Abstract
The theses which my following remarks seek to make plausible are: (I) ‘To be authentic’ is not an expressive predicate, but can only be an attribution from another person; as an attribution it is (II) modernity’s response to a dual loss in a moral realm: (IIa) the loss of a plausible conception of a good life and (IIb) the loss of a plausible conception of individuals’ connections to general rules. (III) This response favors the concept of authenticity of a person affirmed as such by others, as the authentic gesture: the utopian moment in which the totality of one’s successful life is revealed as necessarily embedded in universal solidarity with all humans. With these theses I stand in opposition to the most influential theory of authenticity, namely that of Charles Taylor, which above all else has been developed in The Sources of the Self (1989); Taylor’s theory turns and pivots around his assertion that authenticity cannot be comprehensively discussed without addressing the question of a person’s meaningful, successful life.
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Notes
- 1.
Meanwhile, there are some inventories (Noetzel 1999, pp. 17–41; Wentz 2005, pp. 15–23; Knaller and Müller 2005, pp. 40–43; Knaller and Müller 2006, pp. 6–14; Knaller 2007, pp. 7–33) that are admittedly informative; but nevertheless they generate a feeling of helplessness following the lecture because they fail to alleviate the term’s confusion.
- 2.
It arises above all in appeals such as “Be authentic!”; here one is reminded of something similar to Watzlawick’s famous “Be spontaneous!”.
- 3.
Certainly a person can retrospectively participate in a discussion about their (prior) authenticity.
- 4.
If one wishes to contend that such individuals are indeed authentic, Callicles from Plato’s Gorgias would be the first authentic individual. The point of departure into authenticity, beginning with Kierkegaard’s burst of authenticity, is the figure of the normative outlaw: one can only fully realize oneself if, above all, one emancipates oneself from all norms entirely. Only then can one—as with Plato’s allegorical cave—begin to retreat back on the road to normativity. The Heideggerian variant to this same figure rejects the path backwards in the name of ‘authenticity.’
- 5.
Flouting conventions is not decisive for determining authenticity: There are authentic subjects who are quite conventional and others who are not at all.
- 6.
At no point does Taylor cite Trilling’s work in The Sources of the Self; yet in The Malaise of Modernity (1991, p. 22 f.), there is a downright vague, although still apparent, formulation that accepts Trilling’s distinction between sincerity and authenticity.
- 7.
The difference between contractualism, utilitarianism, and deontology within action ethics is not important for my following reflections.
- 8.
Thus the punctuation of the feeling of happiness in the Enlightenment is irrelevant for the concept of authenticity developed here.
- 9.
Finally, classical utilitarianism could not be conceived without the punctuation of the feeling of happiness; this certainly does not apply to Singer’s preference utilitarianism.
- 10.
Perhaps the model of interpretation in the performative arts is fitting for the description of the authentic moment and the authentic style: the norm is the musical score, and authenticity its individual interpretations. The musical score betrays its performative purpose only up until a certain point, and after that the rest depends on the performer. If a moral norm is understood as analogous to a musical score, then it exists without any interpretation only abstractly.
- 11.
Regarding the practical power of judgments, see in particular Critique of Practical Reason, 119–126.
- 12.
- 13.
Knaller (2007, p. 24) is imprecise regarding this point when she sees a performative contradiction in the sentence “I want to be authentic (in my actions and communications, in my statements about myself)”; this sentence is not quite a self-attribution of authenticity, but is rather a formulation of the need to be authentic.
- 14.
“[This cast of thought] suppresses so many questions and hides so many confusions that one cannot but experience it as intellectually asphyxiating, once one has escaped, even partially, from its spell” (Taylor 1989, p. 98).
- 15.
Amoral—though not necessarily unconventional—gestures, however, serve only as a predictable, previously-determined codex.
- 16.
In its foundational structure, this determination resembles Hans-Otto Hügels determination of the ‘authentic moment’ (which is certainly formulated without any moral implications); compare Hügel 1997, pp. 54–58.
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Strub, C. (2020). Authentic Gestures: Modern Authenticity as Utopian Affirmation rather than Self-Articulation. 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_8
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