Self-Improvement

Starred review from April 25, 2022
In this stimulating treatise, Coeckelbergh (The Political Philosophy of AI), a philosophy professor at the University of Vienna, looks at how technology has contributed to a harmful individualistic culture of self-betterment. Consulting thinkers from Erasmus to Marx to Foucault, Coeckelbergh chronicles how social and technological changes have resulted in “a neoliberal and capitalist system that lives on our unhappiness and channels our attention to individual self-help and self-improvement as opposed to social change.” The author traces this atomistic view of self-improvement back to the Greek stoics and follows its manifestations through Enlightenment humanists, boundary-pushing hippies, and modern technocrats. Today, social media heightens the pressure to demonstrate one’s authenticity, often conflating it with consumer choice: “Authentic selves need authentic products.” In this environment, Coeckelbergh writes, artificial intelligence “confronts us with the claim that it knows us better than ourselves,” quantifying our steps, online purchases, and sleep cycles and changing how one understands the self. To combat the cycle of discontentment, the author recommends focusing on societal problems and taking inspiration from ancient and non-Western conceptions of selfhood. The provocative thesis intrigues and persuades, and is supported by a cogent analysis of how capitalism and individualism intersect disastrously in the self-help industry. This scintillating “anti–self-help guide” is bold and convincing.