On Being Authentic (Thinking in Action) [Paperback]

One important division of contemporary ethical philosophy is Applied Ethics. Speaking generally, this is the attempt to take the more abstract results from ethics and moral philosophy and apply it to concrete problems that arise in business, our interactions with the environment, new problems that are arising with developing medical technology, and a wide array of familiar and hotly debated issues such as abortion. That is not what one finds in Guignon's book, though what he does is not too far a field. There is no widely acknowledged discipline called Applied Philosophy, but that is what we find here. Guignon is determined to look at the oddity of the claims made by many of today's self-help writers, at the underlying assumption about the way that human lives are made up, and at the ways that thinking about the human self have developed in the modern world. He finally wants to suggest a different understanding of what it means to be authentic that does not fall victim to the easy criticisms that the self-help understanding of authenticity does.

Guignon's initial target is Dr. Phil, who has become one of the highest profile self-help gurus in recent decades and therefore one of the most dangerous. Dr. Phil is not dangerous because he will cause any active harm to either society or to his readers, but because he writes from a poorly thought out position that ignores most of the achievements of thought about human subjectivity over the past couple of centuries. Dr. Phil advocates a position that asserts that authenticity is achieves by sloughing off as much of the external world as possible. If you simply start ridding yourself of all the external chaff that he assumes is keeping you from the wheat at the core of your being that represents the real you, you will discover yourself. What Guignon does by delving deeply into the history of Western thinking about the self and subjectivity and authenticity is show that there is far more to the picture than this. We don't, in fact, discover ourselves by stripping off all externals, but by realizing that authentic existence is only possible not removed from our social existence, but embedded in it. This does not mean merely absorbing and uncritically accepting those social influences immediately impacting us. Our authenticity might well mean challenging and refusing those influences, but it also means acknowledging that we can't merely eject the world around us as if it plays no role in making us who we are. We do not achieve authenticity by heroically stripping ourselves of all the social and cultural influences that provide the raw material for us becoming who we are, but by realizing that we start off embedded in a social group, involved with other lives, even given the fundamental vocabulary for our moral existence by the culture around us. Dr. Phil's project, which subjected to our historical context, seems astonishingly quixotic and irrelevant.

I would like to see the vast panoply of self-help books simply vanish and be replaced by something more substantive like Guignon's book. The catch is that making real progress on self-understanding is hard work. One of the lies of the self-help books is that becoming authentic is hard work. The self-help gurus would have us think otherwise. As a result they invariably offer more than they can possibly achieve.

It won't happen, but I would love to see Guignon's excellent book offered as a twofer along with something by Dr. Phil. But truth be told, skip the Dr. Phil and just get this instead.

One last word, while Guignon focuses his book as the general educated reader, this will be of great help to philosophers as well. Guignon is a perceptive reading of the history of philosophy and positions himself roughly around ideas found in Heidegger, McIntyre, and Charles Taylor. His book makes an interesting contrast with Taylor's somewhat better known books SOURCES OF THE SELF and THE ETHICS OF AUTHENTICITY.

Thirty years after sharing classrooms, movie theaters and drinks around Austin, TX -- Charles Guignon again proves to be an incredibly engaging intellectual companion.

His easy style makes difficult material accessible as he refuses to pass off obfuscation as profundity. By presenting important ideas culled from philosophy, psychology and modern culture (in an admittedly simplified fashion), the author challenges his reader to think seriously about what authenticity might entail within a society and a world such as ours. As with most good books, we are left with the feeling that a realm of thought has been opened up rather than neatly encapsulated and summarized. Guignon clearly adopts a Socratic humility, which encourages the reader to search for the truth rather than to expect to be spoon fed.

The body of this work provides a framework within which the reader can more fully see what passes for authenticity today -- as well as what it has meant historically. These positions are not constructed merely to be straw men who will be easily vanquished by our author. In fact, I found myself wanting to take up Nietzsche's position (as elaborated in the book), and carry it forward in a continuing dialogue we initiated in the late 70's.

As the book closes there is a call to "open and free conversation." In this scenario, one does not defend to the death a pre-determined conclusion as a matter of pride. Instead each person engages in the "to-and-fro of the discussion." Rather than becoming an advocate for a single point of view, one suspends prejudices (or at least recognizes them as such) while allowing the dialogue to be animated by the subject matter. This "dialogical situation" becomes "an unfolding event" through which there is a merging of differing visions to arrive at agreement about what will count as truth. Here I could hardly avoid thinking of what all too often passes for "serious conversation" in the media; that is, a largely empty sound-bite kind of sniping that poses as meaningful debate. How different our society would look if this were replaced by what Guignon calls "open and free conversation."

Hey, maybe I'm not perfect in my interpretation, perhaps you should read it yourself -- as it is well worth the effort. As one of Charlie's past students, I just want to thank him once again for reminding me that philosophy is a process and not an end product to be bestowed.

Guignon's little book on authenticity is an excellent overview of the topic. He provides a summarized history of the various interpretations of what it means to be an authentic self along with an analysis of the problems that each of these conceptions have faced. On the critical side, I was surprised to find that Kierkegaard is almost completely ignored, but this doesn't take away from the value of this book. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the concept of authenticity or what it means to be a human being.