AUTHENTICITY Sturm

Sean

Put most simply, The difference between inauthentic and authentic Dasein consists in different modes of inhabiting a common tradition(Young, 62). Dasein in its essence is thrown projection and its authenticity consists in the stand it takes on itself in living. The inquiry into authenticity, undertaken in the light of this assertion, can be formulated in terms of three questions:

1.

What is the difference between authentic and inauthentic life? In the average everyday way Dasein inhabits the common tradition - the shared public world - it understands itselfin terms of its world(BT, 120), in terms of contemporary public opinion(Young, 64). In other words, the Self of everyday Dasein is the One-self, which we distinguish from the authentic Self(BT, 129). This One-self, which Dreyfus calls undifferentiated Dasein, is inauthentic and must find itself, become a differentiated I-self, in order to live authentically.

2.

But how is it possible for Dasein to differentiate itself - how is authenticity made possible? This question turns on the issue of the call of conscience, which enables Dasein to find itself, calling to Daseins ability-to-be-authentic(Dreyfus, 242).

3.

Is it desirable to be authentic - or rather, once Dasein has differentiated itself, why is it more desirable to live in conformity with Daseins essence, than in conformism to the One? And, how does one live in an authentic way - how does one inhabit the common tradition without being conformist?

The short answer is that authentic Dasein, the I-self, has come to understand its life as a whole, both temporally and existentially, as thrown projection. It becomes a rooted person of character, living resolutely - in the light of its finitude and essential nothingness, and fatefully - taking over its values from heritage. Whereas inauthentic Dasein, the One-self, floats, lost in the making present of the today(BT, 391), having chosen the One for its hero(BT, 371).

1a. Dasein

Dasein is a pattern of concernful activity in the world(Young, 58): One is what one does(BT, 239) and the limits of my world are the limits of myself(quoted in Young, 59). So, Dasein is fundamentally Being-in-the-world - concernful activity in the world. The existential analytic, Heideggers inquiry into Dasein in its average everydayness, reveals that the essential structure (existential) of Dasein, its form of life, is care. Heidegger defines care as ahead-of-itself-Beingalready-in (the world) as Being-amidst entities which we encounter (within-the-world)(BT, 192/249). In other words, Dasein, human existence, always takes a certain form - is a pattern of concernful activity: Guignon calls this temporal unfolding. Dasein is always already in a definite world(BT, 221), a given public situation, thrown into a definite range of possibilities, of given social roles (for-thesake-of-whichs - Worumwillen), a leeway of what is culturally desirable and exemplary, and a past history of involvements and commitments(Young, 59). This is Daseins facticity, its conditioned nature. Dasein is always ahead-ofitself, projecting on, i.e., acting on some such possibility(Dreyfus, 300), by which it understands its action and commits [it]self to a certain future(Young, 61). This is

Daseins transcendence(or existentiality), its possibility of self-creation. So, Dasein is conditioned self-creation - thrown projection. But finally, in addition, Dasein is always amidst a current situation, taking a stand on itself in acting, creating itself authentically or inauthentically. That is to say, as well as having an existential structure, each Dasein has a specific (existentiell) way of life that either reveals that existential structure (authenticity, or resolution), or covers it up (inauthenticity, or falling): the kind of person one is depends on the kind of pattern of action ones life adds up to(Young, 58).

1b. Inauthentic Dasein Fallingis the everyday way the self [i.e. the One-self] takes a stand on itself(Dreyfus, 300). As Heidegger says, for the most part Dasein is lost in its worldIts absorption in the One signifies that it is dominated by the way things are publicly interpreted(BT, 222). Being fallen and absorbed in the One is, in a sense, Daseins default-position: falling and the One are existentialia (structures common to every Dasein). In other words: The shared public world is the only world there is or can be(Dreyfus, 301). So, everyday Dasein

is undifferentiated from the One - a One-self, not an I-self, and therefore inauthentic.

