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

Carl R. Trueman,

Rod Dreher (Foreword)

4.71 · Rating details · 441 ratings · 137 reviews

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 t ...more

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Hardcover, 432 pages

Published November 24th 2020 by Crossway Books

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Start your review of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution

Aug 11, 2020 Jeremy is currently reading it

Shelves: non-fiction, want-to-buy, modernity, culture, psychology, sexuality

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?

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 c ...more

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Nov 26, 2020 Murtaza rated it really liked it

Shelves: favorites

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 inten 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. ...more

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Nov 26, 2020 David Steele rated it really liked it

Shelves: culture

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 ...more

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Nov 20, 2020 Brian rated it liked it

Shelves: 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 writin ...more

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Dec 20, 2020 Mark Jr. rated it it was amazing

Shelves: netgalley, 2020, kindle

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-evidence 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 ...more

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Jan 07, 2021 Wyatt Graham added it

My review: https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/rev... ...more

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Sep 21, 2020 Hanna rated it did not like it

Shelves: reviews

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 ince ...more

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Sep 19, 2020 Anna added it

Shelves: for-review

I 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 destructi I 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) ...more

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Jan 10, 2021 Zack rated it it was amazing

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 trend ...more

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Feb 16, 2021 John rated it really liked it

Shelves: 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 t ...more

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Dec 14, 2020 Samuel Parkison rated it it was amazing

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.

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Jan 20, 2021 Ivan rated it it was amazing

Brilliant diagnosis. Just wanted more prescription beyond the final few pages.

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Jan 20, 2021 Becky Pliego rated it liked it

Shelves: philosophy, read-in-2021, social-issues

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 a ...more

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Nov 14, 2020 Brittany rated it really liked it

I docked a star, not because I disagreed with any of the content but because it's a fairly long book that was a bit more academic than I thought it would be. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are going to fail to finish it even though there is a lot of important information to be had in these pages. (Maybe my review can convince you to still give it a chance. or at least read the quotes I posted below) Carl Trueman is a historian and this book is him identifying historical figures and ideol ...more

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Dec 06, 2020 Mitchell Dixon rated it it was amazing

Shelves: digital-library

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Nov 02, 2020 Nick Roark rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2020

Brilliant

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Jan 22, 2021 Chelsey Meissner rated it it was amazing

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 unfort ...more

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Feb 05, 2021 Jordan Shirkman rated it it was amazing

Carl Trueman is a historian through and through, and he helpfully (and painstakingly!) helps us make sense of how the statement, “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body” is more or less understandable in the 21st century world, when it would have been positively baffling in any other time in human history.

If you don’t have a stomach (or better yet, an appetite) for philosophy and history, mostly from the Enlightment until today, this is probably not the book for you. But if you’re curious to trace ...more

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Feb 04, 2021 Alex Etheridge rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-in-2021

An important, albeit dense, read on how our Western culture got to where it is today with regard to sexuality. How did social consciousness get to where it is today regarding expressive individualism, gay marriage, LGBTQ+ issues, and transgender trends? As Trueman himself states in the opening sentence: "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.'"

Trueman sets out ...more

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Dec 26, 2020 Daddy-O rated it really liked it

It's a grand academic, intellectual-history-based analysis of the culture and all of its identitarian horrors, but you can get the gist by picking up a King James Bible, flipping to Ecclesiastes, and reading, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." ...more

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Jan 26, 2021 Jeremy Mueller rated it really liked it

If you’ve ever wondered why Western culture seems hyper-sexualized or you’ve been perplexed by the seemingly sudden shift in political and social discourse regarding sexual identity (what many coin “The Sexual Revolution”), this book is for you. Trueman is clear from the outset that his book is not meant to serve as a polemic nor as a lament for the cultural shifts. Rather, it is an invitation to further discussion. What history and what trends of ideas have led to a culture in which the claim “ If you’ve ever wondered why Western culture seems hyper-sexualized or you’ve been perplexed by the seemingly sudden shift in political and social discourse regarding sexual identity (what many coin “The Sexual Revolution”), this book is for you. Trueman is clear from the outset that his book is not meant to serve as a polemic nor as a lament for the cultural shifts. Rather, it is an invitation to further discussion. What history and what trends of ideas have led to a culture in which the claim “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” is as normal as saying the sky is blue or ice is cold? Trueman’s central analysis – identity in today’s world is most evidently determined by one’s psychological state – is a penetrating diagnosis of the present culture with far reaching consequences.

