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From what I know about authenticity, it was something that you either used for art, or it was talking about how special someone was. Looking into it, I realized that it is a lot more philosophical than I originally thought.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, people were deciding that a person shouldn’t be defined by their social status. A social status being their cause to marry another person, defining what they can or cannot say, and what would determine their whole lives. If you were in a well known, rich family then you would usually marry into another rich family and then hold a prestigious position in society.
During this time, people were realizing that they shouldn’t be a social status but a human being with interests and personal choice.
This became known as authenticity.
Descartes, a French philosopher, determined that authenticity was a moral inner voice inside of a particular person. Another philosopher said that authenticity was being defined by your experiences and how you interpret them.
Although they sound different, they are the same and mean that you as a person are making decisions not based on the people around you, but on your own experiences.
But wait, there’s more.
In a Stanford Encyclopedia, it goes one step further to differentiate between autonomy and authenticity.
Autonomy is almost like authenticity because it is about self-determination and self-governance. You make laws for yourself that will be morally correct for you and your experiences.
Authenticity is different from autonomy because it brings feelings into the mix. With authenticity, your feelings and desires should sometimes outweigh the self-governing laws that you have set for yourself.
This is where it gets a little more difficult.
Once you have these rules, you have to know what your “true self” is. This is so you can make choices so you won’t betray yourself or reduce yourself to nothing by making a choice that isn’t in line with who you are.
This means that in order to be completely authentic, you have to achieve autonomy and undo the conditioning that society, culture, religion, and everyday life has “put” on you just so you can find out what type of person you want to be without anyone’s influence.
But, this type of authenticity is the only definition.
Authenticity could also be a choice that resonates with you without the autonomy looming over your head. The only problem with this is that in order to be authentic you would have to come to the self-realization of who you are and what choices are authentic and not.
There are times when a person knows exactly who they are, what they are meant to do, and what choices are authentic. To those who know that (and that is a whole other topic I won’t go into) that is something that is great since most people don’t know how to do that.
Authenticity is hard to understand. Because it has to do with philosophy there are many thoughts and understandings as to what it truly is and how we can better live authentic lives.
There is also their debate about whether true authenticity exists. Next week I will talk more about that since I would love to see both sides and determine which I think is the most accurate. Until then, you can check out the article “The Debate over Authenticity” in which I talked about whether true authenticity exists in art.
As this topic was really hard to understand and I may not have done it justice, go check out the links that I put in. The Standford one was very interesting but hard to understand. If you want something a little interesting I would recommend the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy which I have linked here.
Thanks so much for reading! Please comment down below what you believe authenticity is and if exists. If you find a good resource for me to look at on the topic I would love to read it and gain a better understanding.