The Idea of the Autonomous Self Continues to Eat Away at Our Core Being

Descartes was a major player in the slide into the erroneous autonomous self.

I will now close my eyes, I will plug my ears, I will turn aside all my senses … in this way, concerned only with myself, looking only at what is inside me, I will try, little by little, to know myself, and to become more familiar to myself.

Here we have the modern self’s originating gesture, what Henri de Lubac called “the mania of introspection or the search for a static sincerity.” “The farther it goes,” de Lubac insisted, “the more fearful it becomes. It eats into man, disintegrates and destroys him.” William Temple expresses an analogous misgiving when he refers to Descartes’ withdrawal into himself as “the most disastrous moment in the history of Europe.”

From Gil Bailie's THE SUBJECT OF GAUDIUM ET SPES RECLAIMING A CHRISTOCENTRIC ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE HUMAN PERSON