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

4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 2,091 ratings

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 audiobook, 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.

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Product details

Listening Length 13 hours and 36 minutes
Author Carl R. Trueman
Narrator Carl R. Trueman, Rod Dreher
Audible.com Release Date October 11, 2021
Publisher Crossway
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B09GWD6ZGL
Best Sellers Rank #10,846 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#6 in Religion & Philosophy (Audible Books & Originals)
#6 in Church & State
#6 in Religious Ethics (Books)

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4.8 out of 5 stars
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Customers say

Customers find the book insightful and well-written. They appreciate its historical perspective and philosophical analysis, providing new perspectives on modern culture. Readers find it informative and helpful for making sense of what's going on around them. The book is considered important for Christians and should be read by all. It provides a thorough overview of the topic from a Christian perspective. Customers consider it worth their time and money.

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101 customers mention "Insight"92 positive9 negative

Customers find the book insightful. It explores the philosophical underpinnings and social theory behind modern culture. Readers find it easy to understand, bringing new perspectives and viewpoints. The author is described as a serious analyst of thought from the late 19th century. They describe the book as an engaging cultural history that describes how our present culture can be understood in light of historical developments.

"...In Trueman's brilliant exposition, the issue of how perceptions of selfhood have changed from Rousseau to Caitlyn Jenner forms the central strand of..." Read more

"...In it, he aims to explore the philosophical underpinnings and social theory behind the phenomenon from the perspective of a Christian scholar...." Read more

"...The historical analysis is quite fascinating, and it is challenging to start to see one's self in the pages of the text, and in what the sources..." Read more

"...With impressive scholarship, he walks the reader through a history of intellectual thought, beginning with Jean Jacques Rousseau; Romanticism;..." Read more

91 customers mention "Readability"71 positive20 negative

Customers find the book well-written and accessible to readers of all opinions. It provides clear explanations and is descriptive without being academic. The writing style is described as clear and descriptive, making it a useful resource for understanding the intellectual basis for today's worldview.

"...non-combative tone of the whole that will make this readable by people of all shades of opinion — even, perhaps, by those whose worldview stands to..." Read more

"...Trueman does a wonderful job of remaining descriptive and objective throughout, offering commentary minimally in footnotes, and primarily in the..." Read more

"...way that it does and promotes certain things over others, this book is a must-read, for both Christians and non-Christians alike...." Read more

"...This was a solemn, wonderful, and joyous calling, under God; at the core of what we were meant to be...." Read more

27 customers mention "Knowledge level"27 positive0 negative

Customers find the book helpful in making sense of what's going on around them. They find it informative, well-researched, and relevant to today's times. Readers say it's practical for ministry and life.

"...concludes by demonstrating how these developments, facilitated by technological advances, have transformed modern Western culture, specifically..." Read more

"...With impressive scholarship, he walks the reader through a history of intellectual thought, beginning with Jean Jacques Rousseau; Romanticism;..." Read more

"...poets Wordsworth and Shelley. That said, while impressive in what it accomplishes, the book is often a frustrating read because of how dense..." Read more

"...He is a highly qualified academic; a serious analyst of thought from the late nineteenth century on, with cogent insights and some pointed questions..." Read more

15 customers mention "Christian relevance"15 positive0 negative

Customers find the book relevant for modern Christians. It provides a Christian perspective while addressing differing views. Readers say it helps them understand Pope Francis and his faith. They also mention it helps them come together as a community and express their individual psychological well-being.

"...Nonetheless, I consider it a must-read for all 21st-century Christian leaders." Read more

"...This was a solemn, wonderful, and joyous calling, under God; at the core of what we were meant to be...." Read more

"...Self-expression and individual psychological well-being are now at the heart of what it means to be human...." Read more

"...recommend the book for all pastors and those who teach Pastoral Theology in all Catholic Seminaries, as the book attempts to clarify the 'Zeitgeist..." Read more

12 customers mention "Value for time"9 positive3 negative

Customers find the book compelling and thorough. They say it's worth their time, even if they are not pastors. The content is challenging for lay readers but worthwhile.

"This book was challenging and refreshing. It's a look at how the modern consciousness, our society's way of thinking, came to be...." Read more

"Trueman's analysis in this work is very detailed and very thorough...." Read more

"...This book is not purely academic it is necessary for everyone from the scholar or pastor to the layperson." Read more

"...Trueman outlines this cultual history in this monumental work tracing the origins of expressive individualism back to Rousseau, the English Romantics..." Read more

7 customers mention "Timeline"7 positive0 negative

Customers find the book timely and a classic that provides an understanding of how we arrived where we are today. They say it's a key book for understanding the confusing time we live in.

