It has been said many times that a person who represents himself has a fool for a client. Similarly, the self-employed have the most demanding boss. When it comes to sovereignty, the scenario doesn't look any better.

The Catholic viewpoint is that God is King and every substitution is erroneous on its face because it doesn't accept that fact. This is a very robust point and is only open to challenge of the fact of God's dominion, which is generally done via an assault on His existence or nature. These are both topics far too vast for a thread like this.

Here, the question is more one of a practical nature: do people govern themselves well? The answer is very similar to asking whether flagpoles stand up well by themselves... and the answer is generally 'no' because any single pole standing straight up is stable but not robust. A pole even slightly disturbed finds itself increasingly out of balance and rapidly crashing to the ground with no way to halt this decline. This instability is characteristic of many dynamical systems which are stable inside a very small phase space but not robust - so they do not re-enter the stable space once they have left it.

Humans are much the same way. The person who stops smoking compensates by overeating, then gets radically overweight and continues to take comfort in food; becomes lonely and needs more comfort; has bad health, loses a job, needs more comfort... and dies of a heart condition. All sorts of addictions and mechanisms for seeking validation and security feature the same feedback mechanisms. Rage, anger and violence feed on themselves. All sorts of negative emotions, self-righteousness, arrogance, anxiety, ... they feed on themselves and often on each other. People unmoored from associations which govern them effectively may be stable - briefly. In essence, only theoretically.

People need authorities. They need family authorities, state authorities, perhaps divine authorities. Absolute power makes the person independent again, and unstable. It corrupts. The founding fathers recognized that groups of people need to be deeply interconnected in ways that restrict their freedoms, so they cannot simply spin off into destruction; they need self-control as much as possible, but then, they need to be governed; by each other, and well, for their own interests.

Some fools blame all failings on the society and all successes on the individual. Anyone with sense would see that there are social failings that go uncorrected by individuals, yes, and propagate down to reflect poorly on all the members of a society; but that there are also individual failings that are constantly corrected by society and that a mass of ungoverned individuals would be utter destruction for all the individuals involved, and the closer the governance of society comes to being the whim of a single human, the more it magnifies these instabilities; the more a single person can use the demos as a megaphone, it becomes one voice with no mind. However, the more people organize independently into small associations (like families) and subordinate organizations (like communities and states) and independent networks (like the market and churches and government, each related to be not necessarily unified) the more stable the human condition will become.

It may not be ideal at any time, and improvements will be more difficult perhaps due to stability and the fact that flaws won't be as glaring when they are free from controls that moderate them, but individuals will be governed effectively - but not by a single centralized and easily radicalized authority.

Since the alternatives are utter disaster for everyone all at once and tyranny that leads to disaster inevitably, we shouldn't be so ready to give up on the moderation of distributed authority, even if we have doubts at times about the hierarchies that manage some of it.

Sure, God is King...in just about every religion save Hinduism (Even then, I'd have to give it up for Shiva. Buddhism doesn't concern itself with such things, apparently) thus the thousands of years of religious wars.

So you're metaphor with flagpoles? So you're saying that one pole is too flimsy and the answer is to bind them together, right? It makes sense, because the answer would resemble a fasces, so you being pro-fasces, makes you a fascist.

It just confuses me that someone that invokes Catholic dogma would be able to speak on the pitfalls of individuality given the pope's power and idol treatment (have you seen the fervent, adorning masses when he visits?)

or the success of ununified/independent networks given the molestation scandels and subsequent cover-ups by the church.

your argument is too contradictory, I don't know what is being said, really.

BenK:

The Catholic viewpoint is that God is King and every substitution is erroneous on its face because it doesn't accept that fact. This is a very robust point and is only open to challenge of the fact of God's dominion, which is generally done via an assault on His existence or nature.

The idea that God is King is still subordinate to the fact that humans mediate the will of God, and do so in mutually contradictory ways. Even an adamant atheist essentially makes the claim that whatever force created him wants or compels him to exercise his own autonomous authority. Thus the question becomes not whether to follow God's will, but what that will is.

So you're back to square one.

