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Authenticity & Absurdity

Paul Doolan tries to tell them apart.

Movie director Ridley Scott is known for creating an authentic cinematic world within each of his films. The battle scenes in his newest blockbuster, Napoleon, have been compared to the opening sequence of Stephan Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, for their sense of feeling real (though obviously neither is real). In his House of Gucci (2021), Lady Gaga (playing Patrizia Reggiani) and Adam Driver (as Maurizo Gucci, heir to the Gucci fortune), talk to each other in English, with what are meant to be Italian accents. Gaga spent months speaking English with her ‘Italian’ accent before film shooting began, just to get it authentic. There’s only one catch. Patrizia Reggiani and Maurizo Gucci, being Italians, didn’t speak to each other in English with fake Italian accents. They spoke Italian, with authentic Italian accents.

I found House of Gucci to be an almost unbearably funny film. Hearing a gaggle of British and American actors babble in English with hilarious Italian accents created an unintended comical performance. Had they spoken in their own accents, it would have seemed less absurd. Which goes to show, what may seem authentic from one point of view, can seem absurd when looked at from another.

Claims to authenticity pop up in the most unlikely places. In his piece ‘Thirst for Authenticity’, philosopher Dale Jacquette went as far as to claim that the popularity of craft beers “can be understood as a metaphor for a deeper thirst for authenticity” (Beer and Philosophy, ed. Steven D. Hales, 2007). But we don’t want to simply consume authentic foods in authentic restaurants washed down with authentic beers. We want to live authentic lives and, ultimately, become authentic selves.

When people feel that their lives are inauthentic, they might feel life isn’t worth living. Such is the case in Haruki Murakami’s short story ‘An Independent Organ’. The narrator tells us that some people live a life that’s artificial, completely removed from reality, but then “by some chance, a special light shines on them” and they discover how “unreal the inner workings of their lives are” (Men Without Women, 2017). The protagonist lives a life that seems solid, balanced, and filled with contentment. However, unrequited love disturbs his balance, and with a flash of insight he discovers that the life that he had carefully constructed for himself is empty and inauthentic. He then starves himself to death, as a self-inflicted punishment for being inauthentic.

In The Ethics of Authenticity (1992), the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor diagnosed our obsession with authenticity as a response to three modern malaises. Firstly, there is the worry that the individualism of western liberal democracies might have gone too far. Secondly, neo-liberal capitalism has produced a widespread belief that there will be a technological solution to every problem. Thirdly, our industrial-technological society restricts our individual choices, making a truly individual lifestyle (for example, a life off-grid) difficult to sustain. The reaction to these concerns has produced a contemporary ideal of being ‘true to oneself’ in order to achieve a state of authentic self-fulfilment.

Walter Benjamin pointed out that one characteristic of modernity is that ‘ambiguity displaces authenticity’ (One-Way Street, 1928). The ambiguity comes about because we’re not sure anymore how to distinguish between fake and real. This becomes a general suspicion that the image distorts reality and representation has replaced the real. We compulsively search for authenticity because we are suspicious that our own experience is not quite real, but is in fact fake. In its extreme form, this suspicion leads to an obsession with fake news and conspiracy theories. At its most extreme is the belief that we’re living in some sort of simulation, so nothing is real. The paradox is that a society compulsively searching for authenticity is a society estranged from reality.

Knight, Death, and the Devil
Albrecht Dürer 1513

Roots of Authenticity

To find the philosophical roots of our cult of authenticity we have to go back to Swiss philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78). Unlike most of his Enlightenment contemporaries, the Genevan argued that an exclusive emphasis on reason estranges us from reality, alienates us from our fundamental selves, and leads to artifice and hypocrisy. Natural man, exemplified for Rousseau by the Noble Savage, possessed an authentic goodness. We fallen civilised creatures can only hope to regain authenticity by turning our backs on the chattering classes of the metropolitan salons and by immersing ourselves in nature, for instance, by taking a long hike in the woods or mountains.

Many nineteenth-century Romantics, like Goethe, Byron, and the Shelleys, followed in Rousseau’s footsteps literally, journeying to Switzerland to hike in the woods and tremble in awe of the mountains. This new sensibility led to all sorts of innovative fashions among the wealthy elites: breastfeeding one’s own young instead of using a wetnurse; wearing clothing cut in a peasant fashion; painting sentimental scenes of village life; composing music that’s loosely based upon folk tunes. This ‘authenticity’ found its best expression in the work of the Romantic poets, as when Wordsworth declaimed in Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey (1798) that, as a worshipper of nature, “I have felt/ a presence that disturbs me with the joy/ of elevated thoughts.”

