Sincerity and Authenticity by Lionel Trilling, 158 pages
The
death of God having severed Western man from his traditional
understanding of himself as a being in some state of objective harmony
or disharmony with the cosmos, there arose the Enlightenment ideal of
authenticity, which posited modern man as a being in some state of
subjective harmony or disharmony with himself. In this series of
lectures, Trilling traces the development of this ideal through the
writings of Diderot, Austen, Conrad, and Freud.
Unfortunately,
Trilling is unable to provide a clear exposition of authenticity, describing it only in the most
oblique terms. Perhaps this is necessary in tracing the evolution of the idea, but in the end, his nebulous concept of authenticity seems nothing more than an empty exertion of
self-will against the external world.
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