There are three provisos one must bear in mind in inquiring into this notion of Dasein taking a stand on itself in a shared public world. Firstly, fundamental values, for Heidegger, are not things one can choose(Young, 62). Acting on some possibility or other from the leeway of given social roles, in a given public situation (projecting), does not involve conscious choice or intentional states. Everyday concernful activity is doing what is appropriate - what it makes sense to do: Daseins transcendence is merely its ability to project into some possibilities rather than others, as determined by its stand on itself. Secondly, understanding is know-how, not a type of cognition or explicit knowledge, but rather knowing how to do what is appropriate in a given situation. Thirdly, Heidegger distinguishes between genuine and nongenuine understanding. As Dreyfus puts it: To be genuine, a Daseins activity must express being-in-the-world as a whole(192). The in- of inauthentic does not mean that Dasein cuts itself off from its self and understands only the

world [and vice versa in the case of the authentic].The world belongs to being-ones-self as being-in-the-world.(BT, 146). [E]ven authentic Dasein can manifest its whole structure in its activity or it can omit some aspect of what it is(Dreyfus, 193).

According to Dreyfus (192-4), Heidegger describes three specific ways inauthentic Dasein understands, or makes itself at home in the world, which illuminate how Dasein takes a stand on itself in living. The first two are non-genuine. The first is a particular way of being lost in the world, which aims at understanding the most alien cultures and synthesizing them with ones own(BT, 178), for the purpose of knowing it all(ibid.). It is interesting to speculate on the specific targets from contemporary intellectual life implicit in Heideggers descriptions. In this case, he may have been targeting syncretistic movements like theosophy, which attempted to synthesize Eastern and Western ways of thinking. Heidegger implies that it is inauthentic not to derive ones possibilities and values from ones own cultural heritage. The second is being lost in the self - exaggerated selfdissection(ibid.), wherein one is tempted to all possibilities of explanation,[including] characterologies and

typologies(ibid.). Here Heidegger is perhaps targeting psychoanalysis, with its extravagant grubbing about in ones soul(Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 160). The third inauthentic way of understanding is genuine - in everyday concernful activity, expressive of Being-in-the-world as a whole. Nonetheless, this genuine understanding still manifests busy curiosity, or concern for novelty, and ambiguity, the inability to decide what is disclosed in a genuine understanding(BT, 173: my emphasis), both of which are also characteristic of the other inauthentic ways of understanding.

These inauthentic ways of understanding are illustrative of the way, as I said above, inauthentic Dasein understands itself in terms of contemporary public opinion (publicness), having constant care as to the way one differs from Others(BT, 126). This distantiality is grounded in the Ones concern with averageness, with which it prescribes what can and may be ventured, leading to the levelling down of [e]very kind of priority (primordiality), of all possibilities of being. In this way, the One deprives the particular Dasein of its answerablity, of its ability-to-be-authentic, disburdening it of its being(BT, 128).

This way in which the One tranquillises Dasein or accommodates its tendency to take things easily(ibid.) is exemplified in the way everyday discourse tends to idle talk, speciously authoritative but groundless, which Heidegger calls the possibility of understanding everything without previously making the thing ones own, simply passing the word along(BT, 169). The average understanding which this promotes does not let us grasp entities (including other Dasein) primordially, in other words, directly or in their Being, but tends to close off and cover up the entities within-theworld(ibid.). It is uprooted and alienating. So, both average understanding and discourse demonstrate the way in which average everyday Dasein is floating, fascinated, lost in its world and absorbed in the One. Falling, as the everyday way the self takes a stand on itself, is what Heidegger calls the positive possibility ofnot-Beingits-self(BT, 176).

It might be said that Heidegger seems to be claiming that Dasein is inherently (existentially) inauthentic. This would conflict with what I have said above, that Daseins taking a stand on itself means creating itself authentically or inauthentically in its existentiell way of life. But the One is an

existentiale in the sense that, since Dasein is fundamentally Being-in-the-world, acting for-the-sake-of a social role, it must begin by understanding itself in the essentially impersonal terms that such a role provides and the role-occupant thus specified is an idealisation or construct, anaverage human being rather than anyone in particular(Mulhall, 73: my emphasis). Authenticity, as Mulhall puts it, is a matter of the way in which one relates to ones roles, not a rejection of any and all roles(74, my emphasis). One might say, opting out is not an option. And, Dasein can relate to a role authentically, as in, for example, a vocation.

