Becoming authentic: a social conception of the self

Journal article

Two approaches to authenticity have gained currency in the recent analytic philosophical literature. The first takes authenticity to be a property of how people act (authentic agency). The second takes it to be a property of who people are (authentic self). This paper motivates both views, then argues that there is a dependency between the two: the exercise of authentic agency depends on the possession of an authentic self, while the possession of an authentic self relies on the prior exercise of authentic agency. On a particular, individualist conception of the self, this leads to a paradox. This paradox is resolved if one instead adopts a social conception of the self, according to which the self is partially ontologically constituted by other agents (a ‘we’, rather than an ‘I’).

Authors: Mortimer, S

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Journal: Philosophical Quarterly
• Article number: pqaf008
• Publication date: 2025-01-30
• Acceptance date: 2025-01-09
• DOI: 10.1093/pq/pqaf008
• EISSN: 1467-9213
• ISSN: 0031-8094
• Language: English
• Keywords: agency; authenticity; self; social self