The classic worldview, in place for 2 millennia and in decline for the past 200 years, holds that a hierarchical order in the universe gives meaning to our world and our activities in society. Those who still consciously embrace this paradigm believe that “[t]he things that surround us were not just potential raw materials or instruments for our projects, but they had the significance given them by their place in the chain of being. By the same token, the rituals and norms of society had more than merely instrumental significance” [6] (p. 3). From this perspective, the hierarchies of human society both reflect a natural harmony and also participate in it because, among other things, human beings are not exceptions to the structure of the cosmos. So, if we are part of this cosmic order and have our proper place in the universe, no individual should completely arrogate her own existence. On the other hand, the author concludes, a belief in natural law also implies that some realities and relations are good simply in themselves, beyond their spatial and temporal context. These immutable ideals, written in the stars or in God’s mind, are knowable by human rationality, and are applicable to all individuals.

Nowadays, many historians hold that this worldview comprises one of the deepest roots of Western culture. For example, Werner Jaeger locates its origin in the ancient Classical educational model, which is built around the belief in harmony, objectivity, and intelligibility. “By discovering man, the Greeks did not discover the subjective self, but realized the universal laws of human nature. The intellectual principle of the Greeks is not individualism but ‘humanism’ […] It meant the process of educating man into his true form, the real and genuine human nature […] the man revealed in the work of the great Greeks is a political man. Greek education is not the sum of a number of private parts and skills intended to create a perfect independent personality” [7] (pp. 16–17). In fact, that type of education—the Paideia—was adopted in the Roman Empire and was used all through the Middle Ages and the early modern period [8, 9, 10].

Aristotle is one of the most well-known and influential exponents of theoretical systematization in the classic worldview. Only in this light it is possible to fully understand why, in his theory of emotions, rationality has an important educational role. Thanks to rational emotions, human beings learn to “find enjoyment or pain in the right things” [11] (II, 3, 1104b 13–14). However, rational emotions depend on the acquisition of virtues, namely, on the individual’s efforts to interpret and moderate basic emotions, memory, perceptions, and so on [12] (p.105). When rationality is introduced into our desires, they then become as good as any other universal value. Put in normative form, the optimal human moral condition is to desire cosmic harmony. In Aristotle’s words, “Anyone can get angry—that is easy—or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy; wherefore goodness is both rare and laudable and noble” [11] (II, 9, 1109 a 27). In this situation, the whole body, with its different parts, with its actions and passions, reaches a dynamic unity that is a reflection of the highest order of things. I should like here to clarify that, in this chapter, I use the term passion to refer indistinctly to emotion and feeling.

In the Classic interpretation, affectivity has a double dimension: pragmatic and referential. With regard to the first dimension, emotions help us to move toward the realization of the human ideal—in which, as I said, emotions have more than an instrumental role; that is to say, they do not disappear when one’s goals are achieved. With regard to the second dimension, when treated appropriately emotions are valuable sources of information about the world and about oneself. Returning to the context of authenticity, the human heart is disclosed here as being an important mirror of identity—looking into it, I can know who I really am, and by showing it to others I can sincerely express myself. Furthermore, passions reveal the tension between the factual me and the ideal me, between what I am and what I should be. From the Aristotelian perspective, both are part of my identity because I am also my emotions (the mirror in which I look at myself is in fact part of myself) and, further, because they are present in the ideal of the human being.

The distance between the ideal and the real human being, in the classic worldview, is not completely bridgeable. Entities of the sublunar world will always be an imperfect image of those beings that make up the incorruptible, supralunar reality. In other words, some inauthentic experiences are connatural to individuals—hence the tragic human condition. However, the feelings that follow are not as disturbing as they might seem and, in fact, are part of human growing-up. It is thanks to the matter–spirit duality (not to be confused with the matter–soul binomial) that human beings are able to reach a degree of unity that is qualitatively superior to those beings without it. As Robert Spaemann writes, “Aristotle has made a radical ontological break between ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’. God, for him, is pure spirit, and the being of the spirit is life; soul, on the other hand, is the principle of a lower form of life, the life of material bodies. There is a class of ensouled beings that also possesses spirit; that is the class of human beings” [13] (p. 151).