This particular pursuit of authenticity aims to combine individual development with natural goodness, but it’s hard work. Last summer in the Lake District I lingered at sites associated with Wordsworth. I visited the home of his youth in Cockermouth, his house in Keswick, and his last resting place in the cemetery at Grasmere. I sat quietly in the garden of his Dove Cottage in Grasmere, communing with nature while listening to a recital of Wordsworth’s poem Home at Grasmere on my wife’s smartphone. The surroundings helped cultivate a more authentic appreciation of his words, and I was genuinely moved. However, I was aghast at the amount of equipment among my fellow Romantics: campervans and kayaks, helmets and bicycles, fleeces, water bottles, daypacks, hiking boots; not to mention the infrastructure: the hiking routes, coffee vans, information centres, audio-guides, camping sites, phone charging points… All of this in order to ensure an authentic natural experience! I suspect our pursuit of authenticity has edged us into absurdity here.

Authenticity Capitalism

In the early 1960s, the German philosopher Theodor Adorno argued that the jargon of ‘authenticity’ contributes to a ‘collective narcissism’ that is united ‘in praise of positivity’ (The Jargon of Authenticity, 1964). And in a New York Times article, ‘The Gospel According to Me’ (June 29, 2013), Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster argued that ‘the gospel of authenticity’ is the ideology of a new ‘booming self-help industry’ fuelled by the ‘cash cow of New Age spirituality’. Hot yoga, courses in mindfulness and meditation, natural healing, spas and massage, detox breaks in exotic locations, coaching sessions, volunteer tourism, unpaid internships – these are all middle class pursuits of an authentic life. Consider the young professionals who, in order to de-stress and centre themselves, fly to Thailand for a break or pay thousands to spend a week at an ashram where they practise silence while being fed plain white rice and two bowls of light soup a day. From their subjective point of few, this seems authentic. Looked at from the outside, it might strike one, once more, as absurd.

Critchley and Webster warn that corporate capitalism has hijacked the genuine search for authenticity to such an extent that “the distinction between work and nonwork is harder and harder to draw.” I once visited Google’s research headquarters in Zurich and was struck by its campus feeling, where work and pleasure mixed, with activities like yoga and mindfulness freely available (plus organic cookies and vegan food). Employees are encouraged to sign up for leisure activities together. However, this blurring between work and non-work eventually “leads to an enormous increase in anxiety.” Byung-Chul Han calls this the ‘violence of positivity’. Here ‘projects, initiatives and motivations’ saturate and exhaust the achievement-directed subject, leading to burn out (The Burnout Society, 2015).

In 1849, the grandfather of existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard, argued that the self “is in a process of becoming; for the self potentially is not present actually, it is merely what is to come into existence” (The Sickness onto Death). His twentieth century existentialist heirs, such as Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, agreed that the self is a project to be worked on. But the project has now been hacked by corporate culture. Han argues that the neo-liberal economy forces us to inhabit a performance-based culture. As Adorno predicted, this contributes to narcissism, and, ultimately, to burn out.

Natacha de Mahlieu is a Belgian artist. Her 2022 exhibition Theatre of Authenticity demonstrated how the pursuit of uniqueness under the guise of authenticity leads to absurdity. With cameras discreetly set up at sites well-known on Instagram (but supposedly off the beaten track), and using a sixty minute time lapse, she created photographic collages that revealed dozens of people uniquely doing exactly the same thing: taking similar poses to record their authentic personal experience for their Instagram followers. Meanwhile, studies show that thanks to a combination of Instagram and cosmetic surgery, the western face is converging to a single look. Given enough time, in the pursuit of authenticity, we will all pretty much come to look like Kim Kardashian.

‘Back to nature’ 1960s style
modern family camping © Nationaal Archief 1967

Authenticity & Education

I once heard a speaker tell a graduating class of students, “You are all CEOs of your own future.” No one objected to the ideological assumptions underlying such a pronouncement: the CEO as God, bringing the future into being; the absolute freedom of the individual to control and shape their own destiny; the potential to achieve authenticity within the corporate space. Han argues that the ‘auto-exploitation’ of the ‘entrepreneur of the self’ leads to the ‘achievement-subject’ becoming a ‘perpetrator and victim’ and ‘master and slave’ simultaneously (The Agony of Eros, 2017).

