On the recent "God" thread, we learned that an overtly theist vocabluary is simply too much for most people to bear. Few seem able to carry on a discussion using terms like "God" or the "soul." In fact, the concept of the "soul" excited great derision, and many people took the imputation that they have a "soul" as a kind of *insult.* I wondered why this might be, and I believe I have now explained it.
This time, though, I shall approach the issue using purely secular terminology. This will mean working backwards historically, and beginning with the present day. Today, as I will show at a later stage, what used to be called the "soul" is called the "self." Many people, and especially many people on these boards, believe that the "self" is an illusion. I shall begin my analysis by asking *why* this belief has arisen.
Although materialism and economic determinism were associated with Marxism for most of the twentieth century, today those who argue most forcefully for the determining influence of the economy over other areas of life are neoclassical economists, who claim that rational self-interest motivates our every action, and sociobiologists, who locate this motive in the urge to preserve our genes. There has been a massive, co-ordinated campaign to bring intellectual respectability to the notion that market behavior is the authentic expression of human nature, by applying micro-economic theory and related quantitative techniques to the human sciences.
In this effort, the likes of Gary Becker and Richard Dawkins have been abetted by allegedly radical theorists like Donna Haraway and Judith Butler. The cumulative effect has been to establish an orthodoxy that is materialist in a wider, deeper sense than the Leftist materialism of the mid-twentieth century. Not only does the economy determine our ideas; ideas themselves are material, electronic and chemical reactions in the brain. Not only are the actions of human beings driven by material factors; human beings are themselves material, performative, desiring machines.
Within the ‘economy’ itself, the last twenty years have been characterized by ‘financialization.’ This term is used to describe the increasingly abstract, immaterial and purely symbolic nature of money in the ’new economy,’ which gave rise to such concepts as Enron’s ‘weightless corporation,' allegedly capable of creating value without producing anything at all. The rapid expansion of consumer debt and credit, the growing personal investment in the stock market, in short, the practical and ideological translation of life into financial terms, all interpolate a new kind of individual.
Whereas in the early stages of capitalism, economics assumed a rational subject able to suppress his or her desires and impulses and to defer gratification, the consumer economy demands a self which spontaneously and unreflectively acts on irrational desires. The kind of subject that can function successfully in a financialized environment, in fact, closely resembles the disparate, plural, differential self described (and sometimes advocated) by postmodernist philosophy.
The dominant strain in contemporary economics thus represents human activity in mathematical form, claiming on these grounds to have constructed an entirely rational, scientific discipline. It ignores the historical and social contexts within which that behavior takes place, eliminating such considerations by means of abstraction. In theory, neoclassical economics still regards human beings as rational agents. It assumes an individual who will make a cost-benefit analysis of any given situation, and act according to the results of that analysis.
In practice, however, the market economy appeals to manifestly irrational elements of human nature, evoking all kinds of hopes, fears, aspirations and insecurities. Furthermore, the microeconomic model of the rational, selfish, calculating individual serves as the basis on which macroeconomic models of global market behavior are constructed. Like the ‘invisible hand,’ in short, the individual posited by neoclassical economics is a chimera, a phantom, a theoretical representation of an actual human being.
The postmodern economy enacts a thoroughgoing, practical translation of human subjectivity into representational form. In wage labor, people exchange segments of their lives for money. Induced consumption encourages the construction of identity by means of brand labels. The stock market vivifies abstract human activity. At the theoretical level, neoclassical economics makes it possible to quantify in financial terms subjective human experiences such as credit, confidence and trust. These experiences are literally transformed into money. Hence the death of the Self.
Well that's a start at least. Next we will have to show how, why and when the "self" emerged from the "soul."
This time, though, I shall approach the issue using purely secular terminology. This will mean working backwards historically, and beginning with the present day. Today, as I will show at a later stage, what used to be called the "soul" is called the "self." Many people, and especially many people on these boards, believe that the "self" is an illusion. I shall begin my analysis by asking *why* this belief has arisen.
Although materialism and economic determinism were associated with Marxism for most of the twentieth century, today those who argue most forcefully for the determining influence of the economy over other areas of life are neoclassical economists, who claim that rational self-interest motivates our every action, and sociobiologists, who locate this motive in the urge to preserve our genes. There has been a massive, co-ordinated campaign to bring intellectual respectability to the notion that market behavior is the authentic expression of human nature, by applying micro-economic theory and related quantitative techniques to the human sciences.
In this effort, the likes of Gary Becker and Richard Dawkins have been abetted by allegedly radical theorists like Donna Haraway and Judith Butler. The cumulative effect has been to establish an orthodoxy that is materialist in a wider, deeper sense than the Leftist materialism of the mid-twentieth century. Not only does the economy determine our ideas; ideas themselves are material, electronic and chemical reactions in the brain. Not only are the actions of human beings driven by material factors; human beings are themselves material, performative, desiring machines.
Within the ‘economy’ itself, the last twenty years have been characterized by ‘financialization.’ This term is used to describe the increasingly abstract, immaterial and purely symbolic nature of money in the ’new economy,’ which gave rise to such concepts as Enron’s ‘weightless corporation,' allegedly capable of creating value without producing anything at all. The rapid expansion of consumer debt and credit, the growing personal investment in the stock market, in short, the practical and ideological translation of life into financial terms, all interpolate a new kind of individual.
Whereas in the early stages of capitalism, economics assumed a rational subject able to suppress his or her desires and impulses and to defer gratification, the consumer economy demands a self which spontaneously and unreflectively acts on irrational desires. The kind of subject that can function successfully in a financialized environment, in fact, closely resembles the disparate, plural, differential self described (and sometimes advocated) by postmodernist philosophy.
The dominant strain in contemporary economics thus represents human activity in mathematical form, claiming on these grounds to have constructed an entirely rational, scientific discipline. It ignores the historical and social contexts within which that behavior takes place, eliminating such considerations by means of abstraction. In theory, neoclassical economics still regards human beings as rational agents. It assumes an individual who will make a cost-benefit analysis of any given situation, and act according to the results of that analysis.
In practice, however, the market economy appeals to manifestly irrational elements of human nature, evoking all kinds of hopes, fears, aspirations and insecurities. Furthermore, the microeconomic model of the rational, selfish, calculating individual serves as the basis on which macroeconomic models of global market behavior are constructed. Like the ‘invisible hand,’ in short, the individual posited by neoclassical economics is a chimera, a phantom, a theoretical representation of an actual human being.
The postmodern economy enacts a thoroughgoing, practical translation of human subjectivity into representational form. In wage labor, people exchange segments of their lives for money. Induced consumption encourages the construction of identity by means of brand labels. The stock market vivifies abstract human activity. At the theoretical level, neoclassical economics makes it possible to quantify in financial terms subjective human experiences such as credit, confidence and trust. These experiences are literally transformed into money. Hence the death of the Self.
Well that's a start at least. Next we will have to show how, why and when the "self" emerged from the "soul."