However, this Aristotelian identity, typical of free men, is only attained by having knowledge of the good of the universe of which the human ideal is also part. “And all things are ordered together somehow, but not all alike—both fishes and fowls and plants; and the world is not such that one thing has nothing to do with another, but they are all connected. For all are ordered together to one end, but it is as in a house, where the freemen are least at liberty to act at random, but all things or most things are already ordained for them, while the slaves and animals do little for the common good, and for the most part live at random” [14] (XII, 10, 1075a l2–23). The experiences of both human gaps—between the ideal and the factual, and between the material and the spiritual—do not disappear; instead, they are eclipsed by the experience of eudemonia, which emerges from understanding and following this supreme order.

Applying Aristotelian perspective to the IE problem, it could be argued that inauthenticity should be perceived as part of human life—a physiological symptom—at least for young people, that is, people with immature selves. However, this natural suffering is also an opportunity, a means, to arrive and express higher levels of perfection.

The Aristotelian connection between reasons and passions fits, in many respects, with Damasio’s approach. Firstly, neither of them thinks that passions are stupid, purely passive and mechanical reactions. In fact, what Aristotle calls “deliberative desire” bears some resemblance to what Damasio defines as feeling [11] (VI, 2, 1139 a 21). Secondly, because of this kind of connection, for both authors affective education must not rely on a despotic imposition—a productive action—but, as philosopher Leonardo Polo has pointed out, rather primarily on a dialogic learning—a governing action [15] (p. 198). This means that the acquisition of virtues is not just a question of osmosis, that is, of mere exposure to values, but of understanding. Thirdly, by the same token, Aristotle and Damasio share beliefs about how the abstraction of ends (the decoupling of behavior and means) generates intensely pleasant, creative, and productive subjective experiences [3] (pp. 294–297). Undoubtedly Aristotle goes a step further, recognizing that teleology is not a creation of mind but a real natural cause. The difference is great, because believing that human ideals have more than an evolutionary meaning and survival value increases the enjoyment of the contemplation of such ideals.

Humanism is one of the most totalizing narratives that has ever existed. With it, human beings have been furnished with many effective strategies to control and use passions and, ultimately, to promote cooperative behavior. No matter whether they are true or false, these beliefs have offered the human brain, for a long time, an optimal breeding ground for the consolidation of a unique and strong self… at least to some extent.

However, there is a problem with this paradigm from Damasio’s point of view: it ontologically justifies the final steps of the evolutionary escalation of the representational process. Agents with an Autobiographical self tend naturally (have a biological predisposition) to think of themselves as timeless and spaceless (as substances and responsible agents), which are beliefs that may give rise to dualistic lifestyles and finally to the worst type of vertical IE—one of those that lead to pathological conditions.

Understanding our own nature implies accepting, according to Damasio, that the time has come for us to escape the chains of physical events: in order to survive we must divert ourselves from our current biological direction. The philosopher of mind Daniel Dennett supports a similar thesis in chapter 8 of his work Freedom Evolves. However, Dennett’s alternative is not a Spinozan one. For him, the solution involves giving up attitudes associated with realism and choosing beliefs in accordance with the human need for survival. The difference is enormous. For Damasio, knowing the true implies rejecting false beliefs and, thanks to that, surviving. For Dennett, surviving implies rejecting the belief in truth itself [16]. But ultimately, both Damasio and Dennett defend the notion that human substantial identity is only a fiction generated by the autobiographical self.

Whoever is right, it is a matter of fact that the classic worldview is still present in our contemporary culture and hence continues to percolate down to at least our Proto- and Autobiographical selves.

The later introduction of Judeo–Christian ideas into Western culture boosted even more, on one hand, the pursuit of deliberative desire and socialization and, on the other hand, a sense of coherence and security. After all, the Universe has been created by an omnipotent and benevolent God, who has revealed Himself to the world—to the human mind—a God who deserves to be loved and who commands us to love.

However, Christianity gives greater weight to the subject (from the Latin subiectus—lying beneath) in the sense that each individual is not understood as identical to her nature. The new perspective implies, among other things, that individuals are responsible for many of their decisions: they are able to own their nature. Moral conscience and personal identity are other expressions linked to this self-understanding. The defense of responsibility, a belief the Greeks considered to be a natural delusion—we could say that a delusion associated to vertical IE, is first of all based on theological arguments. In addition to disease and ignorance, there is another reason for loving the darkness: a free personal choice. In fact, as Spaemann claims, only on this condition can isolated individuals be deserving of punishment by a righteous divinity [13] (p. 21).