The false pursuit of authenticity begins in our schools, where the aim seems to be to prepare the young for corporate serfdom. As Slavoj Zizek puts it, “The youth undergo the educational process in order to be integrated into the hegemonic social order, which is why their education plays a pivotal role in the reproduction of the ruling ideology” (Like a Thief in Broad Daylight, 2018). Studies in the humanities, like philosophy or the arts, are increasingly de-emphasized, while STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) are promoted because educational managers believe this is what employers want. Teachers claim to implement ‘authentic learning’ by constructing scenarios in which students solve so-called ‘real world’ issues (implying that we know how to differentiate between a real and an unreal world – see my ‘Get Real’ in Philosophy Now 146). This invariably involves problem-solving in a manner frequently taught in business schools. Students are put into collaborative groups, engage in simulations of ‘the real world’, and offer solutions. However, some might feel that encouraging teenagers to act like corporate leaders to present solutions to, for instance, the rising price of energy or climate catastrophe, is akin to an absurd fancy dress, resembling House of Gucci. This is the ‘productive-technocratic version’ of education, whose sole aim is getting people ready for the job market. Two of the many effects of this are, firstly, that students come to see the world as a resource – a reservoir to be plundered in order to further their own careers – and secondly, that authentic life is a never-ending project that depends on success in the business world. This nonstop compulsive quest contributes generously to what Zizek calls “the reign of cynical opportunism accompanied by permanent anxiety” (Like a Thief). Sartre famously argued that ‘existence precedes essence’, meaning that our lives are unfinished projects that we can shape through our acts of will. However, the modern pursuit of the authentic self seems to have become a life-long corporate project to be uploaded to LinkedIn.

We might say that contemporary authenticity is a myth predicated on the promise of a technical fix. Our technological culture leads us to consider nature simply as a storage facility, or a resource waiting to be exploited. A forest becomes a source of wood. A plot of land becomes a potential source of gas, or petroleum, or for grazing cattle, or building houses. Students even come to see environmental degradation or mass poverty as a resource – an opportunity to do some volunteer work to pad out their CV (résumé). This instrumentalization of nature invites us to consider humanity as a resource too; and the hegemony of neo-liberalism means that corporations no longer need to hide the fact that the human has been reduced to a resource (hence the ubiquitous ‘Human Resources Department’). Ironically, this system that crushes individuality has co-opted the quest for authenticity, creating the illusion that one can best find authenticity by submitting to it – by joyfully becoming a human resource, performing a life that mirrors a CV.

This ideology is invisible but omnipresent, infecting and shaping our desires. As Taylor argued, there have always been people willing to sacrifice their closest relationships in order to develop their potential within their careers; but “today many people feel called upon to do this, feel they ought to do this, feel their lives would be somehow wasted or unfulfilled if they didn’t do this.” (The Ethics of Authenticity).

Being-Towards-Death

One of Martin Heidegger’s key insights was that being human means being-in-the-world. Culture provides a means of feeling at home in the world and of learning that some things are more valued than others. A paradox appears here, because the construction of an authentic individual life thus arises within a horizon of significance that’s constructed by a society.

Heidegger’s being-in-the-world is characterized by a certain ‘thrownness’. We are cast by fate into a certain time period, within a socio-geography, with a sex, ethnicity, class, and so on. None of these are of our own choosing. In his 1947 lecture ‘Letter on Humanism’, he argued that we are often caught up in a state he calls ‘fallen’ or ‘ensnared’: we fall into the chatter of everyday life, with its constant worries and anxieties, but this leads us to stray from the essence of what it really means to be an authentic human being. Rather, in this fallen state, the self is a ‘they-self’, living within and towards the norms of others. The fallen person may be an excellent conversationalist, may maintain a large group of contacts, and be an excellent networker. These days, the fallen person may construct a carefully choreographed online presence. They are what is deemed by the crowd as ‘successful’ – but they have succumbed to what Heidegger calls “a homelessness in which not only man but the essence of man stumbles aimlessly about” (Letter on Humanism). Heidegger agrees with Marx, that industrial society produces alienation, but his alienation has its roots in a homelessness that “is coming to be the destiny of the world.”

Heidegger argues that there is one anxiety we try to avoid at almost any cost – we alone among animals possess the knowledge that we will die. Death is the perhaps distant but still ever-present horizon that invests living with significance, even when we deny it. My death is the ultimate possibility against which I live – the certainty that will end all possibilities. To this extent, knowledge of our mortality means my death is already here. Death is present even while absent.

I can never experience the death of another. To this extent, death is non-relational – your death is yours, and my death is truly mine alone. Furthermore, my death is a certainty. So for Heidegger, to anticipate one’s death is to be authentic: to be fully aware that my own death is a certainty, that it can occur at any time, and is therefore always just before me – this heightened awareness reveals my authentic self. Otherwise I am living in denial, and, so, am inauthentic. Yet generally speaking, we flee from the anxiety engendered by the thought of our own death, and this leads us to lack authenticity. The wellness and anti-aging industry, the obsession with physical health and youthfulness, all deny death and are flights from authenticity, even while adapting the language of authenticity. Today, we often flee death by immersing ourselves in the world of chatter instead of the comfort of religion. Yet for Heidegger, it is only by making one’s death a presence in one’s life – by embracing our being-towards-death – that one can live an authentic life. So by listening to the ultimate anxiety, produced by the knowledge that I will at some point be non-existent, I come to live an authentic life. Plato would have agreed. In his dialogue Phaedo, Socrates refers to the aim of philosophy as being ‘practice for dying.’ Montaigne penned the essay “To philosophize is to learn how to die.”