1c. Authentic Dasein Authenticity is an existentiell modification of the Oneas an essential existential(BT, 130), not something which floats above falling everydayness; [rather] a modified way in which such everydayness is seized upon(BT, 179). It is a matter of Dasein finding itself and becoming differentiated from the One, that is, understanding itself as inhabiting a shared public world, but in a particular way. If falling is the positive possibility ofnot-Being-itselfthat kind of Being which is closest to Dasein and in which Dasein maintains itself for the

most part(BT, 176), how does Dasein uncover its ability-tobe-authentic (authentic potentiality-for-Being)? It does so through anxiety, to which Dasein is called by conscience.

It is in the state-of-mind of anxiety that Dasein gets brought before itself through its own being(BT, 184). That in the face of which [and about which] one has anxiety is Being-in-the-world as such(BT, 186). This is because [e]veryday familiarity collapses(BT, 189) - the world is without significancenothing(BT, 180), and Dasein feels not-at-home - nowhere(ibid.). Thus, anxiety brings it back from its absorption in the world(ibid.). It takes away from Dasein the possibility of understanding itself, as it falls, in terms of the world and the way things have been publicly interpreted [and] throws Dasein back upon its authentic potentiality-for-Being-in-the-world(BT, 187). Dasein is revealed to be an entity for which in its Being, Being is an issue for it(BT, 191) and the Being that is at issue is in each case mine(BT, 41). In other words, Daseins preontological understanding, its relationship to its own Being, is made explicit and Daseins mineness is revealed to be the ground of authenticity: anxiety individualises(BT, 191). As Heidegger says right at the outset of BT, because Dasein is

in each case essentially its own possibility, it can, in its very Being, choose itself and win itself [authenticity]; it can also lose itself and never win itself [inauthenticity]; or only seem to do so [undifferentiated Dasein?](BT, 42). In anxiety Dasein becomes a solus ipse - individualised or differentiated, though in a particular way. The One-self is annihilated and there is only anxiety: anxiety is anxious(BT, 187). Dasein is revealed to be nothing but Being-in-the-world and the possibility of authenticity or inauthenticity. As Dreyfus puts it, Dasein has no possibilities of its own and Daseins response to anxiety cannot be to find some resource in itself(304), i.e. Dasein can never make any possibilities its own(310). Dasein is the entity for which its own Being matters, and anxiety is the state-of-mind in which this mattering is revealed (this is perhaps what Dreyfus has in mind when he translates Heideggers neologism Befindlichkeit as affectedness). As Macquarrie and Robinson explain in a footnote (BT, 134), what they call state-of-mind is literally the state in which one may be found - how one is feeling, but also the way in which Dasein finds itself.

So, anxiety reveals Daseins essential nothingness. Heidegger focuses on two aspects of this nothingness: Daseins Beingtowards-death reveals Dasein to be a nullity and Daseins Being-guilty that it is a null basis. Death reveals that Dasein, in projecting, can never make any possibilities its own, i.e. its defining possibilities. Its only essential or ownmost possibility is death(Mulhall, 310). Death, as possibility, gives Dasein nothing to be actualised, nothing which Dasein, as actual, could itself be(BT, 262). It reveals Dasein as a nullity. Whereas inauthentic Dasein awaits its death, as a demise happening at some time in the future, authentic Dasein anticipates its death (its fatality). It does not court it or brood over it, but lives in the light of death as its ownmost possibilitynon-relational and not-to-be-outstripped(BT, 251), i.e. inevitable, individual, and a permanent possibility (Young, 67). (Death is of course, as Dreyfus points out, also Daseins utmost possibility in the sense of a limit case in which Dasein is stripped of its genuine structure(312) - were Dasein unable to transcend anxiety, this would in fact be nongenuine, though authentic, Being-towards-death.)

Essentially, such authentic Being-towards-death is living with a sense of finitude, understanding ones life as a whole (Being-a-whole) in the light of ones death (Being-at-an-end). Dasein is free for its ownmost possibilities, which are determined by the end and so are understood as finite(BT, 264): for the first time one can authentically understand and choose among the factical possibilities lying ahead ofdeath [i.e. not yet actualised](BT, 264).