"...Truly a timely masterpiece and a wake up call to all willing to arise from slumber." Read more

"Trueman’s take on how we got to where we are is clear, compelling and timely...." Read more

"This work by Truman is an instant classic on how we got to where we are now...." Read more

"This is a very timely book which reveals how we arrived where we are now, philosophically...." Read more

6 customers mention "Value for money"6 positive0 negative

Customers find the book a worthwhile investment. They say it's long but worth every word.

"...Worth the investment. A timely apologetic on identity." Read more

"...The historical analysis of how we got where we are today is worth every penny. A great read." Read more

"Long but utterly worthwhile..." Read more

"Excellent purchase..." Read more

identity is becoming subjective in our culture...this may be more destructive then we realize
4 out of 5 stars
identity is becoming subjective in our culture...this may be more destructive then we realize
In today’s modern culture, we have come to think about ourselves differently than ever before. Society is more psychological, secular, and sexual than in any other time period from our history. It has been a slow progress of development going back hundreds of years. Our author investigates many contributing philosophers like Nietzsche, Marx, Rousseau and Freud, to name a few. Not only have ideas shaped us, so have modern advancements in science and technology.It is no secret that we have become a society of psychological beings. For previous generations, job satisfaction was “empirical, outwardly directed, and unrelated” to one’s psychological state: if you had a job that could provide for your family, you were happy (or, if you were a woman, if you had healthy children and a happy husband, you were likewise happy). For our generation, “the issue of feeling is central.” We need to feel good and valued in the things we do, otherwise we are unhappy and depressed. Self-expression and individual psychological well-being are now at the heart of what it means to be human.When societies were religious, and we all believed in a God greater than ourselves, we all shared in a system of ethics that guided social behavior. Having an affair was wrong because God decreed it, for example. Now that society has become more secular, we no longer have a shared system of ethics and morals. We used to tell children not to steal because it was a sin in the eyes of God. Now, when our child steals, we still teach them that the behavior is wrong, but there is no further justification for why? The answer all too often given by parents is: because I said so. This is what Nietzsche meant when he famously declared that “God is dead,” because without God, what barometer do we humans have for what is good and what is evil? It has become necessary for us to create a system of ethics ourselves, but without the structure once afforded to us by organized religion, this has been a tough challenge. In a psychological society such as our own, “the only moral criterion that can be applied to behavior is whether it conduces to the feeling of well-being in the individuals concerned.” Ethics has become a function of feeling.Another development of our modern society is that everything has become sexualized. A major catalyst for this was the invention of modern birth control, something that gave women control over their bodily reproduction and unlocked them to discover more potential in their lives. This was undoubtedly a great gift to women, and yet, where has it ultimately led us? Marriage rates have been declining while the number of children raised by single-parents have been increasing. Sex used to be something sacred, something that society viewed as a private enterprise between two adults. Our modern view of it, however, has become the inverse, as we now view sexual relationships as recreational and fun. Sex is on display everywhere in our culture, from movies and music to advertisements selling cars and hamburgers. Children are exposed to sexual themes at younger and younger ages, something that has become very controversial for parents. The great psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud also contributed to our modern sexualization when he published his discovery that “sexual repression was central to the authority relationship that existed between parent and child.”These culture advancements have all contributed to the changing way we define our identities, the central theme of this book. While yes, all things change as society and culture progress over time, the recent changes in the ways we identify ourselves are newly important: it has transitioned from external to internal. Our identities used to be in relation to others, for example I am the child of Barbara Allen, a waiter at The Cheesecake Factory, and a producer of several albums of hip-hop music. More recently, however, we have began to identify ourselves by our gender and our sexual orientation. He/him, she/her, and they/them; heterosexual/homosexual/bisexual and monogamous/polyamorous.“If the inner psychological life of the individual is sovereign,” our author contends, “then identity becomes as potentially unlimited as the human imagination.” In the United States, the political Right contends that there are only two genders, man and women. The political Left, on the other hand, now believes that gender is a spectrum and is not constrained by numericals. The Right is holding tightly to the past, while the Left has gone too far creating something new. Perhaps we could all agree on three: man, woman, and, for everybody else somewhere in the middle, trans?While secularization and sexualization have been liberating to many, there is an inherent problem with identity becoming something internal: it makes it subjective. This is also the case for our collective sense of ethics: things that used to be objectively good and bad have now moved to the subjective realm of interpretation. This makes it difficult to agree upon collective ideas, fracturing society and creating cultural chaos. The freedom of speech, once a paragon of liberal democracies, has become damaging, because “words become potential weapons.”While the social scaffolding we once had was at times constraining, it also provided structure. We should be wary of tearing this structure down, because societies need structure. Without it, we fall into chaos, and the farther down this rabbit hole we go, where everything in life is internalized and subjective, the more we invite this chaos in.
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2021
    All my life, I have been fleeing a certain idea from France. According to it, civilisation enchains us: freedom consists in returning to a supposedly idyllic state of nature — or to 'barbarism', as some of us have belatedly come to realise. For by now we are all thoroughly enslaved by this foolish misapprehension and its dire consequences.

