Difference between revisions of "Authenticity (philosophy)" - New World Encyclopedia
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The concept of authenticity has been discussed in diverse ways throughout philosophical history. For example, [[Socrates]]'s such dictum as "Unexamined life is not worth living," "Know yourself," can be seen as his attempt of leading others to the discovery of the authentic self and way of life. [[Kierkegaard]] found the loss of the genuine self in the mass in society and tried to present the process of recovering the authenticity within [[theism|theistic]] contexts. Other existential thinkers such as [[Nietzsche]], [[Pascal]], [[Heidegger]], [[Karl Jaspers]], and [[Sartre]] equally discussed the issue of authenticity and developed various ways to deal with the issue. | The concept of authenticity has been discussed in diverse ways throughout philosophical history. For example, [[Socrates]]'s such dictum as "Unexamined life is not worth living," "Know yourself," can be seen as his attempt of leading others to the discovery of the authentic self and way of life. [[Kierkegaard]] found the loss of the genuine self in the mass in society and tried to present the process of recovering the authenticity within [[theism|theistic]] contexts. Other existential thinkers such as [[Nietzsche]], [[Pascal]], [[Heidegger]], [[Karl Jaspers]], and [[Sartre]] equally discussed the issue of authenticity and developed various ways to deal with the issue. | ||
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| + | Those philosophers build the element of authenticity into their own philosophical thought and configure it according to central themes of their works. Accordingly, the way each philosopher dealt with authenticity is different and expositions of their views of authenticity are not straightforward. | ||
The term "eigentlich" (authentic) in German contains the element of "eigen" (one's own). Authenticity, thus, includes the element of "one's own unique self." Accordingly, recovery of authenticity, at least in German, implies the recovery of one's own unique identity. When existential thinkers speak of authenticity, they often include this element and contrast the unique self against the concept of mass, in which individual is no more than just a number. | The term "eigentlich" (authentic) in German contains the element of "eigen" (one's own). Authenticity, thus, includes the element of "one's own unique self." Accordingly, recovery of authenticity, at least in German, implies the recovery of one's own unique identity. When existential thinkers speak of authenticity, they often include this element and contrast the unique self against the concept of mass, in which individual is no more than just a number. | ||
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* Requires authenticity among its citizens to exist, ''or'' | * Requires authenticity among its citizens to exist, ''or'' | ||
* Would remove physical and economic barriers to pursuing authenticity. | * Would remove physical and economic barriers to pursuing authenticity. | ||
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| + | == Kierkegaard== | ||
| + | Kierkegaard criticized the philosophical systems that were brought on by philosophers such as [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]] before him and the Danish Hegelians, although Kierkegaard respected the philosophy of [[Immanuel Kant]].<ref name="Kant">Green, Ronald M. ''Kierkegaard and Kant: The Hidden Debt''. SUNY Press, 1992, ISBN 0791411079</ref> He measured himself against the model of philosophy which he found in Socrates, which aims to draw one's attention not to explanatory systems, but rather to the issue of how one exists.<ref>See for example, ''Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments'': "''Socrates' infinite merit is to have been an ''existing'' thinker, not a speculative philosopher who forgets what it means to exist. ... The infinite merit of the Socratic position was precisely to accentuate the fact that the knower is an existing individual, and that the task of existing is his essential task.''" Swenson/Lowrie translation (1941), p.184-5.</ref> | ||
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| + | One of Kierkegaard's recurrent themes is the importance of subjectivity, which has to do with the way people relate themselves to (objective) truths. In ''[[Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments]]'', he argues that "subjectivity is truth" and "truth is subjectivity." What he means by this is that most essentially, truth is not just a matter of discovering objective facts. While objective facts are important, there is a second and more crucial element of truth, which involves how one relates oneself to those matters of fact. Since how one acts is, from the ethical perspective, more important than any matter of fact, truth is to be found in subjectivity rather than objectivity.<ref name="Hong">Hong, Howard V. and Edna H. "Subjectivity/Objectivity." ''Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers''. Vol. 4. Indiana University Press, 1975, ISBN 0253182433 p. 712-13.</ref> | ||
