Recommended reading for 16 April discussion group is at this address:

www.kdtamre.com/frankl




Recommended reading for 12 March:

Pages 310-316 from Ernesto Spinelli's book The Interpreted World.

Below you can read a part (pages 310-311) of this text.

(And last month's recommended reading, plus the link to full online text of Heidegger's Time and Being, can still be found at the bottom of this page.)

Authenticity and Inauthenticity

The terms authenticity and inauthenticity, as applied to Heidegger's writings, have caused great confusion and debate as to their meaning, not least because of the implied superiority or genuineness or truthfulness of one term (authenticity) over the other (inauthenticity). Hans Cohn, among others, has argued that the problem has been exacerbated by Heidegger's English translators (Cohn, 2002). In the German original, Heidegger is careful to select the term 'eigentlich' (rather that 'authentisch' which he could have used had he wished to emphasize a meaning paralleling that of the English 'authentic') to express his notion of what has been translated as authenticity. While difficult to translate directly into English, 'eigentlich' expresses the opening up to, or ownership, of what is there. In this sense, Heidegger's use of 'authenticity' refers us to the capacity that each of us has to embrace Being as it presents itself to us as ours. If I open myself to my experience of existing, I own that experience in that it expresses my particular way of engaging with Being. This way of existing confronts me with the understanding of my part in what existence brings to me; it involves and implicates me.

In contrast, Heidegger proposed that an alternate way of being is also open to me. This inauthentic way emerges when I cut myself off from my engagement with Being because this way frightens or upsets or threatens or disturbs views and values and attitudes and assumptions that I hold, and wish to hold onto, regarding how I am to engage with Being and what that engagement may mean. This inauthentic view allows me to disown any sense of 'owned' involvement with or responsibility for what presents itself to my experience. I might deny that experience by surpressing it, for example, or by rejecting that it is mine in some way. This stance throws me into a way of being that is detached from what is there for me. As Mary Warnock expresses it, in leading an inauthentic existence:

man ignores the reality of his own relation to the world. There is an ambiguity in his dealings with reality. He partly knows what things are, but partly does not, because he is so entirely caught up in the way other people see them, the labels attached to them by the world at large. He cannot straightforwardly form any opinion, and his statements are partly his own, partly those of people in general. (Warnock, 1970/1979: 57)

As inauthentic beings, we interpret ourselves as reactive victims to experience. This other-focused or 'they-self', as inauthenticity has been presented by various English-language commentators on Heidegger (Cooper, 2003; Macquarrie,1972), has found the means to diminish, if not disengage completely, from the disturbing or anxiety-provoking implications of existence that present themselves. But in doing so, the inauthentic they-self has also imposed a way of being whereby 'it loses what it owns' (Cohn, 2002: 87).

For Heidegger, both authenticity and inauthenticity are human givens of existence. Our capacity for either is a universal attribute, as is our tendency to shift from one way of being to another - as with through the impact of dramatic or life-changing events such as the shock of a sudden catastrophe or the encounter with another who in some way 'shakes' our worldview. Equally, however, the shift from one way to another way of being may fall upon us unexpectedly and inexplicably with no discernible stimulus with which to explain the transformation that has been provoked.

What is important to understand is that the same or similar 'conditions' can generate a shift from authentic to inauthentic ways of being, or vice-versa, or, indeed, provoke no shift at all. The impact of a tragedy like the destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York City may have been experienced by some as a moment of illuminating authenticity, but it as surely induced an inauthentic stance in others. Equally, for some it may have had no impact whatever upon their currently adopted way of being.

Equally, such shifts remain impermanent. We do not become authentic or inauthentic in any fixed or final sense. While, as Heidegger suggests, we may 'fall prey' to inauthenticity most of the time, the possibility of authenhcity is ever present.

Similarly, Heidegger makes it clear that authenticity is not necessarily a 'better' way to exist and, therefore, something for us to strive towards. Indeed, my very striving for authenticity can be seen as an expression of my inauthentic stance towards my being in that in my striving I remain closed to or detached from the way of being that is there for me.

Considered in these ways, the issue of authenticity and inauthenticity can be seen to have little or nothing to do with an aim for, or being 'blocked' from, personal empowerment, 'better living', self actualization and so forth. I shall return to this in Chapter 9 as part of my discussion on the similarities and divergences between phenomenological psychology and humanistic psychology since it is mainly through humanistic interpretations of authenticity or 'being authentic' that this misunderstanding has arisen. Hopefully, readers will now be clearer as to the existential- phenomenological meaning given to these terms and will have understood that they are attempts to describe rather than prescribe ways of being.

In this way, we can briefly return to the question of Heidegger's own 'fallenness' in relation to his public association with Nazism during the 1930s. Many readers have been shocked to learn of this and have subsequently questioned how it could be that someone who wrote so powerfully about authenticity and inauthenticitv could fall prey to the particularly odious 'they-being' of Nazism. Perhaps readers can now understand that Heidegger's stance reveals all too clearly how any one of us can shift from one position to another in our way of being. Although we can, and should, remain critical of Heidegger's personal choice (not least because he never publicly regretted nor recanted his choice), this should not lead us to dismiss the power and worth of his ideas. It seems to be an all too common failing of human beings to be able to understand and communicate important 'truths' about human existence without always being able or willing to live with or act upon their implications.

Nonetheless, it has likely occurred to readers to ask why it should be that we would typically opt for a way of being that is inauthentic rather than authentic. What hidden values may there be in adopting inauthenticity as our principal mode of being? In order to provide an initial response to this question, we must turn to some of the other universal 'givens' of existence, or existentials, discussed by Heidegger.





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Recommended reading for 12 February:

This time there are two different suggestions for reading.
(Click on the titles to find the articles)

An article from Guardian newspaper's website.
This is quite a short and easy-to-read article about Heidegger's understanding of anxiety.

And for those of you who have a bit more time to read and want to go a bit deeper
I would recommend this article where the author explains Heidegger's
views on anxiety in Being and Time in more detail.


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Heidegger's main work Being and Time itself is also available in internet - the link is here.
The analysis of anxiety can be found on pages 228-235.