Possibility of Authenticity:
An Analysis

After establishing the ontological inevitability of the possibility of bad faith, the problem that challenges us is whether or not there is a way of achieving authenticity. The positive descriptions of authenticity previously presented subliminally imply a vague possibility of the phenomenon of authenticity.

We recall Sartre arguing in Being and Nothingness that authenticity consists in self-recovery of the corrupted being. In his article titled Sartre's Hello's and De Beauvoir's Goodbye's: Morality, Authenticity, and God, Ronald Santoni says that "it is not the case that human consciousness is condemned never to escape from 'bad faith.'" By motivating oneself to accept freedom and responsibility, man can "exist authentically in the mode of being for itself." Nevertheless, the enduring enticement to bad faith remains a real possibility. As Santoni says:

Authenticity, like "good faith," is among the genuine possibilities of human being. Yet, in its attempt to recover itself, human reality, because of its characteristic "lack," its "nothingness," is congenitally inclined toward completion, toward filling the "hole in being," toward becoming what it is. For Sartre, the ideal of becoming what "one is" is the ideal of sincerity, but this project is a project of bad faith, a project of "nailing down" one's consciousness. So, in so far as the state of authenticity shares in this tendency, it carries the risk of bad faith and must, therefore, remain suspect for Sartre.

Jean-Paul Sartre is a great synthesizer of seemingly contradictory philosophical premises. However, such ingenuity does not succeed in clarifying concepts that are directly involved in the present discussion. An observation by Thomas Busch is appropriate in the foregoing discussion. In a passage dealing with influences on Sartrean ethics, Busch asserts the ambiguity and vagueness of the connection between freedom and situation in Sartre:

The central weakness of Being and Nothingness was its inability to offer an intelligible relationship between freedom and situation/facticity. Sartre claimed that human reality was both free and situated, but his debt to the cogito tradition [Descartes/Husserl] in developing the former conflicted with his debt to Heidegger's historicity in developing the latter. Sartre's ontology of freedom as surpassing the given is based upon his appropriation of Husserl's notion of intentionality.

It is almost needless to say that any confusion in the discussion of the relationship between freedom and facticity necessarily results in confusion in the discussion of bad faith. This is because of the fact that all patterns of bad faith involve according to different degrees the interplay between the two phenomena. Besides, early Sartre is notorious for disengaging consciousness from the world, the for-itself from the in-itself, and freedom from situation. Sartre shall later revise this tenet and contend that the interplay between the for-itself and the in-itself is more than what he initially affirmed.

To conclude, there is a need to clarify three major points. First, bad faith is not only ontologically possible; its possibility is inevitable. It perpetually haunts the human person for the simple fact that the nature of consciousness is prone to bad faith. The human person is inclined to bad faith in view of the intentionality of consciousness. Faced with the horror of existence and the unbearable responsibilities of absolute freedom, man tends to project himself towards bad faith.

Second, individual authenticity in early Sartre is ontologically impossible. Authenticity is characterized by spontaneity; it is always prompted to become. Authenticity is always in the making; to stop one's search and say that one is authentic is itself bad faith. While the tendency for bad faith is perpetual, one's search for authenticity must be enduring. As Golomb puts it:

The authentic stance is in fact the sober realization that one's search for authenticity cannot be realized because one never owns one's 'transcendent' self. I am not what I am, and I pursue this realization by overcoming the seductive invitations to bad faith I encounter everywhere, with their offers of a self I can never have. Thus I must relate to my self as something which cannot be God. One cannot be authentic, but one can act authentically into one's own 'fundamental project' in life.

Third, individual authenticity can only be achieved on a phenomenological level. The ontological impossibility of authenticity challenges human reality to act authentically in the here and now. Even individual authenticity in this aspect is still difficult to achieve in a society that does not only favor bad faith but even attempts to reward acts of bad faith.

Finally, there is a need for social reconstruction in order to establish a society of brotherhood that makes possible and facile the achievement of authentic life. Sartre, in order to discourage the individual from resorting to bad faith, aims to establish a society that takes away its rewards. However, the authenticity Sartre envisions is no longer the individual authenticity he visualizes in his early writings, but is an authenticity characterized by a collective struggle. How then can we arrive at such authenticity?