I’ve been thinking lately about the importance of our social
ties to other people. I want to consider
one claim about these relationships, which I will call the ‘isolated
individualist thesis.’ According to this
thesis, your individual identity is more or less up to you. The most practically important facts about
you are not up for negotiation with your friends, family, co-workers, fellow
citizens, and the like. You get to
decide.
Lots of philosophers are very skeptical about the isolated
individualist thesis. And not just
philosophers. When I tell people I write
about autonomy, I often get a response something like, “Why would you even believe
in that?!” I think there is a common
view according to which the ‘isolated individual’ is disingenuous myth propped
up for politically nefarious purposes.
Samuel Scheffler gives voice to the skeptical thought:
Whether we like it or not, such relations help to define the
contours of our lives, and influence the ways that we are seen both by
ourselves and by others. Even those who
sever or repudiate such ties—in so far as it is possible to do so—can never
escape their influence or deprive them of all significance, for to have
repudiated a personal tie is not the same as never having had it, and one does
not nullify social bonds by rejecting them.
One is, in other words, forever the person who has rejected or
repudiated those bonds; one cannot make oneself into a person who lacked them
from the outset. Thus, while some people
travel enormous social distances in their lives, and while the possibility of
so doing is something we have every reason to cherish, the idea that the
significance of our personal ties and social affiliations is wholly dependent on
our wills—that we are the supreme gatekeepers of our own identities—can only be
regarded as a fantasy.[1]
According to Scheffler, people really want to believe that
some version of the isolated individualist thesis is true. The trouble is that such hope flies in the
face of a realistic psychology. So, the
view is a mere fantasy.
I think Scheffler’s rejoinder gets everything precisely
backwards. I think people really want to
believe that some version of the isolated individualist thesis is false. The trouble is that such denial flies in the
face of a realistic psychology.
Something in the neighborhood of the isolated individualist thesis is
much closer to an uncomfortable reality than a heroic illusion.
Let’s consider the easiest case for the ‘social ties’
theorist: Spouses. If anyone matters to
the ongoing identity of an ordinary person, probably their spouse does. Many people forecast that if they lost their
spouse, it would make them very unhappy.
But as often the case, our ability to affectively forecast our reactions
to future events is not very good. It
turns out that most people are quite resilient after the death of a
spouse. Dan Moller summarizes the
empirical literature in his paper, “Love and Death":
…Compared to a control group, "The effect of bereavement on
symptoms of depression and general psychopathology…was significant only at 2
months following the loss." Still
another expert sumps up his work, "A general conclusion of this study is that
the death of a spouse in later life does impact the surviving spouse’s
subjective well-being but not to the extent that many would expect." If these results are surprising, it gets
stranger still: research indicates that not only do half or more of bereaved
spouses tend to be resilient or muted in their reaction to their loss, but a
consistent 10% or so of the bereaved experience a dramatic increase in subjective well-being following the loss.[2]
To my ear this sounds like unqualifiedly good news. But as Moller notes, many people don’t like
hearing these findings. It goes against
our desire to imagine our lives as tied up in some ineliminable way with the
lives of other persons.
So who is actually guilty of indulging in a little
make-believe about the self? Living a
life in which our attitudes are not that closely tethered to even the most
important people around us – that’s (often, at least) just part of what it
is to be person. But living a life in
which one’s will is continually subordinated to the will of another
person? That really is the stuff of
fantasy.
[1] Scheffler,
Boundaries and Allegiances (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 106-107.
[2]
Moller, “Love and Death,” The Journal of
Philosophy 104:6 (2007): 301-316, pp. 302-303.