Previous generations and eras found their identity primarily in outward and collective identities, be it their citizenship, their religion, or their job and therefore found contentment in the context of authority structures. Today’s generation finds its identity in the psychological self, what Trueman describes as “the notion that we are who we feel we are and that the purpose of life is inward, psychological contentment or satisfaction.” Those previous generations attributed identity to biological and objective categories. Today’s generation applies identity to psychologized categories such as “perceived-self.” In Trueman’s words: “Reality is inward and psychological, not outward and natural.” For instance, if someone perceives themselves to be a female, even though they are biologically a male, they will claim that any opposition to their perceived self is an affront to their inherent dignity. Even if one were to grant this argument to be true, it necessarily creates a fluid category of identity that is arbitrarily determined by culture to be appropriate. Nowadays, culture perceives that transgenderism and homosexuality are appropriate forms of psychologized identities. But for the sake of logic, is it safe to assume that other forms of psychologized identities, such as pedophilia or beastiality, could one day claim that any critique or push-back against their identity is a threat to their dignity and is therefore oppressive?

Perhaps these are extreme examples, but Trueman helps the reader to understand how this issue of psychologized identity is highly malleable and simply subject to culturally approved norms. It is a slippery slope indeed. And through the power of emotional rhetoric, the sexual revolution has gained astounding influence and power. As a matter of argumentation and communication, the MO of modern day sexual revolutionists is the dismissal of critique on the basis of alleged animus, not on the basis of argument or rationality – “The agreed rational basis for debate is gone. All that is left is emotional preference” (377). They will frame everything as “hegemonic discourse” so that anyone who disagrees with their views is necessarily a part of the underlying problem. In other words, because psychological identity and personal happiness have become the objective standards for identity, any critique or pushback against someone’s perceived identity is seen as a threat and thus needs to be censured by the State. You can understand how it could be reasonable to imagine a society in which the claims “Marriage is a union between one and woman” or “A person born with an XX chromosome is a female” are considered hate speech and will be criminalized by the State due to the “harm” it causes an individual’s psychologized self. In fact, this analysis gets at the bedrock of what constitutes free speech and whether freedom of speech is subject to change over time based upon cultural norms and about what constitutes genuine “harm.” On this point, Trueman quotes Thomas Jefferson, “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg” (“Notes on the State of Virginia”).

I appreciated Trueman’s clarity and candor in this work, and I am grateful he strays away from alarmism. His conclusion raises insightful questions and invitation to further conversation, for which I am grateful. I do hope this work inspires more conversations surrounding this topic, as it looks like the debate surrounding the “sexual revolution” is here to stay for a while.

As for critical feedback:
In writing on the psychological self for 400 pages, you’d think Trueman could find a few pages to clarify his understanding of the soul’s relationship to the body (or, to use his terms, the relation of one’s body to its psyche). This may be an unfair critique since I don’t what Trueman’s full anthropology is, but in in failing to do so, Trueman seems to draw a fairly rigid distinction between body and soul. A distinction which I’m sure he doesn’t even intend to draw. In critiquing one’s psychology, he writes, “If I am whoever I think I am and if my inward sense of psychological well-being is my only moral imperative, then the imposition of external prior, or static categories is nothing other than an act of imperialism…” (363). Perhaps the operative word here is *only*, in which case, I agree, but I do think Trueman could have been a bit more nuanced on this point. This wholesale argument reduces the human experience to one that is purely physical and objective. One’s soul or psyche may be in a state of turmoil due to depression, abuse, etc. but because these aren’t static categories, they don’t truly matter, so the logic goes. He claims that the church needs to recover emphasis on physical embodiment. I certainly agree, but there is no mention at all of what is means to be spiritually embodied people of both body and soul, so it comes across as a mere reaction against the unhealthy state of culture’s emphasis on the psychological self at the expense of a holistic theological anthropology. I am possibly over-critical on this point because theological anthropology has been a particular point of interest for me as of late.

Trueman also makes a brief comment on Western society and sex culture writing: “Nobody looking at Western society today could fail to see how sex dominates the culture in a way unknown to our ancestors in the Middle Ages or the early modern age” (204). I’m not sure this is true. The first few centuries of Roman cultured were highly sexualized. Sure, they didn’t have the internet or television (which certainly exacerbates the sexualized culture), but I’m not sure this statement by Trueman is fully founded.

