Absolute Freedom

Now I started to get Sartre’s famous line, “We are condemned to be free”. Absolute freedom means the rejection of all values -starting with the value of life. Personal freedom is a little bit more ease to get while, on the other hand, absolute freedom is much harder. The activist of our time either conservatives or liberals reject the values of the establishment. The establishment here, for the conservatives means the secularization of society while, on the other hand, for the liberals means the Judeo-Christian values. Therefore, by rejecting either system, liberals and conservatives become nihilist. By rejecting all previous values, the liberals aim to create new ones. But, the conservatives wishes to keep the old ones. This type of activism starts as psychological nihilism. Once it breaks into the world and become active, we can describe it as nihilist/activism. Activism is the last stage of nihilism. The battle the activist of the 21st century must conquer is the battle the revolutionaries of the 19th and 20th century lost. The activist must embrace the church of man and, at the same time, reject the idea of becoming gods. The revolutionaries of the 19th and 20th century reached the level of absolute freedom.

Freedom vs. Responsibility

Americans have always believed in the idea of freedom although the majority of Americans will not agree in the idea of responsibility. The idea of freedom is rooted in American culture. They believe that democracy is the effect of individual freedom. This idea in part is true as Hegel put it on The Phenomenology of the Spirit. They believe that freedom does not go along with responsibility. We find in American culture easy to believe that we were born free but this freedom does not come along. We say that freedom and responsibility goes hand on hand. Here in this article we are going to explore what a French philosopher said about freedom and responsibility.

Sartre was a French philosopher of the 20th century who devoted his life to the understanding of conventional freedom. Sartre wrote novels, plays, essays, articles searching for the meaning of freedom. So, how is that possible that one of the most influential philosopher of our time remains unknown to most American? In La Republique du Silence Sartre wrote “we were never as free as under the German occupation”. What he meant was that we really experiment freedom under oppression. We see a naïve ontology of the meaning of freedom by men now days. For example, I can say that I am free to go to college, to get merry and have kids. This idea of freedom is what we call a naïve ontology of freedom.

This conception is the American conception of freedom where freedom is more about liberty. We can say that liberty does not necessarily go hand on hand with responsibility. Freedom appears when you choose something and consciously accept the responsibility of your action. So, you don’t say “I got married because I am free” you should say “I got married because I chose to get married. In a word is a big difference between “I want to get merry” and “I chose to get married”. This “I want” is part of the naïve ontology we are talking about. This “I want” is made in pure liberty, and on the other hand the “I chose” is made in pure freedom. And other example will be when the majority elected a new President of the U.S. This is done in pure liberty and not in freedom. We must fight the idea of naïve ontology and teach people that we are responsible for all of our actions. This majority that elected a new president is responsible for everything the President does or does not. If he starts a new war, they are responsible for electing this guy. But since they elected this new president in pure liberty they will not accept any responsibility for what he does. They will excuse themselves by saying “I thought he was a good guy” or “I am not the President what can I do”. But if they elect him in pure freedom, they will accept all the responsibility. Freedom is so radical that even those who didn’t vote for him are responsible because they choose in liberty not to vote for him. In Sartre’s idea of freedom is not room for God and destiny. It is very popular in America the believe that this nation was chosen by God. Also, the majority believe that this nation has a destiny to fulfill. These two are also examples of the naïve ontology. There is not a grand design for Americans or other citizens of the world. Although, most Americans believe they were chosen by God to fulfill some kind of destiny.
In conclusion, freedom and liberty are not the same thing. Liberty does not recognize the responsibility of your actions. On the other hand, freedom recognizes that you are responsible for everything you do. We find liberty in the naïve conception of freedom that is rooted in American culture. You are free and responsible of your freedom. You choose and build the life you deserve. There is not a God dictating the rules nor there is a destiny to fulfill. You are in charge of your own life.

CATHEDRAL

Esteban De La Cruz
Professor Xilao Li
March 12, 2015
Literature 115

What interested me about people is not who they are but what they could become. In Cathedral, a short story written by Raymond Carver in 1983, we can see a perfect example of how people change. Carver’s short story is about an unnamed narrator who has an epiphany after meeting a blind guy. The story has three characters the narrator, the wife’s narrator and Frank; a blind guy. I am going to focuses on the narrator since he is the most misunderstand character of the story.

