Self. vs Other

[ebola?]

I also like ebola's idea that we model ourselves in the same ways that we model other people. Perhaps even the vice versa.

I wish that it were my idea. This line of thought emerged w/ William James, Dewey, Cooley, and Mead.

Very briefly, maybe in order to understand the Other we must put them in terms of the Self.

This sounds right, or more precisely, we understand others 'in terms' of how we tend to perceive ourselves (how we see that 'me').

(This idea is proposed for the motor system at least: in order to understand the consequences of a motor action performed by an Other, we must use the same circuits that control that motor action in our Self e.g. to understand someone kicking a soccer ball we must go through the neural motions of kicking that soccer ball ourselves.)

Yup. Mirror neurons are cool, providing a physical basis for intersubjectivity. Mark Johnson (and Lakeoff) argue that all concepts root themselves in metaphorical extension from bodily experience.

The only way to be such an "authentic self" is to do things for your own reasons

Okay. But how do I know whether the reasons that I choose are 'my own'?

I'm referring to the concept of Self and Other, not a particular post.

er...I'd have trouble abandoning these concepts.

Anthony Giddens (a British sociologist) argues that "authenticity" is an accomplishment. We need certain kinds of relationships to accomplish "being ourselves."

I like this, likely 'cause it's thoroughly Marxist. To accomplish authenticity is to unleash unrealized potentialities of what one could be, which points again to a social project. But are these just any potentialities? I think that the rough...heuristic you give for looking at socialized authenticity helps. Authentic projects of self-hood are those from which one is not alienated (in a Marxist sense)

off topic: thoughts on Giddens? I haven't read much, and I've heard mixed things. I got a boner for heavy theory though.

Giddens calls these kinds of relationships "pure" - they are relationships which are not dependent on anything else other than the relationality between the people involved, in order to exist.

Wait. Are any relationships like this?

In the pure relationship, the people involved accomplish authenticity - they can be themselves. (contrast this with, for example, relationships with people you work with, which only exist for the purpose of work, and in which for the most part we can not "be ourselves.")

This sounds about right (better statement of my alienation thing)...

So, what does this mean about the self? It means that there is no "true" self in there, waiting to be expressed. Rather, our selves are negotiated, constructed, and dependent on certain kinds of relationships. If we don't have these kinds of relationships we can never "be ourselves," accomplish authenticity. And this is a very painful thing. The "authentic" self is not self-referential, but actually a product of our relationships with others.

mmm...from another angle, adequate self-reference includes consciousness of one's relational position within the social system.

ricola

 

[satricion]

I
I like this, likely 'cause it's thoroughly Marxist. To accomplish authenticity is to unleash unrealized potentialities of what one could be, which points again to a social project. But are these just any potentialities? I think that the rough...heuristic you give for looking at socialized authenticity helps. Authentic projects of self-hood are those from which one is not alienated (in a Marxist sense)

off topic: thoughts on Giddens? I haven't read much, and I've heard mixed things. I got a boner for heavy theory though.

Well, I'm not sure if it really is Marxist. I mean, the notion of alienation relies on the idea that there is some kind of human nature that can be unalienated. I don't think Giddens would agree with that. He would just argue that 'authenticity' becomes a problem for late modern subjects because of things like globalisation, increasing individualisation, and the reflexivity that he says is characteristic of late modernity. So earlier, in what Durkheim would call mechanical solidarity, we weren't worried whether or not we were 'authentic' because our social context wasn't heterogeneous enough to make 'the self' a problem. Now we live in different times, and we have lots of different selves (as the poststructuralists would argue, although from a different perspective). So our 'real' self becomes a problem we have to solve. It becomes a project, but it's not about unrealised potential. And it's nothing to do with production.

As to thoughts on Giddens? Well, he's pretty big so a lot of people must like him. I personally think he's quite pedestrian, but I suppose he's important in the history of theory. He raises some interesting problems, but I think that he undertheorises power. I mean, Giddens says modernity is reflexive, but what is reflexivity for Foucault? A technology of the self. Giddens isn't able to deal with this claim. I really think that overall Beck is dealing with the same kinds of problems as Giddens (social change etc) but is much better. His theorisation of power is better because he's not stuck in an agency/structure (subject/object) binary. In my work the main people I use are the poststructuralists, Bourdieu, Deleuze, and Beck. Giddens is only incidental.

As to the notion of authenticity, I'm currently working on a paper which argues that it's not just about 'pure' relationships, but it's also about discursive positioning (a la the poststructuralists) and symbolic capital (a la Bourdieu). Or to put it in plain language, I think that authenticity is not just about pure relationships, but also about occupying a valuable position in the cultural world. Being the 'kind' of person that your relationships, and thus society as a whole, wants you to be.

I mean, I think you should definitely read him. If nothing else you're probably going to teach social theory courses in the future, you're going to have to know Giddens.

Wait. Are any relationships like this?

No. But then, do we ever feel completely ourselves? Completely authentic? I think the notion works to a point, but it undertheorises power and so only really applies to middle class experiences.

Giddens gets his ideas on subject formation from object relations theory. He says that we need certain kinds of relationships to give us 'ontological security', a sense of being in the world which is like a 'protective cocoon', protecting us from all the chaos and flux of modernity and allowing us to live our lives in a satisfying and stable way. The pure relationship, and authenticity, are accomplished as part of this process (for Giddens).

 

[Heuristic]

Hmmmm...

I don't know much about social theory, but it seems to me that much of the above trades on the ambiguity of the phrase "being oneself."

When we talk about being able to be ourselves, what we usually mean is simply that a situation allows us to express fully, and as accurately as we can, our emotions and thoughts. We can't "be ourselves" at work, perhaps, because we constantly feel the need to censor ourselves, to carefully check our thoughts, emotions, and reactions, before showing them.

So what is it to be an authentic self? To me, it's simply being cognizant of one's beliefs, values, desires, and emotions, and acting or speaking with that full realization. That's all it is.

 

[satricion]

Hmmmm...

I don't know much about social theory, but it seems to me that much of the above trades on the ambiguity of the phrase "being oneself."

When we talk about being able to be ourselves, what we usually mean is simply that a situation allows us to express fully, and as accurately as we can, our emotions and thoughts. We can't "be ourselves" at work, perhaps, because we constantly feel the need to censor ourselves, to carefully check our thoughts, emotions, and reactions, before showing them.

Indeed, and Giddens would argue that the reason you feel the need to do these things is because the relationships you have with people at work are governed by norms which are extrinsic to the relationship itself. So those relationships don't exist 'for themselves' but rather for other reasons. Hence we do not 'feel ourselves.'

So what is it to be an authentic self? To me, it's simply being cognizant of one's beliefs, values, desires, and emotions, and acting or speaking with that full realization. That's all it is.

Ah yes, and I'm sure that very few people would disagree with you. But the question is, do these beliefs, values, desires etc actually belong only to you? Did they come from just inside you? Or did you get them from somewhere else? Ie, the social world? And if you'd accept how problematic it is to argue that all of our beliefs etc just come from inside ourselves and nowhere else, how can we continue with the notion of authenticity at all?

That is why Giddens is saying that authenticity is an accomplishment. It's a feeling we get when we're in certain kinds of social contexts (and a very good feeling at that). But are we ever really truly authentic, true only to ourselves? I would argue that it is impossible (and that there are also a priori reasons for thinking this).

 

[Heuristic]

Indeed, and Giddens would argue that the reason you feel the need to do these things is because the relationships you have with people at work are governed by norms which are extrinsic to the relationship itself. So those relationships don't exist 'for themselves' but rather for other reasons. Hence we do not 'feel ourselves.'

What does it mean though for a relationship to "exist for itself"? I'm guessing the idea is that our work relationships are viewed as means to other ends, and relationships that "exist for themselves" are viewed as ends in themselves?

And this sounds promising, but ultimately I still find myself scratching my head. A relationship as an end in itself? What in the world is THAT exactly? Don't misunderstand me. I think it's a great line, and it's something I fully intend to use when attempting the formation of a relationship governed by certain pleasurable extrinsic norms. But I have no idea what that would entail in substance. Help me out here. Can you describe what this would be?

Ah yes, and I'm sure that very few people would disagree with you. But the question is, do these beliefs, values, desires etc actually belong only to you? Did they come from just inside you? Or did you get them from somewhere else? Ie, the social world? And if you'd accept how problematic it is to argue that all of our beliefs etc just come from inside ourselves and nowhere else, how can we continue with the notion of authenticity at all?

So far as authenticity is concerned, I don't think it matters that my beliefs, values, desires, etc. are shared by others and are certainly the result of various biological and social forces. So long as they are in fact beliefs, values, desires, etc., held by me, that's all I require.

Put differently, I couldn't care less that it all might be contingent.

That is why Giddens is saying that authenticity is an accomplishment. It's a feeling we get when we're in certain kinds of social contexts (and a very good feeling at that). But are we ever really truly authentic, true only to ourselves? I would argue that it is impossible (and that there are also a priori reasons for thinking this).

Not sure what it means to be true only to ourselves. I think it's possible to act and speak with reasonably full cognizance of one's beliefs, desires, and values, and, to that extent, that it's perfectly possible to be authentic.

 

[satricion]

What does it mean though for a relationship to "exist for itself"? I'm guessing the idea is that our work relationships are viewed as means to other ends, and relationships that "exist for themselves" are viewed as ends in themselves?

And this sounds promising, but ultimately I still find myself scratching my head. A relationship as an end in itself? What in the world is THAT exactly? Don't misunderstand me. I think it's a great line, and it's something I fully intend to use when attempting the formation of a relationship governed by certain pleasurable extrinsic norms. But I have no idea what that would entail in substance. Help me out here. Can you describe what this would be?

Well, Giddens would probably argue something along these lines: a pure relationship exists only for itself in the sense that the people involved in the relationship are in it only for the rewards that the relationship brings as a relationship. So it's the relationship itself, and the other person themselves, that makes the relationship meaningful and rewarding. Just being with the other person for no reason other than that you value them for them, and you value your relationship with them only for the relationship and the intrinsic rewards that 'pure' relationality brings.

The contrast with relationships that you have with people at work are the most instructive constrast to make in this regard: You are hanging out with these people only because you have to. So it's not the relationship that makes the interaction meaningful, but rather the exigencies that keep you together. If you compare that to the people you are the most close with, like your best friends with whom you hang out only because you enjoy their company and because your relationship with them is important for you (and important only because it is a valued relationship, and they are a valued person). So you don't hang out with someone in the pure relationship because you have to, or because they have a lot of money, or so you can use them for sex, or whatever, but because with everything else taken away, the relationship itself matters for you.

