Authenticity: the canon of existentialist philosophers, which includes:

⁃ Dane Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

⁃ German Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)

⁃ Frenchman Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), for whom the conscious Self comes to terms with existence (being and living) in an absurd, materialist world featuring external forces, e.g.

Geworfenheit (Thrown-ness), and intellectual influences different from and other than the Self.

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Sartre - explains existential philosophy through the stories of men and women who:

1. do not understand their own reasoning for acting as they do

2. people who ignore crucial facts about their own lives in order to avoid unpleasant facts about being an inauthentic person with an identity defined from outside the self



Absolute freedom is the 'vertiginous' experience necessary for being an authentic person, yet such freedom can be so unpleasant as to impel people to choose an inauthentic life.

Authenticity is connected with creativity, and the will to act must be born of the person.

In that vein, Heidegger speaks of absolute freedom as modes of living determined by personal choice.


As a philosopher, Sartre identified, described, and explained what is an inauthentic existence in order to not define what is an authentic mode of living.

Kierkegaard’s philosophy of existentialism shows that personal authenticity is a personal choice based upon experience of the real world

Common to the existential perspectives of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are “the responsibilities they place on the individual to take active part in the shaping of one’s beliefs, and

then to be willing to act on that belief.”

Fromm - The human being needs to find an answer to his existence.

He writes that helping us to answer this question is perhaps the major purpose of culture.

In a way, he says, all cultures are like religions, trying to explain the meaning of life. Some, of course, do so better than others.