Authenticity (Eigentlichkeit)

Definition

Pronunciation: EYE-gent-likh-kyte

Also spelled: Eigentlichkeit, Authentic existence, Ownedness

Eigentlichkeit derives from eigen, meaning 'own' or 'proper.' Heidegger's term means literally 'ownedness' — the condition of owning one's existence as genuinely one's own rather than living out the prescriptions of the anonymous public 'they' (das Man).

Etymology

The German eigentlich in everyday usage means 'actually' or 'really' — as in 'what is actually the case.' Heidegger exploited the root eigen (own, proper) to give the term ontological weight. In Being and Time (1927), Eigentlichkeit names the mode of existing in which Dasein takes over its own thrown possibilities rather than drifting along with public interpretations. Kierkegaard's earlier concept of 'becoming a self' in The Sickness Unto Death (1849) was a direct forerunner, though Kierkegaard framed it theologically rather than ontologically.

About Authenticity (Eigentlichkeit)

Kierkegaard wrote in 1846: 'The crowd is untruth.' This sentence — from The Point of View for My Work as an Author — condensed the insight that would become the existentialist concept of authenticity. The individual who lives by public opinion, who does what 'one does,' who thinks what 'they think,' has not yet begun to exist in the fullest sense. Kierkegaard called this condition 'despair' — not an emotion but a structural failure to become a self.

Heidegger secularized and deepened this insight in Being and Time. For Heidegger, inauthenticity (Uneigentlichkeit) is not a moral deficiency or a character flaw. It is the default mode of Dasein's existence. From the moment we are born, we are socialized into a world of ready-made meanings. We learn what things are 'for,' what counts as 'important,' what 'one' does in various situations. This anonymous public understanding — which Heidegger called das Man (the 'they' or the 'one') — is not an external force imposed on us. It is the medium in which we first find ourselves. We are the 'they' before we are ourselves.

The 'they' dictates not through commands but through averageness. It levels down every possibility to what is publicly acceptable, familiar, and already understood. Idle talk (Gerede) passes along interpretations without any original encounter with what is being talked about. Curiosity (Neugier) pursues novelty without dwelling on anything long enough to understand it. Ambiguity (Zweideutigkeit) blurs the distinction between genuine understanding and mere chatter. These are not aberrations of modern life — they are structural features of Dasein's social existence.

Authenticity does not mean rejecting society or becoming a heroic individual. Heidegger was explicit that authentic Dasein does not float above the world in splendid isolation. It means being in the same world, doing many of the same things, but doing them from a different ground — from one's own appropriation of the situation rather than from unexamined conformity. The authentic craftsman may make the same chair as the inauthentic one, but the relationship to the making is different.

The passage from inauthenticity to authenticity runs through anxiety (Angst). In anxiety, the familiar world loses its grip. The meanings that normally structure experience — my role, my plans, my social identity — reveal themselves as contingent rather than necessary. Nothing in particular threatens; rather, the groundlessness of existence itself becomes palpable. Heidegger described this as 'the nothing' (das Nichts) pressing in on Dasein. In this uncanny moment, the 'they' can no longer provide shelter, and Dasein stands before the bare fact of its own being.

The call of conscience completes the turn. Conscience, for Heidegger, is not the voice of moral rules or social expectations. It is Dasein calling itself to itself — summoning itself out of lostness in the 'they.' The call says nothing specific. It speaks in silence, and what it communicates is guilt (Schuld) — not guilt for any particular transgression but the ontological guilt of being a 'null basis of a nullity.' Dasein did not create itself, cannot master its own ground, and is always already falling short of its full possibilities. Owning this guilt — rather than fleeing from it into the reassuring chatter of the 'they' — is the structure of authenticity.

Sartre transformed authenticity from an ontological structure into an ethical demand. In his lecture 'Existentialism Is a Humanism' (1946), Sartre argued that because human existence precedes essence — because we have no fixed nature that determines what we should do — each person is responsible for what they make of themselves. Bad faith (mauvaise foi) is the flight from this responsibility: pretending that external forces, social roles, or human nature determine your choices when in fact you are free. Authenticity, for Sartre, means acknowledging your radical freedom and taking full responsibility for your choices without excuses.

Simone de Beauvoir extended this analysis to the situation of women. In The Second Sex (1949), she argued that the social construction of femininity functions as a systematic form of inauthenticity — women are taught to exist as the 'Other,' defined by male subjectivity rather than as autonomous subjects projecting toward their own possibilities. Beauvoir's work demonstrated that authenticity is not merely an individual achievement but is shaped by political and social structures that can either enable or obstruct it.

Albert Camus approached authenticity from the direction of the absurd. In The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Camus argued that the authentic response to a meaningless universe is neither suicide nor the 'philosophical leap' into faith but lucid revolt — continuing to live and create meaning while fully acknowledging that the universe provides none. Sisyphus pushing his boulder is Camus's image of authenticity: not because the task has meaning but because the consciousness that persists in the face of meaninglessness constitutes its own kind of triumph.

Karl Jaspers contributed the concept of Existenz — the self that emerges through boundary situations (Grenzsituationen). Death, suffering, struggle, and guilt are not problems to be solved but situations to be endured with open eyes. Authentic existence, for Jaspers, means allowing these boundary situations to shatter the shell of comfortable routine and reveal the depths of selfhood that normal life conceals. Unlike Heidegger's analysis, Jaspers's account maintained a religious dimension: Existenz is oriented toward Transcendence — a philosophical term for the divine that Jaspers carefully distinguished from any specific theology.

