Brian V. Johnstone CSsR, "The Self as Receiver and Giver: A Critique of the Modern and Postmodern Self."

PENTECOST 2006 SPECIAL EDITION

ISSUE 7 - ISSN 1448 - 6326

THE SELF AS RECEIVER AND GIVER:

A CRITIQUE OF THE MODERN AND POSTMODERN SELF

BRIAN V. JOHNSTONE, CSsR

Abstract

Modern notions of the Self are highly influenced by the Enlightenment “turn to the subject” where the self, endowed with individual rights, is defined as some kind of separate entity. Although discredited by contemporary philosophers, this notion of the self is still very influential in Western culture. Much Catholic theology and spirituality, as well as contemporary approaches to human freedom and personhood, are also imbued with this idea that the self is a separate and separable reality somehow existing beyond space and time. They assume the self can be objectified, ‘out there’ beyond the world of human acts.

The danger with these approaches is that we tend to define ourselves in opposition to—rather than in relationship with—other selves. Indeed, much of the postmodern critique recognizes this tendency of domination and control of others as a marker of “making oneself”. Can we transcend this impasse? Against all notions of the independent self, the author proposes the notion of the inter-dependent self “who receives gifts from others and gives gifts to others”. Such an approach, building on Alistair MacIntyre’s “virtue guided relationships”, defines the self as receiver and giver. The basic moral choice is to choose to be the kind of self who receives—from God and others—and, in turn, gives oneself in mutual interdependence. [Editor]

Philosophy

            In Western culture there are at present three ways of describing the self.[1] The most predominant is probably that of liberal, existential, individualism, supported by the philosophical tradition coming from Descartes, Locke, and Kant. This may be called the “modern” view. This tradition sees the self as detached from the community of others and from the world. The self is to be discovered by examining one’s own interior, mental experience. For many who take this view, there is a great, indeed fundamental emphasis on individual freedom. The self is free in regard to the world, which is simply “matter” to be investigated and developed by the self.

            The self is free in regard to others, such that what counts above all are the individual’s rights, which protect the self against the intrusions of others. This notion of the self, in its basic philosophical expression, has been discredited by philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Iris Murdoch , Luce Irigaray and Charles Taylor.[2] However, it seems to be still very influential in Western culture.

            There seem to be two basically different ways of seeking an understanding of the self. One is through a process of detachment from the world, from others and in a certain sense from oneself. This last point requires some clarification. The sense of this detachment from oneself, is that one learns to objectify one’s desires, passions, and body, so that one can acknowledge them as some objective, apart from one’s true self, and so better deal and master them. According to some commentators such as Charles Taylor, this notion has its source in very old religious aspirations.   He refers here to an age old “aspiration to rise above the merely human, to step outside the prison of the peculiarly human emotions, and to be free of the care and demands they make on us.” Taylor claims that the idea of the “modern subject” is “a novel variant of this very old aspiration to religious freedom.”[3] This connection with religious aspirations, thinks Taylor, helps explain the power such an idea has, even though now it has no explicit connection with religion at all, indeed quite the reverse: our modern scientific mentality claims to have left religion behind.

            Although the basic “religious” pattern remains, there is a considerable difference. In the modern situation, it is the natural world which the scientific mind wants to be represented as objectively, that is as independently as possible of any human interpretation. That is, the scientific observer, wants to withdraw him/herself from any personal involvement with the “world of nature” so that this world of nature can appear as itself, as an object. The idea is to remove all elements of prejudice, emotions, cultural particularity and the like, and any other subjective distortion, so as to be able to encounter the world as it truly is in itself.   In the ancient religious drive to spiritual purity, the ideal was to liberate oneself from all passion, so as to be able to contemplate reality, i.e. divine reality, as it is itself. Now, in the modern scientific mentality, the aim is a similarly dispassionate, contemplation of the reality of the world of nature.

            The drive for objectivity led to the conviction that the only ultimately satisfactory point of view from which to regard the world objectively—from nobody’s particular point of view. The philosopher Thomas Nagel has used the phrase “the view from nowhere” to indicate this notion of objectivity.[4]   Or in other words, the observer would seek to take up a position of total independence from the world, more or less like a (non-involved) god.   The turning away from involvement in the world, is accompanied by the “turn to the subject.” in European philosophy. This turn to a new way of philosophizing (“I think therefore I am”) is the achievement of René Descartes. (1596-1650). His work reflects the emergence of the modern conception of the self. It is this notion of self that Nietzsche and the post-moderns attack.

