MindPapers: 5.1l.5.1. Authenticity

Anderson, Joel (2003). Autonomy and the authority of personal commitments: From internal coherence to social normativity. Philosophical Explorations 6 (2):90 – 108. (Google)

Abstract: It has been argued - most prominently in Harry Frankfurt's recent work - that the normative authority of personal commitments derives not from their intrinsic worth but from the way in which one's will is invested in what one cares about. In this essay, I argue that even if this approach is construed broadly and supplemented in various ways, its intrasubjective character leaves it ill-prepared to explain the normative grip of commitments in cases of purported self-betrayal. As an alternative, I sketch a view that focuses on intersubjective constraints of intelligibility built into social practices and on the pragmatics of how those norms are contested in an ongoing fashion

Anderson, Joel (1995). The persistence of authenticity. Philosophy and Social Criticism 21 (1). (Google)

Knobe, Joshua (2005). Ordinary ethical reasoning and the ideal of 'being yourself'. Philosophical Psychology 18 (3):327 – 340. (Google)

Abstract: The psychological study of ethical reasoning tends to concentrate on a few specific issues, with the bulk of the research going to the study of people's attitudes toward moral rules or the welfare of others. But people's ethical reasoning is also shaped by a wide range of other concerns. Here I focus on the importance that people attach to the ideal of being yourself. It is shown that certain experimental results - results that seemed anomalous and inexplicable to researchers who focused on moral rules and concern for the welfare of others - can be explained quite elegantly as the product of people's attachment to the ideal of 'being yourself'. The success of this explanation then points to the need for a more general inquiry into the role that the ideal of 'being yourself ' plays in people's ethical reasoning

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