Foucault, among many other radical individualists who have shaped the soul of Western identity, holds to a faulty assumption of chronic distrust, that is, that the Other will always try to control and manipulate my behaviour for his own purposes. Although such manipulation occurs, this is a jaded and cynical Hobbesian (all against all) perspective on human sociality.
The autonomy that modernity cannot do without (a famous Foucauldian phrase) needs a dialectical relationship with community as a balance to one’s self-reflexive relationship to oneself. The nature of autonomy cannot be confined to a radical self-determination but must involve the possibility of recognition by and dependence upon other people within a larger horizon of significance. Flight is by far the easier (although sometimes necessary for safety) and least complex default option; it is always easier to cease speaking with a difficult neighbour or to opt out of a relationship that is painful; it is more challenging and painful to take other selves seriously in terms of the good that they are, and the good that they can offer, or to work towards reconciliation. Redeemed freedom can emerge through a wiser discernment and exploration of the communal dimensions of subjectivity, as freedom to cooperate with, and freedom to serve the Other. Trust building is a tentative but necessary exercise for the moral health of the self.
Without community, humans cannot find full emotional and psychological health. Within community, they can live out of their truest selves, not apart from other people but in the midst of them: at work, in love, during learning. Psychiatrists confirm that there is tremendous personal health to be discovered in long term commitment to other people, Jesus of Nazareth affirmed this insight that when we lose self (sacrifice self) in serving the Other, we actually find a deeper, more durable self. (Matthew 10:39).
This newly discovered type of freedom and accountable individuality is destined to find its fulfilment, not in a self-justifying control, but in seeking out a communion of love, similar to the relations within the Christian Trinity. Here lives a healthy vulnerability, interdependency and mutuality (complementarity), with an ear tuned in to the voice and needs of the Other. It promotes the relocation of the dislocated self into a new narrative, a new drama that involves us, within the relational order of creation. Others can help discern the self, in order for it to find its own space for freedom and calling with responsibility. One of the basic tenets of ecology, as articulated so well by Stephen Bouma-Prediger in his book For the Beauty of the Earth, is the need to look at the larger and richer context of where we are, rather than the current myopia or compartmentalization. He encourages us to assess and discern our home amidst the whole of human and non-human creation.
Individualism is in denial of that larger, richer picture in the quest for individual fulfilment and enlightened self-interest.
The autonomy that modernity cannot do without (a famous Foucauldian phrase) needs a dialectical relationship with community as a balance to one’s self-reflexive relationship to oneself. The nature of autonomy cannot be confined to a radical self-determination but must involve the possibility of recognition by and dependence upon other people within a larger horizon of significance. Flight is by far the easier (although sometimes necessary for safety) and least complex default option; it is always easier to cease speaking with a difficult neighbour or to opt out of a relationship that is painful; it is more challenging and painful to take other selves seriously in terms of the good that they are, and the good that they can offer, or to work towards reconciliation. Redeemed freedom can emerge through a wiser discernment and exploration of the communal dimensions of subjectivity, as freedom to cooperate with, and freedom to serve the Other. Trust building is a tentative but necessary exercise for the moral health of the self.
Without community, humans cannot find full emotional and psychological health. Within community, they can live out of their truest selves, not apart from other people but in the midst of them: at work, in love, during learning. Psychiatrists confirm that there is tremendous personal health to be discovered in long term commitment to other people, Jesus of Nazareth affirmed this insight that when we lose self (sacrifice self) in serving the Other, we actually find a deeper, more durable self. (Matthew 10:39).
This newly discovered type of freedom and accountable individuality is destined to find its fulfilment, not in a self-justifying control, but in seeking out a communion of love, similar to the relations within the Christian Trinity. Here lives a healthy vulnerability, interdependency and mutuality (complementarity), with an ear tuned in to the voice and needs of the Other. It promotes the relocation of the dislocated self into a new narrative, a new drama that involves us, within the relational order of creation. Others can help discern the self, in order for it to find its own space for freedom and calling with responsibility. One of the basic tenets of ecology, as articulated so well by Stephen Bouma-Prediger in his book For the Beauty of the Earth, is the need to look at the larger and richer context of where we are, rather than the current myopia or compartmentalization. He encourages us to assess and discern our home amidst the whole of human and non-human creation.
Individualism is in denial of that larger, richer picture in the quest for individual fulfilment and enlightened self-interest.