Theology and spirituality.

            According to Fergus Kerr, theology and spirituality in the Catholic tradition have been permeated with the Cartesian notion of the self. The key figure was Kant. In his efforts to reconcile the reason of the Enlightenment with his Christian, Lutheran tradition, he produced the most influential variation of the Cartesian paradigm of the self. There emerges. “. . . a picture of the self-conscious, self-reliant, self-transparent, and all responsible individual.”[5]   Many modern philosophers , including in particular Wittgenstein, have sought to revise or even to obliterate this conception.

            However, according to Kerr, this kind of Cartesian individual appears in many works of Catholic theology. Among the authors who have followed this line, Kerr includes Karl Rahner. In 1967, Rahner wrote that there must be no going back on “the transcendent anthropological turn in philosophy since Descartes.”[6] Rahner’s argument was that modern philosophy had proved an obstacle to rethinking Christian doctrine, because it had developed into “ a philosophy of the autonomous subject.” This is closed against transcendence in which dependence on God becomes evident.

            A sense of creatureliness becomes difficult for modern man. The modern self may seem to be closed to God because of moral blindness, but there may be another reason.    Rahner sought to show that when we take fully seriously the self of modern philosophy, we can find within it a transcendence towards God. Even in Rahner’s later synthesis, “the original self-presence of the subject” seems to be the starting point. [7]    However, we must be careful not to exaggerate this feature of Rahner’s thinking. He also wrote in his early work Spirit in the World, that we humans, are from the outset, beings in the world.[8] That is, we are not separate from the world, as Cartesian thought would require. This instance on the part of Rahner that we are beings in the world would seem to be a Heideggerian type of thought, reacting against the Cartesian style of thinking.

Moral Theology

               There are some moral theologians who seem to be clearly influenced by the Cartesian style of thinking.[9]   For example, Timothy O’Connell in seeking to work out a model of the moral agent, in the nineteen seventies, produced what amounts to an image of the Cartesian, self-disembodying subject.[10]

            I would also suggest that the notion of “core freedom” adopted by some moral theologians is linked with Cartesian thinking.[11] Core freedom or basic freedom is that freedom by which we dispose of the self. While the author is careful to point out that basic freedom is always incarnated in the particular choices we make through our lives. Nevertheless, the basic freedom is “a self-determination before God.”   It is realized in the central point where the “self” resides. The self is somehow like an entity available to be so determined. The determination is made “before God” implying that God stands apart, as it were, from the self. There are at least traces of the “disengaged self” here. Basic freedom is embodied in particular acts, but it somehow preexists these particular choices.

Personalism

There is an important version of personalism in the Catholic moral theological tradition, which is, I claim, too much bound to the liberal-existential-individualist tradition, in that it still takes its form from the disengaged self. This view tends to accept the starting point of moral reflection as the mental events within the individual, so that good acts are those in line with my striving towards the good as thought—that is my idea of the good. This notion emerges from Scotus and is developed by Suarez in his treatment of conscience.[12]   Suarez developed the ontology of being as thought being, rather than real being. St. Thomas on the other hand, made the point of reference real being as known.[13]

            In support of this view, the French theologian Prouvost cites Gilson who challenges that interpretation of Thomism which claim that we attain being in a concept, so to reduce it to considerations of the essence of beings. For St. Thomas being, esse, is the act from which all the perfections of the being (this particular being) flow, so that the first of such perfections is esse itself. Thus, a theory of knowledge is required where judgment, not the abstraction of essences in concepts, is primary. What counts about a thing is primarily that it is. This problem of conceiving everything in terms of abstract essences, including the concept of being, seems to be to be at the heart of the problem we are dealing with here.

            In this manner of thinking, we conceive of reason and nature and truth, and I would add, person, as if they were essences, abstractions, outside time. Similarly, on the part of the subject, we have conceived of the cognitive activity of the subject as abstracting essences from time and thus forming concepts. This is in contrast to judging that something “is” in the sense of being in act. In judgment, we become one with the act of being, and, in a sense, one with the being in whom all being participates.

“Beyond Being”?

            I wish to propose a rather different account of the self. As I first step I will question the notion of being that has been used thus far.   Philosophers such as Anthony Kenny query whether the expression “God exists” means anything. Further, he claims, that if we say that God just “is,” we are saying nothing at all.[14] To say “God is” is indeed difficult: God’s “isness” is included in “God” being God.