    If Calvin was the Frenchman who inflicted himself on Geneva (a thing he would have said was always going to happen), then Rousseau — "the other Genevan", as Carl Trueman calls him — was that city's belated revenge on France. And, through France, on the rest of us.

    "Man is born free", Rousseau declared, "but is everywhere in chains". What — everywhere? Yes. For his protest was not exclusively against the royalist absolutism of Louis XV, but against the socialising process itself, and the constraints it places upon the sovereign individual. All societies, therefore, come within the purview of his condemnation.

    This is Carl Trueman's starting point. And from it, he draws a straight(-ish) line to our present situation, in which "I am a woman trapped in a man's body" is a coherent, intelligible thought. For, as he himself points out, as little as a generation ago, his grandfather "would have burst out laughing and considered it a piece of incoherent gibberish".

    This volume is, in my judgment, one of the most important books to have appeared in some years. There. I've said it. Much has been written furiously assailing 'political correctness', 'critical theory', 'identity politics', 'cancel culture', and associated phenomena. But Trueman writes calmly, analytically — and showing the route by which we got here. Far from throwing stones, he makes the enemies' case as powerfully as they would themselves. He shows that he truly does 'get it'. He has no time for chatter about 'snowflakes'. And his riposte is all the more devastating for it.

    In Trueman's brilliant exposition, the issue of how perceptions of selfhood have changed from Rousseau to Caitlyn Jenner forms the central strand of his narrative. He teases out, major thinker by major thinker, the route by which we have arrived at the contemporary "expressive individualism" that is today the orthodoxy — the all-powerful "social imaginary" — of the West and, via the osmosis of global westernisation, of many non-Western countries too.

    "All-powerful?" I hear you ask. "Orthodoxy?" Yes, yes. For what Rousseau — and, after him, John Stuart Mill — failed to recognise was that there never was, nor ever can be, any possibility of a society without an orthodoxy, or devoid of the means to impose it. The only question is of what that orthodoxy will be. And, after that, of how tight a stranglehold it will impose upon its subjects, and how far it facilitates frictionless cohabitation between numerous individuals who, by the nature of the case, will differ from each other in temperament, interests, and opportunities.

    Trueman traces the lineage and expansion of "expressive individualism" over the past two centuries. The journey takes us by way of the Romantic poets, especially Shelley and Blake, and their excoriation of traditional religion for (as Blake put the matter) "binding with briars my joys and desires”. Morality, especially sexual morality, trammels the free personality; we stand in need of something more in accord with human nature.

    Next comes Marx who, as a materialist, thinks that there is no 'human nature' with which to be in accord: we are what we make ourselves. Appeals to a fixed or given 'human nature', as to morality and religion, are mere mists between ourselves and things-as-they-are. By way of Nietzsche, who was certain that Enlightenment thinkers had been too cowardly to confront the consequences of their own dismissal of God, Trueman brings us to Freud, who contended that all civilisations are defined by the behaviours they forbid — and that what they forbid is sexual. For the individual to liberate himself or herself from oppression by society, therefore, we need to embrace the suppressed sexual urges inside ourselves. Trueman contends that Freud's successors, such as Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse, connected the insights of Marx and Freud: the result was the politicisation of sex and the birth of the New Left. From there, the road was clear, over several decades, to stand all the traditional sexual mores on their heads: the old virtues were mere oppression, and so actually wicked; previously stigmatised behaviours, on the other hand, were simultaneously marks of one's victimhood and of one's liberation from it — and so actually virtuous. And — here we are.

