You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World

by Alan Noble

In great detail, Ehrenberg charts the way depression—its causes, meaning, and treatment—has changed over the twentieth century. His startling conclusion is that we have largely moved from understanding depression primarily as a symptom of inner conflict, often driven by feelings of guilt for violating societal or religious norms, to understanding it primarily as a symptom of inhibition, driven by feelings of inadequacy.11 But why do we feel inadequate? Why are we afraid to act in the contemporary world? Ehrenberg’s answer is precisely what I have been describing as our contemporary anthropology: “The ownership of the self has become our lifestyle; it has been sociologically integrated into our mores and is at the very heart of our intimate sovereignty.”12 But this sovereignty has not liberated us. Contrasting the modern condition with the dream of individual sovereignty he finds in Nietzsche, Ehrenberg writes: “The individual, free from morality, creating herself by herself and aspiring to the superhuman, . . . is not our reality. But, instead of possessing the strength of the masters, she turns out to be fragile, lacking in being, weary of her sovereignty and full of complaints.”13 The title of Ehrenberg’s book reflects this diagnosis. We are weary of trying to be our own sovereign selves.