Guilt reveals that Dasein, as thrown, has no possibilities of its own: it is a null-basis, which means never to have power over ones ownmost Being from the ground up(BT, 284). Inauthentic Dasein takes over contemporary mores as binding and universal norms: public consciencethe voice of the One(BT, 278), calls the One-self to its debt to society. Authentic Dasein, on the other hand, in responding to the call of conscience acknowledges its structural indebtedness to the shared public world for possibilities which are never freely chosen, yet for which it is fully responsible (its natality).

So, Being-towards-death and Being-guilty reveal that That in the face of which [and about which] one has anxiety is Beingin-the-world as such(BT, 186) - Dasein as thrown projection

(or factical existentiality). The primordial structural totality(BT, 193) of Dasein, as fundamentally Being-in-theworld, is care. In the light of anxiety, it is revealed that: Care harbours in itself both death and guilt primordially(BT, 306). How? Because, as I said above, Dasein is the entity for which its own Being matters - to be authentic Dasein must face up to the kind of being it is, it must come to understand its life as a whole existentially. In anxiety Dasein is revealed to be existentially nothing but Being-in-the-world and the possibility of authenticity or inauthenticity. 2. The Call of Conscience How is it possible for Dasein to differentiate itself - how is authenticity made possible? If anxiety throws Dasein back upon its authentic potentiality-for-Being-in-the-world(BT, 187), it is in the call of conscience that Dasein is called to anxiety: wanting-to-have-a-conscience becomes a readiness for anxiety(BT, 296). The call constitutes a trace within everyday existentiell inauthenticity of that aspect of Dasein which is anxious about itspotentiality for authentic existence(Mulhall, 130). In short, the selfs ability-to-beauthentic, attested to by conscience, anxiety and care, calls to the One-self to become an I-self.

Who is called to? It is average everyday Dasein, lost in its world and absorbed in the One, falling being its stand on itself as Being-in-the-world. Who or what does the calling? This is a complex issue. Strictly speaking it is conscience, but by extension, also anxiety and care - all those structures of Dasein which are covered up in its absorption in the One. Heidegger likens this to hearing the voice of the friend whom every Dasein carries with it(BT, 163), the true friend who understands you as a whole person. What gets said in the call? Nothing - the call has no content: by remaining silent, it forces Dasein into reticence and attending to itself, instead of losing itself in contemporary public opinion and the idle talk of the One(BT, 271). What is Dasein called to? What is the issue Dasein is called to attend to? (One must keep in mind that, in Heideggers typically circular or paradoxical way of speaking, the caller is also what Dasein is called to attend to.) First of all, conscience calls Dasein to its ownmost Beingguilty(BT, 269), its structural indebtedness to the shared public world for possibilities (i.e. Dasein as a null basis).

Dasein is also called by anxiety (or to anxiety). In this sense, The caller is Dasein in its not-at-homeness: primordial, thrown, Being-in-the-world as the not-at-home(BT, 276-7) (i.e. Dasein as nothing). But furthermore, conscience is also the call of care(BT, 277: my emphasis). Dasein is called to itself. Conscience calls one [t]o ones own self(BT, 273), in other words, to ones abilityto-be-authentic, to ones potential to become an I-self, which understands its life as a whole existentially and temporally. Dasein is called to a way of life that reveals its existential structure, i.e. to take a stand on itself in acting of authentic self-creation. Heidegger calls this reticent self-projection upon ones ownmost Being-guilty, in which one is ready for anxiety(BT, 197), or resoluteness. Of course, a genuinely authentic way of life would also reveal its temporal structure, i.e. comprehend an authentic Being-towards-death, a sense of finitude. When resoluteness has been thought through to the end(BT, 305), it becomes anticipatory resoluteness, Dasein acting in the world for the sake of its ownmost possibility (death)(Dreyfus, 194). So, the I-self is essentially the self of the care-structure Dasein as a whole - retrieved from its lostness in the One. The

resolute taking-up of this self and remaining faithful to it Heidegger calls self-constancy.

3. Authentic Temporality and Historicality The formal difference between irresoluteness and resoluteness in style but not in content...is reflected in a structural difference in the temporality of the inauthentic and authentic modes of existence(Dreyfus, 326). But, in addition, Heideggers understanding of authentic historicality offers an ideal of existence which formulates how the content of authentic existence is to be determined, without specifying what that content must be. As Young puts it: What counts, here, is not what you do, but how you do it(69).