    Though Trueman writes as a Christian, the average infidel reader will seldom be distracted by that point. Even if the overall argument of the book leaves the religion discarded by Rousseau and his successors looking far preferable to our current sorry state, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self reads less like a work of Christian apologetics than as a rigorous examination of why we are where we are, and how the heck we got here. And it is precisely the non-combative tone of the whole that will make this readable by people of all shades of opinion — even, perhaps, by those whose worldview stands to be desiccated in consequence. Forget the populist angry-head scribblers on the right, who will merely confirm your own indignation: read this instead, and get the bigger picture.
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  • Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2024
    Product review: This product was delivered on time and in a high-quality condition as advertised.

    Content review:

    How did we get here?

    I often ask myself this question when I encounter a seemingly counter-intuitive social movement with strong media support in Western civilization such as the current issues surrounding gender identity. In seeking to understand the movement, I came across The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl R. Trueman. In it, he aims to explore the philosophical underpinnings and social theory behind the phenomenon from the perspective of a Christian scholar.

    “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.”

    The book’s underlying premise is that the early 21st-century ‘gender ideology’ and its current cultural infiltration are the sequelae of the late 20th-century sexual revolution which in turn is a by-product of the re-imagining of self and society that developed from 18th- and 19th-century philosophical thought.

    To make his point, Trueman explores how the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Romanticists (Wordsworth, Shelley, and Blake), Friedrich Nietzche, and Charles Darwin contributed to the loss of innate teleology and the grounding of ethics in aesthetics. Through Sigmoid Freud and Marxist thinkers, the self was psychologized then psychology was sexualized, and finally, sexuality was politized. Trueman concludes by demonstrating how these developments, facilitated by technological advances, have transformed modern Western culture, specifically American society, with special emphasis on surrealist art and eroticism and the pornification of mainstream culture championed by Hugh Hefner.

    Trueman’s framework for analysis derives significant contributions from Charles Taylor’s concepts of social imaginary, immanent frame, mimesis/poiesis and expressive individualism, Philip Rieff’s ‘third world’ social theory and his concept of the therapeutic self and ‘deathworks’, and Alasdair Mcintyre’s elaboration on emotivism as a social theory.

    Given my lack of expertise on the matter, it is difficult to determine whether he definitively establishes a causal relationship between analyzed theories and the current social issues in gender identity. However, his explanation is certainly plausible and has the added benefit of making several complex philosophical works accessible to a wider audience. The author’s tone is non-neutral and as such this book cannot be readily recommended to those caught in the wave of the movement. Nonetheless, I consider it a must-read for all 21st-century Christian leaders.
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  • Paul Charbonneau
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
    Reviewed in Canada on July 5, 2023
    Carl Trueman clearly explains the historical long road to where we find ourselves today. His insights help to explain not only the traction that the LGBT+ movement is making today but also the lightning fast change in attitude towards end of life issues (in particular Medical Assistance in Dying.) The Church will need to depend on the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to navigate through these challenges at the same time staying true to the Lord.
  • Niklas Morgan
    5.0 out of 5 stars Sehr lesenswert!
    Reviewed in Germany on December 8, 2021
    Dieses viel zu wenig bekannte Buch ist mit Sicherheit eines der besten Philosophie bzw Psychologiebücher, die ich in den letzten Jahren gelesen habe.
    Brilliante und auch faire Analyse, statt den sonst oft üblichen Polemiken und Strohmann Debatten.

    Hier hat jemand gründlich gelesen und nachgedacht und er erklärt den modernen „psychologischen Menschen“. Er spannt einen grossen Bogen von der Aufklärung über die Romantik, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Reich, bis zu Marcuse und den postmodernen Feministinnen und Butler.
    Danach versteht man die Komplexität der aktuellen Reizthemen des aktuellen Zeitgeists, von Gender über Homoehe bis Transgender.