The Art of Authenticity

For many philosophers, such as Heidegger, works of art provide a means to approach an experience of authenticity. Much of modern pop culture celebrates youth and denies death. David Bowie’s lyrics “Oblivion shall own you/Death alone shall love you” are something of an exception. But Richard Wagner’s opera Götterdämmerung (1876) warns us that even those who seem to be invincible are all too mortal. From Albrecht Dürer’s Knight, Death and the Devil (1513), through 17th century Dutch still-lifes with their wilting flowers, to the art of the AIDS activist group Act Up in the 1980s and 1990, and recently the cancer photographs of Tracy Emin, art frequently confronts us with the uncomfortable truth of mortality.

There’s a space in Zurich’s Kunsthaus Museum that challenges us to embrace our being-towards-death. There hangs Andy Warhol’s diptych Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) from 1963, which sold for a record $105 million in 2013. The left-hand panel contains a black and white photograph repeatedly stencilled across the canvas in five rows of three, of a car wreck wrapped around a pole, doors gaping open, the corpse of a man violently flung across the front seats. The right-hand panel is painted a cloudy grey. Warhol created this work when the USA was at the height of its power and optimism, when the car and the new interstate highways symbolised freedom and mobility and summed up the American dream. The work was an abrupt reminder that there was nothing authentic about that dream. Around half a million Americans had been killed on the roads in the decade or so before Warhol made it, similar to the number of Americans killed during both world wars. Yet this mass killing lay unremembered by a culture that preferred to deny death. Indeed, Warhol’s ‘Death and Disaster’ series never received the critical or popular acclaim his later work would achieve. It seems that most people did not want to be reminded that turning the ignition of the car can be the first moment of a wonderful adventure, or it can lead to the car being wrapped around a pole, and then… all is grey.

Contemplating great art makes me tingle with intense pleasure, even when it confronts me with the presence of my forthcoming death. It makes me feel authentically alive. Or, you might object, it simply makes me look absurd.

Heidegger’s influence on continental philosophy has been enormous. Nevertheless, something does not sit right with his idea of being-towards-death as authenticity. Firstly, there is Adorno’s sustained critique that the doctrine leads to “a regression to the cult of death” (The Jargon of Authenticity). Secondly, while it’s true that one can never experience another’s death, can one even experience one’s own death? As one approaches death, one is still alive, so not yet dead (I’m reminded of James Joyce’s quip, “Monsieur de la Palisse… was alive fifteen minutes before he was dead” from Ulysses, 1904). Once I die, I will no longer exist, and so will be incapable of any experience. So can the I that exists authentically contemplate the non-I of non-existence? In Buddhist meditation, the aim is to achieve detachment from the illusion of continued existence. However, the sitter does not simply meditate on non-existence. Instead, one contemplates one’s breath, or a mantra, or a koan, or a visualization. Yet Heidegger seems to take it for granted that we can be aware of our future non-existence, and this seems to not be the case.

Conclusion

In his ‘Letter on Humanism’, Heidegger argued that public chatter was leading to the ‘devastation of language’ (some will no doubt accuse Heidegger, with his propensity for obscure neologisms, of having contributed to this devastation). E.M. Cioran said that words become ‘trivialised by usage’, and when repeated too often, they ‘weaken and die’. Through overuse, the signifier breaks free from the signified, and meaninglessness ensues. Such, I fear, is the problem with much of the noise that surrounds us. We have fallen into meaningless chatter, and we have fallen so deep we’re not even aware of our dilemma.

The term ‘authenticity’ pops up everywhere. It has come to mean many things. It sells beer and cosmetics. It justifies educational innovations. It suggests we should be suspicious of how we live. It compels us to change who we think we are. But ‘the cult of authenticity’, as Adorno called it, together with the wellness industry that now surrounds it, leads to a fetishization of individual experience, thereby rendering invisible how the subject is formed and deformed by historical conditions and institutions. If you feel anxious or overworked, that’s your own fault, because you’re not leading an authentic life. The solution is to work hard at personal and professional growth while healing yourself through the practice of mindfulness or yoga or cognitive therapy, rather than (say) to overthrow the institutions that exploit you. Thus the term ‘authenticity’, wrapped up in the neo-liberal language of positivity and liberation, has itself become meaningless, destructive, and absurd.

Paul Doolan taught philosophy in international schools in Asia and in Europe and is the author of Collective Memory and the Dutch East Indies: Unremembering Decolonization (Amsterdam University Press, 2021).