Being true to myself means being true to my own originality,
which is something only I can articulate and discover. In
articulating it, I am also defining myself. I am realizing a potentiality
that is properly my own. This is the background
understanding to the modern ideal of authenticity, and to
the goals of self-fulfillment and self-realization in which the
ideal is usually couched. I should note here that Herder applied
his conception of originality at two levels, not only to
the individual person among other persons, but also to the
culture-bearing people among other peoples. Just like individuals,
a Volk should be true to itself, that is, its own culture.
Germans shouldn’t try to be derivative and (inevitably)
second-rate Frenchmen, as Frederick the Great’s patronage
seemed to be encouraging them to do. The Slavic peoples
had to find their own path. And European colonialism ought
to be rolled back to give the peoples of what we now call the
Third World their chance to be themselves unimpeded. We
can recognize here the seminal idea of modern nationalism,
in both benign and malignant forms.
This new ideal of authenticity was, like the idea of dignity,
also in part an offshoot of the decline of hierarchical society.
In those earlier societies, what we would now call identity
was largely fixed by one’s social position. That is, the background
that explained what people recognized as important
to themselves was to a great extent determined by their place
in society, and whatever roles or activities attached to this
position. The birth of a democratic society doesn’t by itself
do away with this phenomenon, because people can still define
themselves by their social roles. What does decisively
undermine this socially derived identification, however, is
the ideal of authenticity itself. As this emerges,
Being true to myself means being true to my own originality,
which is something only I can articulate and discover. In
articulating it, I am also defining myself. I am realizing a potentiality
that is properly my own. This is the background
understanding to the modern ideal of authenticity, and to
the goals of self-fulfillment and self-realization in which the
ideal is usually couched. I should note here that Herder applied
his conception of originality at two levels, not only to
the individual person among other persons, but also to the
culture-bearing people among other peoples. Just like individuals,
a Volk should be true to itself, that is, its own culture.
Germans shouldn’t try to be derivative and (inevitably)
second-rate Frenchmen, as Frederick the Great’s patronage
seemed to be encouraging them to do. The Slavic peoples
had to find their own path. And European colonialism ought
to be rolled back to give the peoples of what we now call the
Third World their chance to be themselves unimpeded. We
can recognize here the seminal idea of modern nationalism,
in both benign and malignant forms.
This new ideal of authenticity was, like the idea of dignity,
also in part an offshoot of the decline of hierarchical society.
In those earlier societies, what we would now call identity
was largely fixed by one’s social position. That is, the background
that explained what people recognized as important
to themselves was to a great extent determined by their place
in society, and whatever roles or activities attached to this
position. The birth of a democratic society doesn’t by itself
do away with this phenomenon, because people can still define
themselves by their social roles. What does decisively
undermine this socially derived identification, however, is
the ideal of authenticity itself. As this emerges,
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