[lit-ideas] SOS - Autonomy & Individuality: The Modern Self?
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 10:01:56 -0700
Whether or not we shall be provided a definition of "The Modern Self" by
Charles Taylor or as John McCreery recommends "plod along taking the gaps of
incompleteness as well as the clashes of inconsistencies in stride," is yet
to be determined. Others have written on similar if not identical subjects
and if we happen to have read some of these others we shall be desirous of
integrating or contrasting Taylor's "Modern Self" with them. Some of us may
be willing to "plod along," but not before we are convinced that is what we
must do. I mentioned Luc Ferry & Alain' Renault's Essay on Antihumanism.
Alain Renaut continued their project with his The Era of the Individual, A
Contribution to a History of Subjectivity. On page 17 he provides what we
might say passes for definitions of two terms which may or may not be
related to Taylor's "Modern Self":
"Humanism is basically the valorization of humanity in its capacity for
autonomy. What I mean by this - without, of course, claiming any
originality in the matter - is that what constitutes modernity is the fact
that man thinks of himself as the source of his acts and representations, as
their foundation (read: subject) or author. (This is why, by the way, the
antihumanistic passion common to various genealogical practices of the 1960s
so often involved criticizing the idea of the author.) The humanistic man
is one who does not receive his norms and laws either from the nature of
things (as per Aristotle) or from God, but who establishes them himself, on
the basis of his own reason and will. Thus modern natural right is a
subjective right, posited and defined by human reason (as per juridical
rationalism) or by the human will (as per juridical voluntarism). Thus
modern societies conceive of themselves politically as self-established
political systems based on a contractualist scheme, in contrast to societies
where authority is established through tradition by means of the deeply
antimodern notion of 'privilege.'
"Individualism, on the other hand, carries a different emphasis.
Tocqueville accurately predicted that at the level of sociopolitical
phenomena it constituted a dangerous, but not irresistible, tendency in
modernity. The best definition no doubt follows from Benjamin Constant's
deceptively simple formula of the 'freedom of the moderns.' Constant placed
less stress on the valorization of autonomy than on independence: among the
ancients, he explained in a famous speech delivered at the Athenee royal in
Paris in 1819, freedom was defined in terms of participation in public
affairs and the direct exercise of sovereignty, by this 'collective freedom'
was held to be 'compatible with . . . the complete subjection of the
individual to the authority of the community,' to the point that '[n]o
importance was given to the individual independence, neither in relation to
opinions, nor to labor, nor, above all, to religion''; in contrast, among
the moderns, for whom the sovereignty of the individual was profoundly
restricted, being publicly exercised only 'at fixed and rare intervals,' the
individual nonetheless thinks of himself as free because he is 'independent
in his private independence,' Constant added; and in an age where, '[l]ost
in the multitude, the individual can almost never perceive the influence he
exercises, . . . we must be far more attached than the ancients to our
individual independence.'"
Lawrence
Other related posts:
- » [lit-ideas] SOS - Autonomy & Individuality: The Modern Self?