In short, pick up this book and read it and share it with a friend and start a conversation on the issues contained within. ...more

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Jan 19, 2021 Tim Michiemo rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Christians

Shelves: worldview-culture, arts-and-culture, favorites, re-read

4.9 Stars

Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is a phenomenal work of cultural and philosophical 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 Alasdai 4.9 Stars

Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is a phenomenal work of cultural and philosophical 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 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!
...more

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Feb 01, 2021 John Dube rated it it was amazing

Shelves: culture

Wow! A terrifically clear analysis of the times. I suspect not all will buy into Trueman’s path to the psychological man (I myself would see the poets and Dali as more of a symptom than a cause), yet there is no denying he has arose. I’m hoping Truman will go the direction of Wells and this might represent a kind of first volume, a la No Place for Truth.

As a pastor, I’m particularly challenged by this volume. While reading I was stuck by many of the ways the church (myself included) has accepte ...more

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Feb 13, 2021 Justin Lonas rated it liked it

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 Sch 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. ...more

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Feb 02, 2021 Bob rated it it was amazing

The Rise & Triumph of the Modern Self
If you are troubled by the state of our culture’s morality & wonder how we got here, this book is a must read from a brilliant Christian historian.

Trueman begins by giving us this phrase; “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body” , it is the springboard of the book. Not long ago that statement would have been considered nonsense, and anyone saying it would be morally suspect. Today, if you even question the validity of that statement, you are considered a bigot a The Rise & Triumph of the Modern Self
If you are troubled by the state of our culture’s morality & wonder how we got here, this book is a must read from a brilliant Christian historian.

Trueman begins by giving us this phrase; “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body” , it is the springboard of the book. Not long ago that statement would have been considered nonsense, and anyone saying it would be morally suspect. Today, if you even question the validity of that statement, you are considered a bigot and deemed unworthy of any social standing, platform, or even livelihood. How did we get from point A to point B? That’s what Trueman attempts to answer.

One of his main points is this: "The rise of the sexual revolution was predicated on fundamental changes in how the self is understood. The self must first be psychologized; psychology must then be sexualized; and sex must be politicized." And this is the path his book takes, following figures such as Augustine, Charles Taylor, Paul Rieff, Marx, Rousseau, Freud, Nietzsche, Charles Darwin etc.

It follows then that the uninfluenced self is inherently good and society is what corrupts a person or impedes their ability to be their pure selves (driven by feelings) by imposing their traditions, ethics, or the like. Sexual gratification and fulfillment is central to pleasure and what it means to be human. Religious constructs that limit sexual freedom cause repression of people's true identities. The traditional family unit is oppressive. Oppression is less about economics and legal standing and more about psychological victimhood- hate speech, microaggressions, etc which is more subjective.

He also brings out the question many want the answer to, which is, where does one derive the meaning and happiness from their life?

To answer this question, Trueman references Charles Taylor and his term expressive individualism, meaning "that each of us finds our meaning by giving expression to our own feelings and desires." There has been a shift to making our feelings the ultimate authority.

Trueman explains why it is not enough to just know in our minds who we are- we desire to be publicly recognized in the way we see ourselves.

There is so much more I could say, in the end I would simply reiterate the book itself. The book, though long is important, well reasoned, well researched & is one I would highly recommend you read. It will go a long way in helping you to understand how we got to where we are in our society & explain how our society thinks.
...more

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Oct 23, 2020 Scott Carter rated it it was amazing

Dr. Carl Trueman may have written the most important book of the year. Certainly, he provides the most valuable book in 2020 for Christians who desire to intellectually engage with the Western world. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self traces the underlying intellectual thought leading to what Charles Taylor calls “expressive individualism” in our present day. The sexual revolution of the 20th and 21st centuries is ultimately just one “manifestation of the larger revolution of the self that Dr. Carl Trueman may have written the most important book of the year. Certainly, he provides the most valuable book in 2020 for Christians who desire to intellectually engage with the Western world. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self traces the underlying intellectual thought leading to what Charles Taylor calls “expressive individualism” in our present day. The sexual revolution of the 20th and 21st centuries is ultimately just one “manifestation of the larger revolution of the self that has taken place in the West.” The author sets out to provide historical context to the transformation of the nature of the self.

Dr. Trueman begins with the work of three philosophers. Philip Rieff provides helpful concepts such as the triumph of the therapeutic and psychological man. With Charles Taylor, he utilizes his expressive individualism and the modern notion of the self. Lastly, he works through Alasdair MacIntyre’s understanding of our ethical discourse, or our inability to have such discussions. We have beliefs and assumptions about the nature of society, and because there is no longer a consensus on the end goal of human existence, “modern ethical discourse is chaotic.” These concepts are critical because the author frequently refers to and uses them to frame aspects throughout the rest of the book.