Individual sovereignity does not mean isolation. Sovereign individuals decide to make or continue connections with others, and to perpetuate or change social institutions. This kind of moral choice is fundamentally no different than any other moral choice. Of course our actions affect others; the question of sovereignity is that of who decides what actions are right, and what actions to take.

In the end, each person must decide - in the sense that a decision is unavoidable - what actions to take, and what is right or wrong. Hang your hat on your interpretation of God, on pure reason, on tradition or gut feelings or what have you: it's still your hat, and you're still the one hanging it.

your conception of the human person (i.e.--self) is (consciously or unconsciously) conditioned by your (and your community's) metaphysical assumptions? The "self" in Reformation England and the "self" in Bolshevik Russia were rather different things.

Fritz Gerlich:

your conception of the human person (i.e.--self) is (consciously or unconsciously) conditioned by your (and your community's) metaphysical assumptions? The "self" in Reformation England and the "self" in Bolshevik Russia were rather different things.

What if it is?

Basically, if you think you're autonomous, you are, for all practical purposes. I disagree that the "self" was a different concept for people in those times and places; each man considers himself a moral agent, even if he decides to suborn his decisions to those of another person.

BTW, your community's assumptions only matter if they are also your assumptions, or otherwise shape your thinking. They are channeled through you.

Elshtain and her ilk are right about that: there is no faith as blind as the one that considers itself "enlightened."

do people govern themselves well? The answer is very similar to asking whether flagpoles stand up well by themselves

I suppose if people were in any way like flagpoles this analogy would have some merit. And then maybe we should ask if a flagpole cares which flag it is forced to display or who raises that flag or if it ever matters which way the wind blows.

The "self" in Reformation England and the "self" in Bolshevik Russia were rather different things.

I seriously doubt that.

"A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man." The Simpsons

While Elshtain's book may be hyperbolic and too enmeshed in stock conservative issues, her critique of the concept of the "sovereign self" serves a corrective function to the symbol of the autonomous, sovereign individual. It is a symbol, not fully realizable, for the self remains permeable and incapable of complete autonomy. One’s social context, heredity, and historical situation exert such a strong influence on the self that they define the ground from which the self can exercise its capacity for choice. While behaviorism and determinism state the case too strongly, I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to argue that the features of the self and the nature of the capacities it possesses are contingent on the context within which it developed. The attempt to live according to the symbol of sovereign self seems an exhausting attempt to step over horizons that can’t be wiped away.

I would suggest that the symbol of the open self is healthier than the symbol of the sovereign self. The open self allows external persons and the world to make demands on it, and in so doing, is embiggened. The sovereign self, on the other hand, is closed to such demands and instead asserts its ultimate authority in all things and becomes constricted. Heidegger identifies the danger of the closed self: “Meanwhile man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth. In this way the impression comes to prevail that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct. This illusion gives rise in to turn to one final delusion: It seems as though man everywhere and always encounters only himself.” In exalting the sovereignty of the self, the finality of the authority of the self in all acts of choice, one can also close the self off to a full experience of existence. In the “sovereign self’s” attempt to grasp existence directly without recognizing the authority of mediating contexts that stand between it and the self, the “sovereign self” rejects a multifoliate experience of existence in favor of a singular one.

While one perhaps has the same inability to fully enact the symbol of the “open self” that one faces with the “sovereign self”, the pursuit of the “open self” postures the self in a manner that allows for a more full experience of life. This openness is not tied to any particular religious convictions, unless you consider the acceptance of your own contingency and smallness a religious act.

While I may not subscribe to all of Elshtain’s views, I am all for some healthy criticism of the idea of the sovereign self.

sewall:

I would suggest that the symbol of the open self is healthier than the symbol of the sovereign self. The open self allows external persons and the world to make demands on it, and in so doing, is embiggened. The sovereign self, on the other hand, is closed to such demands and instead asserts its ultimate authority in all things and becomes constricted.

You've chosen to define "sovereign" in a new way, which makes this argument nonsensical. A sovereign individual mediates demands; he does not necessarily reject them.

The question of sovereignity is multiple choice: who is the final arbiter of right and wrong? I contend that it is, of necessity, the individual. Any other source of authority must persuade the individual in order to have any effect.

