One of the things I have been doing on my research leave is read (surprise), and specifically to read in the area of philosophy. Currently I am reading Gary Gutting, French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century. Besides just interesting, I hope to write one day a biblical theology of knowledge. That interest has led to reading this and that, including some philosophy. A few years ago I read Husserl, which led to reading several things by Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. The current chapter in Gutting’s book is on Henri Bergson. I thought the following quote was fascinating, and something of a good summary of the modern mood, and the modern notion of the self:
“for a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to develop [se murir], to develop is to go on creating oneself endlessly.”
I suspect it is hard to find a better description of one of the key strands of modern thought: the creation of the self. In one sense, this is a perennial challenge or temptation: the notion that we create ourself. It is one thing to say that our decisions matter, and that we shape who we are over time. It is another thing altogether to assert that we create ourselves.
(This is from Bergson’s work L’evolution creatrice, and is quoted in Gutting, 66).
Bradley, this is very much the outlook of Michel Foucault, the continual reinvention of the self. We see this especially in the last third of his work on ethics. It is interwoven with his quest for freedom. The fatal flaw is that the quest is not interwoven with the good. Thus it becomes more like anarchism and narcissism, experimentalism, philosophical rebellion. It is grounded in a negative view of freedom. It can become quite anti-institutional.
Charles Taylor makes a good dialectical interlocutor with Foucault, because in Sources of the Self and later in The Language Animal, He proposes the essential relationship with moral frameworks and the good as a part of the healthy self and a robust identity. This is critical to the search for meaning in Millennials today.
Gordon: Greetings. Thanks for the comment. And thanks for the leads on things to chase down. Yes, I think the notion of a never-ending creation of the self is troubling to me. The idea that we–as Christians–always seek holiness, seek to be faithful, are always being conformed to the image of Christ, etc.–is of course simply part of what it means to be a Christian. But the idea of continual “creating” one’s self is unhelpful. Thanks again! Take care, Brad