A Common Enemy

Examining "The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self" [Pt.4]

[Continued from Pt.3]

§IV. Descartes — The Root of All Social Evils?

We noted in our last article¹ that although Carl R. Trueman agrees with the Marxists in their interpretation of history and, specifically, postmodernism, he does not agree with them regarding the postmodern self. We noted that this is significant given the fact that the Marxists and Postmodernists, in contradiction to Trueman, agree with one another about the postmodern self. What we intend to make clear in this article is that while Trueman is opposed to the Marxists and Postmodernists regarding the postmodernist self, he shares several key criticisms of Réne Descartes’s depiction of the modernist self as a res cogitans,² an immaterial substance that is “separable and so really distinct from extended substance or bodies.”³ For Descartes, the self is “independent of the body with which it is united during a human life,” and its “continued existence is also independent of the existence of this body.”⁴

Hubert J.M. Hermans explains that —

The Cartesian conception of the self is traditionally phrased in terms of the expression ‘I think’. This expression assumes that there is one centralized I responsible for the steps in reasoning or thinking. Moreover, the Cartesian ‘I think’ is based on a disembodied mental process assumed to be essentially different from the body and other material extended in space.⁵

Gerard Delanty similarly characterizes the Cartesian self as

…a purely thinking and perceiving being [which] is the basis of the modern understanding of knowledge and is also related to the modern practice of politics, liberalism, the possibility of which is the autonomous individual⁶

Beginning with some of the mid to late modernist philosophers and thinkers, these key attributes of the self become the object of virulent attack. In the first place, Descartes’ substance dualism⁷ was opposed by other philosophers of his time. As Howard Robinson explains —

Descartes’ conception of a dualism of substances came under attack from the more radical empiricists, who found it difficult to attach sense to the concept of substance at all.⁸

The general movement was away from Descartes’ substance dualism and toward materialism,⁹ in which there exists only one kind of substance, namely matter.

What is more, in the second place, Descartes’ later critics came to view the self not only through the lens of materialism but also as something that lacked any inherent ontological unity. Whereas the self (soul) had previously been considered to be ontologically simple, critics of Cartesian substance dualism posited that the self was ontologically complex.¹⁰ For instance, G.W.F. Hegel argued that the self is not an simple unity but a dialectically constituted unity. As Antonio Wolfe explains, “concepts are for Hegel structures of developmental unities, and to be a self necessitates the form of such a unity.”¹¹ Thus, Wolfe continues, for Hegel —

It is the self which is the subject of a substance forming process. It is subject not as that which is appended predicates as one appends an ornament on a tree, but as that which engages process and thus acts to produce its own substantive being as its many predicates. The substantiality is the totality of a concept in its full self-development, for only the whole endures unchanged in the progression of moments which are its parts, and as this enduring unity it is its self-identity.¹²

The self, in other words, is in a historical process of becoming, “a self-differentiating developmental unity” that “produces itself as an otherness which is different from it and yet through which its own identity is attained.”¹³ Insofar as a subject exists, he is in a process of becoming by means of social interaction.

Hegel’s successor Karl Marx would also flesh out a view of the self as “a collective social actor who must be historically constituted.”¹⁴ Itay Snir elaborates on Marx’s conception of man as it stands in contrast to that of Descartes, writing —

Marx does not address Descartes’ philosophy explicitly, but his conception of man, according to which human consciousness is determined by sociohistorical development…implies obvious critique of the Cartesian “I think”.

[…]

The subject indeed thinks, but his thoughts are not the essence that determines and enables his other actions – they derive from the latter.¹⁵

Sigmund Freud would later posit a view of the self that was very similar to that of Hegel and Marx. As Steven Fowler explains, for Freud —

…[the] subject is not an isolated, autonomous passive perceiver of an objective reality that exists apart from the individual but rather an active agent of history that is both constituted by and constitutes a human historical reality.¹⁶

Thus, Fowler continues,

The distinction between a rational, reductionistic and deterministic model of the world and a world of relational, interpretive, developmental logic is embodied in Freud’s theories as well as his method.

