today, the seemingly counterintuitive phrase, "I am a woman trapped in man's body", has become something that is apparently cohesive, intuitive, and even moral. One might think that such a phrase gained its traction within the last 5 years after Bruce Jenner's switch to Caitlyn in 2015. Or, another might assume that phrases like "I am a woman trapped in a man's body" and "I was born this way" started in the 1950s at the start of the sexual revolution or in June, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn. No, transgenderism is merely the latest fruit of an understanding of human identity that has developed for hundreds of years.

Summary

Carl Trueman, in his book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, introduces the reader to the philosophers and ideas that have formed Western culture as we know it today. As he addresses the idea of "self", Trueman acquires the help of three philosophers--Philip Rieff, Charles Taylor, and Alasdair MacIntyre--to relay to the reader how society changes. In part 1 of the book, Trueman discusses the Rieffan ideas of "social imaginary", "first, second, and third worlds", "the psychological man", and "deathworks." Similarly, although Rieff is his primary confidant throughout the book, he still addresses the thoughts of Taylor's "immanent frame" and MacIntyre's "emotivism", which Trueman calls "expressivism." Trueman takes great care (close to a hundred pages) of orienting the readers to the definitions he uses and the iconoclastic narrative he is about to walk them through.

Part 2 begins by discussing the sociology of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Genevan philosopher and progenitor of the French Revolution. Rousseau is important because he believed that the individual was inherently good and it was only society, the culture around him, that made him do evil. An individual is good when he is free to be his authentic self, something that society and the cultural elite repress. Trueman then turns the reader's gaze to the Romantic poets, William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, and William Blake, men who were iconoclasts and wrote on the expression of individuality. The author then addresses the three philosophers who fundamentally shaped Western thought: Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Charles Darwin. These three giants combined formed a cohesive, scientific, and anti-cultural attack against the sacred order of Christianity and Western culture as a whole.

Part 3 addresses how Sigmund Freud was the catalyst that made the radical ideas of Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin relevant to the lives of everyday human beings. Freud believed that every action came from sexual impulses. He indelibly changed the idea of the modern self into a sexual identity. Marxists such as Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse and others, married the ideas of Freud and Marx. Marx's bourgeoise was now the patriarchal traditional sexual norms that needed to be abolished by the individual iconoclastic sexual norms of the proletariat. Rousseau psychologized identity, Freud sexualized it. Then, Reich and Marcuse politicized both identity and sex. What use to be something private and personal now became the topic of public debate and pop culture.

In Part 4, Trueman addresses the triumphs and so-called "deathworks" of the sexual revolution and the age of expressivism. Deathworks, as Rieff defined them, are the things that make a full-on assault on the sacred order of second-world, faith-guided, pathologies. Taking the brunt of these assaults is Christianity. Most of the writing of Nietzsche, Marx, Darwin, and Freud are considered deathworks. And even though many have never read the works of any of these authors, their affect can be seen through the triumph of the sexual revolution. The sexual revolution, as Trueman notes, has triumphed in the erotic by making pornography look acceptable and common in TV shows and movies (Game of Thrones being a prime example). It has triumphed in the therapeutic as evident in several U.S. Supreme Court rulings and protests Ivy League campuses. Finally, the sexual revolution has triumphed in the T, the transgenderism, of the LGBTQ+ community. Transgenderism is merely a product of the overthrow of a traditional (and biblical) understanding of sex, identity, and self. This overthrow has been developing for centuries.

Critique

Carl Trueman's Rise and Triumph is a hard book to work through but is well worth the read. We as believers must know who what we are arguing against in order to be persuasive in the lives of those around us. Nietzsche, Marx, Darwin, and Freud are all men who, although many people have never read their work, continue to impact our society. I do wish that the author went back further and addressed how much of 18th, 19th, and 20th century materialism originated with Epicurus, the Greek philosopher. Also, after understanding the importance of Rise and Triumph's content, I hope that he writes a more condensed, and easier to read, edition of the book that is more understandable to a less philosophical audience. Trueman's book, nonetheless, is still one of the most important books I have ever read.

Application

Although not argumentative, the book still provides a way for the reader to know the intellectual giants first-hand. Trueman's book sheds a light on the way in which the sexual revolution has destroyed the biblical understanding of human identity, specifically in the matters of pornography and abortion. Each are a deathwork which makes an assault on the very image of God in man. The author, in concluding the book, calls for Christians to stand together in unity. With the advance of the sexual revolution, we as Christians are facing a time when we may not be free to speak against the LGBTQ+ agenda or abortion rights. But, in order to endure the full outcome of the sexual ideologies that controls our current culture, we, as the Church, must stand together.

Book Reviewed

Trueman, Carl. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive

Individualism, and the Road to the Sexual Revolution. Wheaton: Crossway, 2020. 432 pages.

ISBN: 9781433556333

For this review, Crossway has provided a complimentary copy of this book through the Blog Review Program.