Is it possible to be authentic in the postmodern age?

Introduction

The idea of being authentic has always been popular throughout the history of philosophy. It is present in sources as diverse as the Ancient Greek consideration of aletheia (truthfulness in self-expression) to be a virtue (Aristotle and Rackham), all the way to existentialism in the 20th-century (Grene); and the possibility of authenticity has been presupposed in all of these theories. However, since the beginning of the postmodern age, which has led to significant changes in our world, some have begun to question whether authentic life is even still possible (Sim).  

Authenticity

In Being and Time (Heidegger), it is argued that inauthenticity is Verfallen (“falling”), which means acting simply as a member of a “crowd”. 

Heidegger’s definition of authenticity is flawed because an authentic being can also rely upon the social conditions which constitute a “falling” existence. This is a view substantiated in Escape from Freedom (Fromm), which can be used to justify the fact that intentionally wanting to stop living in a “falling” way would be believing in “the illusion of individuality”, and hence, not be authentic at all. Fromm also believed that any action which resulted from a complete rational understanding of its causes is authentic. This theory of authenticity is valid because, unlike Heidegger’s, it considers only the actions themselves, rather than judging something based on its origins and evaluating it purely from the context it originates in, thus committing genetic fallacy.

Fromm’s theory of authenticity can also be supported by the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Kant), where Kant claims that autonomy is only possible through reason, and must not arise through desire. As Kant stated in the Groundwork, “...the will of a rational being can be a will of his own only under the Idea of freedom, and such a will must therefore–from a practical point of view–be attributed to all rational beings” (p.116). Hence, if the concepts of autonomy and authenticity imply each other (as no contradiction arises if this is assumed to be the case), then using reason to cognise one’s possible actions will always be an antecedent to authenticity. Therefore, if one rationally evaluates an action before it is done, then the resulting action can be considered authentic. 

The Postmodern Age

The “postmodern” is defined as “the incredulity towards metanarratives” in the introduction to The Postmodern Condition (Lyotard, p.xxiv). A metanarrative can be thought of as a grand, comprehensive system which allows people to interpret and contextualise objects and events on a smaller level. For example, a religion is a metanarrative because it offers its believers a worldview (such as an omnipotent God determining everything to happen in a certain way) which can then be used to evaluate individual events as following from that worldview. Thus, postmodernity is the dismissal of metanarratives like religions, involving the conscious refutation of ontological worldviews and beliefs that are often held unconsciously.

The Impossibility of Authenticity 

In the opening to Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life, Adorno quotes Ferdinand Kürnberger, “Life does not live” (p.1). Similarly, in the first thesis of The Society of the Spectacle, Debord writes, “Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation” (p.1). Both of these thinkers believe that authenticity is no longer possible in postmodernity, and the reasons for this can be derived from three core ideas of postmodern philosophy (which is a set of theories created to analyse postmodernity in more depth): hyperreality, sign value, and panopticism. 

Hyperreality was first introduced in Simulacra and Simulation (Baudrillard and Glaser), which opens with Baudrillard’s idea that in the postmodern world, a representation can “[have] no relation to any reality whatsoever,” which is a type of representation Baudrillard terms a “pure simulacrum” (p.6). These representations have the condition of being hyperreal, because they no longer represent external objects, but refer only to themselves, or are signifiers without denotata, or pure abstract forms indistinguishable from reality. An example of hyperreality is social media, because it began as a model of real life, but now, people are greatly influenced by social media and start imitating the behaviour they see on it, meaning that what has began as a model of reality, is now a model for reality, meaning that it is impossible to distinguish between the ideas of social media and those of real life, leaving social media as a “pure simulacrum”. Baudrillard contends that in postmodernity, hyperrealities are becoming more and more common, which blurs the line between fiction and reality. This means that what was once subjective is now becoming more objective until the two qualities can no longer be distinguished; and this is because more and more fictions (which must be subjective and not objectively truthful, by definition) are now becoming objective realities absent of subjective individuality. Authenticity, as defined earlier, must involve an individual’s own rational evaluation of their possible actions, and with the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity gradually disappearing, this means that an individual will eventually no longer be able to recognise all of their own subjective thoughts as their own (since it will be impossible to differentiate them from external objective ideas), suggesting that authenticity is no longer possible.

Moreover, another concept discussed by Baudrillard is that of sign value. In early writings such as For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (Baudrillard), he argues that the values of objects in the postmodern age are no longer determined by their “use value” (the physical properties of an object or its utility) or their “exchange value” (the worth of the object in comparison to others), but mainly by their “sign value”, which is how much the object gives its owner a feeling of high social status. The concept of the sign value can also be interpreted as an updated version of “commodity fetishism” from Das Kapital (Marx and Engels) by recontextualising it in a postmodern society, because both ideas analyse the relationship between people and capitalist commodities. Besides, he was an outspoken Marxist before attacking the doctrine in 1973 with The Mirror of Production (Baudrillard). Baudrillard also wrote in For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, “...everything, even artistic, intellectual, and scientific production, even innovation and transgression, is immediately produced as sign and exchange value (relational value of the sign)” (p.87). This means that everything achieved by anyone in the postmodern age is ultimately done to gain social prestige through the sign values of objects. Hence, all actions must lie deeply-rooted within social milieus. Since authenticity was defined earlier in this essay as the quality of anything that is evaluated rationally before it is done, and rational evaluation will also be rooted within these milieus (as it is an action), it appears that authenticity is not possible.