First, people criticize the narrator for been rude. They say “he does not care about his wife and the world he live in” (classmates). On the other hand, I find the narrator honest because he says what he feels. We often tell people to be honest with their feeling, but when they do it, we want an “honest” but positive reaction out of them. A blind man was going to visit him and his wife and he didn’t want that to happen. The narrator said, “I wasn’t very enthusiastic about his visit”, is something wrong with that? I think this statement is only an opinion and not a state of being. We can not make any conclusions about him taking only this line as a reference.
Other line they use to support they argument against the narrator appears in paragraph 3; in this paragraph the narrator’s wife is sharing a poem with him. The narrator said, “I can’t remember I didn’t think much of the poem. Of course, I didn’t tell her that” (para3). This line touches our feeling because we believe in a romantic and idealistic way of viewing love. I don’t think those who are married put attention to everything the wife say to them. But they want to believe that it happens in their lives. So, again, we can not judge him of been rude distant to his wife. This was the first stage. This stage Plato called, in the Republic, the stage of the images. Because what we see is not real and the judgments we do are wrong. In this case, the narrator is the stage of images because his judgments are based only in the appearance of the individuals. On the other hand, the Frank is the realm of the ideas. For him the world are not simple images without a meaning behind. For him the world is a world of transcendence ideas. So, let’s take a look to what the experts say about the narrator.

Samira Sasani wrote an essay on Cathedral for the Department of Foreign Languages, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran. For her the narrator is not rude. Instead, she believes the narrator is a man of distances. “My wife filled me in with more detail than I care to know” (para3). Her judgment has a little bit more of understanding of the character. Because, “been rude” is more about spontaneity and “been “a man of distances” is more about a state of being. The good news is that this state of being can be change at any time. The best example to support her argument is when the narrator’s wife and the blind man have a nice and interesting conversation after they had dinner. The narrator stayed outside of the conversation. He does not want to join in. And when the blind man asks him a question he answers with a simple yes or no.
“For the most part, I just listened. Now and then I join in. I didn’t want him to think I’d left the room, and I didn’t want her to think I was feeling left out. They talked of things that had happened to them-to them!-these past ten years” (Carver, Cathedral).
So, we see that is not that he is been rude, but that he is a man of distance. The cool part is that this state of being is by choice. He is been a man of distance because he wants to be seen as one. From the beginning of the story, he is aware of his state of being. He does not have any intentions to be part of the story. That makes him a man of distance.
In conclusion, what can we say about the main character, the narrator, in Cathedral? We see that he wasn’t acting rude. It was a spontaneous reaction to what was happening in his life. Also, we see that he was more a man of distance than rude. But, is there anything more we can say about this character? The answer is yes. The narrator and the blind man were watching T.V. then something happened. On T.V. a cathedral appears. The blind man asked the narrator to describe it to hi. The narrator couldn’t do it. Then the blind man had an idea “let’s make one ourselves” he said. The narrator went to his wife room to pick up a heavy paper, and he change his state of being a man of distances to a state of man of engaging.
“So I went upstairs. My legs felt like they didn’t have any
They felt like they did after I’d done some running. In my
In my wife’s room, I looked around. I found some ballpoints. In a little basket on her table, and then I tried to think where. To look for the kind of paper he was talking about” (Cathedral).

From that moment the narrator changed, and he becomes more engaged with the blind man; to the point where they drew a cathedral together. “Me and him are working” the narrator said. After they’ve done working with the drawing the narrator experiment an epiphany. But the epiphany was achieved because the choice he made: changed his state of being. But the narrator couldn’t articulate his emotions because it was something new for him. The last sentence is “it was really something”.

Man is a homeless creature.

The problem with Secularization and Christianity is that both stripped away all hope from men to become an authentic self. Both science and religion dispossessed men from a system of images and symbols by which he could express his wholeness. As philosopher William Barrett writes, “With the lost of this containing framework, system of images and symbols, man became not only a dispossessed but a fragmentary being”.

