Authenticity

In Our Time: Philosophy

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2019

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what it means to be oneself, a question explored by philosophers from Aristotle to the present day, including St Augustine, Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Sartre. In Hamlet, Polonius said 'To thine own self be true', but what is the self, and what does it mean to be true to it, and why should you be true? To Polonius, if you are true to yourself, ‘thou canst not be false to any man’ - but with the rise of the individual, authenticity became a goal in itself, regardless of how that affected others. Is authenticity about creating yourself throughout your life, or fulfilling the potential with which you were born, connecting with your inner child, or something else entirely? What are the risks to society if people value authenticity more than morality - that is, if the two are incompatible? The image above is of Sartre, aged 8 months, perhaps still connected to his inner child. With Sarah Richmond Associate Professor in Philosophy at University College London Denis McManus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton and Irene McMullin Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Essex Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:47.0	Hello, do thy own self-be-true is advice so apparently simple and compelling that
0:52.3	when Polonia says it in Hamlet he needs no
0:54.7	further examination.
0:56.6	To philosophers though, from Aristotle to Sarge to today, it's been far from simple.
1:01.4	Is your authentic self something you were born with and you need to
1:04.4	fulfill or is it something you create for yourself throughout your life? Does your
1:08.6	obligation to be yourself override your obligation to others? And if you really can be true to yourself,
1:14.0	where does authenticity end and narcissism start?
1:17.0	With me to discuss ideas about authenticity and philosophy
1:20.0	are Dennis McNabbers,
	...

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