Introduction
Martin Heidegger, one of the most influential philosophers of the modern age, devoted much of his career to a single question: “What is ‘being’?” In Being and Time, he developed various concepts and terms to explore or extend it. “Authenticity”—Eigentlichkeit in German—is one such term that he uses to refer to “a possible way of life or mode of existence for humans, a life that reveals what it is to be human in a privileged way.”1
Even with this definition, it remains unclear how a life might be viewed as authentic, or, conversely, as inauthentic. Therefore, in this essay, I will a) explicate Heidegger’s view in Section 1, b) raise key objections in Section 2 and c) propose my own evaluation in Section 3. In assessing the concept, I draw on the views of McManus, Guignon, Crowell, Adorno, and Dreyfus.