Selfhood and Authenticity

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to explore the changing character of ethics in modernity by giving specific attention to individuals' quest for personally meaningful lives. The project orchestrated and synthesized many voices and developed a rigorous phenomenology of selfhood, one which accounted for key relationships between and among embodiment, sociality, symbolicity, and temporality. Most generally, this project explicated and elaborated a thorough-going phenomenology of selfhood and authenticity, and, it specifically sought to elucidate the phenomenological grounds of selfhood so that the shallower and lower forms of authenticity can be eschewed while richer and higher forms can be articulated and fruitfully sought. I concluded that selfhood needs to be extended well past the circumference of the skin's boundaries if it is to be richly fulfilled. To say that we are authentic selves is to recognize that we can exist as responsible flights of passionate care over that once-occurrent world in which we find ourselves thrown, projected, and stretching along.

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