The ideal of authenticity in our time
Exploring philosophers' thought on the line between authenticity and honesty.
Following the first attempted assassination of Donald Trump, I was reminded of a somewhat more intriguing topic that surfaced around his persona. I’m referring, of course, to Trump and the ideal of "authenticity." In common discourse, it’s often said that Trump is transparent; he shows no distinction between inner and outer self; he dares to speak truth to power (in his case, I believe irony committed suicide with such remarks). The real issue has always been that Trump’s persona has been marketed as authentic, which raises a critical question: what is the value of authenticity when considered on its own? Is it flawed due to inflation in its meaning, or is there something deeper in the very concept of authenticity that demands reevaluation?
Of course, this topic has been debated extensively. But I’d like to offer an intriguing distinction from a thinker who at least once was far more widely known. But let’s begin in a more familiar ground. Many of us are familiar with—some may have even read—Charles Taylor’s analyses on this subject. However, a central issue with Taylor’s treatment of the concept (and, to a lesser extent, with Bernard Williams’ approach) is that it tends to blur the line between sincerity and authenticity. It’s as though authenticity is seen as the natural outgrowth of sincerity, an inevitable extension of the grand idea of the concept. Protestant sincerity evolves seamlessly into authenticity, now clothed as a secular ideal. I suggest we look to one of the authors Taylor references in his discussion on the subject, the literary critic Lionel Trilling. Trilling offers us a more complex and, in fact, nearly antithetical view of sincerity and authenticity, as well as a critique of Taylor’s thesis.
Lionel Trilling (1905-1975) himself was arguably one of the most intellectually gifted figures of his time. In terms of his broad and deep engagement with the Western intellectual tradition, he likely rivaled individuals like Matthew Arnold, Isaiah Berlin, or Hans Urs von Balthasar. These are people who mastered a vast canon of texts in their lifetimes—and reading Trilling, especially if you're a lover of literature, can be an exhilarating experience. In 1972, Trilling published a book titled Sincerity and Authenticity, a collection of lectures he delivered at Harvard. Trilling accomplishes some remarkable things in these lectures, which I won’t delve into here, but if the subject interests you, I highly recommend them.
Back to the distinction. In his first lecture, Trilling offers an insight drawn from Polonius in Hamlet:
"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
Trilling sees in Polonius’s advice an expression of the "medieval" understanding of sincerity. The self in question here is, first and foremost, a social self. The self has what one might call "roles," and as long as one remains faithful to them, the harmonious relationship with others will be preserved. However, especially in the context of this post, we tend to automatically read Shakespeare’s passage as a paradox: How, if we are true to ourselves, can we please everyone around us? And indeed, Shakespeare later expresses our more modern conception of sincerity, particularly in King Lear, but for now, we’ll set that interpretation aside. Regarding medieval sincerity, we would have to say that what concerned it was the idea of saying something out of place, out of context. For instance, yes, if I habitually steal on weekdays, it would be hypocritical of me to criticize someone else for stealing on the weekend. Or if I were a serf, it would be inappropriate for me to advise a lord on how to manage his affairs, and so on.
Trilling convincingly demonstrates that the ideal we identify as authenticity—one that is constantly searching for its own essence, inherently opposed to social roles and society itself, and willing to pay high prices, even to the point of society’s destruction, in order to express its own sovereignty—is not synonymous with medieval sincerity. In fact, to some extent, it arises in opposition to it. Authenticity demands a kind of metaphysical sovereignty beyond society. It views its social self with the same irony and critical distance with which it views society as a whole. In this sense, Trilling tells us, it achieves what Hegel would have recognized as the proper development of the ideal of sincerity: an absolute reference point, albeit a negative one, from which society can be judged. The way Trilling narrates the tension between these two very different conceptions is something quite rare in the intellectual history literature on this subject. The temptation to see the story as teleological, moving from sincerity to authenticity, is simply too great—especially since these concepts overlap and share fascinating historical connections. Reading Trilling, in my view, is like exercising the mental discipline to keep these two frequently conflated concepts separate. It’s a bit like tearing down the house to get rid of a mouse, and perhaps Trilling’s work can help temper this tendency.