Just Couldn’t Finish Reading: Inventing the Individual – The Origins of Western Liberalism by Larry Siedentop (FP: 2014)

It would be a poor excuse to say that I bought this book by accident because I didn’t. It is, however, almost possible to say that I bought it under false pretences – except for the giveaway comment right in the middle of the front page: A magnificent work of intellectual, psychological and spiritual history. Yup… spiritual history. That I think should have rung a few alarm bells but, sadly, didn’t.

Now what I expected from this book was a start at the transition from religious to secular society in Europe from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and onwards to the Modern age. Instead the book started its exploration of the rise of the individual with Paul on the road to Damascus and him using his conversion to found the Christian church. I’m actually impressed that I lasted around 160 pages before I gave up. I realised I had another 200 to go and, although the narrative had reached Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire at this point, found that I couldn’t bring myself to turn another page.

The book did have an interesting premise – that the idea of God being interested in individual souls and the idea of individual salvation acted like a corrosive force in the Ancient world to slowly, over the centuries, lay the foundations for the concept of the individual - valued for him/her self, self-acting, self-actuating and ultimately responsible for their own actions. What is more that this concept had a number of unintended consequences that helped shape the modern world we live in. On that level it was indeed all very interesting. It was just the early Church history that just wasn’t me. I don’t think that this was a bad book at all. It was closely argued and seemed to make a lot of sense but it was so outside my knowledge, experience or interest that it simply didn’t interest me enough to finish it. Definitely a book for someone far more interested in the founding and early life of the Christian church – just not for me!