Authenticity is a matter of genuineness, a hallmark of the unalienated original self. In his brilliant book Sincerity and Authenticity, literary critic Lionel Trilling identifies the ethos of authenticity, of individual impulses that are expressed freely and spontaneously without concern for propriety or others' reception. This value is associated with the 1960s—the generation to which many of today's college faculty belong—and the rejection of convention. It abounds in such mid-twentieth-century literary classics as The Catcher in the Rye, with its disparagement of "phoniness"; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, with its search for "quality"; or On the Road, with its rejection of conformity and its celebration of spontaneity. A logic of authenticity seeks a singular self, a unique individuality that does not change or yield according to circumstances. The roots of this ethos can be traced through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art and thought, from Emerson's notion of self-reliance back to the roots of Protestant Christianity, in which a person's history and family become irrelevant to the notion of the soul, and all that matters is individual faith, not ritual action.
The authentic self is often characterized by solitude. Groups are anathema to the authentic self, because participating in a group requires compromise, while authenticity requires consistent loyalty to one's own principles. As Freud pointed out in Civilization and Its Discontents, because we are members of society, individuals can never attain complete happiness, for we must always compromise our desires. The authentic self therefore celebrates separation of the person from society. It is distrustful of convention and even of success, since achieving worldly success means meeting the expectations and desires of the populace at large. Vincent van Gogh was the perfect authentic self: he had his own distinct, original style, suffered during his lifetime for his singularity, and was never commercially successful.
For authentic selves, the concepts of originality and authorship are critical. Since each self is unique, so are its words. In the celebration of authenticity that began in earnest in the eighteenth century, each text had to have a singular author. Authorship might have to be "authenticated" in order to ascertain precisely the identity of the originating individual.
Authentic individuals are especially prominent among the literary and musical geniuses whose oeuvre is perceived to have bubbled up spontaneously from their souls.' Unlike in earlier times, their inspiration was not thought to derive from a muse or from God; their creativity came from the internal inspiration of the writer or artist herself or himself. As these moments of inspiration "are increasingly credited to the writer's own genius," writes Martha Woodmansee, "they transform the writer into a unique individual uniquely responsible for a unique product. Wordsworth was the quintessential author, forever emphasizing his originality and creativity. And because authors are originators, they own rights to their work." Johann Gottfried von Herder's view, which guided this idea of authenticity, was that "one ought to be able to regard each book as the imprint of a living human soul. " Thus it is not just possible but essential to trace the book back to its originating soul.
God is dead, truth is dead. There are only multiple truths, depending on perspective. What is then important is our perception of reality. Because reality is determined ultimately by our mind.
Also, man is born without sin but is then corrupted by society and civilization. Parents, politicians, and preachers are hypocritical moral figures. Thus to be truly moral, one must look to nature and to one's heart for moral guidance and not to authorities such as the family, the state, and religion.
This I believe is the central essence of the authenticity ethos.
On a different note, let me say one thing. We can posit that objective standards of beauty and morality exist because biologically we are essentially built the same way. We are motivated and driven by the same desires. Gender roles are not socially constructed. They are a direct result of our biology and our genes. Our taste in art is not socially constructed. Humans tend to find similar things beautiful (a sunset vs. a pile of poop). Our moralities are similar (rules against incest, murder, and theft are found in all cultures). These things might not be "truths" to an alien species that come across our planet, but these are essentially truths for us, because we have been built to love, want, and desire the same things.
The reason why we have religion, family, and the state is because we need them. Communism forgot this. Communism was based on a false belief in human nature.
In an age of science, religion and myth are still relevant because science can not address the universal God-shaped hole in our hearts. We humans have evolved to seek fulfillment regarding questions of spirituality, meaning and purpose. But just because we have this need, does not mean that the object of this need exists. Nevertheless, we have this need and we have to address it, even materialists and atheists. Like their religious counterparts, they have their own mythic narratives that they believe in.
Can we ever know and experience the true reality? We begin our search for meaning with this question. Once we have found a narrative that sufficiently addresses this question of reality, then we have found our reality. Is this the true reality? Probably not, but by then, we don't care.
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