Authenticity Part 3

The question of Dasein, the real philosophical, question is authenticity. But how did this come to be? Now, I am going to add something to the description of Dasein that is going to help us understand Dasein: Being-there-now-what? Dasein is the being-there that also questioned itself. The question of authenticity comes to Dasein only when Dasein has reached the lowest or the highest point of its life. This means that it could happen at any time of your life. If you are a very successful person or somebody who has lost everything the question of authenticity may arise at any given moment. It is in that situation when Dasein starts to question itself about its existence and the meaning of its life. Does this life have a meaning? And if there is a meaning, how does Dasein give a meaning to its life?
Now that Dasein started questioning itself, Dasein is one step closer to understand its authenticity. The way we are going to break this down is by starting from the hard and almost impenetrable philosophical idea of authenticity. Heidegger’s idea of authenticity means two things: find your truth self in a sea of people and mastering your life. His idea seems impossible since the majority of people live in big cities. Heidegger thinks that we all get lost-in-the-they. What does this means? It means that we look for comfort in the crowd. It means that instead of living the philosophy of the self, we are living the philosophy of the one. It means that we copy people’s behaviors and repeat what other people says. So, are you ready? Take a deep breath and try to understand what Heidegger writes:
When the call of conscience is understood, lostness in the “they” is revealed. Resoluteness brings Dasein back to its ownmost potentiality-for-Being-its-Self. When one has an understanding Being-towards-death –towards death as one’s ownmost possibility –one’s potentiality-for-Being becomes authentic and wholly transparent. (354)
Heidegger’s point is that an inauthentic person gets lost in the everydayness. Think of a person whose day look like this: 6:00 am wake up, get ready for work. 7:00 am, start to work. 12:00 pm, lunch, check Facebook. 3:30 pm, get out of work. 4:00 pm, go to the gym. 6:00 pm eat, get ready for school. 10: 00 pm. Or the person can go the other way around and choose self-creation.
Although Sartre was inspired by Heidegger, his idea of authenticity is a little bit different. Sartre’s idea of authenticity, on the other hand, is more understandable. Sartre himself writes:
To be sure, the one who practices bad faith is hiding a displeasing untruth or presenting as truth a pleasing untruth. Bad faith then has in appearance the structure of falsehood. Only what changes everything is the fact that in bad faith it is from myself that I am hiding the truth. Thus the duality of the deceiver and the deceived does not exist here (89).
Basically, Sartre is saying bad faith is the lostness in-the-they. This lostness or bad faith means that we are following what society dictates. In other words, we are tied to the social roles. In that sense, it is impossible to be authentic. We live under the umbrella of social roles. This means that everything we do or the way we behave is determinate by our social institutions. For example: a teacher must act like one or a husband must take care of his family etc.
In short, people believe that an inauthentic person is the one that worries all the time about what people believe about them. Or, that an authentic person is the one who fallows his feelings. To tell you the true, these conceptions of authentic or inauthentic lives are not completely correct. The correct description, I believe, is what David R. Law writes:
The authentic human being is thus a being whose existence precedes his essence, which is free and freely wills his freedom in all circumstances in which he finds himself. (44)
This idea of authenticity is more accurate because authenticity does not depend only in the feelings of the person. Authenticity, I believe, has to do more with freedom than we the emotions of the person. This idea that existence precedes essence, what it really means is the human being is not defined in advance. Instead, we first of all exist, encounter ourselves, surges in the world –and define ourselves afterwards.
Now that we got the basic background of our question for authenticity, we can move to the next level of understanding this question. By now, we know that our question is an existential question, and this question is rooted in the philosophy of Heidegger and Sartre. Also, we come to the conclusion that authenticity is the consequence of our individual freedom and not of our emotions. As an illustration, we see the example of Lesley Truman. Her emotions do not make her authentic, but the freedom that leads her to questioning her present state of being does. We can see in Lesley Truman the lostness-in-the-they. In other words, she is acting in bad faith. The truth is that she is not an actress like she wants to make herself believe; she is a world of possibilities. When I say that she is not an actress, I do not mean that she cannot perform. What I mean is that she is not an actress as her state of being. She is not an actress, since, in her most consciousness, she knows that there is not compulsion for her to be what she is. Human nature escapes all definitions. All of these evidences lead us to the conclusion that Lesley Truman was living in bad faith. Therefore, she is lacking authenticity.