Inauthentic Dasein, the One-self, is lost in the making present of the today, it understands the past in terms of the Present(BT, 371). It projects from the inauthentic present the values of contemporary public opinion, having chosen the One for its hero(BT, 371). It actively represses its value-tradition(Young, 65), its cultural past, and awaits its demise at some time in the future. It lives a floating, irresolute life of tranquillised conformism.

Authentic Dasein, on the other hand, lives with a sense of perspective or equanimity, understanding its life as a whole. It anticipates its death, living resolutely (with Entschlossenheit) in light of its finitude and essential nothingness, in the light of a full recognition of [its] ontological predicament(Young, 66). It also has perspective, in the sense of critical distance(Young, 70), on its culture. In deriving its possibilities from heritage, it repeats the deepest and most hallowed values [ideals] of our cultural tradition(Young, 64). It sees that the possibilities sanctioned by contemporary public opinion are not the only viable possibilities. It is opened up to the historical richness of its thrownness(Young, 70)(i.e. ent-schlossen or un-closed). This is what Heidegger calls authentic historicality: authentic Dasein becomes rooted in tradition and fateful, which involves it helping determine the destiny of its culture (co-historicising). Heidegger neatly summarises the authentic way of life when he calls the sense of perspective of authentic Dasein the moment of vision. Inauthentic Dasein knows only the general situation [and] loses itself in those opportunities which are closest to it(BT, 300) - the inauthentic present of undifferentiated options(Young, 72). Authentic Dasein, in

disclosing its unique Situation, experiences a stark contrast between those [possibilities and values] which must be taken up and those which do not matter(ibid.), i.e. what is worldhistorical in the current situation(BT, 391) and what is not. In the moment of vision, the authentic present, it sees the present in relation to the future (destiny) and the past (heritage). The ground of this disclosure of the unique Situation is Daseins self-constancy, which I discussed above with respect to the I-self. This is the form of resoluteness or openness, in which authentic Dasein projects on any possibility in the light of an understanding of its life as an existential and temporal whole. The selfs resolutenessis in itself [in form, not content] a steadiness [Bestandigkeit : constancy is Standigkeit] which has been stretched along [and] with which Dasein as fate incorporates into its existence birth and death and their between, and holds them as thus incorporated(BT, 390-1). So, as Young says, the kind of person one is depends on the kind of pattern of action ones life adds up to(58).

This is why it is more desirable to be authentic: authentic Dasein knows what to do in any given situation. More than that, it knows what it ought to do. Authentic Dasein sees its way clear to take a stand on itself in living which is in conformity with its essence, as thrown projection and inhabits the common tradition without being conformist.

Appendix (after Dreyfus and Rubin) Dreyfus and Rubin draw attention to the fact that Heidegger offers two versions of falling in Being and Time. Their diagnosis complicates considerably the picture of authenticity I have offered. The structural explanation is that everyday Dasein, as concernful activity in the world (Being-in-theworld), takes the stand on itself of falling, in which it falls away from its ability-to-be-authentic as a result of its existential structure. But to explain the fact that Dasein for the most part does not hear the call of conscience, Heidegger, according to Dreyfus and Rubin, gives an additional motivational explanation - that Dasein actively resists hearingfleeing its nullity(Dreyfus, 334). If structural falling is motivated by fleeing, then, since Dasein as Being-in-the-world is necessarily fallen, is not Dasein

inherently inauthentic? And, why does Dasein, once it has become resolute, experience falling back into inauthentic resoluteness as a constant possibility(BT, 308)? Dreyfus and Rubin believe Being and Time has no adequate response to these questions, though Heidegger himself became aware of them later.

Sources Being-in-the-World Hubert Dreyfus, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1991. The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger ed. Charles Guignon, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993. Heidegger and Being and Time Stephen Mulhall, Routledge, London, 1996. Heidegger lectures, Robert Cavalier at Carnegie Mellon University (unpublished - sourced at http://caae.phil.cmu.edu// ). Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism Julian Young, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997 Martin Heidegger: A Political Life Hugo Ott, Fontana, London, 1994 (orig. 1988). Martin Heidegger: An Illustrated Study Walter Biemel, Routledge and Keegan Paul, London, 1973.