That is what Giddens would argue anyway. One thing we need to keep in mind as well is that we don't actually have to accept that these kinds of relationships really exist in the world ever. The pure relationship functions as an ideal, and we feel 'ourselves' to the extent that we have these kinds of relationships.

So far as authenticity is concerned, I don't think it matters that my beliefs, values, desires, etc. are shared by others and are certainly the result of various biological and social forces. So long as they are in fact beliefs, values, desires, etc., held by me, that's all I require.

Put differently, I couldn't care less that it all might be contingent.

Not sure what it means to be true only to ourselves. I think it's possible to act and speak with reasonably full cognizance of one's beliefs, desires, and values, and, to that extent, that it's perfectly possible to be authentic.

Well I mean okay, but this is a different issue to the problematic that this thread is about:

Is it possible to be an Authentic Self, or do we necessarily define ourself through the world contingently?

So this is the dichotomy that we are looking at. What I am saying is that there is no 'authentic' self, but that authenticity is a feeling that we can accomplish through certain kinds of relationships. So the fact that you don't care that it's contingent is fine. Whether or not you care isn't really the issue.

What you are talking about is the feeling of being 'true' to yourself, in the sense of acting in good faith with regards to yourself, and not intentionally going against what you feel to be right and true, for whatever reason you might do this. And that's fine. But that's not directly relevant to the problem. The problem is, once we accept that these motivations etc are contingent, what sense does it make to talk of a "real" self instead of one defined, contingently, through the world (as psyduck the op said).

We need to keep in mind the context that these ideas are coming out of. Giddens is saying that authenticity becomes a problem for people in late modern societies because of the diversity of the social context we live in, and consequently the heterogeneity of the different 'selves' we have to act out in the different contexts of our lives. So he's saying that, in a sense, we feel like we are acting the 'least' when we are in relationships he calls pure. So then we feel authentic.

Finally, we need to understand the history of these ideas. The notion of the authentic self comes from humanism, and the idea that there is an essence of the self that can in some way be brought to the fore. This is the notion behind ideas like 'self-actualisation' and 'finding yourself', both ideas that assume there is a self there to actualise, or to find. This idea is premised on a cartesian dualism, and once you get down to the ontological nitty gritty, is incoherent. However, this fact only really took hold in the 1960's when social changes which increased the heterogeneity of society made authenticity a problem.

So in answer to the question "are we authentic or are we socially constructed", the answer that Giddens (and to a certain extent me as well, although I think Giddens misses a lot of important things) is giving is that we are socially constructed, but sometimes we feel authentic, and that's important for our wellbeing.

Anyway I hope that makes sense. I'm really stoned. And a werd up to you all.

 

[Heuristic]

Well, Giddens would probably argue something along these lines: a pure relationship exists only for itself in the sense that the people involved in the relationship are in it only for the rewards that the relationship brings as a relationship. So it's the relationship itself, and the other person themselves, that makes the relationship meaningful and rewarding. Just being with the other person for no reason other than that you value them for them, and you value your relationship with them only for the relationship and the intrinsic rewards that 'pure' relationality brings.

My problem is that even in such a pure relationship, we still speak of the psychological rewards that follow from it, and that keep us coming back. So even in this case, the relationship doesn't quite exist "for itself." And so I'm still not sure we have an entirely coherent description of a "pure relationship."

The contrast with relationships that you have with people at work are the most instructive constrast to make in this regard: You are hanging out with these people only because you have to. So it's not the relationship that makes the interaction meaningful, but rather the exigencies that keep you together. If you compare that to the people you are the most close with, like your best friends with whom you hang out only because you enjoy their company and because your relationship with them is important for you (and important only because it is a valued relationship, and they are a valued person). So you don't hang out with someone in the pure relationship because you have to, or because they have a lot of money, or so you can use them for sex, or whatever, but because with everything else taken away, the relationship itself matters for you.

That is what Giddens would argue anyway. One thing we need to keep in mind as well is that we don't actually have to accept that these kinds of relationships really exist in the world ever. The pure relationship functions as an ideal, and we feel 'ourselves' to the extent that we have these kinds of relationships.

Even as an ideal though, for reasons stated above, I'm not sure we have a coherent description of it.

Well I mean okay, but this is a different issue to the problematic that this thread is about[...]

So this is the dichotomy that we are looking at. What I am saying is that there is no 'authentic' self, but that authenticity is a feeling that we can accomplish through certain kinds of relationships. So the fact that you don't care that it's contingent is fine. Whether or not you care isn't really the issue.

Well, I'm not sure the OP's post was quite as limited as your quote indicates, however, and the resulting discussion certainly hasn't been. He also included a quote from Wilde as to the importance of originality, and phrased his question alternately as about whether we can be a Self without being an Other. All three (your quote, his alternate phrasing, and the quote from Wilde) express something different.

One way of resolving the question phrased in your quote is to argue that there is, in fact, no necessary dichotomy between authenticity and contingency. Our individual selves are in part (of course!) a function of where and how we are raised, our genes, our nutrition, etc. Our selves might evolve as we encounter new situations, or the same situation, over a period of time. We will find that some of our passions, beliefs, and values, are shared by others.

But none of this means that we are not therefore unique selves (to address Wilde), and none of this means that there is a lack of what most people would call an authentic self (to address the problem you quoted).

Further, authenticity is not a approbation-neutral term. It very much includes a positive endorsement of that which it describes. And so I think it very much matters to question WHY it should be important to us, or important to a conception of authenticity, that selves are not contingent in nature.

What you are talking about is the feeling of being 'true' to yourself, in the sense of acting in good faith with regards to yourself, and not intentionally going against what you feel to be right and true, for whatever reason you might do this. And that's fine. But that's not directly relevant to the problem. The problem is, once we accept that these motivations etc are contingent, what sense does it make to talk of a "real" self instead of one defined, contingently, through the world (as psyduck the op said).

I understand. My answer is to reject the assumption in the question that there is a necessary difference between the two. I am perfectly comfortable talking about my real self while at the same time discussing how it was formed through contingent events and circumstances. There is no contradiction here.

If the OP phrased the question as "is the self a necessary thing, immune to contingent events, or is it formed as a result of contingent events" then I think I would agree with you. But instead he phrased it in terms of authenticity, and that raises a host of complex assumptions and problems.

We need to keep in mind the context that these ideas are coming out of. Giddens is saying that authenticity becomes a problem for people in late modern societies because of the diversity of the social context we live in, and consequently the heterogeneity of the different 'selves' we have to act out in the different contexts of our lives. So he's saying that, in a sense, we feel like we are acting the 'least' when we are in relationships he calls pure. So then we feel authentic.

Wait, are we talking about the history of the idea of authenticity, or are we talking about Giddens's view of that history? If the latter, I have to say that I disagree with it.

Finally, we need to understand the history of these ideas. The notion of the authentic self comes from humanism, and the idea that there is an essence of the self that can in some way be brought to the fore. This is the notion behind ideas like 'self-actualisation' and 'finding yourself', both ideas that assume there is a self there to actualise, or to find. This idea is premised on a cartesian dualism, and once you get down to the ontological nitty gritty, is incoherent. However, this fact only really took hold in the 1960's when social changes which increased the heterogeneity of society made authenticity a problem.

Hmmm... I'm not sure self-actualization relies on the idea of a necessary (as opposed to contingent) self. Self-actualization requires a certain stability of self, to be sure, in which certain capacities, desires, values, remain existent, and which reward development. But whether these things are contingent isn't a requirement for that.

Does humanism require some necessary self as opposed to a contingent self?

So in answer to the question "are we authentic or are we socially constructed", the answer that Giddens (and to a certain extent me as well, although I think Giddens misses a lot of important things) is giving is that we are socially constructed, but sometimes we feel authentic, and that's important for our wellbeing.

Anyway I hope that makes sense. I'm really stoned. And a werd up to you all.

Hah! Yeah, it made sense (though obviously I disagree with a lot of it).

 

[satricion]

^^
I don't think we really disagree on that much.

My problem is that even in such a pure relationship, we still speak of the psychological rewards that follow from it, and that keep us coming back. So even in this case, the relationship doesn't quite exist "for itself." And so I'm still not sure we have an entirely coherent description of a "pure relationship."

Well I'm not sure that this view is actually inconsistent with what Giddens is saying. I think he could concede this whilst still maintaining that the idea of an intrinsically valuable relationship remains a cherished ideal in late modern societies, and he could also argue that so long as the psychological rewards from the relationship come from the relationality itself, ie, come just from the process of interaction that the two people are engaged in and nothing else, then your argument is not inconsistent with what he is saying.

I guess when I think of the 'pure relationship' I think of a couple of friends I have that I've known since I was about 13. Whenever we see each other we usually just talk about meaningless shit, or sometimes we don't say anything at all. It's just the experience of 'being-with' that is cherished, reenacting a relationship within which we can be completely comfortable.

Well, I'm not sure the OP's post was quite as limited as your quote indicates, however, and the resulting discussion certainly hasn't been. He also included a quote from Wilde as to the importance of originality, and phrased his question alternately as about whether we can be a Self without being an Other. All three (your quote, his alternate phrasing, and the quote from Wilde) express something different.

Sure. What I am saying is that we get the feeling that we are selves constructed without others (unique and authentic) when, paradoxically, we have certain kinds of relationships that allow us to feel like that. When we examine the idea it proves contradictory, but nevertheless I think we do often experience ourselves as in a sense sui generis.

Further, authenticity is not a approbation-neutral term. It very much includes a positive endorsement of that which it describes. And so I think it very much matters to question WHY it should be important to us, or important to a conception of authenticity, that selves are not contingent in nature.

Sure absolutely. From my perspective, the notion of authenticity is a problem because throughout history, humanism has held up a notion of the 'authentic' self which was then used to judge peoples from other cultures or class backgrounds as being 'deficient', 'underdeveloped' or 'inauthentic' in some way. So I think it's important to trouble this notion.

Wait, are we talking about the history of the idea of authenticity, or are we talking about Giddens's view of that history? If the latter, I have to say that I disagree with it.

Neither. We're talking about Giddens' view that 'authenticity' becomes a problem for people in late modernity, and how the problem is 'solved.'

