A Small Defence of the Use of the Term Authenticity:
Sincerity and Social Mobility No one has mentioned how the notion of authenticity contrasts with the notion of sincerity. Or why anyone would choose to use one word rather than another in a specific philosophical context. One question that should be asked: What does a person or philosopher "gain" and where is the "gain" by using the word "authenticity", with all of its connotations and resonances, that you wouldn't gain by using the word "sincerity," with its connotations and resonances?
First I want to distinguish the general cultural use of these terms from the specific philosophical-literary use. The general cultural use of the term "sincerity," which only enters the English language at the beginning of the 16th century and only entered the French language in the 15th century, had many "class" connotations that are lost to us today. The philosophical-literary use of the term sincerity gains momentum in the Enlightenment. The sixteenth century in France, but especially in England, was obsessed with problems of dissimulation, feigning, and pretence. But this obsession seemed to have been largely directed to anxiety about "class" and "status," especially suspicion of the class and status of strangers. These questions do not arise without a certain amount of social and geographical mobility. Some have proposed that the obsession with "sincerity" arises from this increase in mobility. It is a consequence of the fact that a person's "authenticity" is no longer guaranteed by kinship reciprocal relations of the village or by known class and status relations certified by Kings and peers. In other words, personal sincerity is looked at as the guarantee for social authenticity in a society where there is social and geographical mobility.
Notice even at the beginning of the use of the term "sincerity" there is a authenticity/sincerity dialectic. I can't cover everything in this email but the dialectic of sincerity/authenticity worked its way into the political-religious culture in some part through the radical Protestants. With the Calvinists and the Anabaptists there is a direct connection to larger political and philosophical traditions and how the sincerity/authenticity dialectic migrates as both a political and existential notion.
The Beginning of the Literary/Philosophical Dialectic of Authenticity/Sincerity:
In a discussion with Simon Critchely about Diderot's "Rameau's Nephew", Critchley once pointed out that the dialectic between sincerity and authenticity is one of the "dark matters" of Enlightenment thinking. One cannot read Diderot's "Rameau's Nephew" or Rousseau's "Confessions" without pondering how notions of sincerity are working through their thinking. The notion is the under-current of Enlightenment thinkers that is picked up and foregrounded among Romantic writers. One only needs to think of the uses of "sincerity" by Wordsworth and Shelley in the English tradition and Goethe in Germany. Perhaps Carrol can reflect on the dialectic between notions of sincerity/authenticity in Wordsworth but my reading of The Prelude tells me that Wordsworth looks at authenticity as an artists relation to self and beauty. It is with Wordsworth that I mostly see that sincerity as a value elides into authenticity as a value. It is about this time that in the poets the idea of authenticity takes on an ant-modern tinge. Strangely, this comes through the idea of strength and begins to take on an ontological meaning. An artist is "strong" if he is true to his (sic) own being. It is the strength of the self to create beauty, to remain true to the authentic artistic project of creating the self as a work of art. I do not know as much about German Romanticism as I do about Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc, but from what I have read the same ideas about strength and the sentiment of being allied itself with notions of authenticity in Germany also.
Perhaps Chris (if he doesn't think I am too stupid in making these sketchy comments) can confirm that culturally Heidegger derives some of his own ideas about authenticity from the radical Protestants (perhaps filtered through the Lutheran tradition) and the notions of Romantic poets. The point here is that the relation between sincerity and authenticity in Romantic literature begins to turn the original notions inside out. Sincerity becomes a kind of "imitation" of authenticity, a social mask that can easily lead to hypocrisy.
In Lionel Trilling's interesting book "Sincerity and Authenticity" from which I derive some these reflections, he makes the following observation:
-- "The word 'authenticity' comes so readily to the tongue these days and in so many connections that it may very well resist such efforts of definitions as I shall later make, but I think for the present I can rely on its suggesting a more strenuous moral experience than 'sincerity' does, a more exigent conception of the self and of what being true to it consists in, a wider reference to the universe and man's (sic) place in it, and a less acceptant and genial view of the social circumstances of life. At the behest of the criterion of authenticity, much that was once thought to make up the very fabric of culture has come to seem of little account, a mere fantasy or ritual, or downright falsification. Conversely, much that culture traditionally condemned and sought to exclude is accorded a considerable moral authority by reason of the authenticity claimed for it, for example, disorder, violence, unreason. The concept of authenticity can deny art itself, yet at the same time it figures as the dark source of art...." p. 11. --
Trilling's book follows the trace of his reaction to "existential politics", i.e. his confrontation with the "irrationality" of the New Left and Columbia University in 1968. I mention this because I read "Sincerity and Authenticity" as to large extent a political intervention into a literary and philosophical tendency. In the political sense for Trilling the philosophical notion of authenticity is a sort of tyranny of cultural practice.
Personally, I think that there is some psychological sense in speaking about authenticity. But it is nothing that can actually be defined philosophically or used in an exact way. Other notions such as alienation, self-deception, bad faith, and even hypocrisy, can be substituted according to context. The idea that a poet can pay close attention to her own needs of self-development, inner strength of expression, and integrity to her own artistic creation, can be a notion of authenticity. Whether you are acting and writing authentically is something that you have to decide for your-self. For Rousseau, Shelley, and Wordsworth it was the force of social relations that makes a person inauthentic. I am not sure how any definition of authenticity can be anything but a "sense of things," a feeling for self; it certainly can not be a coherent philosophical notion.
(At this point I will stop. I have much to say on the incoherent way that Heidegger uses the concept of authenticity but if Chris actually reads this as I requested, I don't want him to suffer my "ignorant" comments on Heidegger. But I do have a suggestion. Chris, who is a Heidegger scholar, should pay close attention to how and where Heidegger uses the word "possibility", how it is often used in several different ways in the same paragraph, how Heidegger substitutes one meaning for the word "possibility" at one point of a discussion in Being and Time for another meaning in another part of the discussion.)
Jerry Monaco
On 5/17/06, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Last post for day. Doug's watchin' me! Hmmm, maybe
> he's at jury duty... ;)
>
> Examples of inathenticity (lack of coincidence of
> perceived and actual life-possibilities):
>
> The woman who perennially deceives herself about her
> husband's serial infidelity.
>
> The parents who abuse their children and are then
> surprised when their progeny shun them in old age.
>
> The person who again and again tries to solve their
> peoblems by following the latest fad, without
> addressing the actual reasons for their problems (my
> ex-girlfriend's mom comes to mind).
>
> The soldier who steps on the battlefield absolutely
> sure that he's not going to die, because death is
> "something that happens to other people."
>
> Hell, by this point practically anybody who is still
> holding on to the neocon fantasy about Iraq is
> probably being inauthentic. ;)
>
> And so forth.
>
>
> --- Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:
>
>
> > ^^^^
> > CB: May we have an example of a perceived available
> > life-possibility
> > coinciding with the real available
> > life-possibilities ? And an example of
> > them not coinciding ?
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
> >
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> >
>
>
> Nu, zayats, pogodi!
>
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-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/