Authenticity (philosophy)

Authenticity is a technical term used in psychology as well as existentialist philosophy and aesthetics (in regard to various arts and musical genres). In existentialism, authenticity is the degree to which one is true to one's own personality, spirit, or character, despite external pressures; the conscious self is seen as coming to terms with being in a material world and with encountering external forces, pressures, and influences which are very different from, and other than, itself. A lack of authenticity is considered in existentialism to be bad faith.

Views of authenticity in cultural activities vary widely. For instance, the philosophers Jean Paul Sartre and Theodor Adorno had opposing views regarding jazz, with Sartre considering it authentic and Adorno inauthentic. The concept of authenticity is often aired in musical subcultures, such as punk rock and heavy metal, where a purported lack of authenticity is commonly labeled with the epithet "poseur". There is also a focus on authenticity in music genres such as "...house, grunge, garage, hip-hop, techno, and showtunes".

One of the greatest problems facing such abstract approaches is that the drives people call the "needs of one's inner being" are diffuse, subjective and often culture bound. For this reason among others, authenticity is often "at the limits" of language; it is described as the negative space around inauthenticity, with reference to examples of inauthentic living. Sartre's novels are perhaps the easiest access to this mode of describing authenticity: they often contain characters and antiheroes who base their actions on external pressures—the pressure to appear to be a certain kind of person, the pressure to adopt a particular mode of living, the pressure to ignore one's own moral and aesthetic objections in order to have a more comfortable existence. His work also includes characters who do not understand their own reasons for acting, or who ignore crucial facts about their own lives in order to avoid uncomfortable truths; this connects his work with the philosophical tradition.

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