Hmmm... I'm not sure self-actualization relies on the idea of a necessary (as opposed to contingent) self. Self-actualization requires a certain stability of self, to be sure, in which certain capacities, desires, values, remain existent, and which reward development. But whether these things are contingent isn't a requirement for that.

Does humanism require some necessary self as opposed to a contingent self?

Gotta run, gotta class to teach, will edit and answer this later.

 

[satricion]

Well god damnit. I just wrote out this lovely response about humanism and whatever and then the internet ate it or something. God damnit. I'll come back to this if I can be bothered later today. A quick summary:

Descartes.
Sartre.

They're wrong.

Giddens.

 

[Heuristic]

Well I'm not sure that this view is actually inconsistent with what Giddens is saying. I think he could concede this whilst still maintaining that the idea of an intrinsically valuable relationship remains a cherished ideal in late modern societies, and he could also argue that so long as the psychological rewards from the relationship come from the relationality itself, ie, come just from the process of interaction that the two people are engaged in and nothing else, then your argument is not inconsistent with what he is saying.

Ah, but now we're getting into some interesting territory then. Descartes has his demon-god; I shall introduce the spectre of the lonely con-man.

The lonely con-man enjoys the positive attention and affections he receives from others. To this end, he will spin, convincingly, any story and play any role, tailoring himself to the object of his desire. All the rewards from each interaction derive solely from the relationality of the relationship; he simply enjoys the feeling of being with another, and the positive attentions he receives.

Now... would Giddens's description of authenticity exclude our lonely con-man?

I guess when I think of the 'pure relationship' I think of a couple of friends I have that I've known since I was about 13. Whenever we see each other we usually just talk about meaningless shit, or sometimes we don't say anything at all. It's just the experience of 'being-with' that is cherished, reenacting a relationship within which we can be completely comfortable.

What makes your honesty and lack self-inhibition with your friends, though, any more authentic than a lie one undertakes with full self-awareness and, even, full internal approval? The lonely con-man delights in that feeling of being-with too. Nothing he says is truthful, unfortunately.

Sure. What I am saying is that we get the feeling that we are selves constructed without others (unique and authentic) when, paradoxically, we have certain kinds of relationships that allow us to feel like that. When we examine the idea it proves contradictory, but nevertheless I think we do often experience ourselves as in a sense sui generis.

Hmmm... "the feeling that we are selves constructed without others." I don't know what that means. I think we feel very relaxed and comfortable with our close friends. I'm not sure I'd agree with the jump to this next level of description.

Sure absolutely. From my perspective, the notion of authenticity is a problem because throughout history, humanism has held up a notion of the 'authentic' self which was then used to judge peoples from other cultures or class backgrounds as being 'deficient', 'underdeveloped' or 'inauthentic' in some way. So I think it's important to trouble this notion.

I agree that people of one culture have frequently looked at persons from foreign cultures as inferior or deficient, but I'm not sure that really ties with the idea of authenticity. If anything, the idea of an authentic self-in the sense of some core, essential human self-may actually mitigate the ability of the persons of one culture to judge those of another inferior since, underneath our cultural trappings, we each have a similar, human self.

Neither. We're talking about Giddens' view that 'authenticity' becomes a problem for people in late modernity, and how the problem is 'solved.'

Becomes a problem for them in the sense that they worry about it? People wandering about, worrying about their authenticity? I don't know... perhaps he meant people in late academia, not late modernity?

Gotta run, gotta class to teach, will edit and answer this later.

And did any of your students claim that the internet ate his answer? Sorry, I couldn't resist.

 

[satricion]

The lonely con-man enjoys the positive attention and affections he receives from others. To this end, he will spin, convincingly, any story and play any role, tailoring himself to the object of his desire. All the rewards from each interaction derive solely from the relationality of the relationship; he simply enjoys the feeling of being with another, and the positive attentions he receives.

Now... would Giddens's description of authenticity exclude our lonely con-man?

Giddens' description of the accomplishment of authenticity (keep in mind Giddens doesn't think authenticity is 'real', he just thinks it's a feeling we can achieve) is not aimed at addressing this fairly arcane and specious example. Nevertheless, Giddens would argue that unless your con-man had some situations where he wasn't just manipulating people in order to get attention, that he would feel inauthentic, and bad about himself. In day to day life, typically people who behave in the way that your con man behaves are described as being insecure or having low self-esteem (most people have met someone like this, who always seems to be 'working' to make people like them). This conclusion is consistent with Giddens' argument. Now, if you want to say that isn't how your con man thinks then great, sure, but I don't think that's actually a rebuttal of Giddens' argument.

What makes your honesty and lack self-inhibition with your friends, though, any more authentic than a lie one undertakes with full self-awareness and, even, full internal approval? The lonely con-man delights in that feeling of being-with too. Nothing he says is truthful, unfortunately.

Nothing, except that I would actually feel authentic, whereas the con-man is unlikely to. He would feel like a con-man, like he was performing many different selves for different purposes. Maybe he would get a perverse enjoyment out of this, but I doubt it would be very fulfilling. Furthermore, Giddens would argue that it is only in late modernity that your con-man is even possible. How can we be a con-man unless we live in a differentiated social context which allows multiple possibilities for identity? Your con-man is actually dealing with this just like everyone else, it's just that your con-man hasn't achieved authenticity. Now of course, you could say, that he doesn't care. Which is fine if you want to say that, but it doesn't really get us very far.

Hmmm... "the feeling that we are selves constructed without others." I don't know what that means. I think we feel very relaxed and comfortable with our close friends. I'm not sure I'd agree with the jump to this next level of description.

Well, my experience teaching these ideas is that the students I teach find the idea that their identities do not belong purely to themselves to be quite a difficult one to come to terms with. Regardless of the argument, whether it's ontological (the humanist self is ontologically incoherent) or empirical (class, for example, is a major determinant of the way people see themselves and the world), it always comes down to "sure, but I went on a search to find the real music that I really liked, to find the real friends that I really liked, to find the real me..." In fact, students are often willing to admit that someone else's identity is socially constructed (particularly if they don't like that person's subcultural affiliations) but not their own (because they feel authentic).

Authenticity is a problem to be solved, but it isn't seen as such unless we don't have social contexts that allow us to feel secure in ourselves. When we feel insecure we realise it's a problem. But when we don't, even discussing the problem seems like a stupid waste of time.

Ultimately, we feel like we are real. In a previous post you yourself admitted that as long as it feels real, you don't care, even if rationally you know it's contingent. And I have no problem with that. It's what allows me to feel happy and comfortable most of the time, despite the fact that I am more convinced of the socially constructed nature of selfhood than most people (except other sociologists).

I agree that people of one culture have frequently looked at persons from foreign cultures as inferior or deficient, but I'm not sure that really ties with the idea of authenticity. If anything, the idea of an authentic self-in the sense of some core, essential human self-may actually mitigate the ability of the persons of one culture to judge those of another inferior since, underneath our cultural trappings, we each have a similar, human self.

Emphatically: This is not how these ideas played out historically. The notion that there is a real self was used to justify the idea that people in different cultural contexts' selves were the same as ours, but less developed, primitive, childlike, or distorted in some way. The humanist self can not cope with difference because, as Rousseau argued, everyone has the same kind of self, it can be known, and we can map out the good society on the basis of this (meaning that every good society is the same). In the history of modernity, this ontology of the subject was used to justify colonialism and racism.

Becomes a problem for them in the sense that they worry about it? People wandering about, worrying about their authenticity? I don't know... perhaps he meant people in late academia, not late modernity?

No. People don't usually worry about their authenticity. Until they find themselves in contexts where it becomes a problem. Then they worry about it a lot. Go to the self-help section of a bookshop: Get the most out of yourself! Find yourself! Ten steps to self-actualisation! Buy a magazine: Take this quiz to find out this fact about yourself! Follow these steps to be a well adjusted person! So-and-so, well known psychologist, says we can feel good about ourselves using these three simple, easy steps! Go on this diet and let the thin, happy you out of the fat, unhappy you!

Nobody is saying that in day to day life, most people go around obsessing about their authenticity. But that some people do it some of the time, and that it's widespread enough to have essentially generated part of an industry (self help gurus, 'life-coaches' and whatever) means that it's a relatively interesting feature of the present historical moment. I mean, it started this thread didn't it?

 

[Heuristic]

Giddens' description of the accomplishment of authenticity (keep in mind Giddens doesn't think authenticity is 'real', he just thinks it's a feeling we can achieve) is not aimed at addressing this fairly arcane and specious example. Nevertheless, Giddens would argue that unless your con-man had some situations where he wasn't just manipulating people in order to get attention, that he would feel inauthentic, and bad about himself. In day to day life, typically people who behave in the way that your con man behaves are described as being insecure or having low self-esteem (most people have met someone like this, who always seems to be 'working' to make people like them). This conclusion is consistent with Giddens' argument. Now, if you want to say that isn't how your con man thinks then great, sure, but I don't think that's actually a rebuttal of Giddens' argument.

It raises problems for Giddens's argument in that the argument now lacks a good description of the feeling of authenticity. Previously we had something when we described it as the feeling one achieves in a pure relationship. Now, however, we have the example of a pure relationship which exists, apparently, without any feeling of authenticity.

Nothing, except that I would actually feel authentic, whereas the con-man is unlikely to. He would feel like a con-man, like he was performing many different selves for different purposes. Maybe he would get a perverse enjoyment out of this, but I doubt it would be very fulfilling.

But we're back at square one in attempting to describe what it is about the experience that you think allows you to achieve a feeling of authenticity, but that does not allow-or makes it more difficult-for the con-man.

Furthermore, Giddens would argue that it is only in late modernity that your con-man is even possible. How can we be a con-man unless we live in a differentiated social context which allows multiple possibilities for identity?

It is? Con-men aren't an invention of late modernity. Trickery, role-playing, acting, various forms of politicking and interpersonal manipulation and deception extend back at least as far as written human history does.

Your con-man is actually dealing with this just like everyone else, it's just that your con-man hasn't achieved authenticity. Now of course, you could say, that he doesn't care. Which is fine if you want to say that, but it doesn't really get us very far.

Hasn't he? Why not? He's fulfilled the only conditions I've seen Giddens impose, which is that one must achieve this feeling in the context of, perhaps even as a result of, being in a pure relationship.

