Becoming More Authentic

    Authenticity means creating our own comprehensive life-meanings
—our "Authentic projects-of-being".
When we re-center and re-integrate our lives
around our freely-chosen purposes,
we become more focused, unified, & decisive.
We gain greater autonomy
and increase our capacity to resist and transcend enculturation.
This approach to life was developed by
such existential philosophers and psychologists as:
Camus, Sartre, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, & Maslow.
But only we individually can decide what content
to put within this structure of Authentic Existence.

OUTLINE:

I. From Conformity to Autonomy

The power of enculturation—providing our basic life-scripts.

Writing our own scripts—deciding what to live for.

From scattered, tangled, superficial living
to organized, simple, purposeful living.

Creating an Authentic Project.

My Authentic Project-of-Being.

Several Possible Projects-of-Being.

1. Albert Camus: Rebelling Against the Absurd.

2. Jean-Paul Sartre: Inventing Meaning in a Meaningless World.

3. Martin Heidegger: Confronting Existential Guilt and Death.

4. Søren Kierkegaard: Willing One Thing.

5. Abraham Maslow: Becoming Self-Actualizing.

TEXT:

"Becoming More Authentic:
The Positive Side of Existentialism"

SYNOPSIS:

    When we seek to make our own lives "meaningful",
we may be struggling with two different sorts of meaninglessness.
We can create many forms of relative meanings
within the assumed areas of meaningful life:
money, achievement, love, marriage, children, enjoyment, & religion.
But even when we have fulfilled such meanings,
we may still feel an ultimate hollowness,
a spiritual or existential meaninglessness.
This deeper meaninglessness is not overcome
by any of the relative meanings we are able to create or achieve.
Ultimate meaning comes only as a gift
—independent of whatever relative meanings we can achieve.

The following 5-fold distinction underlies this cyber-sermon:

Relative Meaninglessness          Existential Meaninglessness

1. Disappointed expectations;              1. Frameworks of meaning collapse;
failure to fulfill accepted criteria.           lack of ultimate purpose in life.

2. Discrepancy between established     2. Uncaused; discovered as a
criteria and observable actualities;      fundamental condition-of-being;
based on intellectual information.        existentially disclosed.

3. Temporary—lasts only until              3. Permanent—no matter what we
the discrepancy is corrected.               change, meaninglessness continues.

4. Limited to a specific                            4. Pervades every dimension of life.
realm of meaning.

5. We know what to change                  5. Nothing we can do will
to bring meaning.                                    make life ultimately meaningful.

OUTLINE:

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.
The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.