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==Culture and authenticity== | ==Culture and authenticity== | ||
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=== Authenticity and critique to modern cultures === | === Authenticity and critique to modern cultures === | ||
| − | + | These considerations aside, it is the case that authenticity has been associated with various human activities. For Sartre, [[Jazz]] music, for example, was a representation of freedom; this may have been in part because Jazz was associated with [[African-American]] culture, and was thus in opposition to Western culture generally, which Sartre considered hopelessly inauthentic. [[Theodor Adorno]], however, another writer and philosopher concerned with the notion of authenticity, despised Jazz music because he saw it as a false representation that could give the appearance of authenticity but that was as much bound up in concerns with appearance and audience as many other forms of art. Heidegger in his later life associated authenticity with non-technological modes of existence, seeing technology as distorting a more "authentic" relationship with the natural world. | |
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| − | These considerations aside, it is the case that authenticity has been associated with various human activities. For Sartre, [[Jazz]] music was a representation of freedom; this may have been in part because Jazz was associated with [[African-American]] culture, and was thus in opposition to Western culture generally, which Sartre considered hopelessly inauthentic. [[Theodor Adorno]], however, another writer and philosopher concerned with the notion of authenticity, despised Jazz music because he saw it as a false representation that could give the appearance of authenticity but that was as much bound up in concerns with appearance and audience as many other forms of art. Heidegger in his later life associated authenticity with non-technological modes of existence, seeing technology as distorting a more "authentic" relationship with the natural world. | ||
Most writers on inauthenticity in the [[twentieth century]] considered the predominant cultural norms to be inauthentic; not only because they were seen as forced on people, but also because, in themselves, they required people to behave inauthentically towards their own desires, obscuring true reasons for acting. [[Advertising]], in as much as it attempted to give people a reason for doing something that they did not already possess, was a "textbook" example of how Western culture distorted the individual for external reasons. Race relations are seen as another limit on authenticity, as they demand that the self engage with others on the basis of external attributes. An early example of the connection between inauthenticity and capitalism was made by [[Karl Marx]], whose notion of "[[Marx's theory of alienation|alienation]]" can be linked to the later discourse on the nature of inauthenticity. | Most writers on inauthenticity in the [[twentieth century]] considered the predominant cultural norms to be inauthentic; not only because they were seen as forced on people, but also because, in themselves, they required people to behave inauthentically towards their own desires, obscuring true reasons for acting. [[Advertising]], in as much as it attempted to give people a reason for doing something that they did not already possess, was a "textbook" example of how Western culture distorted the individual for external reasons. Race relations are seen as another limit on authenticity, as they demand that the self engage with others on the basis of external attributes. An early example of the connection between inauthenticity and capitalism was made by [[Karl Marx]], whose notion of "[[Marx's theory of alienation|alienation]]" can be linked to the later discourse on the nature of inauthenticity. | ||
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| − | {{credit|Authenticity_(philosophy)|168418593}} | + | {{credit|Authenticity_(philosophy)|168418593|Philosophy_of_Søren_Kierkegaard|177100088}} |
Revision as of 14:34, 11 December 2007
Authenticity is a philosophical concept that denotes the genuine, original, true state of human existence. The concept arises from the insights that human beings generally live or exist in inauthentic way and the genuine self and one's genuine relationships with others (God and/or other people) are lost. The authentic life is often described as a life of freedom, joy, meaning, value, happiness.
Religious traditions generally contain the insights for authenticity. They have teachings to restore authentic self and society. In philosophy, the concept has also been discussed by many thinkers throughout philosophical history, and it was thematised by Existentialists. From their perspective, social relationships, cultural values and norms are generally inauthentic and the attempt of discovering the authentic self requires radical reexamination of and even transcendence from the whole cultural contexts and habitual life style and ways of thinking.