In existential psychology, Rollo May drew on both Heidegger and Kierkegaard to describe authenticity as the capacity to confront anxiety without neurotic defenses. The neurotic, for May, is someone who has narrowed their world to avoid anxiety — who has sacrificed possibilities to maintain security. Therapy aims not to eliminate anxiety but to help the person bear it, thereby reopening the possibilities that anxiety had foreclosed. Viktor Frankl's logotherapy shares this orientation: the authentic person is one who finds meaning through engagement with life's demands rather than retreating into comfort or distraction.

The concept of authenticity has been criticized from multiple directions. Theodor Adorno, in The Jargon of Authenticity (1964), argued that Heidegger's language of ownedness masks a conservative ideology that mystifies social relations and turns structural problems into individual spiritual tasks. Adorno claimed that authenticity becomes a commodity in consumer society — people perform authenticity rather than achieve it. Jacques Derrida questioned whether the distinction between authentic and inauthentic can be maintained, arguing that the 'proper' (eigen) is always already contaminated by the 'improper.' Charles Taylor has responded to these critiques by arguing that authenticity, properly understood, is not narcissistic self-expression but a moral ideal that demands self-examination in dialogue with others.

Despite these debates, the existentialist concept of authenticity retains its diagnostic power. In an era of algorithmic curation, social media performance, and manufactured consent, the question Kierkegaard posed in 1846 — whether you are living your own life or the crowd's — has lost none of its urgency.

Significance

Authenticity is the ethical center of existentialist thought. While the major existentialist thinkers disagreed about metaphysics, theology, politics, and human nature, they converged on the conviction that the fundamental task of human existence is to become genuinely one's own — to stop living at second hand.

The concept transformed twentieth-century ethics by shifting the question from 'what is the right thing to do?' to 'who am I being when I do it?' This shift influenced not only philosophy but psychotherapy (existential analysis, logotherapy, humanistic psychology), literature (Kafka, Dostoevsky, Camus, Sartre's fiction), theology (Tillich, Bultmann, Buber), and political theory (Beauvoir's feminism, Fanon's anti-colonialism).

Authenticity also became the bridge between existentialism and popular culture. The beatniks, the counterculture, the self-help movement, and contemporary discourse about 'living authentically' all draw — often loosely — on the philosophical concept. This popularization has diluted the concept's rigor, but the underlying question remains philosophically vital: in a world that offers endless ready-made identities, what does it mean to exist as oneself?

Connections

Authenticity in Heidegger's framework requires confrontation with Angst, which strips away the comfortable meanings of everyday life and exposes Dasein to its own groundlessness. The primary obstacle to authenticity is what Sartre called bad faith — the denial of one's own freedom through self-deception. Thrownness establishes the factual situation from which authentic choice must proceed — authenticity never means creating yourself from nothing.

The relationship between authenticity and mortality is central: being-toward-death is the confrontation through which Dasein can own its existence as finite and non-transferable. Camus's analysis of the absurd provides an alternative route to authenticity — through lucid revolt against meaninglessness rather than through anxiety about death. Radical freedom in Sartre's framework is both the ground of authenticity and its burden. The existentialism section traces how these interconnected concepts form a coherent, if contested, philosophy of selfhood.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does authenticity mean doing whatever you feel like or ignoring social norms?

Authenticity in the existentialist sense has nothing to do with impulsive self-expression or contrarian rebellion. Heidegger was explicit that authentic Dasein does not withdraw from social life — it inhabits the same world and may follow many of the same norms, but from a different relationship to them. The authentic person follows a social convention because they have genuinely taken it up as their own, not because 'that is what one does.' Similarly, Sartre did not argue that freedom means acting on whims. He insisted that every free choice carries responsibility — not just for yourself but for the image of humanity you project through your choices. Kierkegaard, the earliest source of the concept, argued that authentic selfhood requires commitment, discipline, and relation to something beyond the self. Authenticity is harder than conformity, not easier.

Can authenticity be achieved permanently or is it always temporary?

For Heidegger, authenticity is not a permanent achievement but a mode of existing that must be continually renewed. Dasein has a structural tendency to fall back into the anonymous 'they' — this is not a failure to be overcome once and for all but a condition of human existence. Each moment of authentic resolve is won against the gravitational pull of everydayness and can be lost in the next moment. Kierkegaard described the self as a relation that relates itself to itself — an ongoing activity, not a finished state. Even Sartre, who believed in radical freedom at every moment, acknowledged that bad faith is a permanent temptation precisely because the awareness of total freedom produces anxiety. Authenticity is a practice, not a possession — more like staying awake than like reaching a destination.

How does existentialist authenticity differ from the modern self-help concept of being authentic?

The contemporary self-help version of authenticity typically means 'expressing your true inner self' — the assumption being that there is a fixed, genuine self underneath social conditioning that needs to be discovered and displayed. Existentialist authenticity means almost the opposite. For Heidegger, Sartre, and Beauvoir, there is no pre-given true self waiting to be found. You are what you make of yourself through your choices and commitments. Authenticity is not discovering who you 'really are' but taking responsibility for who you are becoming. It involves confronting uncomfortable truths — your mortality, your freedom, the absence of any script for your life — rather than affirming a comfortable self-image. The self-help version often reduces to a consumer identity ('my authentic brand'); the philosophical version demands ongoing self-examination, acceptance of groundlessness, and the willingness to act without guarantees.