Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

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

Carl R. Trueman,

Rod Dreher (Foreword)

4.68 · Rating details · 733 ratings · 207 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

Get A Copy

Hardcover, 432 pages

Published November 24th 2020 by Crossway Books

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self

Lists with This Book

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.68 ·

Rating details

· 733 ratings · 207 reviews

More filters

Sort order

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, culture, sexuality, psychology, modernity, want-to-buy

Ben Shapiro: "This is the most important book of our moment."

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: ...more

flag 68 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 50 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 18 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 14 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 19 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 12 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 11 likes · Like · see review

Jan 07, 2021 Wyatt Graham added it

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

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

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.

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Jan 20, 2021 Ivan rated it it was amazing

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

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Jan 20, 2021 Becky Pliego rated it liked it

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

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

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Mar 01, 2021 Bob rated it really liked it

Shelves: christianity-and-culture

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 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. ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

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.

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Nov 02, 2020 Nick Roark rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2020

Brilliant

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jan 19, 2021 Tim Michiemo rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Christians

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

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

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Apr 11, 2021 An Idler rated it it was amazing

Trueman makes a convincing case that most of the seismic culture war issues of the modern world are really downstream symptoms of a centuries-running shift in the way we think about the self and identity.

Basically, Romantic psychologizing of the self in the 18th and early 19th centuries was taken in a radical, anti-essentialist direction in the latter 19th century by Nietzsche; Freud sexualized this new concept of a plastic human identity; the New Left wedded this Freudian approach with Marx and ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Feb 24, 2021 Jonathan Josey rated it it was amazing

It took me a month to get through this book. And this is not because it was boring in any way. Quite the contrary — it took time for me to take in the information and digest it before continuing to read. I found the background philosophical explanation of our current times of the “social imaginary” and “expressive individualism” incredibly insightful and helpful. If you are looking for a light, easy read, then this book is probably not for you. But if you’re willing to give the time and effort t ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Feb 22, 2021 Paul rated it it was amazing

This book is like a crash course in the history of philosophy since the 1800s, and specifically of the major ideas that have shaped the Western world in recent centuries. Not as a negative, but it is significantly more academic than I expected. Definitely a must-read for understanding secularization, expressive individualism and LGBT ideology.

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Feb 28, 2021 Andy Dollahite rated it really liked it

4.5 stars As Trueman notes, this is neither polemic or lament. He offers a historical genealogy for how the West came to inhabit a social imaginary prioritizing the expression of self-identity, emotivism, and poesis. It’s a postmortem of a culture no longer attentive to transcendental sacred order. This is intentionally not a theory of everything, but still ambitiously comprehensive. It’s greatest strength is explaining why the vanguard of the sexual revolution will settle for nothing other than ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend It | Stats | Recent Status Updates

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Philosophy

55 users

Cultural

47 users

History

33 users

Nonfiction

31 users

Christian

29 users

Religion > Theology

28 users

Politics

22 users

Sexuality

17 users

Psychology

16 users

Religion > Christianity

13 users

See top shelves…

About Carl R. Trueman

Carl R. Trueman

146 followers

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

Books by Carl R. Trueman

Republocrat, Confessions of a Liberal Conservative

Histories and Fallacies: Problems Faced in the Writing of History

The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom

More…

Power, Sister! 20 New Books on Women’s History

Happy Women's History Month! One of the undisputedly good things about modern scholarship is that women’s history is finally getting its due....

Trivia About The Rise and Triu...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from The Rise and Triu...

“Every age has had its darkness and its 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.” — 3 likes

“While earlier generations might have seen damage to body or property as the most serious categories of crime, a highly psychologized era will accord increasing importance to words as means of oppression. And this represents a serious challenge to one of the foundations of liberal democracy: freedom of speech. Once harm and oppression are regarded as being primarily psychological categories, freedom of speech then becomes part of the problem, not the solution, because words become potential weapons.” — 1 likes

More quotes…

See a Problem?

Preview — The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl R. Trueman

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

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Carl R. Trueman

Books by Carl R. Trueman

Related Articles

Trivia About The Rise and Triu...

Quotes from The Rise and Triu...

See a Problem?

Preview — The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl R. Trueman

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

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Carl R. Trueman

Books by Carl R. Trueman

Related Articles

Trivia About The Rise and Triu...

Quotes from The Rise and Triu...

new topic
Discuss This Book