I really wanted to begin with the term ‘self-critique’, but the idea of criticism has such a bad press: it is almost always thought of in negative terms. We don’t like criticism and we don’t like ‘critical’ people. But actually we depend massively upon the outcomes of genuine appraisal, evaluation, and that is the actual meaning of critique.
Self-critique is an immensely important habit of life: we can positively live within it and from it. So a more affirmative sense of this notion is the idea of self-reflection, though I mean to include in that the hard aspects of ‘critique’.
Socrates, whose teaching stands behind much of the writings of Plato, said that the unexamined life is not worth living. That is to say, if we are unwilling to stop and think, to ask what we are doing and why, and perhaps is there a better way or something else we really want or need to be doing, our lives will be shallow and scarcely worth living.
Those of us who try to teach need to do this continually. I was fortunate to have as my first Philosophy tutor at the University of Melbourne Dr Anne Jackson, who herself had been taught at Cambridge by the great Ludwig Wittgenstein. She in fact had a habit which I later learned actually came from Wittgenstein. She would interrupt herself while speaking, wring her hands across her face, and say, ‘What am I trying to say?’ As a teacher or writer, that is the fundamental question of self-critique: to ask what we are trying to communicate.
‘Stop and think.’ In the last decade or so, this phrase has been introduced by police and other community leaders, to encourage young people who are drawn towards violence against another person: Before you lash out and perhaps ruin another life and your own, stop and think. That pause may save a life.
This habit of life, self-critique, is not at all negative. It is about considering what we are capable of doing and what we may want to do and be. It is evaluative and therefore asks for truthful and realistic consideration of how things are. Am I achieving what I set out to do? Do I need to change something and if so what? For instance, on one occasion when I might have changed the context of my work, I came to see that it was not the context but my own approach and focus that needed some adjustment.
Self-critique draws upon many of the other habits of life. It requires attention, and truthfulness, and a willingness to learn. I am reminded here of Polonius’ saying to his son Laertes, in Hamlet, ‘to thine own self be true’. That authenticity is grounded in self-reflection, a really strong commitment to truthful self-awareness. Attention.
I think the great danger in this ‘habit’ of life is that we avoid it, by taking upon ourselves the evaluations of others. I once had a student who told me his father had said to him, ‘You will never be any good,’—and with that a crushing comparison with another member of the family. This young man had suffered from that for decades, but now was completing a degree and went on to other achievements, because he found the courage to resist that assertion. He learned to make his own self-evaluation and because of that has been able to affirm many others in their lives and growth as well.
Others imbibe from home or school a sense that they are so much better than their peers or other groups in society. Inherently, they live as superior beings, and expect the world to recognise this and reward them for it.
Of course we depend upon the appraisals of others, in developing an appropriate sense of self. This is where the habit of life we called belonging is crucial. The critical element here is a balance between self-awareness, self-critique, and that support and constructive response from our peers.
There are two elements in the Christian scriptures that have been influential in my own thinking here. One is the affirmation from the Letter to the Romans, chapter 12. verse 3. The context introduces the Apostle’s distinctive image of belonging, a community like a body, made of many members, each having a contribution and gift to offer, and all inter-dependent. Paul writes:
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgement, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.
There are so many interesting things here, such as the idea of a ‘measure of faith’, with may differ and which is ‘assigned’ by God. I won’t pursue that … But this idea of not thinking too highly is so easily, and so unhelpfully, applied as if only to oneself. ‘Don’t get above yourself,’ people in an earlier generation used to say. It does apply to self-awareness, and that is why it leads to the discussion of gifts and mutual contributions. We belong together and we don’t ‘have it all’, on our own.
Positively then, we need to become aware of what we can offer to the community and of what we need others to offer, what we need from them in order for our own contribution to flourish. Whereas this verse (used out of this context) has been used to put people down, sometimes by people to put themselves down, it is actually an encouragement to this positive habit of life: make a sensible, positive assessment, a self-critique that values all that you have been given, as well as what others can also offer you.
A different idea addresses the negative and often frightening idea of judgement, which is actually a word linked to the idea of critique.This is a very complex area of biblical thought, so widely misunderstood and so often used to crush people, to induce guilt and fear.
In the Gospel of John, chapter 3, however, we find a very different idea. Just following a verse widely quoted, affirming God’s love for the world, verse 16, we find what is effectively a ‘turning of the table’ on that idea of divine condemnation—typical of Jesus:
Indeed God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, but people loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God. (John 3. 17 – 21)
There are many complex elements in these verses, which seen in part to assert an Christian exclusiveness, which is evident in John’s Gospel, which I find uncomfortable. But it is balanced by this assertion that it is not God who rejects or condemns people, but their own choices. God wills all to belong, to live in the light, as John puts it. The question then is what does it mean to ‘condemn’ ourselves? The passage might seem to suggest it is about believing, but then it switches to the idea of how we live, whether our deeds are ‘true’—and there is a profound challenge to any who think that faith is about having the right ideas rather than being who we are, living in the truth. That calls for a lot of self-reflection!
This habit of life is deeply challenging, complex, and I suggest never completely clear. That is to say, what it asks of us is a continuous openness to re-assessment, to self-awareness, self-critique, growing and learning, together. And in that humility to live and act in thankfulness for who and what we are and have.
And well we might ask: So where does all this lead. What do we do with our self-reflection? Surely the answer is that we live with and from it. We choose what we want to do and be. That will now lead me to some practical things, as we grow and give.