The illusion of authenticity

The true self is a fiction and authenticity is illusory. Humans should embrace the artificial, striving for virtue and aesthetic excellence.

Written by Bo Winegard.

“The first duty of life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered.”
—Oscar Wilde

Of the many memorable lines in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, few have been quoted as often as Polonius’s advice, “This above all else: to thine own self be true.” Unlike Hamlet’s soul-searing “To be or not to be” soliloquy, these words are commonly cited not because they make for riveting poetry but because they seem wise and commendable. This is even more true today than when Shakespeare wrote them, for we, being descendants of the Romantic revolution, live in an era in which authenticity is esteemed and self-expression celebrated.

That Polonius was a tedious windbag might give pause. Perhaps Shakespeare believed that “to thine own self be true” was exactly the kind of cliche a pompous prattler would pass off as sagacious advice. And thus Shakespeare was not endorsing Polonius’s counsel but mocking it. After all, a Caesar with an insatiable lust for war might be most true to himself while in bloody conquest. But few would praise him for his steadfast commitment to authenticity. Likewise, few would denounce him for straying from his true self if he restrained his bellicose passions and advocated peace and diplomacy.

If Shakespeare’s attitude toward Polonius’s admonition was indeed ironic, he was correct. Authenticity is overrated. It is often undesirable and perhaps even incoherent. I do not dispute, of course, that in certain contexts the term can be useful. When a restaurant boasts that it serves authentic Texas barbecue, I am not confused by the claim. But when applied to humans instead of food or memorabilia, authenticity becomes vague, muddled, perplexing.

Was Jeffrey Dahmer acting authentically when he murdered people? Was Adolf Hitler acting authentically when he embraced anti-Semitism and embarked on a public career that ended in calamity? Presumably the champions of authenticity would answer no in both cases, but aside from a concern with rhetorical effectiveness (“Dahmer was authentic” is unlikely to persuade people that authenticity is a good thing), the reasons for such denials are not clear.  

The misguided authenticity/inauthenticity dichotomy should be replaced by a more meaningful virtuous/sinful distinction. Humans should strive not to conform to the characteristics of some mysterious hidden true self but to the precepts of transcendent moral and aesthetic standards. Whether an act is congruent with the “authentic” self is irrelevant. For the acts of the authentic self might lead to ugliness and even damnation.

Humans are not like rocks or rivers. They do not exist merely as they are, forever unaware of past and future. Humans create. Transcend. And overcome. Rejecting one’s current self while pursuing a more noble future self is no more inauthentic than the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly.

Many human tendencies are wicked. Sigmund Freud argued that humans have an instinct toward destruction and that the history of civilization was the history of a clash between Eros and Death. And although his heady vision of cultural conflict was more poetic than scientific, it was not far from the truth. Civilization is at war with human deviousness and depravity.

To be sure, humans are works in progress, flexible and receptive to culture, but they are also evolved creatures with relatively fixed characteristics, some of which are unpleasant and some of which are evil. One of the crucial tasks of civilization is to guide and discipline—to curb the wicked and the crass and to spur the virtuous and the refined. And for this task the notion of authenticity is singularly unhelpful.

If authentic means in conformity with innate desires and instincts, as it often seems to, then authentic behaviors will comprise good and wicked acts. Examples of the wicked abound, though they are controversial because humans dislike and often reject evidence of their own depravity or blame it on external forces such as a corrupt social order that encourages violence and avarice.

Yet even a cursory glance at children on a playground refutes the intrinsic nobility of human nature. Selfish and aggressive acts are not anomalies; they are commonplace. These are often subdued but never abandoned. Adults do not leave wickedness behind like an outgrown toy. Original sin is ineradicable. The daily news provides endless evidence. And even the quotidian—a gossip magazine or a grisly film—evinces the power and pervasiveness of human sin.

The problem for the proponent of authenticity is that he seems committed to the position that suppressing these (and other) sinful or antisocial desires is inauthentic, requiring social coercion which distorts the innate nature of the self. If most humans have a deep desire to dominate others, then restraining them from acting on that desire is restraining them from expressing their true selves. Civilization becomes an affront to authenticity.

