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 — yet no historical phenomenon is its own cause. From Augustine to Marx, various views and perspectives have contributed to the modern understanding of the self.
In this timely book, Carl Trueman analyzes the development of the sexual revolution as a symptom — rather than the cause — of the human search for identity. Trueman surveys the past, brings clarity to the present, and gives guidance for the future as Christians navigate the culture in humanity’s ever-changing quest for identity.

Dr. Carl Truman spends a long time trying to answer a singular question; "Why is self-identity central to our modern conception of self?". To answer this, he dives in to the philosophical underpinnings of Freud, Rousseau, Rieff, and others to establish the historical, cultural, artistic movements that have driven the modern self to lead us to where we stand.

Truman is at his best when he is a historian, and with scholarly detail he finds the best way to frame the long and dense history of philosophical thought on the idea of the modern self that is compelling and makes a formidable case. Where Truman is lacking is the vision for moving forward. In a 400 tome, his only treatment is his "Concluding Unscientific Prologue", where he makes three terse, broad, and undefiled recommendations for the church despite acknowledging that the culture has changed forever.

In this the stereotype of the Reformed Historian may prove to be true; that it is only about explaining how we got here, criticizing the philosophy, but then offering no real solution towards winsome, apologetic change. Perhaps the intention of Trueman's book was to simply write a book with that kind of narrow focus. But it will then only be read by those of the philosophical echo chamber to simply nod and say "I knew it", without offering solutions forward. ( )

Very good book, but I would have liked more detailed information on how the church should move forward. ( )

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.

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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. ( )

As I was reading *The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self* by Carl R. Trueman, I knew very early that it would be one of my favorite books of the year. If you’re interested in understanding our current culture, and likely the foreseeable future, you will want to read this book. I can say without hyperbole *The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self* is the most profound cultural analysis I’ve read.

“I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body” 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.

You should understand that *The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self* is not a lament or even an apologetic. Trueman doesn’t attack anyone or promote a political viewpoint. He offers very few strategies for Christians at the end, but even hesitates to do that. He says that’s not what this book is about. He simply explains the historical narrative of how our culture thinks about selfhood and identity today.

Trueman writes:

> At the heart of this book lies a basic conviction: the so-called sexual revolution of the last sixty years, culminating in its latest triumph—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. The sexual revolution is as much a symptom as it is a cause of the culture that now surrounds us everywhere we look, from sitcoms to Congress.

Trueman structures the book in four parts. The narrative of concepts build on one another through history. Part one lays the groundwork for the concepts he will return to throughout the book as he examines what he calls a “long and complicated story.” Trueman builds off the work of philosophers Philip Rieff, Charles Taylor, and Alasdair McIntyre. He introduces and uses their concepts frequently. You’re going to want to read this chapter slowly and highlight key terms like mimesis and poiesis, social imaginary, and expressive individualism. They come up again.

Part Two begins the historical narrative and focuses on concepts introduced by Rousseau, the Romantics, Nietzche, Marx, and Darwin. I found this part of the book fascinating, because we don’t typically think about or mention these historical figures very much, but they had a profound influence on how we think. The most surprising to me is Nietzche, who I imagine most people don’t really know much about at all. These thinkers psychologized identity and the idea of selfhood. Human identity became plastic and completely pliable.

Trueman writes of Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin:

> These three effectively strip away the metaphysical foundations for both human identity and for morality, leaving the latter, as Nietzsche is happy to point out, a matter of mere taste and manipulative power games.

Part Three focuses on psychology, and specifically Freud and others who advanced Freudian concepts. Trueman explains how these concepts sexualized psychology. Building on the concepts of those who came before, identity became sexualized. Building on Marx’s concepts, identity then became politicized, which means sexuality also became politicized.

Part four brings us to our current day and culture. Trueman explains how the concepts previously mentioned have worked together to currently shape our society and culture. Part four examines the rise and acceptance of the erotic. It explains how the concepts of the therapeutic self have played out in higher education and the Supreme Court. Finally, it examines the rise and acceptance of transgenderism. All of these concepts defy and demand that any traditional frameworks be labelled and destroyed if they threaten self-definition.

My interpretation is that our modern obsession with identity—psychologically, sexually, racially, therapeutically—has created a culture that worships “self” like no other. In fact, we worship our ability to self-identify and self-create to the point that identity is completely pliable. Anything goes, unless of course I feel it threatens my concept of selfhood. Our culture is now anticulture. “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 17:6) It’s a dangerous place to be.

*The Rise and Triumph of the Self* is extremely well researched and written. It is a long book. It also uses a lot of unfamiliar terms, which may make it a difficult read if you’re not familiar with them. I read it very slowly to digest it. However, it is very rewarding and the most important cultural analysis of the year. I highly recommend it. ( )