Religious perspective
Religions traditions generally have a concept of authenticity. Based upon the insight that human beings are vulnerable to various temptations, religions offer teachings, practical methodologies, rituals, trainings, institutionalized mechanism, and other ways to allow human beings to recover authentic self and life. The concept of salvation, for example, is build upon the idea that there is some authentic state of being.
The concept of authenticity can be applied to almost all key concepts in religious teachings. It functions as the concept to distinguish religious ideals from secular notions. For example, religious teachings often distinguish genuine happiness, which is built upon spiritual awakening or oneness with the divine or some other spiritual elements, from secular happiness built upon material wealth and secular values alone. Genuine joy is also distinguished from hedonistic pleasure in pejorative sense. Even genuine love is distinguished from secular notion of love. Authenticity thus separates and establishes the religious realm or the sacred realm in sharp contrast with mundane or secular realm.
Religious teachings are, in a sense, attempts to present authenticity to the world, thereby the world is distinguished into the sacred and the secular. Religious teachings are in this sense radically challenges to people who otherwise live as they are without even questioning the way they live.
Philosophical perspectives
The concept of authenticity has been discussed in diverse ways throughout philosophical history. For example, Socrates's such dictum as "Unexamined life is not worth living," "Know yourself," can be seen as his attempt of leading others to the discovery of the authentic self and way of life. Kierkegaard found the loss of the genuine self in the mass in society and tried to present the process of recovering the authenticity within theistic contexts. Other existential thinkers such as Nietzsche, Pascal, Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, and Sartre equally discussed the issue of authenticity and developed various ways to deal with the issue.
Those philosophers build the element of authenticity into their own philosophical thought and configure it according to central themes of their works. Accordingly, the way each philosopher dealt with authenticity is different and expositions of their views of authenticity are not straightforward.
The term "eigentlich" (authentic) in German contains the element of "eigen" (one's own). Authenticity, thus, includes the element of "one's own unique self." Accordingly, recovery of authenticity, at least in German, implies the recovery of one's own unique identity. When existential thinkers speak of authenticity, they often include this element and contrast the unique self against the concept of mass, in which individual is no more than just a number.
General characteristics
If authenticity can only be described in very abstract terms, or as the negative of inauthenticity, what can be said about it directly? All writers generally agree that authenticity is:
- Something to be pursued as a goal intrinsic to "the good life."
- Intrinsically difficult, due in part to social pressures to live inauthentically, and in part due to a person's own character.
- A revelatory state, where one perceives oneself, other people, and sometimes even things, in a radically new way.
One might add that many, though not all, writers have agreed that authenticity also:
- Requires self-knowledge.
- Alters radically one's relationships with others (God and/or people).
- Carries with it its own set of moral obligations.
The notion of authenticity also fits in to utopian ideas, in as much as many believe that a utopia:
- Requires authenticity among its citizens to exist, or
- Would remove physical and economic barriers to pursuing authenticity.
Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard criticized the philosophical systems that were brought on by philosophers such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel before him and the Danish Hegelians, although Kierkegaard respected the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.[1] He measured himself against the model of philosophy which he found in Socrates, which aims to draw one's attention not to explanatory systems, but rather to the issue of how one exists.[2]
One of Kierkegaard's recurrent themes is the importance of subjectivity, which has to do with the way people relate themselves to (objective) truths. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, he argues that "subjectivity is truth" and "truth is subjectivity." What he means by this is that most essentially, truth is not just a matter of discovering objective facts. While objective facts are important, there is a second and more crucial element of truth, which involves how one relates oneself to those matters of fact. Since how one acts is, from the ethical perspective, more important than any matter of fact, truth is to be found in subjectivity rather than objectivity.[3]
Culture and authenticity
Secular and religious notions of authenticity have coexisted for centuries under different guises. For these writers, the conscious self is seen as coming to terms with being in a material world and with encountering external forces and influences which are very different from itself; authenticity is one way in which the self acts and changes in response to these pressures.