The most common response from advocates of authenticity is that the true self is innately good but was somehow mutated by the invention of private property or capitalism into the exploitative self we see today. Original sin is a myth. But there was a fall after humans tasted the seductive fruit of civilization. To live authentically is to reject the superficiality and selfishness encouraged by civilization and to return to the innocent passions and joys of the primitive self.

But the evidence that civilization created factitious desires to dominate and subjugate, causing a relatively benign creature to become a fiercely competitive and acquisitive animal, is limited, to say the least. Instead, the best evidence suggests that humans have always been competitive and acquisitive, though their capacity for accumulation was of course limited before the development of permanent settlements. Murder, rape, theft, and other iniquities are not novel behaviors. Nor for that matter are similar behaviors unknown in other animals. Nature is red in tooth and claw. Humans are no exception.

Thus, the claim that the authentic self is free from wicked desires because those desires are socially created is not tenable. And the version of authenticity that its proponents end up espousing is suspiciously artificial, relying, as it does, upon a fictitious and quintessentially romantic view of human nature. Adam and Eve without the fall.

Human selves are created by context. The particular combination of characteristics, of traits and tendencies, we generally call a person’s self are always shaped by surrounding norms and practices because humans are cultural creatures. Without social enrichment, they must remain limited and incomplete, their growth stunted like plants in a degraded soil. Thus, there is no self without culture because the self is created by culture. Social existence precedes essence. And the authentic self, cloistered from cultural forces and influences in some inviolable metaphysical realm, is an invention of the Romantic imagination.  

A proponent of authenticity might respond that this is a superficial argument and beside the point. Of course humans are significantly shaped by culture. After all, one of their most important and unique capacities, namely the capacity to produce language, is unimaginable without culture. And the peculiar language any individual speaks is largely determined by contingencies of culture. English here, Spanish there. French now, Latin then. However, this does not refute the notion of a true self. For language is to the self what clothes are to the body. It does not change the self though it does alter its presentation to the world.

But one does not need to embrace a robust version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to believe that language is more than a superficial costume allowing a preexisting self to express its thoughts and desires. Language molds and creates. It may not determine thought, but it does shape it.
Furthermore, language is only the most obvious example of cultural influence. Upon reflection it becomes evident that many features typically associated with the true or authentic self are at least partially culturally created.

Take for example a person’s deepest moral convictions. These are often claimed to be an essential part of a person’s true self, and the expression of them in the face of ferocious social opposition is often claimed to be a triumph of authenticity. Thus, a German who loudly and courageously opposed the Nazis is seen as more authentic than a German who conformed and remained silent.

However, we can ask a variant of a common existential question: Would a person born into a different cultural context have had the same basic moral values?

The disconcerting but virtually inescapable answer is no he would not have had the same values. An ardent gay rights advocate in 1999 might have been an ardent traditional marriage advocate in 1975. And he may have been an ardent Stalinist in 1945. Even had this hypothetical man been born into different communities in the same year, he may have had very different moral commitments. Perhaps in a secular community, he would have been an advocate for atheism, whereas in a Christian community, he would have been an advocate for Catholicism.

This does not mean that the human moral system is infinitely plastic. Nor does it mean that all variation in moral and political views is caused by the environment. Basic moral and political predilections are heritable. The way they manifest, however, is determined by context. The same predisposition can lead to different beliefs in different contexts. (And presumably different predilections can lead to the same beliefs in different contexts.)

Suppose, for example, that a tendency to rebellion is at least partially innate. Some people are more likely to rebel than others because of their genetic proclivities. The specific form this rebellion would take would be almost entirely determined by cultural context and historical accidents. In 1780, rebellion might have meant espousing republicanism; in 2024, it might mean espousing monarchism. That which was once part of the staid status quo is now a part of a bold counterculture.

