Authenticity (philosophy)

Intelligible descriptions of the abstract concepts that constitute authenticity usually indicate the descriptive limits of language; thus, to describe the negative space surrounding the condition of being inauthentic, examples of inauthentic living illustrate the condition of being an authentic person.[12] To that descriptive end, the novels of Jean-Paul Sartre are in language that makes authenticity conceptually intelligible through the stories of anti-heroic characters, men and women who base their actions upon external, psychological pressures — such as the social pressure to appear to be a certain kind of person; the pressure to adopt a given way of life; and the pressure to prostitute personal integrity (moral values and aesthetic standards) in exchange for the comfort (physical, mental, and moral) of social conformity. The novelist Sartre explains existential philosophy through the stories of men and women who do not understand their own reasoning for acting as they do, people who ignore crucial facts about their own lives, in order to avoid unpleasant facts about being an inauthentic person with an identity defined from outside the self.

Absolute freedom is the vertiginous experience necessary for being an authentic person, yet such freedom can be so unpleasant as to impel people to choose an inauthentic life. As an aspect of authenticity, absolute freedom determines a person’s relation with the real world, a relation not based upon or determined by a system of values or an ideology. In this manner, authenticity is connected with creativity, and the will to act must be born of the person. In that vein, Heidegger speaks of absolute freedom as modes of living determined by personal choice. As a philosopher, Sartre identified, described, and explained what is an inauthentic existence in order to not define what is an authentic mode of living.[13]

Personal authenticity depends upon the person finding an authentic faith, and so be true to himself and to herself. That moral compromises inherent to the ideologies of bourgeois society and Christianity challenge the personal integrity of a person who seeks to live an authentic life, determined by the self.[14] That a mass-culture society diminishes the significance of personal individuality, by way of social “levelling”, which is realised through news media that provide people with beliefs and opinions constructed by someone other than the self. A person can attain authentic faith by facing reality and choosing to live according to the facts of the material world, which is denied by passively accepting religious faith that excludes authentic thought from a person’s world-view.[14] Kierkegaard’s philosophy of existentialism shows that personal authenticity is a personal choice based upon experience of the real world;[14] thus, in Practice in Christianity (1850), Kierkegaard said:

Therefore, it is a risk to preach, for as I go up into that holy place — whether the church is packed or as good as empty, whether I, myself, am aware of it or not, I have one listener more than can be seen, an invisible listener, God in heaven, whom I certainly cannot see, but who truly can see me. . . . Truly, it is a risk to preach! Most people, no doubt, have the idea that to step out on the stage as an actor, to venture into the danger of having all eyes focused on one, is something that requires courage. Yet, in one sense, this danger, like everything on the stage, is an illusion, because the actor, of course, is personally outside it all; his task is precisely to deceive, to dissemble, to represent someone else, and to reproduce, accurately, someone else’s words. The proclaimer of Christian truth, on the other hand, steps forward into a place where, even if the eyes of all are not focused on him, the eye of an omniscient one is. His task is: to be himself, and in a setting, God’s house, which, all eyes and ears, requires only one thing of him — that he should be himself, be true. That he should be true, that is, that he, himself, should be what he proclaims [to be], or at least strive to be that, or at least be honest enough to confess, about himself, that he is not that. . . . How risky it is to be the I who preaches, the one speaking, am I who, by preaching and as he preaches, commits himself unconditionally, displays his life so that, if possible, one could look directly into his soul — to be this I, that is risky!

— Søren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity (1850) pp. 234–235

Personal authenticity can be achieved without religion, which requires accepting pre-determined virtues (eternal valuations) as unquestionably true. In living authentically, a person elevates himself or herself above the mass culture in order to transcend the limits of conventional morality, thereby personally determining what is and what is not good and evil, without the pre-determined virtues of conformity “on account of which we hold our grandfathers in esteem”; an authentic life is achieved by avoiding the “herding animal morality.”[15][16] To “stand alone [is to be] strong and original enough to initiate opposite estimates of value, to transvaluate and invert ‘eternal valuations’.”[15] Common to the existential perspectives of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are “the responsibilities they place on the individual to take active part in the shaping of one’s beliefs, and then to be willing to act on that belief.”[14]

The call of personal authenticity — of being true to one’s self — conceals the chasms between the essential self and the existential self, which are psychologically divergent interpretations of the Self. Essentialist authenticity demands that a person find and follow a prescribed system of values in order to reach a pre-ordained destiny. Existentialist authenticity prescribes to the individual man and woman “determine your destiny!”, by being aware of the absolute freedom to choose. The essentialist person searches for signs of self-betrayal; the existentialist person asks: “How am I not myself?” and answers “Only when I act in bad faith”.[17]

A very different definition of authenticity was proposed by Erich Fromm[18] in the mid-1900s. He considered behavior of any kind, even that wholly in accord with societal mores, to be authentic if it results from personal understanding and approval of its drives and origins, rather than merely from conformity with the received wisdom of the society. Thus a Frommean authentic may behave consistently in a manner that accords with cultural norms, for the reason that those norms appear on consideration to be appropriate, rather than simply in the interest of conforming with current norms. Fromm thus considers authenticity to be a positive outcome of enlightened and informed motivation rather than a negative outcome of rejection of the expectations of others. He described the latter condition – the drive primarily to escape external restraints typified by the "absolute freedom" of Sartre – as "the illusion of individuality",[19] as opposed to the genuine individuality that results from authentic living.