A third gap is introduced into the puzzle of identity: what I am, what I should be and, the new element what I want to be. With the last, new meaning is added to the Greek Areté, namely, the role of intention and struggle in the definition of individuals. There are two main consequences. First, the outlines of the human ideal become blurred, because not everything seems to be written in heaven. God listens to those who pray, and grants things to those who ask with faith. The new framework leaves room for creativity and a certain amount of self-government [17, 18]. Secondly, the gap affects the sense of community. The call of God is vocational: it is not just open to novelty, but is personal as well. Along these lines, the early Christians believed that everyone, after death, must go through a particular judgment before God, in which the repayment for the acts committed by individuals will be determined independently of the sins that communities have committed. In fact, these followers of Christ believed that individuals are prior to the polis. It was the discovery, Spaemann concludes, that the man who dies for his fatherland is more than his fatherland [13] (p. 19). But, if this is so, the lines of humanistic ideals are blurred even more.

The Christian solution to the three gaps bears some resemblance to that of the Greeks’ because, for the former, alterity is also a central element. The doctrine of the Trinity shows that there is one God in three Persons. On the one hand, God’s nature is one. On the other hand, the divine Persons maintain a reciprocal relation of infinite love for/with each other. Both features explain, from different perspectives, God’s oneness. In the same way, for Christians, each individual, as an image of God, shares her nature with other human beings—a nature that we need to know and implement in order to attain happiness. Besides, as persons, we have to find ourselves in extending our love to others [19]. It is only in this way that what is initially a fracture becomes the most valued gift. “No one can have greater love than to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). This is not a (Greek) heroic end; instead, it’s the way for an individual to gain resurrection—the final triumph of the subject. Apart from this, in practical terms, Christians for a long time followed the theory of deliberative feelings. Faith and reason support each other and, together, nourish the heart. It is the heart, in turn, that defines the individual. Only the heart in action—a loving heart—can reflect the agent’s identity, the agent’s unity.

In the promise of resurrection, we discover the last important difference from the Greek point of view. Christian salvation comes from God’s intervention, both during our earthly life as well as in the afterlife. Of course, this grace is mediated, according to early Christians, by the community, which reinforces even more the recognition of human alterity. A similar result develops from two other Christian beliefs: first, the proclamation of the Kingdom not only to Israel but to all the Gentiles; and second, the universal judgment at the end of the time. The civilizing purpose of Humanism is extended to the entire human race. In addition, as mentioned, this extended love is not just a matter of pure altruism. Each individual’s happiness is put at stake.

Nevertheless, this mighty effort appears to have been insufficient: the course of history would still tilt the balance toward the subject. The process, which would take more than one and a half thousand years, reaches its peak with modernity. I shall present, in the next section, three catalysts for this change (C1, C2, and C3 from now on), particularly those directly related to the emergent ideal of authenticity.

The first milestone (C1) in civilization’s downfall has to do with the introduction of a Cartesian approach. Catholic philosopher René Descartes breaks with the hegemony of the Schoolmen—and their Aristotelian influences—when he proposes a trialistic ontology: res extensa (extended being), res cogitans (mental substance) and God are the three substances that make up reality. This means that each one can exist without the existence of the other two. The conclusion also has epistemological implications: the natural sciences, humanities, and theology enjoy significant autonomy with respect to each other. The only link among them is God, who assures that there is a unity among the sciences.

Concerning human beings, Descartes holds that the mind and the body are separate substances. In the words of Damasio, Descartes suggested that “reasoning, and moral judgment, and the suffering that comes from physical pain or emotional upheaval might exist separately from the body” [20] (p. 249). Just as important, in Descartes’ anthropological dualism, passions are placed on the side of the physical world, and the self is on the spiritual side. In other words, the first are generated by purely mechanical laws, and therefore they have to be governed—have their excesses corrected—just as humans control machines, namely, by changing their physical causes. In contrast to the theory of deliberative feelings, for Descartes, the passions are not susceptible directly to convincing arguments, but only deserve—respond to—despotic impositions [21]. Passions, like perceptions, are moved by physical forces. However, according to Descartes, this does not mean that they are only linked to physical realities. In fact, some of them speak of the soul and some of the body–soul connection (Principles of Philosophy, AT VIII 23, CSM I 209). But how, then, do passions reflect the soul? This is no merit of theirs, but rather of the soul which, by humbling itself to the level of the material world, can receive and control this kind of physical images, namely, neural encoding.“Nature likewise teaches me by these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst, etc., that I am not only lodged in my body as a pilot in a vessel, but that I am in addition so intimately conjoined, and as it were intermixed with it, that my mind and body compose a certain unity. For if this were not the case, I should not feel pain when my body is hurt, seeing I am merely a thinking thing, but should perceive the wound by the understanding alone, just as a pilot perceives by sight when any part of his vessel is damaged” (Descartes, Sixth Meditation, Part 13). How is this possible? Here lies the main difficulty of the Cartesian proposal. Descartes does not explain the nature of this particular movement of the soul. This difficulty is usually formulated as the mind–brain problem.

