Angela Franks’s Body and Identity: A History of the Empty Self illuminates how our culture came to be unrecognizable to so many. As she tells it, the changes came about gradually and then all at once. It is a careful and vast intellectual history, engaging notable thinkers like Aristotle, Augustine, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but also novelists like Jane Austen and C. S. Lewis, to explain the observable contemporary incoherence surrounding the self, the body, and identity. That incoherence, Franks demonstrates, is a primary cause of our current malaise. This deeply considered work is a welcome contribution to the present literature on the body, gender ideology, and the self. 

The most provocative aspect of the book is the contention that Christianity, even though it posits a natural moral order, had a seminal role in destabilizing identity by making it less socially embedded. Obedience to Christ and Christianity’s universality transcend loyalty to family or tribe, which were traditional and solid sources of identity. Christians also affirmed from the beginning that both men and women could have individual callings commensurate with their talents, which could likewise clash against unchosen and more collective loyalties. That belief introduces more potential challenges to traditional sources of identity. 

As Christianity supports a (properly understood) form of individualism and vocation, readers are called to consider what kind, and degree, of solidity and liquidity is just and good for human beings. To what extent did Christianity, either purposefully or inadvertently, contribute to the modern identity crisis? And how does its answer to that crisis speak to our contemporary social discontent? 

Liquid Bodies, Empty Selves

Franks begins her investigation by examining the confusion over the body and identity that permeates our modern world. She contends that modern society has become characterized by “liquid bodies and empty selves.” For much of human history, people operated in a predominantly solid and unchosen world, born into given familial, national, and class structures. Those structures are now more fluid, as relationships are less permanent, roles less defined, and an understanding of an immutable human nature, and an orientation toward the good, undermined. Instead of drawing on unchosen ties to answer the question, “Who am I?” (a member of a family, class, nation, and such), individuals must now answer that question for themselves. As Franks summarizes, “In modernity, we are given no assistance with this task: not from an idea of ‘human nature,’ which has been deconstructed; not from social roles, which have been liquified; and not from moral codes, which have been relativized.”

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Amidst the Rousseauian demand for authenticity, and absent an understanding of the human person, what comes to matter most is choice, rather than the moral content of that choice. Modern self-definition is not about inculcating virtue but about curating or purchasing an outward appearance, as exemplified by consumerism and carefully cultivated social media profiles often distant from reality. Such themes are apparent and explored in Western literature. Jane Austen deftly demonstrates, particularly through Mansfield Park, the distinction between appearance and reality, with charm functioning as the doxic (Franks’s chosen formulation) self and virtue the true core. Overall, people have more freedom to form their lives and identities, which has benefits. 

Yet it also turns out that too much choice, absent a telos, is debilitating, that defining every aspect of oneself is an anxious endeavor and a burden too immense for mortal man. The modern individual is narcissistic and liberated, able to determine truths about his nature and identity, yet empty because he doesn’t know who he is. 

Further, contemporary culture simultaneously elevates and denigrates the body, sometimes dismissing it but also asking too much of it; “sexuality bears a disproportionate weight when it comes to contemporary identity-formulation.” With postmodernism, the body has been liquified by separating desire from purpose, as “meaningful desire would require commitment and self-sacrifice in pursuit of a goal somehow bigger than ourselves.” 

Ultimately, for Franks, Pope John-Paul II’s formulation that the body reveals the person is preeminent. Bodies both express, and are inseparable from, the individual, which means that questions about identity and the body are interrelated. 

Provocations

Franks’s book is primarily an intellectual history meant to explain the ideas behind these observable modern realities. What is rather unexpected is her demonstration that Christianity first introduced certain complications with identity. 

Ancient identity was solid, as human beings were born into rigid, tethered, and unchosen hierarchies and institutions. Even gods were gods of the city. The ancients were interested in the self, and able to think about body and soul in complex ways, with Aristotle in particular providing a substantive metaphysical account of identity by weaving together the soul and the body. Those philosophical explanations were explored, however, in a society in which most people already had a reasonably firm understanding of where they fit into the fabric of human life and society.

A universal Christianity undermines solidity somewhat by putting obedience to Christ above even family loyalty or membership in a particular tribe or nation. Further, the calling of a Christian and God’s love for a person are individual. For example, the apostle Paul had a vocation that was distinct. This introduces choice or liquidity. 

However, a vocation is still given and grounded. “Paul knows who he is, his true self, because he has received that identity from Christ.” Likewise, Augustine’s ultimate answer to the content of the self is to acknowledge that we are all made in the image of God and receive, rather than create, our identity. Christianity left in place an immutable understanding of human nature and a moral order rooted in the transcendent, even as it prompted theologians and philosophers to consider more carefully the nature of the human person. 

As Franks details, the modern notion of identity really takes hold with the rise of secularism: “The loss of a widespread sense of transcendent divinity shifted our relationship to our selves from one of reception to construction: from the instinct that identity is found in what and who we were made to be by forces beyond us, to the conviction that the self has to be formed from the outside in.” 

Though her book is not about solutions, as that will be dealt with in a second volume, Franks’s analysis points to Christianity’s resolution of the problem it contributes to: that the identity of the Christian will find rest in God’s plan for each person. Ironically, for Franks, Christianity both begins the problem and offers the remedy. 

