Throughout history the West has promoted the unified self. Whether it is the Christian emphasis on inner purity or the rationalist focus on eliminating contradictions in thought and reason, we have long believed that the unified self is a worthy objective. In this article, Kenneth Gergen argues that the desire for self-unity is ultimately mistaken. To adapt to the ever-changing modern world and to work with others to achieve the public good, we must shift our starting point from the fixed unified self to fluid and complex social processes.
This article is presented in association with Closer To Truth, a partner for HowTheLightGetsIn Festival 2024.
Western culture has had long romance with the idea of a mind within the body, a regnant force somewhere behind the eyes. One could trace such dedication to Aristotle, and his complex vision of an animating soul. Christianity picked up the thread but anointed it with a spiritual oil. For Descartes and Kant the soul reappears in secularised form as thought process, while Freud later spied unconscious forces twisting and disturbing the thinker. One might say that that the realm behind the eyeballs is like a blank slate upon which culture may inscribe the fantasies of the times. How could it be otherwise? If we invent an imaginary space, what are the limits and evidential barriers in how we select its population?
This is not to argue for abandoning this tradition of speculation. To abandon all of humankind’s imaginaries would rob us of most that’s worth living for. These attributed ingredients of the psyche have served not only to unite communities and foster a nurturing sense of being, but also – precisely because of their undecidability – they sustain the vital questions of “who am I?” and “who are we together?” To terminate such questioning is to seal the door of imagination itself.
At the same time, attention to the fit between such assumptions and the conditions of the times is important. How does the embrace of a given belief function within existing conditions; how does it contribute to well-being; what is lost; who is oppressed? And if such concepts as the sanctified soul or unconscious pariahs are losing their salience in contemporary life, what are their replacements, and what are their promises? In effect we shift from wobbly questions of ontological justification to pragmatic questions of the relationship between our beliefs about persons and the contribution of these beliefs to human wellbeing.
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With deep roots in Western history, and blossoming in the 20th century, we find a widely shared belief in the ideal of what can be termed a unified self.
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19th September 2024
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