Well, my experience teaching these ideas is that the students I teach find the idea that their identities do not belong purely to themselves to be quite a difficult one to come to terms with. Regardless of the argument, whether it's ontological (the humanist self is ontologically incoherent) or empirical (class, for example, is a major determinant of the way people see themselves and the world), it always comes down to "sure, but I went on a search to find the real music that I really liked, to find the real friends that I really liked, to find the real me..." In fact, students are often willing to admit that someone else's identity is socially constructed (particularly if they don't like that person's subcultural affiliations) but not their own (because they feel authentic).

Right, but I think the problem for the students lies in the phrasing. It sounds as though you're claiming that their identities belong to someone else, which, you must admit, sounds at the very least puzzling and vaguely alarming. If you were to tell them instead simply that they are the product of their experiences and various biological determinants, I'd bet you would find widespread agreement.

Similarly, I think they're using the term "real me" in an ontologically innocent fashion. They don't mean to imply any ontological theories of the self; they're simply using the expression to convey a sense of finding a greater sense of more stable and comfortable enjoyment in a particular form of music, or with certain friends.

Authenticity is a problem to be solved, but it isn't seen as such unless we don't have social contexts that allow us to feel secure in ourselves. When we feel insecure we realise it's a problem. But when we don't, even discussing the problem seems like a stupid waste of time.

Well, let's distinguish between two forms of insecurity here. There's insecurity in the sense people use it most frequently in conversation when describing a person; they mean that the person isn't confident in the worth of some aspect of himself. Call it personal insecurity. Then there's the insecurity you're describing here, which seems to be more uncertainty about one's identity than insecurity as such. Is this a fair description of what you mean by insecurity?

Ultimately, we feel like we are real. In a previous post you yourself admitted that as long as it feels real, you don't care, even if rationally you know it's contingent. And I have no problem with that. It's what allows me to feel happy and comfortable most of the time, despite the fact that I am more convinced of the socially constructed nature of selfhood than most people (except other sociologists).

Hmmm... I didn't say anything about feeling "real" though. It's a small difference, but it may be important to this discussion. I said that so long as I'm acting with a reasonably full awareness of my own desires, thoughts, and values, it doesn't particularly matter to me whether these are in part caused by social forces. I'm not sure what it would mean to feel "unreal."

Emphatically: This is not how these ideas played out historically. The notion that there is a real self was used to justify the idea that people in different cultural contexts' selves were the same as ours, but less developed, primitive, childlike, or distorted in some way. The humanist self can not cope with difference because, as Rousseau argued, everyone has the same kind of self, it can be known, and we can map out the good society on the basis of this (meaning that every good society is the same). In the history of modernity, this ontology of the subject was used to justify colonialism and racism.

Humanism is a pretty broad label, and I have some doubt that "the humanist self" is quite as narrow a category as you describe. For humanism to be unable to cope with difference, its description of the self would have to one which is highly determined in terms of various characteristics that, obviously, can vary among cultures. To pick a trivial characteristic which varies by culture that I think we would agree humanism can easily cope with, there are frequently sharp differences in language among cultures. The existence of this difference poses no challenge for humanism of course.

As far as the history of ideas, I still maintain that humanism, and the notion that at core we are all equivalent in deeply important respects, actually poses problems for those who wish to exploit others. It's far easier to justify exploitation of another people when I can claim that they are literally and fully alien; if I must acknowledge instead that this other people is composed of human selves, I encounter a host of new moral problems. Whether I care about those moral problems is another issue, of course.

No. People don't usually worry about their authenticity. Until they find themselves in contexts where it becomes a problem. Then they worry about it a lot. Go to the self-help section of a bookshop: Get the most out of yourself! Find yourself! Ten steps to self-actualisation! Buy a magazine: Take this quiz to find out this fact about yourself! Follow these steps to be a well adjusted person! So-and-so, well known psychologist, says we can feel good about ourselves using these three simple, easy steps! Go on this diet and let the thin, happy you out of the fat, unhappy you!

Yeah, but none of those titles is about authenticity in the sense we're talking about it here.

Nobody is saying that in day to day life, most people go around obsessing about their authenticity. But that some people do it some of the time, and that it's widespread enough to have essentially generated part of an industry (self help gurus, 'life-coaches' and whatever) means that it's a relatively interesting feature of the present historical moment. I mean, it started this thread didn't it?

Fair point about the thread, but I don't think the self-help industry is predicated on uncertainty about authenticity.

 

[satricion]

It raises problems for Giddens's argument in that the argument now lacks a good description of the feeling of authenticity. Previously we had something when we described it as the feeling one achieves in a pure relationship. Now, however, we have the example of a pure relationship which exists, apparently, without any feeling of authenticity.

Giddens argues that pure relationships are required for the feeling of authenticity, which is a dimension of what he calls 'ontological security.' He describes this as a kind of 'protective cocoon' which protects us from insecurity about ourselves and about the world. He says that accomplishing a protective cocoon like this is somewhat more difficult in late modernity, because of how differentiated societies have become, and because we are often embedded in 'abstract systems' which disembed social relations from their roots in traditional sources of meaning (such as place, class based cultures of sociability, etc) and reembed people into global flows over which they have no control.

So the pure relationship, for Giddens, is a way of dealing with the complexity of modernity, and the problems that it brings.

Your con-man is not experiencing pure relationships. He is manipulating others in order to achieve some perverse satisfaction, but that kind of satisfaction is not what Giddens would describe as authenticity. This is not a pure relationship according to any sense in which I have described it.

It is? Con-men aren't an invention of late modernity. Trickery, role-playing, acting, various forms of politicking and interpersonal manipulation and deception extend back at least as far as written human history does.

Manipulating heterogeneous social contexts in order to perform different selves is premised on a social context heterogeneous and fragmented enough to allow this. So yes, for the purposes which you put your con-man to (ie, troubling the idea of the pure relationship) his actions are indeed a product of late modernity.

Hasn't he? Why not? He's fulfilled the only conditions I've seen Giddens impose, which is that one must achieve this feeling in the context of, perhaps even as a result of, being in a pure relationship.

Because he hasn't achieved pure relationships. He's manipulating others. That's not what a pure relationship is. In a sense one of the problems here is that Giddens' notion is a tautology: We are authentic when we have pure relationships, and we have pure relationships when we area authentic. This is of course a problem. Indeed, this is one of the reasons why I agree with Giddens that authenticity is a problem for late modernity, but I think he only touches on one minor part of what it is to feel authentic.

Right, but I think the problem for the students lies in the phrasing. It sounds as though you're claiming that their identities belong to someone else, which, you must admit, sounds at the very least puzzling and vaguely alarming. If you were to tell them instead simply that they are the product of their experiences and various biological determinants, I'd bet you would find widespread agreement.

Similarly, I think they're using the term "real me" in an ontologically innocent fashion. They don't mean to imply any ontological theories of the self; they're simply using the expression to convey a sense of finding a greater sense of more stable and comfortable enjoyment in a particular form of music, or with certain friends.

I am arguing that they are a product of their relationships. Identity does not exist 'within' us but, in a sense 'between' us. It is contingent and constantly negotiated according to the conditions for subjectivity laid out in different historical moments. It's nothing to do with it belonging to someone else. It doesn't belong to anyone and I would never argue otherwise.

They use the term 'real me' to refer to their own 'unique' identity, usually described in terms of going on a journey to find the self that they really wanted all along (but often didn't know it), their real self. A journey of 'self discovery' (which is an ontologically incoherent notion implying a sui generis self that finds itself). They are all too happy to say that other people are just defining themselves contingently according to their own relationships. But they often have trouble describing themselves in a language that is anything other than humanist and individualistic (because that is the language of late modernity). Just in case you'd find it amusing, these days the typical inauthentic subjectivity is emo. All of my students think emos are just sheep following a conception of what they think is 'alternative', but isn't really alternative. They tend to be more sympathetic to the authenticity of goths though.

Well, let's distinguish between two forms of insecurity here. There's insecurity in the sense people use it most frequently in conversation when describing a person; they mean that the person isn't confident in the worth of some aspect of himself. Call it personal insecurity. Then there's the insecurity you're describing here, which seems to be more uncertainty about one's identity than insecurity as such. Is this a fair description of what you mean by insecurity?

This is a fair distinction to make. Giddens' insecurity is about having so many different contexts to perform different selves that you risk losing a conception of who you really are and what the world is really like. This other kind of insecurity is about failing to accomplish the self that you feel like you are being called upon to accomplish. So what you've actually identified here is a problem with Giddens' theory: he can't deal with the fact that some kinds of selves are considered more 'real', 'valuable' or 'authentic' than others, regardless of the kinds of relationships people have.

Humanism is a pretty broad label, and I have some doubt that "the humanist self" is quite as narrow a category as you describe. For humanism to be unable to cope with difference, its description of the self would have to one which is highly determined in terms of various characteristics that, obviously, can vary among cultures. To pick a trivial characteristic which varies by culture that I think we would agree humanism can easily cope with, there are frequently sharp differences in language among cultures. The existence of this difference poses no challenge for humanism of course.

As far as the history of ideas, I still maintain that humanism, and the notion that at core we are all equivalent in deeply important respects, actually poses problems for those who wish to exploit others. It's far easier to justify exploitation of another people when I can claim that they are literally and fully alien; if I must acknowledge instead that this other people is composed of human selves, I encounter a host of new moral problems. Whether I care about those moral problems is another issue, of course.

Okay, let's define humanism:

1. Descartes. The human subject is ontologically separate from the world, and is rational.
2. Rousseau. The human subject is ontologically special, and can be exhaustively known. Society does not allow for the flourishing of the human subject, but given the right social conditions, this inner humanity could indeed flourish.

These are the most important thinkers, and define most conventional understandings of what humanism is (the only humanism that it could be argued could possibly differ from this is the early Sartre, although he still maintains a Cartesian dualism as the fundamental condition for an ontology of the subject.)

The fact that people speak different languages, and that that is okay for humanism, is completely irrelevant. I am referring to difference in a more fundamental sense. The colonialist example is the most instructive here: Humanism was the ideology that allowed the notion that colonised nations are 'less developed' because their social relations were different to those of the colonisers. They were labeled primitive or savage, and then taken over. The same idea is current today, for example here in Australia where I live, where the government's policy towards the Indigenous inhabitants of the land has consistently been aimed at trying to force them to live by some kind of (fictional) "Australian" standard. This is not about language (although language reflects social relations) but about the practices of day to day life, and the social relations those practices instantiate.

Yeah, but none of those titles is about authenticity in the sense we're talking about it here.