            With this problem in mind, I would suggest that we should say of God, “God gives.”   If we ask, “What gives?”, and continue the inquiry, the question becomes “Who gives?”   The basic reply is “God gives.” Similarly the “act” of esse which was the theme of so much of Gilson’s writing, would be better expressed as the “act of giving.”   If we ask, “Who is God?” the answer is “God is giving.” This amounts of course to much the same thing as saying, “God is love.”   But it specifies the meaning of the general term “love” according to the way God has expressed that love in history, or rather in the act of giving which began history with the act of creation.

               We can now return to Gilson. His point is that we are not considering “essences,” but acts. If we consider the primary activity as judgment—as an act in time—about the reality of something as its exists in time, then the picture changes: thinking is no longer dealing with abstract essences. But, by moving beyond esse, I want to suggest that the primary judgment is simply this: we exist as receivers. This is followed in due course by the judgment that we exist to give to others. Perhaps, something like this happens when the child becomes aware of its differentiation from its parents. When we pursue this search for awareness, we may arrive at a judgment that “God gives.”   Further, this judgment is not purely speculative. It is the judgment that we need to make to articulate the meaning of our receiving and our giving to others. This meaning makes sense of and guides our actual practice of receiving and giving. The act of judgment unifies the acts of reception and of giving by affirming, “I am a receiver and a giver.”

            It may help at this point of the argument to refer to a classic source. St. Thomas, in keeping with his view of real being, treats of conscience by taking as the point of reference the real good as known.[15] Note that it is the real good, but this good as received; the fact that it is given is what counts. It is received according to the receptive capacity of the receiver –that is, as known by the receiver. And as received, it becomes the guiding principle for the action of the one who have received it. We give on to others what we have received. Thus the framework of receiving and giving is crucial for an understanding of the good. Moreover, in the crucial moral theological question of conscience, the framework of receiving and giving enables us to find an answer. To elaborate: I am suggesting that in this crucial matter, St. Thomas is in fact adopting the notion of receiving and giving as the framework of his analysis. We are concerned with the good as presented or “given” by the intellect to the will, not with the good as existing outside this framework. Thus the good which I ought do, the gift which I ought give, is that which my intellect gives to me (even though I may be in culpable error). On the other hand, those theologians whom St. Thomas criticized (St. Bonaventure, for example) seemed to think of the meaning of a moral act as if it were a kind of “essence” prior to, and apart from, its being “received” by the person.

            The good, therefore, is not an abstract concept outside that receiver.   But the reference is to the real good, not simply to good as thought.   The knowledge of the real good, as such, may be obscured by my error; but I ought continue to seek true knowledge of that real good.   This is built in to the genuine will to give gifts to another.

            The primary meaning of the good, according to the theory I am proposing, would be then a “good gift”, that is, what fulfils the receiver in enabling him or her to become, in turn, a giver of gifts to others.   This is not all that different from the notion of “good” as those qualities which people seek in a good cricket bat, an example used by some philosophers. A good gift is good in the sense that it has those qualities which people who want to give and receive gifts would want to find. Similarly a “good” man or woman would be one who has those qualities which people would want to find in a person. What they would want to find in such a person is the capacity to receive and give gifts.

Basic Human Goods

            There is another version of moral theology found, for example, in the writings of Germain Grisez and John Finnis, which seems to me to be unduly under the influence of the “modern view” of the disengaged self.[16] Thus, according to Grisez, we begin by asking about the laws of (practical) reason, or the principles of free choice, and so seek to derive material norms from this. Note that the whole approach begins, as it were, by looking inside our own minds, and thereby trying to discover the laws which operate in our own (practical) reason.   A reflection on what can be reasonably chosen leads to a series of “basic human goods.”   The problem is that, because that theory begins in the mind, it ends with ideas of basic human goods, rather than real goods.

            The approach, for which I arguing here, does not attempt to begin by looking inside the mind, be it theoretical or practical.   It begins with the practice of giving and receiving gifts. Anthropologists, in particular Marcel Maus, held that this is the most basic form of human exchange.   I would suggest further that it is in a tradition that we first encounter the gift, and, indeed, in the very concrete form of the gift of food from parents. The giving continues as they, and others, give the child the instruction and formation necessary for living.   Reception of such gifts in tradition is a primary characteristic of being a person. But reception leads on to giving. In the light of what I have received, I consider what goods which I ought give to the other, goods which truly correspond to his/her nature and fulfil that person’s quest for a good life.