In December of 2006, I turned 21. The week before my birthday, I was having an existential crisis. At the time, I thought I had everything in life, but I was wrong because I didn’t have any big ambitions other than get married and start a family with my girlfriend at the time. I thought I had everything in life, and felt I was at the top of all my possibilities. All of my friends were already 21, working, with a family and kids. The week before my birthday was hell for me. I came to the conclusion that I did not know who I was and what I wanted in life. My life seemed to be ended before it even started. My destiny was written; get a job, married, have kids, drink beer on the weekends: repeat that until you die: another wasted life. I said the same exact words Lesley Truman said, “This is not what I really want”.
I didn’t know at the time but I was lost-in-the-they. I was totally living in bad faith because I was lying to myself. I was becoming a thing, an object, something that people can use. I was going through a lot of pain. Finally, I asked myself the most existential question, I think, of all time “why am I here rather than there”? In other words, why am I doing what I am doing now? Why can it not be something else? Why am I not fulfilling my whole potential as human being? Basically, I was in the mode of Dasein, encountering with a world full of possibilities. The question of authenticity, paradoxically, showed up to me when I was at the “highest” and at the same time the “lowest” point of my life.
I spent five years of my life redefining myself, fighting the lostness-in-the-they and overcoming bad faith. I understood that there are things that I cannot control. For example; the fact that I was born in Mexico, the first language that I learned, the culture that I learned, all of them were things I did not choose but now I can have a different attitude towards them. Being Mexican is the same exact thing as being an actress or a waiter. To put it differently, you are not a U.S. citizen; you in bad faith make yourself believe that. Your native language does not make you what you are. With this in mind, we can recall what David Farrell Krell writes, “Dasein is the most universal and emptiest concept”. For this reason, Dasein escapes all attempts of definition. This means, we are not tied to any particular description or pre-oriented definition of humanity.
Now that we understand that we are not defined because there is not human nature to define us, we are getting closer to authenticity. I did not choose to be born in a particular place, but I was thrown into that place. I was born there by accident without any particular destiny to fulfill. But I made myself to believe in the idea that I was there for no other reason than to fulfill a specific destiny already written for me. All of these are examples of bad faith.
The first step in order to achieve authenticity is to recognize that you were born by chance and thrown into a world without any particular destiny to be fulfilled. Second, you have to accept that for the most part of your life society was dictating, ruling, and deciding your destiny. And finally, you have to accept that you will always be in the mode of Dasein until you die, encountering with the world, searching in the world –and defining yourself afterwards.
As I stated, the question for authenticity is an existential question, but it is also a humanistic view. Authenticity has value like life, art, politics etc. We, for the most part, do not hesitate to say that authenticity is good for the individual and for the society. The first component of authenticity, I believe, is to help us guide for how we ought to live. And second, an authentic person is the one who lives in such a way that his actions are true expressions of his inward and outward discoveries of the world. Taken from this point of view, authenticity is a humanistic attitude because it seeks the best for the individuals and humanity itself. Furthermore, the question of authenticity is not an ideal. Authenticity can be as real as this laptop or this notebook in front of me.
If we ask ourselves, why is it good to be authentic? The question seems to be absurd. It is like asking a person, would like to be happy? But authenticity is not a condition that is obviously good in itself. In other words, an authentic person is not always in a state of happiness. If Dasein is encountering, searching, and defining itself in the world, it is very hard that all the time he is going to be in a state of happiness.
The idea of authenticity makes a very heavy demand on you. You must commit yourself to a project. To put it in other words, Dasein is always in the state of projection. This projection is what makes Dasein authentic since it projects its full potentiality. For this reason, Dasein encounters, searches and finds meaning in life. For example, in the short story “The Ingrate”, the protagonist, an African-American slave, encounters himself with the situation that he is a slave. Then, he searches for meaning in that situation because he is not conferrable with his state of ben.
But what is this project that will give Dasein its authenticity? We have shown that authenticity is not about how you feel, but it is about how you express your emotion to the world. When you express your emotions to the world, you are inevitably engaging with other people in an I-You relationship. An authentic person is not defined by the career he chooses but the way he relates with other people. In this case being authentic is being what you truly are. This does not mean that the person should take the attitude of disengaging from the other people around him. The authentic person must hope for his recognition as being authentic.
