Abstract
Intuitively, a person who acts authentically, i.e. who stays true to herself, inspires (at least a certain amount of) admiration regardless of whether the self she stays true to has admirable qualities or not. In this article I explore whether this intuition can be substantiated or—put differently—whether we should consider authenticity as such to be good or valuable. To do so, I first clarify what I mean by acting authentically and which notion of the self my conception of authenticity relies on. I go on to show that acting authentically is good insofar it is pleasurable and constitutive of being self-respecting. I also discuss whether acting authentically is conducive to acting courageously and autonomously. Here it will transpire that the connection between authenticity and courage as well as autonomy is much weaker and only holds for specific self-conceptions. I conclude that even though authentic action is valuable in some respect, it can also be problematic depending on the self-conception the authentic agent stays true to.
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Notes
- 1.
By assuming that a person is authentic if enough of her actions are, I am subscribing to what could be called an additive understanding of authenticity. Several authors have taken a similar stance regarding personal autonomy, but phrased the idea in terms of local autonomy (i.e. the autonomy of particular actions) vs. global autonomy (i.e. the autonomy of an agent which depends on the autonomy of her actions). Cf. Oshana (1998, p. 92).
- 2.
To do so, I would have to draw on considerations far beyond the issue of authenticity, for instance on the metaphysical commitments of the different understandings of the self as well as on their implications for the theory of action, philosophy of mind etc.
- 3.
I do not discuss the connection between authenticity and self-knowledge since Nadja El Kassar examines the issues surrounding it in much more detail in this volume. For another assessement of this connection, cf. Feldman and Hazlett (2013).
- 4.
For instance, Aristotle claims that courage is something we can only manifest in ethically admirable actions. He does so because for him courage is an ethical virtue (cf. Aristotle 2002, Book III, Chap. 11).
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Bratu, C. (2020). What Is Good about Being Authentic?. In: Brüntrup, G., Reder, M., Gierstl, L. (eds) Authenticity. Studien zur Interdisziplinären Anthropologie. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-29661-2_6
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