            The good life means a life constituted by receiving and giving in regard to others in such a way that persons are fulfilled by becoming more and more what they are: receivers and givers of gifts. These goods are real goods; they are the goods we intend to give to another.

The Postmodern View of the Self.

Postmodern philosophers reject the modern notion of the self—a self discovered within my mind, as the center of my mental experience. Postmodern thought speaks of the notion of the de-centered self.[17] To this way of thinking, there is no apriori inwardness to be discovered (as in the first view), for the self has to be made. As one contemporary philosopher has written,

No depth exists in (the) subject until it is created. No apriori identity awaits us. . . Inwardness is a process of becoming, a work, the labor of the negative. The self is not a substance one unearths by peeling away layers until one gets to the core, but an integrity one struggles to bring into existence. [18]

Thus, there is no “real” self to be found within. The self is something to be “made”, in the world of language and interaction: “The self as self-conscious is a product of time”[19]   So we should not imagine that we can find our true selves by descending within ourselves, that is, by moving from the “outside” to the “inside”, or from the upper to the lower. Rather we make our self, by moving from the present towards the future. That is, to make myself takes time.[20]   The self is not a permanent substance beneath or within our negotiations with others and the world, but is these negotiations.

            The negotiations themselves are understood predominantly, if not exclusively, in terms of power or struggle. Why do the elements of power and struggle come in here? In this process of negotiation, I “make” myself in response to the other who, however, will often seek to force his image on me. Thus there are occasions when I must resists, and assert myself against the interpretations others want to force on me. Indeed, it is precisely in such conflict that I make myself.

            But others also, may well need to resist the interpretations I try to place on them. In your self-assertion against me, you make your self. But neither partner in this interaction finds a hidden substance beneath these interpretations which is the true self.   The negotiation with others, by which I make myself, is frequently, if not always, characterized by a struggle for power. Thus, for example the other does not want to allow me to become myself, or seeks to impose an alien “self” on me, so that I have no self of my own.   This seems to be the aspect of the making of the self which predominates in the thinking of postmodern philosophers.

            However, some philosophers, under the influence of Nietzsche, such as Foucault and Derrida, appear to have been so aware of the pervasiveness of power in contemporary society that they go so far as to claim that all judgments are an exercise of power.   Hence their concern to uncover and deconstruct the hidden systems of power.

            Some theologians, believing that we must accommodate to the postmodern world, have adopted this version of the self. One of the best endeavors to positively take account of the postmodern position is that of Rowan D. Williams.[21]

Critique of the postmodern “Made” Self.

            According to the view just described, the self is “made” over time, rather than being “given.” What is entirely missing is the element of reception, which I have argued is the primary constitutive element of the self.  The postmodern model of the self is identifiable as one of domination and control. To that degree, it is the very opposite of the self formed by receiving and giving. If I do not receive, I “have” nothing, quite literally and am nothing.   If we can speak of “making” the self, in any sense at all, the first step in this making is to accept what is received, as the basis of forming the self as both a receiver and a giver to others.

            However, I would object to the idea that “making” is an adequate account of what constitutes the self. I would suggest that when we know a “self”, either the self of another or my own self, what I know is a narrative or story of a life. Thus, for example, when in a group, we speak of someone who is known to us, but now dead, we find ourselves telling stories about that person. Often when we do this, we add story to story, as if we were trying to tell the whole life of that person, and so come to know the self of the other. The person of that other emerges as the unifying reality of the stories. To express this idea, we can speak of the “narrative unity of life” proposed by Alasdair MacIntyre.[22]

            This unified narrative is a teleological narrative. It begins when that person receives the gift of life, takes form when the person consciously chooses to accept that gift. It continues further when she or he takes up what has been received and becomes a giver of gifts to others. The whole process has an intentionality leading forward in time, towards the truly good life, understood in terms described above, namely as a life of receiving and giving, by which I become what I am to be, namely a free receiver and giver of gifts.

            When I commit myself to willing and giving good to the other, the good I will for this other is something which will enable him or her to move on towards the truly good life. In other words, when I give a true gift to another, that gift enables the other person to develop, by becoming a more complete giver and receiver of gifts. Therefore, I must keep on seeking to know the true self of the other, so that I may give him or her something which is a truly good gift.