    Erstaunlich, dass ein religiöser Theologe so analytisch fundiert die Position der Gegenseite erklären kann, ohne dabei unfair oder herablassend zu werden. Sehr bemerkenswert. Werde es aufgrund der Informationsdichte sicherlich bald nochmals lesen.
  • Cjbevan
    5.0 out of 5 stars the history of thought and assumption to the present construct
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 15, 2021
    21 07 15 the rise and triumph of the modern self
    The phrase ‘I am a woman trapped in a man’s body’ epitomises our arrival at a point in time where public discourse seems to have changed out of all semblance, not only to our past, recent and distant, but even out from a firm anchor in reality itself. This phrase previously would have been considered nonsensical, or as symptom of mental disorder, but now has credence in public life and even controversially in medicine. This has not happened overnight, nor even particularly quickly, but is the most recent manifestation of trends that have been going on for centuries. Trueman in this book describes how we have come to this point, the world of emotivism and the world of deathworks.
    He traces the history of thought and assumption to the present construct of the Psychological Man of Phillip Reiff , living out the Expressive Individualism of Charles Taylor, from the Reformation, via Rousseau ; then the Romantics Wordsworth, Shelley and Blake ; and then the overtly political and iconoclastic Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin ; and finally the politicisation of sex, of Freud being appropriated into Marxism by the Gramsci, and then the Frankfurt School firstly by such as Horkheimer and Fromm, and then Reich, Del Noce, and Marcuse . We have arrived to an anti-culture.
    What emerges is a history of thought about human nature; a genealogy of the contemporary worldview which currently appears to dominate in so many ways. The present cultural conflicts are in origin presenting issues based upon conflicting world views, each with deep emotional and philosophical roots.
    One thing I noticed particularly when reading out loud is that Trueman actually writes well. He shapes sentences carefully, with economy and imagination. There is not spare word in the book. There is no waffle or ambiguity. That also means that much is said, thus requiring careful thought and reflection, making this a demanding but rewarding book to read.
    One recurring theme is the agreement, repeatedly, throughout the history of these ideas, of the hatred for family life. Thinkers such as Godwin considered marriage the most odious of all monopolies . The Romantics, such as Shelley, disliked the family as being confining and thus inauthentic . Marx opposed the family as bourgeois and oppressive. The New Left, such as Reich, sees the family as part of the authoritarian state, inculcating the values of the thus embedded status quo . Del Noce sees a problem in parents overseeing the sexual education of their children, since for him this is part of growing political awareness, and thus the province of the state, so the family should be dismantled . Feminists such as Simone de Beauvoir, with her loathing of motherhood, and Shulamith Firestone’s desire for universal pansexuality, the polymorphous perversity of Freud , all agree with their predecessors that the tyranny of the family must be abolished. This chimes chillingly with avowed intention of the Black Lives Matter movement to destroy hetero-normativity, and the oppressive patriarchal family.
    A salutary warning at the end is that we are all living in conversation with our times and places, as much as fish live in the sea. Our churches become shaped by appeals to emotive personal stories, not historical precedent, nor rigorous theology, nor solid metaphysical foundations for decisions (hence the booing when the Bible was quoted in Synod ); a process very much part of therapeutic culture. But those in theory attempting to avoid such pitfalls can fall into therapeutic and aesthetic ways of thinking all too easily. Churches can reflect such things, even when in theory upholding a mostly orthodox faith.
    This is most easily demonstrated by the elements of choice ; we choose to be Christians, then we choose to which church we go; we choose whether to attend locally, or go further afield; we choose by denomination, worship style, preaching, theology, company, or times of events; we can choose a church as if choosing a cat or a meal. Choice is the essence of the world in which we have to live and of which we are a part . We live in a world where the un-tethering of what it means to be human from any kind of metaphysical framework has rendered the notion of universal human dignity something that threatens to push the West into a kind of totalitarian anarchy .
    The church must not simply imitate the world in its zero-sum confrontations, its sarcasm, and ad hominem polemics. Moral and ethical decisions must be soundly founded upon solid thought, not emotive appeals, nor attractive personas. Christianity that is authentic is dogmatic, doctrinal, and assertive, as well as compassionate . The church must function as authentic community . That community must be united in compassion, as well as in dogma, doctrine, and assertion.
  • Mike Dicker
    5.0 out of 5 stars Stimulating and insightful
    Reviewed in Australia on February 25, 2021
    Loved reading this book. It draws together the many threads of cultural historical and philosophical analysis to present a balanced view of the 21st C world.
    Much to ponder from this book about how to live as a disciple Christ in a way that is not only understandable to our Western neighbours but also holds out the compelling vision of life found in the gospel.
  • Grant Mitchell
    5.0 out of 5 stars Paradigm shifting
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 5, 2024
    Rarely do you read a book that makes you see patterns in the culture that you can’t unsee. Must read.