An authentic person recognizes that we live in a shared world. Therefore, we share with other people the beliefs society creates for us. Although, we see all the time the same negation, when, for example a person says, “Well this is what I believe and there is nothing to do about it”. The negation here, or bad faith, is that we make ourselves believe something is not really ours. An authentic person stays away from all these made beliefs. For example, many people believe that their purpose in life is to get married and have kids. This idea is implanted into our brains so society can function well. But, the individual does not really possess this belief. In other words, it is a belief that was not created by him.
The authentic person must create his beliefs. These beliefs, once he engages in relationships with other people, will transcend in a form of values. An inauthentic person, since he is lost-in-the-they, has not true beliefs. Therefore, his beliefs will not transcend in a form of values. The authentic Dasein must engage in a commitment. But, commitments are not enough to be counted as an authentic person. For example, think of a very talented person who is strongly committed to make a lot of money by writing cheap love stories. This is a perfect example that committing to something does not count you as authentic person because it is not enough to feel strong about a belief. What the authentic person needs is a strong reason to commit to a project. On the other hand, the commitment of becoming authentic will count you as being authentic person. This is because the journey of authenticity is worth it because we see dignity attaching to the project of being authentic.
Authenticity involves an attitude towards the social circumstances of life. Worrying about fitting in and being a well-adapted member of society is the definition of inauthenticity. Authenticity tends to be the personal concern with achieving self-realization and personal fulfillment through getting in touch with one’s own most inner self and society. As we see in Lesley Truman, her lack of authenticity is because she is not in contact with her self. She was acting in bad faith because she made herself believe that by becoming a femmes Broadway actress will give her a valuable role in society.
Once the person has understood all of these steps, he is closer to becoming authentic. He creates his beliefs and values and lives an independent life. His values will direct him in life. They will guide the authentic person into what circumstances of the social problems he will engage. This engagement will be his commitment. In other words, he will commit himself to a cause worth living it. As Charles Guano writes:
Seen from this point of view, becoming an authentic individual is not a matter of recoiling from society in order to find and express the inner self. What it involves is the ability to be a reflective individual who discerns what is genuinely worth pursuing within the social context in which he or she is situated. (155)
In other words, the authentic person is not counting on society to truly show his true self. Furthermore, the authentic person is thinking critically in the environment he happens to be in. In addition, the authentic person understands what is genuinely worth pursuing within the social context he is involved. With all of this in mind, we can think of an authentic person as one who is showing his values, thinking critical about his environment, and engaging in a genuine project in his social context.
As an illustration, we will see the example of Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor. Aurelius, I think, was an authentic person because he lived his life according to his beliefs and projects. He wrote a book called “Meditations”. In this book, we can see his true self because he wrote about what he believed. For example, Marcus Aurelius writes:
Furthermore, even supposing that those who remember you were never to die at all, nor their memories to die either, yet what is that to you? Clearly, in your grave, nothing; and even in your lifetime, what is good of praise –unless maybe to sub-serve some lesser design? (67)
For the most part, I am, like Marcus Aurelius, living my life guided for my genuine beliefs. I noted that every time a life crisis comes along, we have the option to overcome it and gain authenticity, or we can simply ignore it and continue living in the lostness-of-the-they. If you can see, as Marcus Aurelius did, the people and the beliefs around us will die, what is that for us? Basically, what Marcus Aurelius is saying is that you must live your life and stop worrying about other people and their beliefs.
What society believes now will change over time, but an authentic person will live his life according to his beliefs. For example, I am against unfair minimum wages, so I do not chop at Wal-Mart. In this case, I am genuine with myself, and I engage with society by not supporting unfair minimum wages. If I buy some product at Wal-Mart, my action is saying that I am supporting minimum wages. So what the authentic person must do is live according to his beliefs and engages in the social context he is in.
In a word, the authentic person is going to engage in the society he lives in and with a critical mind he is going to engage in a meaningful relationship with the people around him. He is not going to let his emotions take control of his mind. Instead, he is going to act according to his values.

