Today we are continuing our very condensed survey of Carl Trueman’s thought-provoking book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.
Part 2: Foundations of the Revolution
In order to understand the modern view of self, Trueman suggests that we go back to the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This 18th century French philosopher believed that man is basically good at birth, but cultural forces pervert him and cause him to become evil. In his book Confessions he recounts a time when his friend, M. Verrat, persuaded him to steal some of Verrat’s mother’s asparagus, which he could sell to make money to buy food for himself. Rousseau maintained that his motivation for stealing was basically good, because he wanted to help his starving friend, and it was only society’s rules which made it appear wrong. For Rousseau, then, human corruption is not in-born but is produced by the pressures and conditions of broader society.
For Rousseau, then, human corruption is not in-born but is produced by the pressures and conditions of broader society.
Rousseau blamed his friend, M. Verrat, for flattering him and enticing him to commit theft. The corruption of theft did not arise from within his own heart, but was a result of social pressure which was outside of his control. He also blamed other influences for his own misbehavior, including his master’s bad treatment and his father’s harsh punishment. As Trueman puts it: “His corruption is essentially the result of his reaction to corrupting circumstances.”
The Christian teaching about man is that we are sinful from birth, and that we sin because we have sinful hearts. Rousseau blamed society rather than the individual, because he believed that we are born basically good and only corrupted by external influences. His concern was that although our natural impulses are right, our sinful culture distracts us and we begin to act in an inauthentic way. It is living in relationship to others which causes us to act differently than our nature, and this is the true form of slavery. Personal authenticity is, for Rousseau, the greatest virtue, and we must look within at the self in order to find our place in the world. As Trueman summarizes: “The one who is truly free is the one who is free to be himself.”
Rousseau’s ideas were popularized by the 19th century Romantics, exemplified by poets such as William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, and William Blake. Wordsworth, for instance, thought that city life with its industrialization and monotony led man to be inauthentic and therefore corrupt. He proposed a return to rural life where we would find the most authentic and pure forms of human nature. Shelley believed that poetry was the means by which men could get in touch with their most authentic selves, and that it would enable them to find harmony with nature and bring about a kind of social utopia which violent revolutions cannot produce.
The call for a return to nature necessarily involves removing any restraint from human behavior (or at least certain behaviors). For Shelley and the rest of the Romantics, marriage is positively evil because it requires a person to live an inauthentic life, preventing him from being true to himself. And marriage was supported by Christian morality, as Shelley states plainly here: “In fact, religion and morality, as they now stand, compose a practical code of misery and servitude: the genius of human happiness must tear every leaf from the accursed book of God ere man can read the inscription on his heart.” In other words, religion and morality as set forth in the Bible must be gotten rid of, so that man can see in his own heart the path to true joy. Of course, this is precisely opposite of what the Scriptures themselves teach, for “The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable – who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9) and “For from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts,….” (Mark 7:21).
This whole issue of being “truly authentic” is quite interesting. On one hand, we can see some positive benefits of thinking this way, because hypocrisy in general is not something we want to encourage. However, it is interesting to note that our society defines the boundaries inside which it is ok to be authentic. For instance, it is still considered good for a man to suppress his authentic self, if that self includes a desire for rape and murder. And there is little if any concern as to the damage one might to do himself by suppressing those desires. But if a man feels that he is not at home in his body, and is truly a woman, our society tells him that it would be harmful and even immoral in some sense to continue to live inauthentically as a man.
Society defines the boundaries inside which it is ok to be authentic.
This view of the self and society was further developed in the work of men like Frederich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Charles Darwin. Nietzsche famously said, “God is dead,” and he called for men to embrace the logical conclusion that if God was indeed dead (in the sense that belief in God is no longer acceptable to the modern mind or necessary to explain life), then there is no basis whatsoever for right and wrong. We must live for the present moment and seek to satisfy ourselves, for there is no greater meaning or purpose to life.
Marx taught that history is the history of one people being oppressed by another. This leads us to be deeply cynical of traditions and authorities, since these are ways that those who possess power use it to oppress those who do not. Religion, for instance, offers only a false sense of happiness, so it must be torn down in order to find true happiness in an economic system where the workers can receive the fruits of their labor instead of merely serving the good of property owners. The same is true of all ethical and moral codes; they serve only to maintain the status quo of society and must be torn down if mankind is to progress.
Charles Darwin offered a view of the world and its development that had no room for or need of God in his theory of evolution by natural selection. If this is true, the world and mankind have no special place or significance, and there is no goal toward which history is moving. Like Neitzsche, Darwin’s ideas erode the foundation of human nature and destiny. “In fact,” Trueman notes, “they [the ideas of human nature and purpose] were never anything more than manipulative concepts developed by one group, most notoriously the Christian church, to subjugate another.” It is not difficult to see how this kind of thinking leads to the idea that personal happiness is the mark of a life well-lived, and that traditional structures of society must be distrusted and destabilized in the name of human progress. And thus, the foundation for revolution was laid.