[…]

Freud’s research and theories supply empirical evidence for the self-overcoming rationality of Heidegger’s phenomenology and surpass the analytic, calculating rationality of Descartes and the distinct categories of the Cartesian Dualism. Freud’s model of the human psyche is a dynamic one, not a static, essentialist’s model.

…the essentialists who attempt to reduce human reality, in terms of knowledge, ethics or even human subjectivity itself, to a determined, mechanistic, rational ontology have a difficult time coming to terms with Freud’s revelations of the self-overcoming, dynamic, interpretive character of human subjectivity…¹⁷

These explicit and implied criticisms of Descartes’ cogito¹⁸ pave the way for postmodern theories of the self (which we have already explored) wherein the self is depicted as socially constructed via the means of interpersonal linguistic interactions (i.e. dialogue), a view which we also find in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.

Following Hegel, Marx, Freud, the Postmodernists, and Charles Taylor, Trueman rejects the Cartesian cogito, and embraces a self that is constructed by means of linguistic interactions within the social body, arguing that “communities shape consciousness.”¹⁹ He writes —

…for all psychological man’s inward turn, individual personal identity is not ultimately an internal monologue conducted in isolation by an individual self-consciousness. On the contrary, it is a dialogue between self-conscious beings.

We each know ourselves as we know [i.e. learn about] other people. A simple example of why this is important to understand is provided by Descartes’s famous idea that in the act of doubting my own existence, I have to acknowledge that I do exist on the grounds that there has to be an “I” that doubts. As plausible as that sounds, a key question that Descartes fails to ask is, What exactly is this “I” that is doing the doubting? Whatever the “I” might be, it is clearly something that has a facility with language, and language itself is something that typically involves interaction with other linguistic beings. I cannot therefore necessarily grant the “I” the privilege of self-consciousness prior to its engagement with others. The “I” is necessarily a social being.

If our identities are shaped by our connection to and interaction with significant others, then identity also arises in the context of belonging. To have an identity means that I am being acknowledged by others.

[…]

Individual identity is thus truly a dialogue: how a person thinks of himself is the result of learning the language of the community so that he can be a part of the community.²⁰

On Trueman’s account, Descartes’ “psychological turn” has led to a “prioritization of the individual’s inner psychology”²¹ in which people make “their inner psychological convictions absolutely decisive for who they are.”²² This dialogical understanding of the self is viewed by Trueman as an improvement over that of Descartes which he believes has contributed to the current transgender movement.²³ The Cartesian self/modernist self is portrayed as destructive of society because it posits an independence of the individual from the social body that ultimately leads to “expressive individualism,” which “is a distortion, because we are not born free but rather interdependent and embodied.”²⁴

Thus, he further follows Hegel, Marx, Freud, and the Postmodernists by centering the body as the site of human identity. This is because, according to Trueman, “to tear identity away from physical embodiment and to root it entirely in the psychological,” as Descartes and his modernist successors did, “would be to operate along the same trajectory as transgenderism.”²⁵

On his view, given that the normalization of transgenderism “cannot be properly understood until it is set within the context of a much broader transformation in how society understands the nature of human selfhood,”²⁶ Trueman believes that his understanding of the self as (a.)socially constructed via linguistic exchanges within one’s local community and (b.)primarily bodily must be recovered if the church is to function and prosper in our day. He writes —

If the church is to avoid the absolutizing of aesthetics by an appropriate commitment to Christianity as first and foremost doctrinal, then second, she must also be a community. If the struggle for Christianity is the struggle for the nature of human selfhood, then it is worth noting that Hegel’s basic insight, so compellingly elaborated by Taylor, that selves are socially constructed and only come to full self-consciousness in dialogue with other self-consciousnesses, is of great importance. Each of us is, in a sense, the sum total of the network of relationships we have with others and with our environment.²⁷

[...]