Work Cited
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. 1927. New York: State University of New York Press.
1999. Print.
Hutson, David J. “Standing OUT/Fitting IN: Identity, Appearance, and Authenticity in Gay and
Lesbian Communities” Symbolic Interaction.Vol. 33, No. 2 (Spring 2010). pp. 213-233. Web. 15 April 2009.
Farrel Krell. Basic Writing of Martin Heidegger. HarperCollins Publisher 1977.
Cathcart, Tom and Klein, Daniel. Heidegger and a Hippo Walks Through those Pearly Gates. Penguin Group 2009.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Edition Gullimard 1956.
Law, David R.. Briefly Sartre’s Existentialism and Humanism. SCM Press 2007.
Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Pierre Hadud 1998.
Guignon, Charles. On Being Authentic. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2004.
. Paul Laurence Dunbar. The Ingrate. University Press 2005.
Tao Ruspoli. A Film about Martin Heidegger’s Philosophy 2014.

Authenticity

Part 2

Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study* showed that physical education programs do have an impact in combating childhood obesity in young overweight girls. Just an extra hour of exercise a week lessened obesity in this group. * Datar A, Sturm R. Physical education in elementary school and body mass index: Evidence from the early childhood longitudinal study. American Journal of Public Health. Sept. 2004; 94,9. Now that we understand that we are not defined because there is not human nature to define us, we are getting closer to authenticity. I did not choose to be born in a particular place, but I was thrown into that place. I was born there by accident without any particular destiny to fulfill. But I made myself to believe in the idea that I was there for no other reason than to fulfill a specific destiny already written for me. All of these are examples of bad faith.
The first step in order to achieve authenticity is to recognize that you were born by chance and thrown into a world without any particular destiny to be fulfilled. Second, you have to accept that for the most part of your life society was dictating, ruling, and deciding your destiny. And finally, you have to accept that you will always be in the mode of Dasein until you die, encountering with the world, searching in the world –and defining yourself afterwards.
As I stated, the question for authenticity is an existential question, but it is also a humanistic view. Authenticity has value like life, art, politics etc. We, for the most part, do not hesitate to say that authenticity is good for the individual and for the society. The first component of authenticity, I believe, is to help us guide for how we ought to live. And second, an authentic person is the one who lives in such a way that his actions are true expressions of his inward and outward discoveries of the world. Taken from this point of view, authenticity is a humanistic attitude because it seeks the best for the individuals and humanity itself. Furthermore, the question of authenticity is not an ideal. Authenticity can be as real as this laptop or this notebook in front of me.
If we ask ourselves, why is it good to be authentic? The question seems to be absurd. It is like asking a person, would like to be happy? But authenticity is not a condition that is obviously good in itself. In other words, an authentic person is not always in a state of happiness. If Dasein is encountering, searching, and defining itself in the world, it is very hard that all the time he is going to be in a state of happiness.
The idea of authenticity makes a very heavy demand on you. You must commit yourself to a project. To put it in other words, Dasein is always in the state of projection. This projection is what makes Dasein authentic since it projects its full potentiality. For this reason, Dasein encounters, searches and finds meaning in life. For example, in the short story “The Ingrate”, the protagonist, an African-American slave, encounters himself with the situation that he is a slave. Then, he searches for meaning in that situation because he is not conferrable with his state of ben.
But what is this project that will give Dasein its authenticity? We have shown that authenticity is not about how you feel, but it is about how you express your emotion to the world. When you express your emotions to the world, you are inevitably engaging with other people in an I-You relationship. An authentic person is not defined by the career he chooses but the way he relates with other people. In this case being authentic is being what you truly are. This does not mean that the person should take the attitude of disengaging from the other people around him. The authentic person must hope for his recognition as being authentic.
An authentic person recognizes that we live in a shared world. Therefore, we share with other people the beliefs society creates for us. Although, we see all the time the same negation, when, for example a person says, “Well this is what I believe and there is nothing to do about it”. The negation here, or bad faith, is that we make ourselves believe something is not really ours. An authentic person stays away from all these made beliefs. For example, many people believe that their purpose in life is to get married and have kids. This idea is implanted into our brains so society can function well. But, the individual does not really possess this belief. In other words, it is a belief that was not created by him.
The authentic person must create his beliefs. These beliefs, once he engages in relationships with other people, will transcend in a form of values. An inauthentic person, since he is lost-in-the-they, has not true beliefs. Therefore, his beliefs will not transcend in a form of values. The authentic Dasein must engage in a commitment. But, commitments are not enough to be counted as an authentic person. For example, think of a very talented person who is strongly committed to make a lot of money by writing cheap love stories. This is a perfect example that committing to something does not count you as authentic person because it is not enough to feel strong about a belief. What the authentic person needs is a strong reason to commit to a project. On the other hand, the commitment of becoming authentic will count you as being authentic person. This is because the journey of authenticity is worth it because we see dignity attaching to the project of being authentic.
Authenticity involves an attitude towards the social circumstances of life. Worrying about fitting in and being a well-adapted member of society is the definition of inauthenticity. Authenticity tends to be the personal concern with achieving self-realization and personal fulfillment through getting in touch with one’s own most inner self and society. As we see in Lesley Truman, her lack of authenticity is because she is not in contact with her self. She was acting in bad faith because she made herself believe that by becoming a femmes Broadway actress will give her a valuable role in society.