The undermining of human behavior is the second catalyst (C2) along the slippery slope. Here, the intellectual and social phenomenon in question is due to theological arguments, concretely those defended in the Protestant Reformation. Theologians like Martin Luther and John Calvin expounded the belief that salvation is not earned by good deeds but through faith in Jesus Christ. From this perspective, God keeps an even greater distance from the earthly world than in Cartesianism [22] (pp. 157–159). The physical world is corrupted by sin: no ideals can be inferred from it, even from the human body. Contrary to what Catholics believe, God does not intervene in this mess in any way—nor does He intervene in our behavior, which tends inevitably to evil and ruin. God’s grace affects only the soul— a self that, because of original sin, cannot direct the body toward good. Moreover, saving grace comes not from the community but solely from the individual’s faith. In fact, what leads to God is the subject’s recognition, first, of this tragic divorce between body and soul, and second, of her incapacity to remedy this problem without divine aid [23].

The reformist view gives priority to introspection over objective knowledge much more than Cartesianism. Your heart, not your behavior, tells you who you really are. Here Areté ends up being radically transformed: the fight for identity and salvation takes place in the mind — in the task of attaining good thoughts. Of course, the reformers are referring to the intellectual heart — not the emotional, which is part of the perverse world [24] (pp. 63–64).

From very early on, numerous philosophers began to rationally justify Puritan theological attitudes. One of the best-known examples is Immanuel Kant. According to him, duty must be the motor of good choices, not the passions. There are two reasons for adopting this strict posture. First, the passions tell us almost nothing about reality or even about our own body [25]. Second, morality is not about the pursuit of identity and happiness; as Judy Hughes writes, it is “about becoming worthy of happiness by heeding the call of duty” [26] (p. 72). In this sense, Kant goes further than Descartes: the passions are not even worthy of being governed tyrannically, they merely deserve to be ignored. This means that the individual’s happiness — the overcoming of identitarian gaps — is a matter of God’s choice. In sum, if Descartes takes God out of the physical world, Kant takes him out of the moral world, for it isn’t necessary to believe in God in order to recognize what is good or bad.

Like Descartes, Kant infers human ideals through rational introspection but, unlike Descartes, he makes them dependent on the subject and not on the chain of being. This becomes clear, for example, in Kant’s Principle of Respect: never treat a person merely as a means, but always as an end. This is also the case of Kant’s Categorical Imperative: you are to “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law”(Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, 4:421). In both, any ideas about higher orders have disappeared, and with them the classic solution to IE.

Kant’s ideals are oriented toward enabling the encounter between different subjects, each one with particular interests. The Kantian solution is to think of one’s neighbor as a potential enemy, and then regulating the fight so that it can be as beneficial as possible for both. In this context, it is clear why the golden rule ends up being formulated in its negative form: don’t do to others what you would not like them to do to you.

Likewise, Kant asserts a “negative” ideal of freedom. “It is only in a Society which possesses the greatest Liberty, and which consequently involves a thorough Antagonism of its members — with, however, the most exact determination and guarantee of the limits of this Liberty in order that it may coexist with the liberty of others — that is the highest purpose of Nature, which is the development of all her capacities, can be attained in the case of mankind” (Principles of Politics, Fifth Proposition). In short, my freedom ends where that of the other begins. It was not only Kant: many other modern philosophers, like John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill, have helped to popularize the idea of negative freedom and the necessity to separate public space from private space. Thanks to all these thinkers, the gap between the physical and the intellectual worlds finds its correlate in a new way of understanding community.

The third milestone (C3) of the fall of Humanism is the process of secularization of Christian faith. This has had a variety of consequences. First, because in the Cartesian view, the unity of sciences depended too much on theological arguments, secularization fuels the phenomena of hyper-specialization and disintegration of academic discourses. It is no accident that many contemporary authors blame Descartes for what Charles Percy Snow named The Two Cultures: the contemporary divorce between the natural sciences and the humanities (the sciences of the spirit). If nowadays there are many difficulties that hamper establishing a dialogue this is because, first, for a long time, each of these spheres of knowledge saw themselves as self-sufficient and, second, because neither of them knew, thanks to Descartes, how to carry on such a dialogue. Undoubtedly, this scenario does not help one to believe (without divine help) in the unity of being, and hence, in the unity of the sciences [27].

