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.