Chapter 8 - The Demand for Authenticity

Summary

This chapter discusses Heidegger’s concept of authenticity and the extent to which it entails an individualism incompatible with his social ontological holism. I argue that Heidegger’s notion of authenticity does not refer to a process of individualisation in which individuals come to rely mostly or solely on their own abilities. Rather, it amounts to what I call an emphatic individuation in which Dasein ontically comes to understand its own nature. Rather than prescribing a set of beliefs or actions, I argue that authenticity requires Dasein to adopt a set of ontologically transparent second-order attitudes on its own existence. This solves two problems inherent to Heidegger’s conception of the self, namely, its lack of constancy (the capacity of the self to remain itself in changing situations) and autonomy (the capacity to commit to some possibilities rather than others). These problems are solved by the analysis of being-towards-death and conscience, respectively. I then consider what the demand for authenticity entails for Heidegger’s conception of face-to-face relations and his conception of historical communities and how it differs from moral obligations.