Of course they are. All of those titles are about finding yourself (which is premised on the notion that there is a real self to find, as opposed to a fake one) and then getting this self to flourish (in five easy steps, $39.99). Nobody would be buying these books if they didn't think that the self that they had found wasn't the right one, the one for them (their authentic self).

 

[Heuristic]

I just want say first that I'm enjoying the discussion. Hopefully you're not finding it too much of a bore to kick around Giddens's theory with someone who is learning about it entirely from this discussion.

Giddens argues that pure relationships are required for the feeling of authenticity, which is a dimension of what he calls 'ontological security.' He describes this as a kind of 'protective cocoon' which protects us from insecurity about ourselves and about the world. He says that accomplishing a protective cocoon like this is somewhat more difficult in late modernity, because of how differentiated societies have become, and because we are often embedded in 'abstract systems' which disembed social relations from their roots in traditional sources of meaning (such as place, class based cultures of sociability, etc) and reembed people into global flows over which they have no control.

So the pure relationship, for Giddens, is a way of dealing with the complexity of modernity, and the problems that it brings.

Your con-man is not experiencing pure relationships. He is manipulating others in order to achieve some perverse satisfaction, but that kind of satisfaction is not what Giddens would describe as authenticity. This is not a pure relationship according to any sense in which I have described it.

Okay, so based on this and what you say elsewhere in the post, a pure relationship is a relationship which i) is sought purely for the relationship itself, i.e. for the benefits intrinsic to the relationship, AND ii) produces the feeling of authenticity in at least one of the persons involved.

So I still feel like we're back to square one in understanding what Giddens means by a feeling of authenticity, or a pure relationship; neither is very helpful in understanding the other because the description is now, as you noted, somewhat tautological.

The con-man is certainly being manipulative, but he's also interested purely in the benefits derived intrinsically from the relationship. It sounds to me like the element missing from Giddens's account is a form of expressive honesty.

Manipulating heterogeneous social contexts in order to perform different selves is premised on a social context heterogeneous and fragmented enough to allow this. So yes, for the purposes which you put your con-man to (ie, troubling the idea of the pure relationship) his actions are indeed a product of late modernity.

It requires that an individual be i) a stranger to another individual, and ii) able to imitate the desired characteristics, e.g. personal or professional history, occupation, wealth, etc.. Both such things though are available in any large and complex society; and large and complex societies predated late modernity.

I am arguing that they are a product of their relationships. Identity does not exist 'within' us but, in a sense 'between' us. It is contingent and constantly negotiated according to the conditions for subjectivity laid out in different historical moments. It's nothing to do with it belonging to someone else. It doesn't belong to anyone and I would never argue otherwise.

I agree, largely, with what you're saying here, but I wonder what it adds to use the metaphor of locating identity "between us" rather than "within us." Given the tension between this metaphor, and what we know concerning the role of the brain, I wonder whether the metaphor does more harm than good.

They use the term 'real me' to refer to their own 'unique' identity, usually described in terms of going on a journey to find the self that they really wanted all along (but often didn't know it), their real self. A journey of 'self discovery' (which is an ontologically incoherent notion implying a sui generis self that finds itself). They are all too happy to say that other people are just defining themselves contingently according to their own relationships. But they often have trouble describing themselves in a language that is anything other than humanist and individualistic (because that is the language of late modernity). Just in case you'd find it amusing, these days the typical inauthentic subjectivity is emo. All of my students think emos are just sheep following a conception of what they think is 'alternative', but isn't really alternative. They tend to be more sympathetic to the authenticity of goths though.

Sure, but what they have in mind in describing this is a process of self-awareness and critical thought. If you consider their "real me" to simply mean a relatively stable awareness of certain beliefs and values, it becomes compatible with a very wide variety of theories of the self. I don't think we need to impute any ontological argument to their self-descriptions.

This is a fair distinction to make. Giddens' insecurity is about having so many different contexts to perform different selves that you risk losing a conception of who you really are and what the world is really like. This other kind of insecurity is about failing to accomplish the self that you feel like you are being called upon to accomplish. So what you've actually identified here is a problem with Giddens' theory: he can't deal with the fact that some kinds of selves are considered more 'real', 'valuable' or 'authentic' than others, regardless of the kinds of relationships people have.

This sounds of a piece with some type of existentialist dread, and I have to admit that I'm skeptical as to whether this actually happens.

Okay, let's define humanism:

1. Descartes. The human subject is ontologically separate from the world, and is rational.
2. Rousseau. The human subject is ontologically special, and can be exhaustively known. Society does not allow for the flourishing of the human subject, but given the right social conditions, this inner humanity could indeed flourish.

These are the most important thinkers, and define most conventional understandings of what humanism is (the only humanism that it could be argued could possibly differ from this is the early Sartre, although he still maintains a Cartesian dualism as the fundamental condition for an ontology of the subject.)

I understand Cartesian dualism, however I'm not sure why you think this to be necessary to humanism. How would you classify thinkers such as Darwin, Meade, James, Dewey, or Freud?

The fact that people speak different languages, and that that is okay for humanism, is completely irrelevant. I am referring to difference in a more fundamental sense. The colonialist example is the most instructive here: Humanism was the ideology that allowed the notion that colonised nations are 'less developed' because their social relations were different to those of the colonisers. They were labeled primitive or savage, and then taken over.

Humanism was also the ideology that furnished the ground for criticizing and opposing such labels, and certainly the ground for critiquing many of the more brutal practices of colonialism.

I also disagree that the ability of humanism to accommodate, for instance, differences in language is insignificant. The point I'm making is that even if one wishes to accept much of what you argue to be the core premises of humanism, i.e. an ontologically special and separate self, which all human beings possess, the substance of humanism as to what this self consists of is very much up for debate.

The same idea is current today, for example here in Australia where I live, where the government's policy towards the Indigenous inhabitants of the land has consistently been aimed at trying to force them to live by some kind of (fictional) "Australian" standard. This is not about language (although language reflects social relations) but about the practices of day to day life, and the social relations those practices instantiate.

I have to admit to being almost completely ignorant of that issue in Australia.

Of course they are. All of those titles are about finding yourself (which is premised on the notion that there is a real self to find, as opposed to a fake one) and then getting this self to flourish (in five easy steps, $39.99). Nobody would be buying these books if they didn't think that the self that they had found wasn't the right one, the one for them (their authentic self).

Well, I think those titles are about enabling a person to either deal with various psychological problems, change certain patterns of behavior or thought, discover certain latent preferences, or some mixture of all three. I'm not sure Giddens's conception of authenticity really helps us to understand these titles or the demand for them.

There's no contradiction between asserting that various aspects of oneself are stable and strongly influential, and at the same time asserting that these aspects are the result of biological and social forces.

 

[satricion]

Okay, so based on this and what you say elsewhere in the post, a pure relationship is a relationship which i) is sought purely for the relationship itself, i.e. for the benefits intrinsic to the relationship, AND ii) produces the feeling of authenticity in at least one of the persons involved.

So I still feel like we're back to square one in understanding what Giddens means by a feeling of authenticity, or a pure relationship; neither is very helpful in understanding the other because the description is now, as you noted, somewhat tautological.

The con-man is certainly being manipulative, but he's also interested purely in the benefits derived intrinsically from the relationship. It sounds to me like the element missing from Giddens's account is a form of expressive honesty.

I agree, and so would Giddens.

It requires that an individual be i) a stranger to another individual, and ii) able to imitate the desired characteristics, e.g. personal or professional history, occupation, wealth, etc.. Both such things though are available in any large and complex society; and large and complex societies predated late modernity.

Sure, and this is an ambiguity which comes up whenever you start to draw lines between one kind of society and another. The theorists of late modernity (like Giddens and, in case you're interested, Ulrich Beck, who I think does a better job) are basically arguing that what is special about late modernity is that things that have been characteristic of modern societies since the industrial revolution start to become more important, which in fact undermines some of the institutions that we used to have before the present historical moment. So basically, capitalism requires that everyone think of themselves as a sovereign individual. This is because society is structured in a way that makes this kind of identity useful and important if you want to negotiate structures and institutions which assume you are this kind of subject.

So, Giddens is going to argue that it wasn't always this way. He would argue that in industrial (rather than post-industrial) societies, people generally drew their identities from fairly secure and stable cultural processes. These included class or place based cultures of sociability tied to the labour market of the time, solid pre-second wave feminism gender identities, assumptions of nuclear family formation, etc etc. What Giddens is saying is that the importance of these sources of meaning has started to break down as societies become more heterogeneous and fragmented.

So of course your con man could have existed in any age and that's fine. But Giddens isn't arguing that your con man could only have existed since the 1970's (which is when late modernity is said to have started, keeping in mind that this is not a rigid binary). What Giddens is saying is that the problems he is using the notion of the pure relationship in order to try to understand have only become pervasive features of contemporary societies since these societies became heterogeneous enough to start to break down the traditional, stable sources of meaning and identity that existed before. So Giddens is saying that in this context authenticity becomes a problem not because we live in a time where there are lots of options for selfhood, in contrast to before where there weren't, but rather that we live in a time where there are many many more options for selfhood than there were, and that these options are drawn from a more fragmented and heterogeneous context than before.

So the quantitative change (more individualisation, more fragmentation) creates a qualitative change: people start to experience their subjectivity as something they need to individually manage, rationally choose. Authenticity becomes a problem because people like to feel like they are a real self, not a contingent one. People don't like to go around reflection on their own construction, but they have to at times, particularly in late modernity. The kinds of relationships that allow them to accomplish authenticity in a context where the self has become a reflexive project are those that Giddens describes as pure. Empirical work in this tradition tends to focus on these changes in the kinds of subjectivities people are articulating.

Sure, but what they have in mind in describing this is a process of self-awareness and critical thought. If you consider their "real me" to simply mean a relatively stable awareness of certain beliefs and values, it becomes compatible with a very wide variety of theories of the self. I don't think we need to impute any ontological argument to their self-descriptions.

Well, this 'real me'/'fake me' dichotomy is what motivated this thread. So in asking can you be authentic or are you always constructed by the other, you set up a binary between an objectively real you, and an objectively contingent you. I am arguing that this is a false binary, and that realness is a feeling with no ontological justification, but which can be accomplished. I am also saying that if we want an objective, ontological justification for real 'realness' then we will fail, since the notion is ontologically incoherent. For me, accepting this ontological incoherence is the first step to thinking about the self as a contingent social construction, and hence understanding the way that the self is made up in different historical moments.