Protestants need to recover both natural law and a high view of the physical body.²⁸

[…]

A recovery of a biblical understanding of embodiment is vital.²⁹

Trueman’s view is not new to RTMS, but also informs his writing elsewhere. For instance, regarding his 2012 book The Creedal Imperative, Trueman states —

Some years ago I wrote a small book on the importance of creeds and confessions of faith. In it, I described the recitation of a creed as one of the greatest acts of counter-cultural rebellion in which one could engage. It is such because it involves an assertion of the importance of the past, a relativizing of individual identity in relation to the wider church body (past, present and future), and a clear declaration of submission to external authority.³⁰

The “anti-historical” attitude exhibited by many today is, for instance, “arguably an implication”³¹ of Descartes’ thinking, as are the prioritization of individual identity and personal autonomy.³² This shows us that even in this seemingly unrelated book Trueman sought to remedy "problems" that are openly identified in RTMS as the fruit of the cogito/modernist self. This is because, as our next article will make clear, Trueman is repeating a standard communitarian critique of the cogito/ modernist self.

[Continued in Pt.5]

1. The Resurrection of the Modernist Self

2. Trans., thinking thing.

3. Shapiro, Lisa. “Cartesian selves,” in Descartes’ Meditations: A Critical Guide, ed. Karen Detlefsen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 227.

4. ibid.

5. “The Dialogical Self: Toward a Theory of Personal and Cultural Positioning,” in Culture & Psychology Vol. 7(3) (2001), 249.

6. Modernity and Postmodernity: Knowledge, Power and the Self (London: Sage, 2000), 158.

7. Substance dualism posits that there are two distinct, independent kinds of things respectively known as mind and matter.

8. “Dualism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Sept 11, 2020, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/.

9. Bishop George Berkeley’s idealism is a notably peculiar position at this time. See Guyer, Paul. “Idealism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Feb 5, 2021, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/#IdeaEarlModeBritPhil.

10. i.e. made up of parts. For more on this “Intro to Biblical Axiology [Pt.2]”—

Intro to Biblical Axiology [Pt.2]

11. “Ships, Persons, and Hegelian Selves,” Epoché Issue #11, Feb 2018, https://epochemagazine.org/11/ships-persons-and-hegelian-selves/.

12. ibid.

13. ibid.

14. Modernity and Postmodernity, Delanty, 16.

15. Education and Thinking in Continental Philosophy: Thinking against the Current in Adorno, Arendt, Deleuze, Derrida and Rancière (Switzerland: Springer, 2020), 12-13. (emphasis added)

16. “The Self-Overcoming Subject: Freud’s Challenge to the Cartesian Ontology,” in Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 35:1 (2004), 99. (emphasis added)

17. ibid., 108. (emphasis added)

18. Latin for “I think,” which is shorthand for the self.

19. RTMS, 405.

20. ibid., 56-58. (emphasis added)

21. ibid., 23.

22. ibid.

23. Trueman writes —

…Why does the sentence “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” make sense not simply to those who have sat in poststructuralist and queer-theory seminars but to my neighbors…? The statement is, after all, emblematic of a view of personhood that has almost completely dispensed with the idea of any authority beyond that of personal, psychological conviction, an oddly Cartesian notion: I think I am a woman, therefore I am a woman.

—RTMS, 60. (emphasis added)

24. “The New Culture War Battleground is You,” Deseret News, June 1, 2021, https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2021/6/1/22459065/the-new-culture-war-battleground-is-you-philosophy-freud-nietzsche-rousseau-identity-politics. (emphasis added)

25. RTMS, 406.

26. ibid., 20.

27. ibid., 404. (emphasis added)

28. ibid., 405.

29. ibid.

30. “Historical is Not Enough,” First Things, Oct 23, 2015, https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2015/10/historical-is-not-enough. (emphasis added)

31. RTMS, 94.

32. Trueman writes —

[Descartes’ thinking] effectively moved the individual knowing subject to the center. And this move surely found its most eloquent psychological expression in the work of Rousseau, for whom society and culture were the problems, the things that corrupted the individual and prevented him from being truly authentic. Given that the hierarchies of honor-based societies would be examples of precisely the kind of corrupting conventions that the egalitarian Rousseau would have regarded with disdain, the clear notion is that all human beings are created intrinsically equal.

— RTMS, 65. (emphasis added)