A Phenomenology of Inauthenticity

ion in which reflection subordinates him (TA 85). In other words, the individual becomes mere thing, possessed by a vaporous “aggregate” that can think and choose for him; only the collective can determine how things will go, so there seems to be no individual responsibility. In this special sense, “the public” is defined as the opposite of free association from earnest passion, or authentic democracy. This "public is not a people" (TA 92, my italics); one cannot “belong” to it as lovers belong to each other; one can only let oneself be absorbed into it through an abdication of responsibility. In Heidegger’s sense of das Man, “the public” is the anonymity in which people hide when they lack the courage for autonomy or self-rule (TA 89). This does not mean that all solidarity or self-definition through group membership necessarily causes inauthenticity. Being a loner is neither necessary nor sufficient for authenticity. Authentic collective action is possible, but it requires active engagement from each participant, which requires their personal appropriation of shared goods to be pursued by joint action as their own purpose. Being a (positively) “free” participant in concrete groups can “reinforce and educate the individual, yet without shaping him entirely” (TA 92). Like authentic art, this kind of existential bildung requires rather than suppresses individual response and initiative: each member of the group cultivates her own interpretation of its common life and benefits from the unique interpretation of others. Likewise, in religious faith, the individual is “educated to make up his own mind instead of agreeing with the public” by default. So “strong communal life” and even action by “the people” as a whole are possible for Kierkegaard (TA 91); like Mill and Kant before him, he even associates them with enlightened thinking for oneself. Kierkegaard contrasts such “contemporaneity with actual persons” in joint efforts with the anonymous public that suppresses individual alterity (PA 91). Like Buber after him, Kierkegaard believes that such vital community arises from encounters in which the participants are freely present in "resolute mutual giving" (TA 79). It requires the kind of “personal human discourse” or sincere self-revelation that is blocked by BS (TA 104). It is impossible when “chatter” replaces “essential speaking” or earnest communication (TA 97). Thus Kierkegaard's analysis of authenticity emphasizes the need for norms with the universal and overriding significance of ethical ideals, and more generally, for values outside the self that can inspire "excellence" (TA 78, 89). Traditional romantic conceptions err in imagining that sources for the authentic existential identity can be found solely within the individual, and especially in the "immediacy" of affective promptings. As Ferguson says, for Kierkegaard,