Autonomy and the Question of Authenticity

Abstract

The task of this paper is to distinguish conceptions of authenticity in an effort to find out which, if any, can be of service to a plausible theory of autonomous agency. In doing this I will go back several decades to look at an account of authenticity offered by Karl Jaspers, and to yet a differ ent ideal of authenticity attributed by Charles Taylor to Johann Herder. My suspicion is that the view of authenticity that has come to dominate current discussion grows out of the Herderian ideal. According to this ideal, a person lives authentically when she is true to herself, and she is true to herself when she develops her life on the basis of what is of value to her.1 The currently received view borrows from this idea and main tains that authenticity amounts to endorsement of, or absence of alien ation from, the principles according to which one lives one's life. As I understand the concept, to be autonomous is to act within a framework of rules one sets for oneself, and it is to have a kind of authority over oneself as well as the power to act on that authority. A theory of autonomy must explain what kind of authority and power is involved, given that we are speaking of adult persons who are interpersonally bound by political and moral frameworks. We correctly attribute autonomy to a person when the person has de facto power and authority to direct affairs of elemental importance to her life within a framework of rules (or values, principles, beliefs, pro-attitudes) that she has set for herself. These affairs are general and routine. They concern, for instance, intimate relation ships, access to and control over information about oneself, and events that lend a distinctive pattern to one's life. While a person's behavior and motivations can be traced to a variety of factors, to describe a person as autonomous is to claim that the person is self-directed in this way. Elsewhere I have suggested that authenticity is unnecessary for auton omy. I agree that autonomous people must be true to themselves, but