The final main concept of postmodern philosophy is that of panopticism, which was considered in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Foucault). Foucault compares the structure of the postmodern society to a panopticon, which is a prison design where prisoners cannot know if they are being watched or not. This means that for the prisoners, it would be most practical to simply behave well in the prisons. Foucault argues that the postmodern society is very much like this: a self-regulating system where individuals internalise social ideas (such as standards of beauty) and allow themselves to be greatly influenced by them. As Foucault wrote, describing the prisoner of a panopticon, “He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication” (p.200). Therefore, similar to the consequences of all actions done for maximised sign value, if our actions are all done due to a fear of nonconformity to societal values, authenticity appears impossible. 

Therefore, thinkers like these believe that if all the actions of an individual in the postmodern world are determined and limited by factors external to themself, then authenticity cannot be possible, because authenticity must be dependent solely on an individual and their rationality, and nothing else. 

Evaluation

However, these prior arguments are incorrect, as they can be refuted in two different ways. Firstly, thinkers who believe that authenticity is impossible in the postmodern world like Debord are contending for the absolute claim that authenticity is always impossible. However, the postmodern age is not yet complete, and the characteristics of the postmodern age (such as hyperreality) may change and evolve in the future, with the chance that authenticity can eventually become possible. Nevertheless, some scholars have theorised that postmodernity had already come to an end in the late 1990s with the beginning of “post-postmodernism” (López), but this is a weak counter-argument because “post-postmodernism” is not yet fully accepted in academia, and there are other contesting theories about what occurs after the supposed end of postmodernism, such as metamodernism (Storm). This means that the idea that authenticity is, and will always be, impossible in postmodernity is invalid. 

The second reason concerns the social structures and notions which supposedly negate the possibility of authenticity. These social structures (such as the panopticon and sign value) must still be created, and hence, have a creator which lies outside them. With a Gucci bag, its high sign value must have begun with a person of great social prestige purchasing a Gucci bag, thus allowing for the quality of social status (or high sign value) to be applied to the Gucci bag. In the system of a panopticon, there must still be someone who constructs the panopticon and thus is outside of it. With hyperreality, not everything is hyperreal yet - for example, all purely abstract concepts can never be hyperreal because they are themselves the bases for simulacra in the first place, or the objects of representation. Hence, if the limits to authenticity are themselves authentically made, then authenticity was always possible and the social structures never really eliminated the possibility of authenticity entirely. This means one can still be authentic by creating panopticons or objects with high sign value.

This view that authenticity is possible can be further substantiated by an idea introduced in Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, which is a well-respected and credible source because it records key ideas from lectures given at the University of Berlin. In the Lectures, the idea that the process of world history is itself the actualisation of freedom or authenticity is posited, so in any particular period of world history (in this case, the postmodern age), authenticity must still be possible. This is evident in the following quotation, 

“World history, as already pointed out, represents the development of the spirit’s consciousness of its own freedom and of the consequent realisation of this freedom. This development is by nature a gradual progression, a series of successive determinations of freedom which proceed from the concept of the material in question, i.e. the nature of freedom in its development towards self-consciousness.” (Hegel, p.138) 

This shows that authenticity (or alternatively, the necessary consequence of a rational evaluation of one’s actions before they are done) is always possible throughout world history, which is evident in how reason can always be used - as it is fundamental to the human experience according to the Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), and even if it is used for inauthentic ends (such as for sign value and social prestige) or exists in an inauthentic condition (such as the panopticon), reason has the ability to transform the inauthentic ends of its use into a single authentic end, and transform its inauthentic conditions into a single authentic condition. This single authentic condition or end of all reason is the process of world history itself, as the Lectures on the Philosophy of World History states,”...world history is therefore a rational process” (p.27). Thus, authenticity is still possible in postmodernity, and in fact, in any historical epoch or society thereof. 

Conclusion

To conclude, authenticity (when defined as the “the essential quality of an action which has been rationally evaluated before it is done”) is possible in the postmodern age. The conditions of the postmodern age also do not eliminate the possibility of authenticity, because the conditions themselves must be created in an authentic way, which invalidates the argument against the possibility of postmodern authenticity. Furthermore, even though postmodernity can confine people to inauthentic conditions (such as Foucault’s notion of society being structured like a panopticon), through the use of reason, this inauthenticity can contribute to the actualisation of world history as a larger whole (which is an authentic process as it relies on rationality). 

References

Adorno, Theodor W., and Dennis Redmond. Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life. Prism Key Press, 2011, p.1. 

Aristotle, and Harris Rackham. The Nicomachean Ethics. Harvard University Press, 2003. 

Baudrillard, Jean, and Sheila Faria Glaser. Simulacra and Simulation. The University of Michigan Press, 2020. 

Baudrillard, Jean. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. Telos Press Limited, 2019. 

Baudrillard, Jean. The Mirror of Production. Telos Press, 1975. 

Debord, Guy, et al. The Society of the Spectacle. Critical Editions, 2021, p.1. 

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Vintage Books, 1995. 

Fromm, Erich. Escape from Freedom. Farrar & Rinehart, 1941.

Grene, Marjorie. “Authenticity: An Existential Virtue.” Ethics, vol. 62, no. 4, 1952, pp. 266–74. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2378633. Accessed 20 Nov. 2022.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, et al. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Cambridge University Press, 1992, p.138. 

Heidegger, Martin, and Joan Stambaugh. Being and Time: A Translation of Sein Und Zeit. State University of New York Press, 2010. 

Kant, Immanuel, et al. Critique of Pure Reason Abridged. Hackett, 1999. 

Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Cambridge University Press, 2014. 

López, José. After Postmodernism: An Introduction to Critical Realism. Athlone Press, 2006.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Das Kapital. O. Meissner, 1894. 

Sim, Stuart, editor. The Edinburgh Companion to Critical Theory. Edinburgh University Press, 2016. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctv2f4vfd6. Accessed 27 Nov. 2022.

Storm, Jason Ānanda Josephson. Metamodernism: The Future of Theory. The University of Chicago Press, 2021.