So yeah sure, my students aren't making some kind of complex ontological argument, but if they think they are a real, true, non contingent self, then they're wrong, for the reason that that is an ontologically incoherent notion.

This sounds of a piece with some type of existentialist dread, and I have to admit that I'm skeptical as to whether this actually happens.

I'm surprised you'd argue this. Don't you agree that some kinds of selves are considered better than others? These distinctions are pervasive throughout society and they structure how we interact with the options for selfhood.

I understand Cartesian dualism, however I'm not sure why you think this to be necessary to humanism. How would you classify thinkers such as Darwin, Meade, James, Dewey, or Freud?

Okay well first of all Mead is definitely not a humanist according to my previous definition. The self is definitely contingent for him. I don't know enough about James or Dewey, but my understanding is that they're in a similar pragmatist tradition to Mead.

Darwin is a straight up humanist...in fact Darwin thought that Aboriginal Australians were the most primitive people on earth, the closest to animals. This rests on the notion that evolution is the growth of some kind of human essence becoming more (from less) human, and that all humans are evolving towards the same essence. A humanist idea with biological underpinnings.

My (admittedly simplified) portrayal of humanism is a pervasive one throughout modern society. It is the ontology which we need if 'finding yourself' is going to be a coherent notion, and it defines how we interact with others. Rousseau's notion of the noble inner essence of humanity remains a pervasive cultural trope, and that's all I'm trying to establish.

I also disagree that the ability of humanism to accommodate, for instance, differences in language is insignificant. The point I'm making is that even if one wishes to accept much of what you argue to be the core premises of humanism, i.e. an ontologically special and separate self, which all human beings possess, the substance of humanism as to what this self consists of is very much up for debate.

Sure but once you fix a substance, you immediately start to exclude. Identity is relational, and always rests on tiered binaries. We can go back to Derrida for this. Once you say 'this is this independent of all else' you wind up with exclusions. There is no way out of this.

Well, I think those titles are about enabling a person to either deal with various psychological problems, change certain patterns of behavior or thought, discover certain latent preferences, or some mixture of all three. I'm not sure Giddens's conception of authenticity really helps us to understand these titles or the demand for them.

These titles are about not being the self you should be, but having the potential to become the self you have the potential, inside you, to become. Your essential self. Your real self. Your authentic, humanist self.

There's no contradiction between asserting that various aspects of oneself are stable and strongly influential, and at the same time asserting that these aspects are the result of biological and social forces.

That's true, but that's not the problem we're addressing here. We're talking about selfhood. The feeling of being a subject.

 

[Heuristic]

I agree, and so would Giddens. [regarding a place for some type of expressive honesty in an account of a pure relationship - Heuristic]

Okay, but then my question is: what is being expressed, honestly, in the course of the interaction in a pure relationship? If each participant is bringing something to the interaction, which exists prior to the interaction, might this not present a problem for the idea that authenticity is simply a feeling achieved in a pure relationship? That is, it sounds to me like each person brings a certain set of values, beliefs, desires, etc., to a pure relationship; the pure relationship is important only insofar as it allows the expression of that set; however the set exists prior to the relationship. I may engage in many activities, other than a pure relationship, that allow for the expression of that set. Why wouldn't these other activities allow for the same feeling of authenticity? Indeed, why wouldn't simple awareness of that set allow for a feeling of authenticity?

Sure, and this is an ambiguity which comes up whenever you start to draw lines between one kind of society and another. The theorists of late modernity (like Giddens and, in case you're interested, Ulrich Beck, who I think does a better job) are basically arguing that what is special about late modernity is that things that have been characteristic of modern societies since the industrial revolution start to become more important, which in fact undermines some of the institutions that we used to have before the present historical moment. So basically, capitalism requires that everyone think of themselves as a sovereign individual. This is because society is structured in a way that makes this kind of identity useful and important if you want to negotiate structures and institutions which assume you are this kind of subject.

Can you expand on the notion of a "sovereign individual"? What is that exactly?

So, Giddens is going to argue that it wasn't always this way. He would argue that in industrial (rather than post-industrial) societies, people generally drew their identities from fairly secure and stable cultural processes. These included class or place based cultures of sociability tied to the labour market of the time, solid pre-second wave feminism gender identities, assumptions of nuclear family formation, etc etc. What Giddens is saying is that the importance of these sources of meaning has started to break down as societies become more heterogeneous and fragmented.

So of course your con man could have existed in any age and that's fine. But Giddens isn't arguing that your con man could only have existed since the 1970's (which is when late modernity is said to have started, keeping in mind that this is not a rigid binary). What Giddens is saying is that the problems he is using the notion of the pure relationship in order to try to understand have only become pervasive features of contemporary societies since these societies became heterogeneous enough to start to break down the traditional, stable sources of meaning and identity that existed before. So Giddens is saying that in this context authenticity becomes a problem not because we live in a time where there are lots of options for selfhood, in contrast to before where there weren't, but rather that we live in a time where there are many many more options for selfhood than there were, and that these options are drawn from a more fragmented and heterogeneous context than before.

I think my skepticism arises from the assertion that the forces which form a person's identity have been broken down. Most people, in their formative years, don't experience sharp movements from one class to another, or from one culture to another. I'm not sure I buy Giddens's picture here. How would you describe this picture at a concrete, individual level, taking a person from late 19th/early 20th century America, and contrasting that with a person born in late 20th/early 21st century America?

So the quantitative change (more individualisation, more fragmentation) creates a qualitative change: people start to experience their subjectivity as something they need to individually manage, rationally choose. Authenticity becomes a problem because people like to feel like they are a real self, not a contingent one. People don't like to go around reflection on their own construction, but they have to at times, particularly in late modernity. The kinds of relationships that allow them to accomplish authenticity in a context where the self has become a reflexive project are those that Giddens describes as pure. Empirical work in this tradition tends to focus on these changes in the kinds of subjectivities people are articulating.

What is it though to manage one's subjectivity? The statement "people start to experience their subjectivity as something they need to individually manage" has the tantalizing, grammatical aspects of a meaningful sentence, but I wonder what's actually there.

Well, this 'real me'/'fake me' dichotomy is what motivated this thread. So in asking can you be authentic or are you always constructed by the other, you set up a binary between an objectively real you, and an objectively contingent you. I am arguing that this is a false binary, and that realness is a feeling with no ontological justification, but which can be accomplished. I am also saying that if we want an objective, ontological justification for real 'realness' then we will fail, since the notion is ontologically incoherent. For me, accepting this ontological incoherence is the first step to thinking about the self as a contingent social construction, and hence understanding the way that the self is made up in different historical moments.

I agree that it's a false binary, but I wouldn't endorse the idea that authenticity is simply a feeling one achieves either, nor would I endorse the idea-I'm not sure you are either-that selves are completely determined by social forces.

So yeah sure, my students aren't making some kind of complex ontological argument, but if they think they are a real, true, non contingent self, then they're wrong, for the reason that that is an ontologically incoherent notion.

I think that once the students start to make ontological claims about the nature of the self, their statements are fair game for the criticisms you've advanced. However, I think their emotional concern about those criticisms, their knee-jerk reaction to reject them, derives less from a deeply held ontological commitment, and more from an unease with the types of metaphors and language used to advance your criticisms.

[I say that I'm skeptical existentialist dread, as such, really occurs. -Heuristic] I'm surprised you'd argue this. Don't you agree that some kinds of selves are considered better than others? These distinctions are pervasive throughout society and they structure how we interact with the options for selfhood.

I don't agree with the idea that we can choose selves to the extent certain existentialists would claim. I think there are various forms of anxiety, some of which include a sense of depersonalization, but I think an existentialist explanation of anxiety does not cohere well with background knowledge concerning the nature of the brain, the relationship between the brain and the personality, empirical studies of the stability of personality and values over time, and other well supported theories and facts.

I would agree that we value certain traits over others. I'm less certain that I would agree that we value certain "selves" over others.

Okay well first of all Mead is definitely not a humanist according to my previous definition. The self is definitely contingent for him. I don't know enough about James or Dewey, but my understanding is that they're in a similar pragmatist tradition to Mead.

Right, but my question is why you believe Cartesian dualism to be necessary to humanism. I fully agree that all the thinkers I mentioned would not qualify as humanism in the sense you defined it.

Darwin is a straight up humanist...in fact Darwin thought that Aboriginal Australians were the most primitive people on earth, the closest to animals. This rests on the notion that evolution is the growth of some kind of human essence becoming more (from less) human, and that all humans are evolving towards the same essence. A humanist idea with biological underpinnings.

Well, let's stop for a moment. Darwin did think that "savages" were more primitive and less developed. But he attributed the difference to cultural development, not to biological difference. In other words, "savages" were savages not because of innate or essential differences, but because they simply were at a different stage of cultural development.

Darwin did not, however, buy into the idea of Cartesian dualism, which I understand you to be saying is necessary to humanism.

My (admittedly simplified) portrayal of humanism is a pervasive one throughout modern society. It is the ontology which we need if 'finding yourself' is going to be a coherent notion, and it defines how we interact with others. Rousseau's notion of the noble inner essence of humanity remains a pervasive cultural trope, and that's all I'm trying to establish.

I have to disagree with the idea that "finding oneself" defines how we interact with others. I understand that college students may sometimes talk that way, but I also think college students frequently don't know what they're talking about, particularly when it comes to describing how human relationships work.

Regarding an inner essence of humanity... this I agree is a pervasive trope, and insofar that THAT is what makes one a humanist, I would argue that Dewey, James, Mead, and Darwin are all humanists. The pervasive trope that there is some basic form of human nature, which we all possess, does not depend though on the specific ontological claims of Descartes or Rousseau.

Sure but once you fix a substance, you immediately start to exclude. Identity is relational, and always rests on tiered binaries. We can go back to Derrida for this. Once you say 'this is this independent of all else' you wind up with exclusions. There is no way out of this.

Sure, but stating that certain aspects of human nature are not caused by social forces is not the same as stating that such aspects are "independent of all else."

These titles are about not being the self you should be, but having the potential to become the self you have the potential, inside you, to become. Your essential self. Your real self. Your authentic, humanist self.

Well, I think they're about both developing traits and characteristics one already possesses, AND about developing them in a certain direction (in line with, but not the same as, the notion of a self one should be). But I'd be willing to bet that very few of those books-ones with explicitly religious themes aside-talk about some ontologically prior self with certain characteristics that one must "find." And those books will argue that doing will accomplish things like a reduction in anxiety or depression, a greater feeling of well being, and more professional and personal advancement.

