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, and 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, and 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.

    James Park is an existential philosopher and author of the book
which is the basis for this presentation:
Becoming More Authentic: The Positive Side of Existentialism.
If you click this title, the Table of Contents of the book will appear.
From there, you will be able to open several sample pages of the book.

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.