The Theory and History of Authenticity

WHAT ACTUAL CIRCUMSTANCES favored the rise of authenticity as a vital goal in today’s society?

WHAT ACTUAL CIRCUMSTANCES favored the rise of authenticity as a vital goal in today’s society? Lionel Trilling attempted to answer this question when he described the growth of authenticity out of the simpler and more modest virtue of sincerity, which itself arose in response to the momentous shift out of feudalism. According to Trilling, the concept of sincerity first emerged as a precursor to authenticity in the 16th century as a result of the gradual breakup of the face-to-face relationships of traditional European society. As was the case in many other pre-modern traditional societies around the world, the highly personalized universe of Medieval Europe was held together by a taken-for-granted social order that provided its members with secure positions in a divinely sanctioned hierarchy. Local authorities served church and state, and were served in turn by their vassals. The family replicated this order, with the father exercising a sacralized authority. This stratified and sanctified worldview validated the daily lives of the faithful. For most of those living in this cosmically ordained system, there was little or no travel away from their locality, and little or no social mobility within it. Under these circumstances individuals were constrained by the obligations entailed in their predestined social roles. What mattered was not personal sincerity and purity of intent, but only whether persons were able to live up to their obligations to the neighbors and kinsmen they had known and who had known them all their lives.