In short, those books are about helping people get what they want-which isn't really a Giddensian sense of authenticity, so much as more concrete desires such as a reduction in various problematic psychological symptoms, or the achievement of personal and professional goals.

Remember, one of the most popular self-help books of all time was How to Win Friends and Influence People.

That's true, but that's not the problem we're addressing here. We're talking about selfhood. The feeling of being a subject.

This comes back to a question I raised above: what are we talking about when we refer to the feeling of being a subject?

 

[satricion]

Okay, but then my question is: what is being expressed, honestly, in the course of the interaction in a pure relationship? If each participant is bringing something to the interaction, which exists prior to the interaction, might this not present a problem for the idea that authenticity is simply a feeling achieved in a pure relationship? That is, it sounds to me like each person brings a certain set of values, beliefs, desires, etc., to a pure relationship; the pure relationship is important only insofar as it allows the expression of that set; however the set exists prior to the relationship. I may engage in many activities, other than a pure relationship, that allow for the expression of that set. Why wouldn't these other activities allow for the same feeling of authenticity? Indeed, why wouldn't simple awareness of that set allow for a feeling of authenticity?

I think this is a very interesting take, and I agree to an extent. I think what Giddens adds to this is the idea that we need certain kinds of relationships in our lives for our activities (even those that do not directly contribute to the continued existence of these relationships) to seem meaningful. Our sense of meaningful selfhood is dependent on our relationships with other people (I think this is so obvious that we can virtually consider it an axiom, it is certainly axiomatic for sociology, anthropology etc). So when we go and do things that are fulfilling, they are only fulfilling for a subject that has been constructed relationally.

Hmm.

Thinking about this idea, I think what we can do is complicate the notion of authenticity a bit further. Drawing on my own life experience, for me one of the most fulfilling things that I do is my own academic work. The integrity of my 'academic' subjectivity is contingent on recognition (of the quality of my work, teaching, and general intellectual competence) from my peers (such as my supervisor, other academics, other phd students etc). These are definitely not pure relationships (sociology is often the only thing I have in common with these people) and yet sometimes (rarely ) I do feel like an 'authentic' academic (anyone who's ever done a phd will recognise the constant fact of "I am a fraud" syndrome which pretty much defines the experience).

However, the other most fulfilling thing in my life is my girlfriend, who I've been with for ages, live with, and with whom I could say that I have, on Giddens' terms, a 'pure' relationship. But there is a sense in which I am a different person in this relationship than I am in my collegial relationships.

So I think what we get here is that Giddens only identifies one of the many ways that we can accomplish a feeling of authenticity. Authenticity is many things, and I would maintain that it's a feeling that is accomplished. Perhaps we can flesh this out more by saying that it's a feeling of being comfortable in the role you are playing, and finding this role satisfying according to all of the things that we bring to relationships that you list above.

Can you expand on the notion of a "sovereign individual"? What is that exactly?

A subject who is the author of their own fate, has control over their own life, and engages with the world on the basis of their own inner conviction as to who they are as an individual (this last bit is important). This is a historically specific idea of what a human being is (it is specific to post-Enlightenment societies, there is plenty of writing on this).

I think my skepticism arises from the assertion that the forces which form a person's identity have been broken down. Most people, in their formative years, don't experience sharp movements from one class to another, or from one culture to another. I'm not sure I buy Giddens's picture here. How would you describe this picture at a concrete, individual level, taking a person from late 19th/early 20th century America, and contrasting that with a person born in late 20th/early 21st century America?

Well it's not that the forces that form a person's identity have broken down (this can't really happen because if it did we wouldn't have identities). Rather it's that specific things that used to be stable and secure are now changing or declining in importance, resulting in a more heterogeneous social context.

So if we take for example, modern western societies in the 1950s, what we find is that the vast majority of people have identities built around work (and the class based cultures of sociability that revolve around that), nuclear family formation (and the gender identities that this implies) and the nation state (underpinned by the kinds of nationalisms that amongst other things form the basis for its existence).

Fast forward to today and we find that:

Work is completely different. It is much less stable and influenced by vast global flows of information and capital which have created an enormously diverse array of entirely new industrial contexts - this is sometimes described as a 'post-fordist' situation, or romanticised as a 'global economic village'.

The nuclear family is no longer stable. Less people are getting married, more people are divorcing, and lots of people are living in different situations such as share houses, by themselves, in monogamous relationships in which partners live together, or whatever. Second wave feminism, and later the gay rights movement is part of what brought this about, and also created many different kinds of gender identity outside of those connected with nuclear family formation.

Ethnic identities are different. We have diasporas which cross the globe, different kinds of nationalisms which are being troubled by things like ethnic rights movements, etc.

The things that in the 1950's were taken for granted sources of stability and meaning are getting less important, and other, different kinds of living are being created. This means that what it means to be a 'real' man, a 'solid'' worker, or whatever, is perpetually in flux. Authenticity becomes a problem.

What is it though to manage one's subjectivity? The statement "people start to experience their subjectivity as something they need to individually manage" has the tantalizing, grammatical aspects of a meaningful sentence, but I wonder what's actually there.

Mmm, fair enough. A way in to the idea is to relate it to a Meadian 'taking the self as object' type process. It's when we sit and think "who am I and who do I want to be"? Giddens says that we are in a situate where we no longer have taken for granted sources of meaning about what it means to be ourselves. The world is more heterogeneous now, and so if we want to accomplish a coherent subjectivity, we need to work harder than before. This means self reflection. Giddens says that in late modernity the self becomes a 'project' that people (consciously as well as unconsciously) work on. He's not saying this never happened before, but that it happens more now, to the point where it's a ubiquitous feature of contemporary modern societies.

I don't agree with the idea that we can choose selves to the extent certain existentialists would claim. I think there are various forms of anxiety, some of which include a sense of depersonalization, but I think an existentialist explanation of anxiety does not cohere well with background knowledge concerning the nature of the brain, the relationship between the brain and the personality, empirical studies of the stability of personality and values over time, and other well supported theories and facts.

I would agree that we value certain traits over others. I'm less certain that I would agree that we value certain "selves" over others.

I don't believe we choose our selves either. I certainly have no patience for a naive existentialism. But the fact that some kinds of people are considered better than others seems axiomatic to me. And if you're going to acknowledge that we 'value certain traits over others' then you have to acknowledge that we value certain selves over others. Certain kinds of people in the world (socially intelligible subjects) are described as being certain ways (having certain traits) which make them more or less valuable (to whatever beholder we care to name, and this of course varies according to the beholder). I don't see how you can argue against this.

Right, but my question is why you believe Cartesian dualism to be necessary to humanism. I fully agree that all the thinkers I mentioned would not qualify as humanism in the sense you defined it.

Alright. But my (caricatured) version of humanism exists to make a certain point. That ontologically, the notion of 'finding yourself' rests on a cartesian dualism and a Rousseauean romanticism and hence makes no sense (a priori).

Well, let's stop for a moment. Darwin did think that "savages" were more primitive and less developed. But he attributed the difference to cultural development, not to biological difference. In other words, "savages" were savages not because of innate or essential differences, but because they simply were at a different stage of cultural development.

For Darwin to argue that, for example, Aboriginal australians were close to animals, he needed to assume that they were biologically less evolved and that this is what created their cultural difference. He also needed to assume a teleological notion of subject formation premised on an innate human essence that is more or less developed, and which develops in a linear, normative way.

I have to disagree with the idea that "finding oneself" defines how we interact with others. I understand that college students may sometimes talk that way, but I also think college students frequently don't know what they're talking about, particularly when it comes to describing how human relationships work.

So basically what you're saying is that college students might talk this way, but they are idiots and so can't be trusted? C'mon. Heaps of people talk this way. It's widespread. And if college students talk this way more than others, maybe it's because they're in a context where identity building is more important and problematic than later in life?

Well, I think they're about both developing traits and characteristics one already possesses, AND about developing them in a certain direction (in line with, but not the same as, the notion of a self one should be). But I'd be willing to bet that very few of those books-ones with explicitly religious themes aside-talk about some ontologically prior self with certain characteristics that one must "find." And those books will argue that doing will accomplish things like a reduction in anxiety or depression, a greater feeling of well being, and more professional and personal advancement.

This books set up a subject position that you should want to occupy, and tell you how to accomplish it, all resting on the assumption that inside you there is the potential to accomplish this subjectivity, and that this potential is connected to your intrinsic humanness.

This comes back to a question I raised above: what are we talking about when we refer to the feeling of being a subject?

We're talking about our experience of ourselves. This has been theorised a number of ways, primarily focusing on language, and focusing on 'meaning' - symbolic, discursive, etc. It is always social.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and invite your inevitable critique (which I assume will be biological and psychological): there is no aspect, part, or dimension of human identity and subejctivity that is not socially constructed, made meaningful socially. I challenge you to find one adjective to describe your identity that does not draw its meaning from the social world.

 

[Raw Evil]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and invite your inevitable critique (which I assume will be biological and psychological): there is no aspect, part, or dimension of human identity and subejctivity that is not socially constructed, made meaningful socially. I challenge you to find one adjective to describe your identity that does not draw its meaning from the social world.

A person's identity is a social construct. To define oneself in words is really only assisting your communication (your method of interaction with other humans) of how you see yourself, in the context of a perspective that another person can understand. Thus, by doing so, we implicitly define ourselves within the context of being a social unit.

The closest we can ever be to truly "being ourselves" is essentially to place our own values above those imposed by others - which works until your values split sufficiently from the majority such as to be seen as an outcast (or even "unhealthy to society" - off to jail with you!). I guess the best effort we can make is to prioritise our own experience whenever appropriate.

 

[ebola?]

Can't believe I so neglected all this:

Well, I'm not sure if it really is Marxist. I mean, the notion of alienation relies on the idea that there is some kind of human nature that can be unalienated. I don't think Giddens would agree with that. He would just argue that 'authenticity' becomes a problem for late modern subjects because of things like globalisation, increasing individualisation, and the reflexivity that he says is characteristic of late modernity. . .Now we live in different times, and we have lots of different selves (as the poststructuralists would argue, although from a different perspective). So our 'real' self becomes a problem we have to solve. It becomes a project, but it's not about unrealised potential.