The Question of Authenticity

Part 1

In the movie Birdman (2014), Naomi Watts plays a character named Lesley Truman. Lesley Truman is a first-time Broadway actress who wishes nothing but to be a fames Broadway actress. Then her opportunity comes when she has the opportunity to perform in a Broadway adaptation of Raymond Carvers’ short story: what we talk about when we talk about love. At this point, in the movie, Lesley Truman has achieved everything she ever wanted in life, to be a Broadway actress. She was one step away from aching fame because her performance is one of the best in Broadway. But something happened in her life after performing the play one night. She starts to cry and says that it is not what she really ever wanted in life. Why?

Many people believe in many things, but the real philosophical question nowadays is: what is authenticity? We all talk about love, freedom, justice, faith, but rarely, we do talk about authenticity. Some people do not even know what this word means. Others may have an idea, but they do not consider this an issue. To tell you the truth, nobody wakes up in the morning thinking, “am I authentic?” The problem is not in the people but in the obscurity of the word authenticity. In order to search for authenticity, the person must be in some degree of existential crisis. Therefore, the person in search for authenticity must start from the point of view of existentialist philosophy. Although we all struggle in life, many of us do not know that we are having an existential crisis. As the result, we miss the call for authenticity.

Existentialism is a philosophy that puts the person in the center of their life. This does not mean that the person is self-centered. It means that the person is in charge of its life. Furthermore, the person creates his destiny by choosing his values. So, Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom, and choice. It is the view that humans define their own meaning in life, and try to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe. The 20th century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) embraced existentialism and made it popular in his novels, plays, and philosophical essays. Sartre’s masterpiece is Being and Nothingness, first published in 1943. On the other hand, Martin Heidegger was a German Philosopher (1889-1979) who never embraced existentialism. However, Heidegger’s masterpiece Being and Time, first published in 1927, inspired Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.

The approach we are going to take in the question of authenticity is an existential approach. This means that we are going to place ourselves as the object of study. First, we are going to borrow one of Heidegger’s concepts in order to understand our inquiry. This concept is Dasein. Dasein is a German word which means being-there or presence. Da means “there” and sein means “being”. This could also be understood as existence. This concept refers to the only being from which reality comes into existence. This being is the human being. So every time I use the word Dasein I am referring to men and women. Now, in our investigation of the question of authenticity, our problems begin with the introduction of Dasein. In short, Dasein is the only being whose is existence is problematic in itself. This is because Dasein does not have a fixed nature. Therefore, Dasein asks itself deeper questions about its own existence, seeking a deeper understanding of itself.

The question of Dasein, the real philosophical, question is authenticity. But how did this come to be? Now, I am going to add something to the description of Dasein that is going to help us understand Dasein: Being-there-now-what? Dasein is the being-there that also questioned itself. The question of authenticity comes to Dasein only when Dasein has reached the lowest or the highest point of its life. This means that it could happen at any time of your life. If you are a very successful person or somebody who has lost everything the question of authenticity may arise at any given moment. It is in that situation when Dasein starts to question itself about its existence and the meaning of its life. Does this life have a meaning? And if there is a meaning, how does Dasein give a meaning to its life?

Now that Dasein started questioning itself, Dasein is one step closer to understand its authenticity. The way we are going to break this down is by starting from the hard and almost impenetrable philosophical idea of authenticity. Heidegger’s idea of authenticity means two things: find your truth self in a sea of people and mastering your life. His idea seems impossible since the majority of people live in big cities. Heidegger thinks that we all get lost-in-the-they. What does this means? It means that we look for comfort in the crowd. It means that instead of living the philosophy of the self, we are living the philosophy of the one. It means that we copy people’s behaviors and repeat what other people says. So, are you ready? Take a deep breath and try to understand what Heidegger writes:  

When the call of conscience is understood, lostness in the “they” is revealed. Resoluteness brings Dasein back to its ownmost potentiality-for-Being-its-Self. When one has an understanding Being-towards-death –towards death as one’s ownmost possibility –one’s potentiality-for-Being becomes authentic and wholly transparent. (354)