            Because of this commitment to give a truly good gift, I must be ready to subject to criticism every formulation I have made of that other and of that good. To cease to do this suggests that I have failed in my commitment to know the true self and the true good. The knowing and the willing involved unfold in my operations of knowing and willing over time. The activities themselves can be expressed as a narrative over time. Indeed my telling such a story constitutes time, as I form, criticize and change my proposals in the endeavor to answer to the question, “What is the true good for this other?”

            But in this process there are certain things I cannot help affirming about others: they have a nature and they are persons which I do not make. In willing their good, I must affirm that I am the kind of being that can give good to another. And this is something about myself that I do not make.

Teleology

            Peter Geach, decades ago, argued that we need to recover a neo-Aristotelean version of natural teleology.[23] Alasdair MacIntyre once rejected this proposal as one more instance of “Aristotelean metaphysical biology.”[24] In a later work, MacIntyre corrected himself on this point, recognizing that an ethics independent of biology is impossible.[25] I suggest re-visiting MacIntyre’s proposal in the form of a teleology of the body- person. For each person is ordered teleologically to becoming to the fullest degree possible a receiver and giver of gifts. I stress both receiving and giving, since the capacity to receive is essential, and without it, there can be no giving, and no “fulfilled” self.

            I include the body in a particular way. The body is, of course, not a prison of the soul. But neither is the body simply the instrument of the spirit. The body is the self as giving in the world, where “world” means the material and social structures in which the self becomes a self. An ethics without biology is impossible—in the first place because we receive and give through our bodies; and, in the second, because if I am to discover what is a true gift for the other, I must discern what the other’s biology will accept as a gift. Here I would suggest a reconsideration of the famous article of St. Thomas on the natural law and the inclinations which are its basis.[26]   As it stands the inclinations are considered as pointers to the teleology inherent in nature. I suggest that we change this around: the inclinations to be considered are those of the one to whom I propose to give gifts.   In order to discern what indeed are true gifts for that person, I must consider the other’s desires and needs, including, in the first place his or her biology.

            After death, Christians believe the self or person will rise again in the body. The risen body will be the risen self as giving to others, but now without limitation (apart from creaturely finitude itself). The “natural” teleology will be fulfilled in the transcendent teleology of the risen life, when death will have become the door to ultimately free and universal giving.

            The theory of the “decentred self,” associated with Foucault, Derrida and others, seems to have been a reaction against the theory that I can find my true self by searching for some mysterious entity within. The self as receiver and giver is not such an inner entity. For it is constituted in the social relationships of receiving and giving. It does not, therefore, lack a “centre”, since without that centre, there would be no one to receive and no one to give.

            The pure “making” theory of the self, (as explained above) leaves us still within the ambit of Cartesian self, but has substituted for Descarte’s inward looking gaze a notion of practical reason, the knowledge of doing and making, In claiming that I make myself, and so also make the selves of others, there is an inevitable element of domination and control.

            The theory that the self in made in conflict and in power-relationships mistakes what is the very contrary of the formation of the self for the reality itself. The self is formed by the reception of genuine gifts, freely given and freely received.   Power struggles are the fruit of the will to dominate and control the other, so as to take from rather than to give to the other. On the contrary, I shape my “self” not by making, and certainly not by domination and control, but in by receiving and giving. This entails a praxis which requires reception and by which I grow in virtue, i.e. in moral goodness. Those who argue, like the present Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, that we construct our self through time, in negotiation with others, seem to me to be correct.[27] However, I would argue that there is more to the self than construction or any form of making. I would suggest that the self emerges through reflection on what goes on when we receive from others and give to others, by a mutual searching for the true self of the other, that we may give the true gift, and in so doing become our true selves, and find true fulfilment. This is the “self” we choose, when we choose to be ourselves.

            MacIntyre, in explaining his newer view as explained above,[28] uses the term, “acknowledged dependence.” Because of such dependence, we need friendships that can endure in good times and in bad, and especially in times of suffering. To sustain such relationships, we need “the virtues of acknowledged dependence.” Such virtue-guided relationships are radically opposed to the kind of relationships of power and domination.   MacIntyre’s play of dependence-independence is better expressed in terms of receiving and giving. The notion of dependence does not bring out that what is involved is receiving gifts from the other, for this other is not only someone on whom I depend, but someone who acts in charity towards me. Similarly, the notion of independence does not capture the moral content of the relationship constituted by the giving of gifts.

            To be a self is to be one who receives gifts from others and gives gifts to others. The basic moral choice is to choose to be that kind of self.