The Self-Important Self
People keep telling me I should take the American writer and polemicist James Lindsay seriously. They say that he’s doing important work, naming things others are afraid to, pulling back the curtain on the ideological rot of our time. I’ve given it a go. I’ve read a couple of essays (this one and this one).
Terry Eagleton once described Richard Dawkins perfectly. He said - and this is perfect:
Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is The Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.
That’s what these essays were like. It’s not that everything in them was wrong. It’s that almost none of it is new, and most of it was pretty badly undercooked. The thoughts are presented as if they are the revelation of a heretofore hidden logic of political ideologies that nobody else has noticed.
In fact, the concepts related been the bread and butter of first-year political science courses for decades.
If I want a refresher on how political ideas don’t fit into a simple spectrum, I can just dust off my old university copy of Politics by Andrew Heywood. Flip to the opening chapters, and there it all is. Heywood lays out how different ideologies understand the individual, society, history and authority — in simple language, with actual references, and without pretending any of it is particularly new.
Lindsay’s talk of the “Discovered Self,” “Received Self,” and “Self-defined Self” might sound novel if you’ve never read a word of political theory. But in Heywood’s terms, it’s standard fare.
Here is how Heywood describes “modern liberalism”:
From this perspective, freedom does not just mean being left alone, which might imply nothing more than the freedom to starve. Rather, it is linked to personal development and the flourishing of the individual, that is, the ability of the individual to gain fulfilment and achieve self-realisation.
This view provided the basis for social or welfare liberalism. This is characterised by the recognition that state intervention, particularly in the form of social welfare, can enlarge liberty by safeguarding individuals from the social evils that blight individual existence… In the same way, modern liberals abandoned their belief in laissez-faire capitalism, largely as a result of J. M. Keynes’ insight that growth and prosperity could only be maintained through a system of managed or regulated capitalism, with key economic responsibilities being placed in the hands of the state.
Nevertheless, modern liberals’ support for collective provision and government intervention has always been conditional. Their concern has been with the plight of the weak and vulnerable, those who are literally not able to help themselves. Their goal is to raise individuals to the point where they are able, once again, to take responsibility for their own circumstances and make their own moral choices.
This is the James Lindsay’s Discovered Self in clear, established form, seeing society’s role as enabling the process, not defining its content.
