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20-10-2015 | Culture and Society

Authenticity in Question

Author: John Carroll

Published in: Society | Issue 6/2015

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Abstract

This essay examines what might be termed the Shakespearean view of the human condition, which regards life as a performance: ‘All the world’s a stage!’ It pitches the performance orientation against what is arguably the leading contemporary ideal in the West, that of authenticity. It asks which is the more plausible philosophy in secular modern times.

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In 2000, the BBC produced a television series called Soul of Britain, which drew on a survey of religious opinion. 75 % of those surveyed reported being personally aware of a spiritual dimension to their experience; 38 % claimed to have had some personal experience of God (David Hay, ‘The Spirituality of Adults in Britain–Recent Research’, Scottish Journal of Healthcare Chaplaincy, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2002). David Hay later used a common expression from the survey to title a book: Something There–The Biology of the Human Spirit, Darton, Longman & Todd, London, 2006.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes, Methuen, London, 1969, p. 59.

Max Weber, ‘Science as a Vocation’ (1918), Essays from Max Weber, trans. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1948.

Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Doubleday, New York, 1959.

Jeffrey Alexander, ‘The Fate of the Dramatic in Modern Society: Social Theory and the Theatrical Avant-Garde’, Theory, Culture and Society, January 2014; Performance and Power, Polity, Cambridge, 2011; and The Performance of Politics: Obama’s Victory and the Democratic Struggle for Power, Oxford University Press, New York, 2010.

Homer, The Iliad, trans. Richmond Lattimore, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1951, Book 18, p. 380.

Mark’s Gospel, ch. 9.

I have explored the nature of character beyond performance, in passing, in my book, The Existential Jesus (Counterpoint, Berkeley, 2007), especially in Chapter 6.

Title: Authenticity in Question
Author: John Carroll
Publication date: 20-10-2015
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Society / Issue 6/2015
Print ISSN: 0147-2011
Electronic ISSN: 1936-4725
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-015-9955-6

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