Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-04T23:31:48.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Ethical Individual: An Historical Alternative to Contemporary Conceptions of the Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Amy R. McCready
Amy R. McCready*
Affiliation:
Bucknell University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article I offer an historically situated model of the self as an alternative to liberal, communitarian, and Foucauldian conceptions. Through the example of John Milton, I show that the conscience gave rise to a self that was jointly individual and ethical. By participating in public debates at the behest of his conscience, Milton recognized himself as an individual possessor of moral authority. Conscience thus liberated Milton from traditional identifications and beliefs as it bound him to act for his society. The self founded on conscience therefore differs from both communitarian and liberal variants. Moreover, whereas conscience in the Foucauldian account renders the self docile, it empowers the self in my account. I conclude that the self predicated on conscience challenges the divisions between private and public realms, self-regarding and prosocial actions, and self-creating and culturally determined persons.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 90 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 90 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alejandro, Roberto. 1993. “Rawls' Communitarianism.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 23:75–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arblaster, Anthony. 1984. The Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Nancy, and Tennenhouse, Leonard. 1992. The Imaginary Puritan: Literature, Intellectual Labor, and the Origins of Personal Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Barker, Arthur E. 1942. Milton and the Puritan Dilemma, 1641–1660. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Barker, Francis. 1984. The Tremulous Private Body: Essays on Subjection. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Baylor, Michael G. 1977. Action and Person: Conscience in Late Scholasticism and the Young Luther. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Brisman, Leslie. 1973. Milton's Poetry of Choice and Its Romantic Heirs. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, Charles Lloyd. 1986. God's Caress: The Psychology of Puritan Religious Experience. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Coles, Romand. 1992. Self/Power/Other: Political Theory and Dialogical Ethics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Crittendon, Jack. 1992. Beyond Individualism: Reconstituting the Liberal Self. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Donagan, Barbara. 1983. “Godly Choice: Puritan Decision-Making in Seventeenth-Century England.” Harvard Theological Review 76:307–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fallon, Stephen M. 1988. “‘To Act or Not’: Milton's Conception of Divine Freedom.” Journal of the History of Ideas 49:425–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fish, Stanley. 1972. Self-consuming Artifacts. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish. Trans. Sheridan, Alan. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1988. “Technologies of the Self.” In Technologies of the Self, ed. Martin, Luther H., Gutman, Huck, and Hutton, Patrick H.. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1990. An Introduction. Vol. 1 of The History of Sexuality. Trans. Hurley, Robert. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. 1991. Feminism without Illusions: A Critique of Individualism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Frazer, Elizabeth, and Lacey, Nicola. 1993. The Politics of Community. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Gelpi, Donald L., ed. 1989. Beyond Individualism: Toward a Retrieval of Moral Discourse in America. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Graham, Elspeth, Hinds, Hilary, Hobby, Elaine, and Wilcox, Helen, eds. 1989. Her Own Life: Autobiographical Writings by Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Greene, Robert A. 1991. “Synderesis, the Spark of Conscience, in the English Renaissance.” Journal of the History of Ideas 52:195–219.Google Scholar
Haller, William. 1955. Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Hekman, Susan. 1992. “The Embodiment of the Subject: Feminism and the Communitarian Critique of Liberalism.” Journal of Politics 54:1098–1119.Google Scholar
Helgerson, Richard. 1983. Self-crowned Laureates: Spenser, Jonson, Milton, and the Literary System. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hill, Christopher. 1975. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Hill, Christopher. 1980. The Experience of Defeat: Milton and Some Contemporaries. London: Faber & Faber.Google Scholar
Ketcham, Frank. 1987. Individualism and Public Life: A Modern Dilemma. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kishlansky, Mark A. 1981. “Consensus Politics and the Structure of Debate at Putney.” Journal of British Studies 20:50–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leites, Edmund. 1980. “On the Origins of Some Modern Ideas of Conscience: The Cambridge Platonists.” Andover Newton Quarterly 20:181–90.Google Scholar
Loewenstein, David. 1990. “Milton and the Poetics of Defense.” In Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics in Milton's Prose, ed. Loewenstein, David and Turner, James Grantham. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Luhmann, Niklas. 1986. “The Individuality of the Individual: Historical Meanings and Contemporary Problems.” In Reconstructing Individualism, ed. Heller, Thomas C., Sosna, Morton, and Wellbury, David E.. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Lukes, Steven. 1973. Individualism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
McCready, Amy R. 1992. “Milton's Casuistry: The Case of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 22:393–428.Google Scholar
McCready, Amy R. 1993. “Revelation and Recollection in A Mask.” Bucknell University. Typescript.Google Scholar
McDonald, Michael. 1981. Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1984. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Macpherson, C. B. 1962. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, Toby. 1993. The Well-tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture, and the Postmodern Subject. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Milton, John. 1959. Complete Prose Works of John Milton. 8 vols. Ed. Wolfe, Don M.. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Morrill, John, Slack, Paul, and Woolf, Daniel, eds. 1993. Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nederman, Cary. 1992. “Freedom, Community, and Function: Communitarian Lessons of Medieval Political Theory.” American Political Science Review 86:977–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, William R. 1940. Milton's Contemporary Reputation. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.Google Scholar
Parker, William R. 1968. Milton: A Biography. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Sandel, Michael J. 1982. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sawday, Jonathan. 1990. “‘Mysteriously Divided’: Civil War, Madness, and the Divided Self.” In Literature and the English Civil War, ed. Healy, Thomas and Sawday, Jonathan. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stevens, Paul. 1988. “Discontinuities in Milton's Early Public Self-Representation.” Huntington Library Quarterly 51:261–80.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1992. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tentler, Thomas N. 1977. Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Keith. 1993. “Cases of Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England.” In Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Morrill, John, Slack, Paul, and Woolf, Daniel. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tully, James. 1988. “Governing Conduct.” In Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, ed. Leites, Edmund. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 1965. The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 1987. Interpretation and Social Criticism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 1990. “The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism.” Political Theory 18:6–23.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 1994. Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Webber, Joan. 1968. The Eloquent ‘I’. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Trans. Parsons, Talcott. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.Google Scholar
Wilcox, Helen. 1990. “Exploring the Language of Devotion in the English Revolution.” In Literature and the English Civil War, ed. Healy, Thomas and Sawday, Jonathan. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wittreich, Joseph. 1974. “‘The Crown of Eloquence’: The Figure of the Orator in Milton's Prose Works.” In Achievements of the Left Hand, ed. Lieb, Michael and Shawcross, John T.. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.