Own-ness not authenticity

I’m going to let the cat out of the bag early; replace “authenticity” with the idea of "own-ness".

Most of my work in coaching and therapy is helping people to identify and realise themselves. Usually in relation to a particular role they have, think they would like to have, or would like to have. The word “authentic” comes up a lot, and most people think they kinda know what it means. It’s vitally important that we do, otherwise, no progress can be made.

What “own-ness” is NOT is ‘being like’ something. It is not an act, or a demonstration of differentness. It is not the appearance of being nicer, softer, more relaxed, friendlier, less starched. It is also not being carelessly grumpy or demanding. Etc…

Own-ness is a translation of eigentlichkeit, or personal integrity. It is Being. Not the body and the mind. Not the soul or the body. It is a pure way of understanding our own integral “Being”. This Being is not something we can define except in terms of a range of possibilities in which there are preferences according to our mood and what we care about. We make progress by being able to access our moods to help us in advancing our cares and concerns.

We are all authentic, all the time. We are us, uniquely authentically us. Even when we are acting in ways which go against our values – we are still us going against our values. So, ‘authentic’ is a rather pointless word if we are trying to understand ourselves.

The own-ness of personal integral is not separable into terms like ‘mind’, ‘body’, ‘soul’, ‘consciousness’ etc. A word used to describe a person then is one that literally means they are ‘there’ as one whole. Thus, the word was coined by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger – Dasein (Da; there and sein; being). This is not a refutation or soul or spirit, but it is a way to join them with body during the event of life, without describing a person as either a physical or other Being.

The better we understand our own-ness, our personal integrity, our Being and the better we accept it, the more content and effective we become.

Own-ness comes from our own history and historicity, the latter basically meaning our culture. Our Being – us – is “thrown” into life, we don’t get a choice about it. In our life, we fall largely into step with our culture. Our Being then has “thrownness” and “fallenness”. To understand our own-ness we must understand how our own history and culture is to us.

This is complicated in modern developed life, and increasingly in the developing world. We are less “fallen” into a geographically defined culture, and we are “thrown” into a massively expanded historicity because we have globalisation and the internet. Information about and adoption of cultural being that is outside of our own geographical confines is widening the possibilities of our personal integrity. We see this in the splintering phenomenon of people ‘identifying as’ – variously, in claiming affinity to a personal heritage, sub-cultures, political and religious ideology, etc.

With this dilution of thrownness and fallenness comes “existential crisis”, a term which like authenticity, is often used but seldom understood. We are in a state of crisis, I believe when we feel uncertain about our own-ness. We are distanced from our own Being, we try on various clothes and parts to see if anything ‘fits’ but nothing is quite comfortable. This state can become extremely damaging, as being divested from ourselves should be.

This is found in the expression abst?ndigkeit – which translates as distantiality:?Dasein's tendency to be concerned with and disturbed by deviation from social norms?(This is called Das Man the 'They', what 'They say' etc. it is behavioural prescriptions of convention that we seem to follow). Environment: The subworld that is in each case "closest to" or "primary for" Dasein. The best description for this that I have seen is that Dasein (each person) feels both part of and separated from themselves, and part of and separate from, groups. As the possibilities for this in the world get wider and less 'anchored', so the extent of our potential for existential crisis expands.

I’m a Heideggerian. I have alighted upon Martin Heidegger's philosophy and phenomenology as the most accurate and useful.?The following is an excellent, short explanation of Heidegger’s existentialism (link in comments).

“Heidegger’s "existentialist" philosophy begins by rejecting the very idea of objective/ subjective dualism. These are with a profound anti-Cartesianism, an uncompromising holism that rejects any dualism regarding mind and body, the distinction between subject and object, and the very language of "consciousness," "experience," and "mind." Thus he begins with an analysis of?Dasein?(literally, "being-there"). But the question emerges, because we are the "ontological" (self-questioning) creatures we are, just who this?Dasein?is. Thus Heidegger's philosophy becomes a search for authenticity or "own-ness" (Eigentlichkeit), or personal integrity. This search for authenticity will carry us into the now familiar but ever-renewed questions about the nature of the self, and the meaning of life, as well as Heidegger's somewhat morbid central conception of "Being-unto-Death." It will also lead to Heidegger's celebration of tradition and "heritage," the importance of resolutely committing oneself to one's given culture.

In contrast to the Cartesian view of the primacy and importance of knowledge, Heidegger suggests that what attaches or "tunes" us to the world is not knowledge but moods. It is in our moods, not the detached observational standpoint of knowledge, that we are "tuned in" to our world. Mood is the starting point for understanding the nature of the self and who we are, and much of Heidegger's analysis of?Dasein?is in terms of its moods, angst and boredom, for example.

What?Dasein?cannot be is what Descartes called "a thinking thing." But, then, who is?Dasein,?what is the self? It is, at first, merely the roles that other people cast for me, as their son, their daughter, their student, their sullen playmate, their clever friend. That self, the?Das Man?self, is a social construction. There is nothing authentic, nothing that is my own, about it. The authentic self, by contrast, is discovered in profound moments of unique self-recognition, notably, when one faces one's own death. It is not enough to acknowledge that "we are all going to die." That, according to Heidegger, is merely an objective truth and inauthentic. It is one's own death that matters here, and one's "own-ness" thus becomes "Being-unto-Death," facing up in full to one's own mortality.

Heidegger was a theology student before he became a phenomenologist, and his concerns were existentialist concerns, questions about how to live and how to live "authentically," that is, with integrity, in a politically and technologically seductive and dangerous world. His philosophy falls into two parts. His early work as a phenomenologist, culminating in his great tome,?Sein und Zeit?(1927; English trans.?Being and Time,?1962), suggests that he deserves to be counted among the existentialists. Like Kierkegaard, he investigates the meaning of authentic existence, the significance of our mortality, our place in the world and among other people as an individual. Heidegger's later work takes a different turn as he comes to see how his early work is still mired in the suppositions of traditional metaphysics. His philosophy seeks a new openness, a new receptivity toward the world, one that turns out to be very much in line with the program of many radical or "deep" ecologists and, as Heidegger himself later discovered, with several non-Western cultures, which had never been distracted by humanistic arrogance of his own philosophical tradition.”