Hi Lauren. Just ran across this post. Liked what you had to say, but I think the issue is not so much authenticity, but how authenticity is currently viewed, as a static "brand" as you suggest. Rather, an "active authenticity" that is always seeking change (in the direction of more authenticity) is what I would consider an "authentic" authenticity, one that moves us closer to who we are truly, pretensions and all.
Hey Eva - thanks for reading. I think authentic is a tricky term - there's a bunch of different meanings you could use, depending where you want to fall on a spectrum between external definitions - 'someone we take to be authentic' and internal ones - 'someone who takes themselves to be authentic'. I focused on the former, and I think you're emphasising the latter? Is that fair?
Montaigne observed that there is ‘as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others’,
Isenberg, A. ‘"Pretentious" as an Aesthetic Predicate’, in Aesthetics and the Theory of
Criticism: Selected Essays (University of Chicago Press, 1973) pp.172-183
Hi Lauren. Just ran across this post. Liked what you had to say, but I think the issue is not so much authenticity, but how authenticity is currently viewed, as a static "brand" as you suggest. Rather, an "active authenticity" that is always seeking change (in the direction of more authenticity) is what I would consider an "authentic" authenticity, one that moves us closer to who we are truly, pretensions and all.
Hey Eva - thanks for reading. I think authentic is a tricky term - there's a bunch of different meanings you could use, depending where you want to fall on a spectrum between external definitions - 'someone we take to be authentic' and internal ones - 'someone who takes themselves to be authentic'. I focused on the former, and I think you're emphasising the latter? Is that fair?
I think you nailed the difference. Maybe another way of thinking about it is authenticity vs. performative authenticity. Thanks for writing back.