When Jean-Paul Sartre called Che Guevara “the most complete human being of our age” he saw a man who had no inner conflict regarding his world view and aspirations, whose every action made manifest the ideals he lived with inside himself. One may like or dislike Che. They may agree or disagree with any number of things the man did. Che was a highly complicated individual yet he was clear within himself of not only his own personal goals and aspirations, but of what was needed to create a more perfect world. He lived entirely by the ideals he espoused.
This is what we are referring to when we talk of authenticity. The individual is not judged as though a criminal. There is no punishment for wrong doing. Living authentic or inauthentic lives is of no normative concern. It holds no moral weight. No position authentically exists from which one could condemn. Rather, the point of import is within ones self.
Zay Amsbury asks “How does the “come from” of an artist determine their authenticity?” This is a simple enough. It is everything. In one section of his Indeterminacy John Cage relates a Buddhist teaching. The student asks “If the mountains are still mountains and the trees are still trees, then what is the difference before enlightenment and after?” To which the teacher replies, “No difference. Except that the feet are a little bit off the ground.”
In this way we see that the actions themselves may be no different in any formal sense. The wood is still chopped the water still carried, yet for one it is like floating. In the same way, one is always historically determined as regards their prima facia modes of thought and action. One can always act inside of history. One can always follow the path determined y history. Ernesto Guevarra could easily have become a successful Physician healing the rural poor. But few can act outside of history. Or more to the point, few can act with no regard for their ontological historicity because their every action (re)creates it every moment, in every breath.
As I said, “there has been a substantial transformation in Humanity’s mode of existence due to the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial economy. And this transformation encapsulates the arguments of Benjamin and places them within a specific socio-historical context that we label the ‘past.’ ” The very basis for authentic action has shifted. The world historical ‘come from’ is something wholly new and unique to our age. Any attempt to understand the basis of human agency without placing it within this socio-historical context will only be a partial analysis.
It is this shift in the very basis of ontological potentialities that alter the potentials for authentic action. Zay and I both seem to agree that the authentic exists within experience. In the final analysis we find there is nothing beyond experience. I am therefore I think, is a better way of looking at the situation. Thought is just an experience, it is not a mode of being. How one thinks is determined by ones mode of Being. Ones mode of Being then determines one’s experience.
However, the shift in the soil upon which and in which that experience is rooted determines how the experience is experienced. For authenticity is based in moments of direct unmediated experience. It is the action taken by that pre-linguistic self that knows and thus acts. This is highly separate from the inauthentic being who thinks and then acts based upon thought. ‘I think therefore I am’ may well have caused more damage to Western thought than the loss of the the library at Alexandria.
To base ones actions upon thought rather than raw experience is to place a filter on true understanding. In thought all the sensory world becomes like nothing as it slowly reduces to signs and signifiers falling further and further away in a sea of referents. To reclaim that original experience becomes an imperative. To reclaim that original experience is to reclaim the soul. That first breath of air or gush of wind. To find that place of action and understanding that we had before language made us forget. That is the path towards authenticity.
Language is an amazing technology. But too often and too easily do we become ensnared in its mesh and rather than determining the course of language, we allow language to determine our actions. Benjamin’s notion of the Authentic in light of Mechanical Reproduction begins down the path and then gets caught in the trap of its own linguistic structures. It becomes unable to see the very thing it critiques causes the entire field of reality to shift. The very basis upon which we act has shifted due to the rise of the photograph and the film and the many technologies that came after. We have undergone numerous paradigm shifts in the intervening years. And as a result we must be ready to look at the potentials of authentic action from within a wholly new conceptual framework.