Authenticity is often "at the limits" of language; it is described as the negative space around inauthenticity, with reference to examples of inauthentic living. Sartre's novels are perhaps the easiest access to this mode of describing authenticity: they often contain characters and anti-heroes who base their actions on external pressures—the pressure to appear to be a certain kind of person, the pressure to adopt a particular mode of living, the pressure to ignore one's own moral and aesthetic objections in order to have a more comfortable existence. His work also includes characters who do not understand their own reasons for acting, or who ignore crucial facts about their own lives in order to avoid uncomfortable truths; this connects his work with the philosophical tradition.
Sartre is concerned also with the "vertiginous" experience of absolute freedom. Under Sartre's view, this experience, necessary for the state of authenticity, can be sufficiently unpleasant that it leads people to inauthentic ways of living.
Authenticity and critique to modern cultures
These considerations aside, it is the case that authenticity has been associated with various human activities. For Sartre, Jazz music, for example, was a representation of freedom; this may have been in part because Jazz was associated with African-American culture, and was thus in opposition to Western culture generally, which Sartre considered hopelessly inauthentic. Theodor Adorno, however, another writer and philosopher concerned with the notion of authenticity, despised Jazz music because he saw it as a false representation that could give the appearance of authenticity but that was as much bound up in concerns with appearance and audience as many other forms of art. Heidegger in his later life associated authenticity with non-technological modes of existence, seeing technology as distorting a more "authentic" relationship with the natural world.
Most writers on inauthenticity in the twentieth century considered the predominant cultural norms to be inauthentic; not only because they were seen as forced on people, but also because, in themselves, they required people to behave inauthentically towards their own desires, obscuring true reasons for acting. Advertising, in as much as it attempted to give people a reason for doing something that they did not already possess, was a "textbook" example of how Western culture distorted the individual for external reasons. Race relations are seen as another limit on authenticity, as they demand that the self engage with others on the basis of external attributes. An early example of the connection between inauthenticity and capitalism was made by Karl Marx, whose notion of "alienation" can be linked to the later discourse on the nature of inauthenticity.
Criticisms of authenticity
Authenticity has its paradoxical components. Sartre illustrated these in his extensive writings, pointing to the conflict between seeing the self as unique and different from the world, but the self is embedded in a world which clearly contains other such beings.
Stated as a doctrine authenticity can be thought to be self-defeating. This is because it is thereby classified and becomes part of the non-self, an object of perhaps methodical study among others. This is opposed to the notion of the individual self which seeks its own solution independently of competing external ideologies.
Another criticism is that the solution to Sartre's difficulties involves some compromise to allow unique individuals to co-exist in a way which is acceptable to all of them. Therefore public ethics or morality may be a limit on authenticity.
Because authenticity is such a slippery concept, and because it can never be rigorously defined, it can be seen as a threat to rationality or to Enlightenment ideas about the transparency of laws.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Lionel Trilling Sincerity and Authenticity; ISBN 0-192-81166-5; Harvard UP 1974
- Charles Taylor The Ethics of Authenticity; ISBN 0-674-26863-6; Harvard UP 1992
- Walter Kaufmann, whose life increasingly focused on a search for authenticity.
- Authentic Business is a non-profit British online community exploring doing business with purpose
- Stagisblog is a blog run by communication consultants discussing the paradoxial idea of the 'authentic organizational identity'
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- ↑ Green, Ronald M. Kierkegaard and Kant: The Hidden Debt. SUNY Press, 1992, ISBN 0791411079
- ↑ See for example, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments: "Socrates' infinite merit is to have been an existing thinker, not a speculative philosopher who forgets what it means to exist. ... The infinite merit of the Socratic position was precisely to accentuate the fact that the knower is an existing individual, and that the task of existing is his essential task." Swenson/Lowrie translation (1941), p.184-5.
- ↑ Hong, Howard V. and Edna H. "Subjectivity/Objectivity." Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers. Vol. 4. Indiana University Press, 1975, ISBN 0253182433 p. 712-13.
