Are you authentic?

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Group: Second Philosophy
Discussion leader: Sojourna Alexandre / Kathryn Koromilas
Where: Open Habitat, Second Life
When: Sunday, 28 September, 2008
Time: 9pm GMT / 1pm SLT
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So you think you are authentic?
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I challenge you to prove to the discussion crowd just how authentic you are!

We are human beings who tend to value:

- authenticity (for a definition, see below) over -inauthenticity
- being what we are over being something we are not
- truth over deception
- meaning over bullshit
- whole and integrated selves over fragmented selves

It all started with Socrates saying that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Ever since then, we have attached value to things that give meaning to our lives, to personal freedom and responsibility, to living lives that we author, to being authentic!

The odd thing is, that we find ourselves “thrown” into this human existence with the seemingly impossible dilemma of:
a) choosing to live our own life
or b) having our life chosen for us.

Philosophers like Søren Kierkegaard, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre and Walter Kaufmann, amongst others, have all at one time or another been problematised by the question of authenticity.

Authenticity is a notion that refers to living with the attitude that:

- I freely and fully engage in life, activities and other projects and I engage in these projects as my own,
- I am the author of my own life,
- I act in a way that reflects my genuine beliefs and desires.

Quite simply, authenticity is about choosing to live your own life and about creating meaning in what seems to be a universal void of absolute meaning and reassurance that our lives have any real meaning beyond what we can forge.

Albert Camus, for example, had a hard time trying to reconcile this desire for an authentic and meaningful living in the face of the ultimate futility of human existence, after all, whatever we do, create, build or learn in this life ends when we die. So what’s the point? This paradox of human existence Camus called the Absurd. He concluded however that human beings are able to create their own meaning in the world. Existentialism is about the individual’s response and reaction to living in this world and authenticity is the mode of living according to your genuine beliefs, desires and sense of free will.

The opposite – living inauthentically – is when I am deceiving myself, and living in bad faith (see below for definition of bad faith).

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QUESTIONS
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How authentic are you? To answer this, first take the authenticity test, below, and then support your score with your own knee-jerk reaction to the notion of living authentically. This test is obviously just for fun and to help kick off the discussion, but did it offer any insight into this topic and to your personal and philosophical response to the goal of authentic living? Is there are difference between the examined life and the authentic life?

Is it even actually possible to live authentically? Personal morality, responsibility and meaning-creation is the core of authentic living, and according to the existentialists the individual is ultimately alone in determining how to live their life in spite of all the external influences (culture, pace of living, technology). One way of determining authentic action, is to judge whether you would act in a particular way, or desire something, or believe something, if no one else was around to influence you. So, can we live authentic lives?

Why do we value being authentic, anyway? We do we desire to live authentic lives? What is wrong with being in-authentic, un-real and fake? What is wrong with being dishonest with or to ourselves?

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Some definitions from the Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names http://www.philosophypages.com/dy
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AUTHENTICITY
Self-conscious appropriation of the conditions of one’s own existence and identity. According to Heidegger, such deliberate reflection about the goals and values of life is the only successful response to the experience of Angst without falling into self-deception.

ANGST
German word for the anxiety or anguish produced by an acute awareness of the implications of human freedom. An important notion for existentialist philosophers, including especially Kierkegaard and Heidegger.

SELF-DECEPTION
Avoidance or outright denial of unpleasant aspects of reality, especially those which might otherwise warrant an unfavorable opinion about ourselves. Thus, for example, the wishful thought, “I’m not really addicted to nicotine; I could quit smoking any time.” is clearly self-deceptive.

Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre condemned self-deception as bad faith, or an inauthentic response to the anxiety produced by contemplation of human freedom.

Although most of us retrospectively acknowledge the role of such a practice in our own lives, it isn’t clear what makes it possible for a single person to be both deceived and deceiver. How can I both know the truth and yet keep it from myself at the same time? Unless the deception is entirely unconscious, there must be some degree of willful disregard of the evidence that I suspect would lead to the unpleasant truth I would rather not face.

BAD FAITH
In the philosophy of Sartre, an effort to avoid anxiety by denying the full extent of one’s own freedom. Bad faith, on this view, is an especially harmful variety of self-deception, since it forestalls authentic appropriation of responsibility for ourselves.

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READINGS
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Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy entry on Existentialism, Authenticity paragraph: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/#2.3

Wikipedia entry on Authenticity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticity_(philosophy)

Articles by Anthony Hatzimoysis for the New Statesman:

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-faith-column/2007/11/existentialism-philosophical
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-faith-column/2007/11/existentialist-living-final

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The authenticity test.
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Take the following authenticity test, adapted from “Becoming More Authentic: The Positive Side of Existentialism,” by James Park, found here: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/AU.html

For each answer, give yourself a score based on the following scale:
[very much—3 points somewhat—2 points very little—1 point none—0]

1. To what degree do I still copy other human beings?
[very much—3 points somewhat—2 points very little—1 point none—0]

2. Do I acknowledge that some of my past choices were enculturated?
[very much—3 points somewhat—2 points very little—1 point none—0]

3. Am I actively resisting the expectations of other people in order to pursue values and purposes I consider more important?
[very much—3 points somewhat—2 points very little—1 point none—0]

4. Have I started to re-create or re-invent myself, centring my new being around purposes I have freely chosen?
[very much—3 points somewhat—2 points very little—1 point none—0]

5. Have I created my own means of making a living? Choose one:
I have resisted holding a job in order to devote myself to more important purposes—3 points
I have created a brand new occupation in which I can pursue my Authentic project-of-being—3 points
I have modified an existing occupation to be more Authentic—2 points
I have a job that leaves little room for Authenticity—0 points