What does it mean to be 'authentic'?
Authenticity is a term used a lot in the careers space, but where did it come from and what does it mean? And what are the implications/applications of this popular value for careers practitioners?
Just “be yourself”?
It feels as though you can’t go on LinkedIn without coming across something to do with authenticity. From “authenticity isn’t always a good thing” to “authenticity is the most sought after business skill that you can’t fake”, you’ll find all sorts of different quotes with a whole range of different meanings, contexts, or intentions, much of them conflicting. So what does being authentic really mean? Where did this idea come from?
Should you “stop trying to be authentic, you already are!” or is “authenticity your greatest act of courage”? Is it about “showing up with empathy” or just a way to “describe your identity”? If “authenticity is just being who you are” then is it really true that “being authentic isn’t an excuse for being an a**hole”? If “authenticity has unmatched value — both in life and leadership”, “is non-negotiable”, and “wins. Always”, what makes it so important? And why don’t we understand it better?
In this article, I will take a look at the concept and origins of authenticity as a social value and offer a possible way to chart a course through the noise. Like many philosophical terms, there is no one single definition, but I will explore briefly how authenticity became to be considered a social value, the philosophical thinking from Heidegger that influenced our modern use of it, and the implications of this for career thinking.
What’s the history behind authenticity as a value?
Drawing from Lindholm - who lays out the historical routes of authenticity as a value in much more detail - I will try to give a (very!) brief summary. The history of authenticity can be viewed as starting with sincerity. Sincerity rose in prominence as a western social value in the 16th century as a product of the move away from feudalism into modernity and urbanisation. As a result of this process, there was an erosion of the perceived sacred hierarchy and taken-for-granted social order of the time (very simply: peasants, knights, nobility, King, God), and more strangers began to interact with each other more often in mixed urban environments.
This new mixing of people from different places and stations in life meant that there was more chance to be dishonest and pretend to be what one was not. Hence, sincerity became a newly important social value because the value of doing what one says one will do took on a new weight.
Alongside this, after Martin Luther (1483 - 1546), there was the new developing Protestantism of Europe and its focus on the individual (rather than the Church) and our egalitarian responsibility for our own salvation. This moved sincerity as a value into a more personal, moral space, placing ourselves and the importance of finding an inner light at its centre. Self-interrogation, purification, and examination of one’s motives and actions became integral to being a virtuous person.
Combine these profound social and religious changes with the development of capitalism, a move away from being locked into a lifetime occupation, and the fast growing development of wage labour which meant that work was increasingly an enforced imposition from an alien authority and not hereditary or connected to any larger meaning system, then, Lindholm states, as we progress through the 17th and 18th centuries we can see sincerity morph into what we now call authenticity.
As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it:
Human beings came to be thought of more as individuals than as placeholders in systems of social relations. This emphasis on the importance of the individual is seen in the prevalence of autobiographies and self-portraits, where the individual becomes the centre of attention not because of extraordinary feats or access to special knowledge, but because he or she is an individual.
At the same time, there is an increasing awareness of what Charles Taylor (1989) calls “inwardness” or “internal space”. The result is a distinction between one’s private and unique individuality, and one’s public self.
With this distinction emerged the question of alignment between two things: one’s private, internal identity, and the public self that we present to others. Hence sincerity, which was more simply about being truthful to others in order to be honest in one’s dealings, morphed into authenticity which became more about being truthful to oneself in order, therefore, to be true to others. So, in its early origins, being authentic is seen as a means to the end of successful social relations.
“perhaps the loss of a sense of belonging through a publicly defined order needs to be compensated by a stronger more inner sense of linkage” - Taylor, ‘The Ethics of Authenticity’
At this point, to be clear, the value of being truthful to oneself in order to be true to others wasn’t yet commonly labelled necessarily as ‘authenticity’. This term is a neologism encountered in the translations of Heidegger’s work in the late 1920s. But, other philosophers talked about and developed this value before Heidegger came along...
The development of authenticity…
As ideas and significance of the self continued to develop over the course of the 18th century and the Enlightenment, we began looking more inwardly to find our guides for conduct and the idea of authenticity developed further. Philosophers like Rousseau (1712-1778) spoke about the importance of the individual detecting which of our feelings and wishes are more or less central to our core motives, and acting on those rather than bowing to the pressures of external influences in order to be free.
Widely regarded as the first existential philosopher, Kierkegaard (1813-1855) spoke of the value of understanding ourselves as relational - we exist in relation to others, the world, and ourselves. Given this fundamental relational aspect of our existence, we can question the ways in which we choose to make connections with ourselves and others. In order to “become what one is” (a quote moving closer to our modern take on authenticity), Kierkegaard says that we need to examine the truthfulness of these relationships and whether they are in some sense imparting meaning to our lives. Given that, in order to find this meaning in our lives, Kierkegaard argues we must build alignment between what we care/are passionate about and the actions we take in the world, then the truthfulness and honesty with which we construct this alignment is of paramount important for us as individuals.