The same applies to other characteristics that are associated with authenticity such as quirky passions and unusual beliefs. One might consider a person’s commitment to the craft of poetry, for example, as an expression of his authentic self, especially if that person’s parents expected him to become a doctor or a lawyer. But his passion for poetry is only possible after the invention of poetry. Without culture, there is no poetry. And without poetry, there is no passion for poetry. This holds a fortiori for other passions that require more technological innovations such as oil painting or electric guitar. Would Eddie Van Halen’s authentic self have remained dormant if he had been born in 3000 BCE? Would he have popularized an aggressive style of play on a rudimentary lyre?

Rhetorical questions aside, the point is this: Passions and beliefs are shaped by an intricate blend of genetic predispositions and cultural forces. Like the cultivated colors and contours of a garden, they are mutable products of civilization, not immutable forces of nature. The feral self is no more authentic than a wild jungle; and the created self is no less authentic than a refined garden.

The human self always transcends itself. Possessing a brain teeming with billions of cells is metabolically expensive, but it comes with its advantages. Chief among them is the capacity for symbolic thought, which liberates humans from the tyranny of the present and allows them to imagine what is absent. In this way, even in a dark silent prison, they can appreciate the audacious beauty of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony or the existential ugliness of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

They can also conjure the past or invent the future, which enables them to envision a better self—one not tortured by gluttony or avarice, nor consumed by feuds and enmities, nor plagued by doubts or anxieties. A self ethically laudable and capable of as much happiness as humans can realistically expect from this world. Put differently, humans constantly overcome their immediate selves, driven by moral and aesthetic desires. As Jean-Paul Sartre noted, with his puckish delight for paradox, humans are what they are not and are not what they are, forever striving toward the future self they imagine.

To claim that there is an authentic or true self behind this process of perpetual becoming is to reject the reality of self-creation. A rose becomes a rose, having no other choice. But a human can become a sinner or a saint, a lecher or a prude, an artist or a bureaucrat, because a human is not limited by some internal essence, some seed from which a predetermined self springs like the shoot of a flower. Instead, a human is what a human creates.

Of course, this does not mean that choice is unlimited or that genetic predispositions are irrelevant. Few humans could ever become professional athletes, despite sedulous training and dogged dedication. For the human body and brain are limited and the human character is not infinitely malleable. Nevertheless, human possibility is expansive and authenticity in any robust sense is virtually meaningless. After all, what could be more authentically human than the desire to become a different, better self?

Since so many natural proclivities are wicked, humans need a moral guide, a transcendent moral law toward which they can aspire. This and not some illusory true self should inspire and motivate humans. They should discipline their instincts and desires and elevate their ethical and aesthetic sensibilities. They should strive to imitate the great moral teachers, such as Siddhartha, Socrates, and Jesus, subduing unruly passions that distract from ethical excellence. And they should absorb the classics of Western Civilization, such as Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton, eschewing the transient pleasures of spectacle and gossip.

Skepticism about authenticity is ultimately a skepticism of a broader philosophy, a kind of neo-romanticism, which promotes an optimistic vision of humans as innately noble, flawed and sinful only because of the corruptions of society. For neo-romantics, the authentic self is precisely this innately noble aspect of human nature, this primal entity, that remains buried like the healthy roots of a disfigured tree scarred by the axe blows of a wicked society. To return to nature, to the authentic foundation of life, is to reject the burdens and expectations of civilization and to embrace innate passions and instincts.  

But this philosophy gets things backward. The sin is in nature, not society. What is needed is not romanticism, but a classicism that is skeptical of human goodness and that advocates for restraint, discipline, and adherence to moral and aesthetic excellence. The important dichotomy is not authentic/inauthentic. It is virtuous/sinful.

Behaviors should be praised or blamed as they conform or fail to conform to transcendent standards. Those that conform are virtuous, and those that do not are sinful. “Natural” desires to sin should be repudiated and “artificial” desires to virtue should be celebrated. For only through careful work and cultivation can the crooked timber of humanity be fashioned into something worthy of esteem.

Bo Winegard is the Executive Editor at Aporia

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