The contention that Christianity first liquified identity is provocative in the best sense. The need for cultural recalibration is obvious, but Franks is careful to reject a reactive approach. In our current climate, pervaded with customizable lives and in need of duties, conservatives can perhaps be inclined to dichotomize rigidity and liquidity, with the former being wholly beneficial and the latter detrimental. Franks’s analysis prompts necessary pause:

Rather than seeing these vectors as characterizing the reality of man who consists of a coming-from and going-toward a transcendent origin and goal (chapter 7), contemporary theory loads all this fluidity onto the body while immanentizing and liquifying human nature. Just as previous eras arguably erred on the side of excessive rigidity in social and human structures, so our age errs on the side of excessive fluidity. But both stability and fluidity are marks of the human person. They must, however, be properly understood. 

Human beings have obligations to family and nation that are invaluable sources of purpose. People are also individuals with equal dignity, loved personally, and bequeathed particular callings commensurate with our talents. We cannot dismiss either of those aspects of Christianity (or the American experiment). Identifying the proper balance between liquidity and solidity is even more urgent as we debate the contours and validity of liberalism and individualism (whatever those terms mean anymore). If the identity crisis came about through a breakdown of an agreement regarding human nature, social roles, and moral codes, recovering an understanding of the human person, natural law, and stabilizing institutions would go a long way in correcting our current predicament. 

Franks’s discussion of the empty self, Christopher Lasch, and Betty Friedan helps readers further explore aspects of identity and vocation. Lasch observed the rise of a self-centered, or softly narcissistic, culture obsessed with appearances. However, as Franks notes:

Friedan does not get much credit for noticing the widespread existence of a culture of narcissism sixteen years before Lasch did. Lasch argued that most people were on the narcissistic spectrum and tended to lack a sense of self. When Friedan blamed “the feminine mystique” for women’s lack of “a sense of human identity, the firm core of self or ‘I’” she was noticing the same kind of thing. 

Lasch himself agreed with this, as he wrote, “In the light of the subsequent radicalization of the women’s movement, The Feminine Mystique is usually read (when it is read at all) as the first halting step down the road since traveled by an army of more militant women.” In reality, “The issue, in a word, was how to revive a sense of vocation in a society destitute of any sense of common purpose.” 

These tensions and inquiries persist. While vocation and work are not synonymous, and work is not the only form of vocation, there is a substantial overlap between the two. In part, an understanding of vocation was what Friedan was tapping into and why her book resonated in a historically Christian nation, a nation where a man’s reputation would suffer if he buried his talents, or, as Tocqueville wrote, just spent his life living. 

Friedan, though at times insulting, was correct in many of her observations, including those about consumerism and advertising aimed at women, and when people offer pertinent descriptions, we tend to follow them in their solutions. However, she posited an inadequate solution by encouraging women to find their identities solely in paid employment. While there is dignity in work, and vocation is a high good, vocation is grounded in service to others and God, meant to inculcate personal virtue. It is given, and inseparable from human nature and the transcendent. The Feminine Mystique was ultimately unable to “revive a sense of vocation” because Friedan’s analysis was not informed by an understanding of natural law and the human person. Without comprehending the purpose and meaning behind actions, they can become hollow. To reiterate Franks, meaningful desire requires “commitment and self-sacrifice in pursuit of a goal somehow bigger than ourselves.”

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Friedan’s housewife is restless and in search of meaning, even with relatively solid social roles in place. This suggests that strict social roles in themselves, absent an understanding of human nature, are inadequate to identity formation. Loading too much of one’s identity onto something, even if it is a good (a career, a relationship), will ultimately be tenuous. Either society was divested of a common purpose, as Lasch suggests, or the suburban middle-class housewife was somewhat detached from contributing to that purpose by being alienated from civil society. Again, Franks’s analysis cautions against reactivity, against putting all our eggs in one identity basket.

Looking Ahead

Franks’s substantive, careful, and expansive book falls into the category of analysis most equipped to explain the modern world we live in: literature that deals with the body, the self, identity, and expressive individualism. 

Like Joshua Mitchell’s American Awakening and Andrew Cherlin’s The Marriage Go-Round, it compels readers to consider how, and to what extent, Christianity, in its pure or distorted form, has contributed to the identity crisis and expressive individualism. While both Cherlin and Franks examine Catholicism and Protestantism, Mitchell sees identity politics as primarily a Protestant devolution; Carl Jung similarly observed that Protestantism tends to degrade in an individualistic direction, while Catholicism withers toward the authoritarian. Such observations raise questions about what kind of recalibrations American society needs, if both Catholicism and Protestantism have helped form the American character. Such recalibrations could come in the form of reform within the churches themselves or by taking advantage of the arguments of theologians as philosophers in the public square. 

To move beyond our current predicament, American society will need to offer people more helpful touchpoints that can enable them to figure out who they are, emphasizing the importance of duty and the meaning found in dedication to something higher than themselves as a corrective against the ascendance of liquidity. This could involve finding ways to engage in rooted communities and, as a citizen of a particular country, rather than retreating to an online customizable reality or taking up world travel as a distraction. Ironically, focusing on serving others bolsters our understanding of ourselves.

Still, there is a danger in that recalibration becoming reactive, in dismissing individuality or the individual dignity of the human person that is posited by Christianity and is the bedrock of the American project. The liquid aspect of human beings, Christianity, and liberalism cannot be disregarded without transforming society and going against the dictates of justice. Ultimate solutions are rooted in theology of the body, a proper understanding of vocation, and the transcendent that combine liquidity, obligation and love, and immutability.