On Being Authentic (Thinking in Action)

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 160 pages
• Published by: Routledge
• Edition: 1st Edition July 21, 2004
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0415261228
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0415261227
• Book Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Weighs: 11.4 ounces

Product Review


'I know of no better account of authenticity than On Being Authentic. Guignon evenhandedly and in plain non-technical English explains the attractions and dangers inherent in this widely held ideal, connects it with deeper cultural currents, and shows how it fits into contemporary thought. The book is a fine achievement, and I recommend it for all literate general readers.' John Kekes


'On Being Authentic traverses often very dense acreages of philosophical argument with considerable elegance. It never patronises the reader, or gives the impression of talking down to them. It is enthusiastic and engaging For anyone who, bemused at our culture's seemingly endless fascination with individual self-worth, seeks some firm guide as how we arrived here, On Being Authentic will prove to be an admirable starting point.' - Jonathan Sawday, Glasgow University

'A very important book. We urgently need to be able to think clearly about authenticity, and Charles Guignon is uniquely prepared to say something important on this matter.' - Charles Taylor, author of The Ethics of Authenticity


'a solid and readable overview of the modern concept of personal authenticitya thoughtful introduction to the topic' Mentalhelp.net



'I know of no better account of authenticity than On Being Authentic. Guignon evenhandedly and in plain non-technical English explains the attractions and dangers inherent in this widely held ideal, connects it with deeper cultural currents, and shows how it fits into contemporary thought. The book is a fine achievement, and I recommend it for all literate general readers.' John Kekes


'On Being Authentic traverses often very dense acreages of philosophical argument with considerable elegance. It never patronises the reader, or gives the impression of talking down to them. It is enthusiastic and engaging For anyone who, bemused at our culture's seemingly endless fascination with individual self-worth, seeks some firm guide as how we arrived here, On Being Authentic will prove to be an admirable starting point.' - Jonathan Sawday, Glasgow University

'A very important book. We urgently need to be able to think clearly about authenticity, and Charles Guignon is uniquely prepared to say something important on this matter.' - Charles Taylor, author of The Ethics of Authenticity


'a solid and readable overview of the modern concept of personal authenticitya thoughtful introduction to the topic' Mentalhelp.net

Product Description
"To thine own self be true." From Polonius's words in Hamlet right up to Oprah, we are constantly urged to look within. Why is being authentic the ultimate aim in life for so many people, and why does it mean looking inside rather than out? Is it about finding the "real" me, or something greater than me, even God?

Thought-provoking and with an amazing range of references, On Being Authentic is a gripping journey into the self that begins with Socrates and Augustine. Charles Guignon asks why being authentic ceased to mean being part of some bigger, cosmic picture and with Rousseau, Wordsworth and the Romantic movement, took the strong inward turn alive in today's self-help culture.

He also plumbs the darker depths of authenticity, with the help of Freud, Carl Jung and Konrad Lorenz, and reflects on the future of being authentic in a postmodern, global age. He argues ultimately that being authentic is not about what is owed to me but how I depend on others.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: 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.