The impacts of the sexual revolution on the world around us have been immense. To name just one, decades ago it would have been largely unintelligible for ordinary people to take seriously the claim, “I am a man trapped in a woman’s body.” More broadly, the contemporary fixation with self-definition in the area of sexuality is a function of these changes. Some praise all this as progressive and reflective of a more enlightened view. Others think these changes are deeply inimical to genuine human flourishing and suggest that we have lost something important. Whatever your view, the purpose of this reading group is simply to understand how we got here.
Our guide will be historian Carl Trueman’s highly acclaimed The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Trueman argues that such changes have been a long-time coming, and are a result of major intellectual shifts on how we understand the ‘self.’ In so arguing, he takes us through a grand tour of figures like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oscar Wilde, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and more. Understanding the role of each of these figures, he argues, is crucial for understanding our modern situation.
All undergraduates, graduate, and medical students are welcome.
Email jprather@houstoninstitute.org to RSVP.