For many, this would be quite an intellectual undertaking, but Trueman persists. In part 2, he starts looking at historical developments. He begins with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Romantics. He notes a change in the understanding of the self, also sometimes phrased as “human selfhood.” An individual’s essence is not tied to the society in which they live but by their inner psychological life. Society is, in turn, the cause of issues as it imposes on the individual and does not allow them to be their authentic selves. Perhaps the most important social influence is Christian sexual ethics, which is deemed oppressive to the individual’s happiness. In concluding part 2, Trueman turns to the contributions of Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin. They each contribute to the death of ideas such as “nature has an intrinsic meaning and that human beings have special significance or an essence that determines how they should behave.” Today, we no longer have an innate purpose.

Rise and Triumph’s part 2 describes the inward shift of the self, and the self is now psychologized. Part 3 works through the idea that Freud (primarily), Reich and Marcuse have sexualized psychology and politicized the self. Perhaps the best summary is this: “To follow Rousseau is to make identity psychological. To follow Freud is to make psychology, and thus identity, sexual. To mesh this combination with Marx is to make identity—and therefore sex—political.”

If the reader is unconvinced of the intellectual trajectory, part 4 demonstrates the cultural appropriation of the trends in parts 2 and 3. For brevity, Dr. Truman only focuses on the rise of the erotic, therapeutic, and transgenderism. These are areas in which the concepts of parts 2 and 3 have significantly transformed.

Dr. Trueman concludes with a few actions for the church.
-The church needs to reflect upon and be able to articulate the “connection between aesthetics and her core beliefs and practices.”
-The church must function as a community.
-The church, Protestants particularly, needs to “recover both natural law and a high view of the physical body.”

Those that have read Dr. Trueman before know he is an orthodox Christian. Yet Rise and Triumph is an outstanding accomplishment. While reading, I was surprised by the restraint of the author to not provide a Christian worldview analysis with every section. Dr. Trueman does identify the moderns trends as pathologies, offers some logical critiques, and provides the church a direction forward. However, by all accounts, this volume is a historical account, and Trueman does an astounding job. He purposely limits his task to historically demonstrating the ideas undergirding the cultural revolution, and he sticks to this task!

If you want to understand our current society, you need to understand the threads of intellectual thought and cultural movements leading up to it. Dr. Trueman provides an essential book to start engaging. I expect there to be critics of this book. I will be interested in seeing how much of the criticism is engaging, and how much of it is dismissive because of being offended.

I received a complimentary digital copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley for review purposes. Comments are my own. ...more

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Jan 04, 2021 Wes Van Fleet rated it it was amazing

Wow! What a fascinating read. Trueman has accomplished a historical and cultural feat that provides the Church with a sound and helpful tool that will be useful for generations to come. As he traces things like sex and gender identity, expressive individualism, and the politicizing of these things, the reader is quick to realize how we got where we are as a culture.

I don’t say this lightly: This book may be the most important work of our time in regards to understanding our culture. I will make ...more

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Nov 19, 2020 Nate rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Agree with Tim Challies' review (link below)… “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self” by Carl Trueman is a demanding but rewarding read. Perhaps the best (and most significant) book of 2020 that I've read.

We are living in a day when definitions of the “self” are shifting away from objective and intrinsic meaning. Statements emerging from the underlying sexual and moral revolution are gaining ground to an on-ramp toward a full pivot into “poiesis” (the world seen as so much raw material where m ...more

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Feb 05, 2021 Brent Pinkall rated it it was amazing

Excellent. Trueman strikes a good balance between accessible and academic. If you want to understand the origins of the identity politics plaguing western culture today (LGBT+, BLM, etc.), read this book. Trueman points out how these issues are actually symptoms of a deeper problem rooted in a wrong understanding of what it means to be a "self." At the end of the book he also gives a brief exhortation on ways that Christians can best respond to these problems. Even though I already had a rough i ...more

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Jan 08, 2021 Cade Patterson rated it it was amazing

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is the most helpful explanation I’ve read from an evangelical point of view of the philosophical and cultural forces that led to the Sexual Revolution. Trueman traces our preoccupation with the fulfillment of desires as the measure of authenticity back to Rousseau and through the various thinkers, artists, and events that unhitched what it means to be a person from any external definition. He sketches the impact of Nietzsche’s honest dealings with a post-Christian world and the power of Dar ...more

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About Carl R. Trueman

Carl R. Trueman

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Carl 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 C ...more

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