The danger in not recognizing this fact of autonomy is that we can delude ourselves into believing that we have no choice. Martin Luther's claim (quoted above) can be read this way; a more generous reading is that he recognized his own choice and asserted it as essential to his being.

People who believe that they are not sovereign individuals can justify terrible acts because they are God's will, or the law says so, or they were just following orders. We all recognize the moral failings of such excuses.

My definition of “sovereign” remains faithful to the concept’s historical development. It originated as an attribute of divinity, and the concept maintained its absolute character when it penetrated the realm of politics. The terrestrial deity of Hobbes admits no authority beyond itself and any appeal of its decisions can only be made to itself. Likewise, the will of a sovereign deity admits of no authority beyond it to which supplicants can appeal, as illustrated in the myth of Job. If we want to use the concept of the “sovereign self”, then we ought to explore fully what it means.

If the self is sovereign, then no external demands on it can be authoritative. Certainly demands are made that the self chooses among; if, however, we deny the possibility that someone or something’s demand upon the self might be authoritative and require a particular response, then we are ascribing the sovereignty of Being (or divinity, if you like) to the self. By refusing to recognize the possibility of authoritative external demands, the “sovereign self” is absolutely free to reject or acquiesce to demands.

I do not think such a life is possible. The impossibility, however, of the living as a “sovereign self” does not rob of its power as a symbol. It can still appeal with great potency to the imagination even if we cannot realize it, but my argument is that attempts to realize it are exhausting to the psyche and entail a rejection of the world. Humans are contingent beings: we are entrapped in becoming and will never attain sufficient being. As such, there is a world to which we owe our existence and that world can and does make authoritative demands on the self.

Openness to these demands still entails a choice to obey them. We still have the power of choice (though I think our ability to choose is partially determined by context), but our choices bring real guilt or harmony. The rejection of these demands does not invalidate their authority; rather, it incriminates the self.

People who reject the demands of another or the world don’t have to justify terrible acts.

my argument is that attempts to realize it are exhausting to the psyche and entail a rejection of the world. Humans are contingent beings: we are entrapped in becoming and will never attain sufficient being.

I'm going to have to agree with Fitzpatrick above. This has all appearances of being overblown nonsense. Perhaps an example or two would clarify your position.

Thanks for the support, djindra.

In order to have meaningful discourse, nouns have to refer to actual things. Terms like "the world" and "the divine" are not very useful. As Stuart Chase demanded: show me the referent!

Steinbeck's East of Eden provides an example of my description of the "sovereign self": Cathy Ames. She refused to acknowledge the binding nature of any demands except those imposed by threat of force. She killed her parents, shot her husband, and abandoned her children in order to free herself from them. Her life ends in a lonely suicide. Adam Trask can represent the “open self” in that he accepted as binding the demands made upon him by the presence of his sons. He recognized that their existence made a demand on him that he could choose to deny, but he also recognized that he would incur guilt by denying it. His recognition of the obligatory nature of his sons’ demand for care and love represents a renunciation of the sovereignty of the self.

Now, the "sovereign self" does not have to be as atrocious as Cathy Ames. One could also choose to be benevolent, but if we apply the concept of sovereignty to the self, then the self could not incur real guilt because of its choices. We would have no ground to condemn Cathy Ames because she would not have broken any obligations, for any demands placed on her by her parents/husband/children would have been illegitimate in the first place.

“Divinity”: A wholly self-sufficient being (Yahweh, Allah, etc).

“World”: I mean both nature and social context, the totality of things (or persons) that exist. I don’t think we spontaneously come into existence (even if the universe did), and because we have predecessors and rely on other people and the physical world to exist, we are a part of it and are obliged to it in some way. We are not self-sufficient beings.

I understand “sovereign”, and I think its development backs me, as an absolute term: you can’t be somewhat sovereign. My point in all of this is to detach the term "sovereign" from the self by showing that it is absurd, even by analogy, to describe the self as sovereign. Maybe my argument has become hyperbolic, but I think that the description of the self as sovereign is itself a hyperbole.