The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self

The sexual revolution is as much a symptom as it is a cause of the culture that now surrounds us everywhere we look, from sitcoms to Congress. In short, the sexual revolution is simply one manifestation of the larger revolution of the self that has taken place in the West. And it is only as we come to understand that wider context that we can truly

When applied to the question of identity, specifically the kind of identities that the sexual revolution has brought in its wake, one can conclude that those that are considered legitimate-summed up by the LGBTQ+ acronym-are legitimate because they are recognized by the wider moral structure, the Sittlichkeit, of our society. The intuitive moral st

The transformation of the marriage of Freud and Marx, however, from shotgun status to one of genuine love was to take place at the hands of two men, one informally associated with the Frankfurt School, the other perhaps its most significant and influential activist intellectual:

Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse, respectively. These two figures are

And that is simply another way of saying that this is also a significant component of how we imagine our personal identiries, our selves. Again, to return to that statement I highlighted in the introduction-I ama woman trapped in a man's body"-such a statement is plausible ocly in a world in which the predominant way of thinking is poietic rat

This explains why so much outrage in the public square is now directed at what one might call speech crimes. Even the neologism hate speech speaks to this. While earlier generations might have seen damage to body or property as the most serious categories of crime, a highly psychologized era will accord increasing importance to words as means of op

Individual identity is thus truly a dialogue: how a person thinks of himself is the result of learning the language of the community so that he can be a part of the community. It also explains the basic buman need to belong: the idea of the isolated Rousseauesque man of mature, living all by himself and for himself, may be superficially attractive,

One important point to note is that all three cultures-first, second, and third-can exist simultaneously in the same society. This is the reason why sociery now often feels like a cultural battle zone: it consists of groups of people who simply think about the moral structure of the wodd in uterly incompatible ways. Third-world cultures operate wit

One of the hallmarks of this reality is that the Bible as a sacred text lay at the heart of the sixteenth-century church reforms for both sides of the Reformation debate. Further, history as an authoritative source of wisdom plays a significant role for both Catholics and Protestants in the sixteenth century. The Reformers themselves constantly mad

Medical professionals considered a symptom of masturbation caused the person to go blind. It was also one reason why parents started to defer to the experts of the medical profession rather than the churches in matters of child-rearing, something of great social significance down to the present day. The movement of sexual problems from the sphere o