1. I tend to make everything I run into Marxism.
2. Yes, in one sense, alienation is species-being denied. But what is species-being? To me, it is the capacity to realize one's 'self' in engagement with the world (as in increasing autonomy in interchange with the non-human environment and recognition (self-consciousness necessarily including consciousness of the non-self) of such autonomy in these interchanges). For Marx, of course, this process occurs socially by necessity, as in order to self-determine over and above the non-human requires collaboration, but with this collaboration comes mutual reflection of the self in the other with whom one collaborates (something like socialized self-consciousness, requiring recognition of how relationships constitute 'willing' and 'seeing').

Whew...so i must also add that this process involves progressing 'universalization' of labor and consciousness, as autonomy (self-efficacy) and self-consciousness (expanding awareness) encompassing more and more of the world, as we see more and more particulars relating to 'generals'.

But wouldn't the pinnacle of the above, 'species-being', be something like God? This being would be COMPLETELY autonomous (with capacity to act unencumbered by ANYTHING outside itsself) and self-aware (and thus aware of all relations to all things and all other actors). Okay...this is Hegel's god/Geist/etc...

SO, species being, while a normative human nature of sorts, is more of an unattainable limit, giving "alienation" meaning by showing what it is not. SB cannot QUITE be uncovered as complete once unfettered by alienating conditions, as a human must still struggle to realize species being, and species being bears no real content a priori: it is something that we build creatively with others.

This sounds a lot like how you described Giddens' authenticity, at least given the key role of mutual recognition in undertaking this project.
...
Okay. How does this all involve unrealized potentialities, other than due to my Marxist fixation? We FORGE relations and we negotiate practices within them (and thus with others). What may be forged out of ourselves (of course, many things) roots itself in the structure of the beginning material to be later molded into 'authenticity' through the right relationships, and according practices and perceptions.
Why "unrealized potentialities" and not...unexpected stuff? Well, I'd like to retain dialectical history.

And it's nothing to do with production.

Ah. I take a very wide vision of labor through Marx, through the lens of The Theses on Feueurbach...labor is any practice bound that transforms some of the world, labor also including will exerted over and perception derivative from that practice.

So earlier, in what Durkheim would call mechanical solidarity, we weren't worried whether or not we were 'authentic' because our social context wasn't heterogeneous enough to make 'the self' a problem.

How the hell would Durkheim know this? (common problem w/ many authors of that time, of course. . .) What if role-ascription when negatively received, even if restricted to but a few 'identities', still breeds the striving to express an 'authentic' self by relating to others?

ughhhh....tired (bluelight tired ). But great ideas to respond to...thanks for the Giddens tips.

ebola

 

[Heuristic]

So I think what we get here is that Giddens only identifies one of the many ways that we can accomplish a feeling of authenticity. Authenticity is many things, and I would maintain that it's a feeling that is accomplished. Perhaps we can flesh this out more by saying that it's a feeling of being comfortable in the role you are playing, and finding this role satisfying according to all of the things that we bring to relationships that you list above.

I agree with this, but I think we're now a long way from Giddens and his pure relationship.

A subject who is the author of their own fate, has control over their own life, and engages with the world on the basis of their own inner conviction as to who they are as an individual (this last bit is important). This is a historically specific idea of what a human being is (it is specific to post-Enlightenment societies, there is plenty of writing on this).

That was in answer to the question "what is a sovereign individual?"

I'm not entirely sure why the idea of a subject as constructed relationally is at odds with the idea of a sovereign individual. Regardless of how the subject is constructed, there is in fact a subject, no?

Well it's not that the forces that form a person's identity have broken down (this can't really happen because if it did we wouldn't have identities). Rather it's that specific things that used to be stable and secure are now changing or declining in importance, resulting in a more heterogeneous social context.

So if we take for example, modern western societies in the 1950s, what we find is that the vast majority of people have identities built around work (and the class based cultures of sociability that revolve around that), nuclear family formation (and the gender identities that this implies) and the nation state (underpinned by the kinds of nationalisms that amongst other things form the basis for its existence).

Fast forward to today and we find that:

Work is completely different. It is much less stable and influenced by vast global flows of information and capital which have created an enormously diverse array of entirely new industrial contexts - this is sometimes described as a 'post-fordist' situation, or romanticised as a 'global economic village'.

In the 1950s vast majorities of people have identities built around work... hmmm... and now that employment at any given job is less stable, work becomes a less stable source of identity. I'm really not sure I agree. Employment instability is a source of anxiety, to be sure, about where the money is coming from next. But are we saying that who one is changes depending on whether one works as an auto-worker, a cop, a lawyer, a doctor, etc?

The nuclear family is no longer stable. Less people are getting married, more people are divorcing, and lots of people are living in different situations such as share houses, by themselves, in monogamous relationships in which partners live together, or whatever. Second wave feminism, and later the gay rights movement is part of what brought this about, and also created many different kinds of gender identity outside of those connected with nuclear family formation.

Eh, "less stable" isn't the same as "unstable," remember. The vast majority of people still get married, and divorce has largely flat-lined or fallen in the last couple decades. And, actually, the push for gay marriage has, if anything, simply brought different sexual relationships into the conventional fold.

Ethnic identities are different. We have diasporas which cross the globe, different kinds of nationalisms which are being troubled by things like ethnic rights movements, etc.

Ethnic identity in the United States has always been in flux and in the mix.

The things that in the 1950's were taken for granted sources of stability and meaning are getting less important, and other, different kinds of living are being created. This means that what it means to be a 'real' man, a 'solid'' worker, or whatever, is perpetually in flux. Authenticity becomes a problem.

Is there any empirical way of verifying that claim? Most aspects of work-ethic and manhood are highly stable: responsible, hard-working, honest, courageous, strong, knowledgeable, virtuous. Certain aspects of what it means to be a "real man" may be in flux, such as with respect to sexuality. But, I don't view sexuality as something within an individual's ability to choose, and so I don't see a change in whether a real man can be gay as posing an existential crisis for anyone.

What I find interesting is that you're completely neglecting the role of individual human relationships in constructing a person's identity as they grow. How did their mother or father treat them? What were their friends like? What sort of things were they taught about themselves, and about others? How did they interact with others? I view all of these things as far, far more important than whether the father is straight or gay, whether he's an auto-worker or a rocket-scientist. And once these things are set, as one grows up, they're very difficult to change. Identity, on this account, is for any one individual quite stable once they mature, regardless of employment instability or family instability.

Giddens says that we are in a situate where we no longer have taken for granted sources of meaning about what it means to be ourselves. The world is more heterogeneous now, and so if we want to accomplish a coherent subjectivity, we need to work harder than before. This means self reflection. Giddens says that in late modernity the self becomes a 'project' that people (consciously as well as unconsciously) work on. He's not saying this never happened before, but that it happens more now, to the point where it's a ubiquitous feature of contemporary modern societies.

Eh, people work on habits. I don't think people work on becoming new selves. As far as accomplishing a coherent subjectivity, I have met very few people outside an academic environment who talk or think in those terms, or in any analogous terms. People worry about relationships, bills, jobs, vacations, the stuff of everyday life. They may worry about individual traits-temper, anxiety, depression, etc.-to the degree that such traits may interfere with their lives, but they don't worry about accomplishing a coherent subjectivity.

I don't believe we choose our selves either. I certainly have no patience for a naive existentialism. But the fact that some kinds of people are considered better than others seems axiomatic to me. And if you're going to acknowledge that we 'value certain traits over others' then you have to acknowledge that we value certain selves over others. Certain kinds of people in the world (socially intelligible subjects) are described as being certain ways (having certain traits) which make them more or less valuable (to whatever beholder we care to name, and this of course varies according to the beholder). I don't see how you can argue against this.

There is a large difference between saying "we do not value an inability to control one's temper" and saying "we value selves with an inability to control tempers less than selves with an ability to control tempers." The second account implies that when change that trait, we've somehow changed selves as well; the first account implies that we can change such traits without becoming a different self.

For Darwin to argue that, for example, Aboriginal australians were close to animals, he needed to assume that they were biologically less evolved and that this is what created their cultural difference. He also needed to assume a teleological notion of subject formation premised on an innate human essence that is more or less developed, and which develops in a linear, normative way.

Darwin does agree with the notion of moral progress, but as far as he was concerned, distinctions between human races were largely arbitrary and unimportant. He pokes fun at the idea by quoting different accounts as to the numbers of races, their characteristics, and so forth. From a biological vantage, human beings all belong to the same species, and are primarily identical.

I wouldn't call him a biological determinist, either. Moral progress isn't a function of biological differences between races, on his view, though this is the account you seem to be ascribing to him.

So basically what you're saying is that college students might talk this way, but they are idiots and so can't be trusted? C'mon. Heaps of people talk this way. It's widespread. And if college students talk this way more than others, maybe it's because they're in a context where identity building is more important and problematic than later in life?

I think college students are simply young and inexperienced, with generally insufficient experience of the world and themselves to grasp well what is actually happening. This isn't true in all instances, nor in any individual instance, of everything they say or describe. I don't think they're idiots at all. Inexperience and idiocy aren't the same.

This books set up a subject position that you should want to occupy, and tell you how to accomplish it, all resting on the assumption that inside you there is the potential to accomplish this subjectivity, and that this potential is connected to your intrinsic humanness.

I don't think learning the seven habits of highly effective people, for example, changes one's identity. I simply don't view identity as quite as unstable, or subject to shift with a change in trait or habit, as you do.

We're talking about our experience of ourselves. This has been theorised a number of ways, primarily focusing on language, and focusing on 'meaning' - symbolic, discursive, etc. It is always social.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and invite your inevitable critique (which I assume will be biological and psychological): there is no aspect, part, or dimension of human identity and subejctivity that is not socially constructed, made meaningful socially. I challenge you to find one adjective to describe your identity that does not draw its meaning from the social world.

We have to describe our experience using language, but that does not mean all of our experience is constructed by language, any more than the qualia of the color blue is constructed by the word "blue."

So adjectives, words, of course draw their meanings from social contexts. But those contexts themselves depend upon individuals coming together with certain types of experience, certain ways of organizing that experience, etc., that must exist PRIOR to the development of a social context as such.

The fact that human societies are so similar, that languages are so similar, and that human beings across cultures can all communicate with one another, all use similar facial expressions to communicate the same emotions, etc., strongly supports the view that there is a biological component, common to all human beings and cultures, to human experience, which plays a large role in shaping and forming our experiences of society and culture.