Heidegger and a modern conception of ‘authenticity’
Perhaps the most influential conception of authenticity derives from Heidegger (1889 - 1976). In his work Being and Time (1927), Heidegger created a number of new terms to get across his ideas because he didn’t find satisfactory terminology that already existed. One such term is Eigentlichkeit, which is described this way in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Eigentlichkeit “comes from an ordinary term, eigentlich, meaning ‘really’ or ‘truly’, but is built on the stem eigen, meaning ‘own’ or ‘proper’. So the word might be more literally translated as ‘ownedness’, or ‘being owned’, or even ‘being one’s own’, implying the idea of owning up to and owning what one is and does”
This term was translated as ‘authenticity’ in English and, as such, the word has been closely associated with him ever since (including by further philosophers who had more to add on the concept, such as Sartre and Beauvoir). McManus argues that Eigentlichkeit lies at the heart of Heidegger’s overall vision. So what did he mean by this idea of “ownedness” and why is it so important?
For Heidegger we begin life immersed in the norms and values of the societies we are born into. From our actions to our ambitions, much of what we think and do is shaped by what he calls the “they” - the anonymous forces of social conformity. We speak, act, and even choose careers and relationships in ways that have been culturally or socially prescribed, often without realizing it. In this state of what he calls “falling”, we don’t truly make choices for ourselves; instead, we are carried along by inherited expectations. Heidegger does not claim this condition is evil or unnatural; it is, in fact, kind of the default mode of existence - we exist in relation to others. But, without necessarily knowing it, it prevents us from genuinely owning our lives and living deliberately.
“I wished to live deliberately … and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” - Henry David Thoreau, ‘Walden’
Authenticity, for Heidegger, only becomes possible when we stop and confront the anxieties of life that we often deflect, such as the unsettling awareness of our own mortality, how much we are “lost” in the “they”, or our lack of given purpose/meaning. We need this anxiety because it is the only thing powerful enough to disrupt the taken-for-granted world that we live in, forcing us to recognize that our lives are ultimately up to us to shape.
In this moment of awareness and realisation, we may begin to act with resolute commitment, accepting responsibility for our choices and choosing projects for the first time that are meaningful not because they’re expected, but because they align with our deepest understanding of ourselves - thus, we begin to “own” our selves. Authenticity doesn’t mean necessarily escaping or rejecting society, but standing behind our choices in it as truly ours. This shift (that is only possible because of our anxiety) transforms everyday living from passive conformity into a deliberate, self-owned way of being.
For Heidegger, therefore, authenticity can be loosely defined as standing up for and standing behind what one does; as owning and owning up to one’s deeds as an agent in the world, and this only becomes possible if we pause to understand who we are and adopt a sort of resolute commitment to our existence.
So, what does it mean to be authentic?
How can we sum up this seemingly simple concept after such a complicated journey?! Well, there are some claims that we could perhaps make to help consider authenticity…
Being authentic does not mean never taking inspiration from others, or never imitating others - these are both a key part of learning and growing and being human. It does not mean simply just “be yourself” or “be who you are”, because there is an integral element of self-examination and reflection involved, as well as an understanding of how you relate to others and the world around you. It is not necessarily loud, or quiet, or compassionate, or selfish, or empathic, or rude; in many ways, it is morally neutral in the sense that is does not commend or condemn any actions that being authentic might lead you to take (although, some existentialists argue that being authentic involves understanding that all other humans have freedom like you, which would inevitably affect how you treat them).
Does it “win. Always”? Well, this kind of depends on what perspective we look at “winning”. It does say there is good for you in understanding and aligning your values, your interests, your passions, with how you act in the world, to the extent that you don’t simply follow the crowd or get lost in the ‘they’ or hide from your own mortality, because this is the best chance you have at giving your life meaning. It may also help with your social relationships because you are seen as more of a truthful person. In that sense, you will “win”.
To be authentic is to try to accomplish a meaningful you in a world that will easily ensnare us as creatures in a socially, culturally, and historically complex web that will make this very difficult to do (and require a bolt of anxiety to get us to really get started). Does that feel like a “win”?
What do you think? Does authenticity “have unmatched value” or is it maybe “not always a good thing”?
Authenticity and Careers?
Based on what we have explored in relation to authenticity, here are some key considerations and questions to potentially explore in the careers space:
Is authenticity an ideal? Is it really something worth aiming for in our career thinking?
How important is being authentic when deciding between career options?
Is it a genuine possibility? Could we ever achieve authenticity for any period of time?
What does it mean to take responsibility for ourselves? How much responsibility/freedom do we really have in this regard?
How do we balance the tension between our desire to be authentic and the needs/interests of others?
Is it quite an empty concept? How can we really know if anyone is authentic?
Is the idea of authenticity linked to privilege?
How can we use this discussion of authenticity to frame the benefits of anxiety in career thinking?
How can we explore what “they” expect of us and how this influences our career thinking?
The concept of authenticity is an individualist concept: we become authentic by becoming who we each, individually, are – not in conforming. Is there a challenge here to not conform to a cultural stereotype of what being authentic looks like?