Authenticity as a Benchmark of Human Selfhood? On Kierkegaard’s Concept of the Self

Abstract

First, this paper wants to ask how the term authenticity is attributed to persons, in order to figure out the semantic content of being authentical as used in philosophical debates and in ordinary language or in pop cultural codes as well. In a second step, I want to show which mostly implicit concept of selfhood is underlying this type of attribution, and what kind of social ideals and moral claims for being true to oneself or becoming a self are presupposed in the usage of the word. Drawing upon Soren Kierkegaard’s concept of the self, developed in his late work The Sickness unto Death (1848, translated 1941), I am going to ask if it is a false or merely an excessive demand to be ‘authentic’, or to what extent it is reasonable to argue for authenticity as a quality standard and benchmark for individual development. That means, in the terms of Kierkegaard, for being one’s own self or of really becoming a self. With his concise and groundbreaking analysis of the structure and dynamics of human selfhood, as this paper finally wants to show, it is possible to shed light onto both—people’s lifelong struggle for being truthful to themselves in their own perception as in the eye of others, as well as why people mostly fail in terms of that demand. Finally, the theoretical framework and alternative concepts of understanding selfhood put forward here should also give some hints for what really matters in personal development and normative goals in education.