The Limits of Authenticity: Identity, Access, and Normative Failure
The Limits of Authenticity: Identity, Access, and Normative Failure

Summary/Abstract: This paper argues that authenticity fails to function as an action-guiding ethical ideal under contemporary conditions. Authenticity presupposes that there is an identity that is prior to its expression, stable enough to serve as a standard of assessment, and accessible to the subject in a form that can guide action. Drawing on Butler’s account of performativity and Baudrillard’s analysis of simulation, the paper shows that the stability and independence of such an identity can no longer be sustained. It then turns to Kripke’s distinction between metaphysical necessity and epistemic accessibility to argue that, even if identity were to exist in a robust sense, it would not follow that it is available in a way that could guide deliberation. The paper concludes that, in the absence of such access, authenticity cannot function as an action-guiding ethical ideal.

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