This kind of scenario is, in turn, linked to the emergence of the various monistic approaches. Many idealist and positivist movements may be considered consequences of the fruitless attempt to solve the mind–brain problem. What results is a renunciation of understanding or a refusal to accept the existence of the physical or spiritual world, respectively. Finally, a goodly number of authors, beginning from these reductive approaches, end up rejecting realism. How could the solipsistic mind, by itself, produce objective statements? Or how could the physical body do it? David Hume’s theory of causation is one of the first and most radical modern examples of epistemological skepticism. It may be the case that objects are connected by causes but, for Hume, we do not know this with any certainty. If the chain of being exists, it is beyond our reach [28] (p.10). The fact that a large number of non-believers simultaneously maintain relativistic positions seems to have more to do with the history of ideas in the West than with timeless strong arguments.

The loss of faith and a widespread disbelief in the natural law is another frequent (but not necessary) connection in modern societies. From this perspective, there is no individual or community responsibility to a supreme order — no more externally imposed blame. We human beings thus appear, in theory and practice, to be the only source of goals and rules. For the same reason, the pursuit of identity and happiness will depend, basically, on the subject’s decisions and social agreements. So, it is the end of external ideals. The true me is what I choose because my will is the sole criterion (the ideal) of authenticity. Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the first modern exponents of this idea about the will as cohesive criterion of identity and moral behavior. For example, in Beyond Good and Evil, he writes, “The individual has always had to work hard to avoid being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high for the privilege of owning yourself” [29].

Human beings seem to be released, in the final stages of the secularization process, from physical and rational bonds. The only limits — the only logic — are those which the means impose on us. In this scenario, human intelligence is no longer the faculty with we attain human ideals, but rather the tool with we overcome obstacles to our will. Taylor calls this new understanding of the role of intelligence “the primacy of instrumental rationality.” “By ‘instrumental reason’ I mean the kind of rationality we draw on when we calculate the most economical applications of means to a given end. Maximum efficiency, the best cost–output ration, is its measure of success” [6] (p. 5). In contrast to reason, the passions begin to be understood as the new and indisputable source of morality: they offer the legitimate goals of self-fulfillment. For instance, it is because of his theory of causation that Hume defends positions that are close to instrumentalism. “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them” (A Treatise of Human Nature, 2.3.3). Reason cannot evaluate ends or passions. Only passions can select and evaluate ends. In a similar but most radical way, Nietzsche contrasts, in The Gay Science, rationality with a “veritable delight in madness” — namely, the passions. Clearly, this revulsive rejection of Puritan principles does not return sentiments to their original place — to Areté. Instead, they acquire a self-referential sense: a positive emotion is justified by its own presence, independently of any external logic, of triggers, or even of the agent’s will.

The hegemony of the passions has, among other important consequences, that of the strengthening of the introspective attitude toward happiness. This ultimately leads, according to Taylor, to hedonistic and narcissistic lifestyles, which in turn leads individualism to unprecedented levels in Western societies, levels at which the classic worldview comes closest to realizing its point of maximum instability [6] (pp. 16–17).

The above-mentioned catalysts, each in a different way, have all contributed to the arising of the modern paradigm, whose gravitational center, according to Taylor, is the ideal of a self-determining free will. I have an authentic life when I am radically free, namely, “when I decide for myself what concerns me, rather than being shaped by external influences” [6] (p. 27). Undoubtedly, in the historical process of the development of the subject there have been many positive achievements, especially in human rights. However, there are also defects, problems, concerns, and risks associated with the new network of beliefs. In this section, I will touch on those directly associated with the experience of dislocation of the self.

On the other hand, Late Modernity is a troubled era where numerous important things have happened in a short space of time. As a result, many conscious ideals (that are somewhere between the Core and Historical Culture and the Core and Autobiographical Self) are perceived simultaneously as conflicting and as tempting. It is precisely in this context that the greatest number of potentially pathological IE occur [4] (section 1.3.C, pp. 150–163).

Social changes are inevitable and are not necessarily harmful. Or, at least, they are inexorably harmful, even though they come about in a very short time. However, there are other more intrinsic problems with the Modern paradigm: those related to the effects of the ideal of free self-determination in the development and living out of human identity. In the next sections, I will argue that these effects are creating a new kind of vulnerable group that are characterized by the inability both to manage suffering and to resist the influence of biotechnological marketing.