Living One’s Own Life
Living One’s Own Life
Self-Determination, Self-Realization, and Authenticity
This chapter deals with the set of problems surrounding the concept of alienation. Against the backdrop of the negative foil of self-alienation, it examines the relations between freedom, self-determination, and self-realization and critiques the romantic conception of authenticity using a model of self-realization derived from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx. It argues that alienation is not coextensive with heteronomy, and that the capacity to have oneself at one's command or to be accessible to oneself in what one does depends on more than self-determination. In support of this argument, the chapter shows how the perspective of self-alienation leads via a formal concept of self-determination to a material conception that points in the direction of what might be called self-realization. It first considers the relationship between alienation and heteronomy, and between autonomy and alienation, before turning to a discussion of a conception of self-realization that is understood as the capacity to give oneself reality in the world in a self-determined way. It then challenges contemporary ideas of romantic authenticity by engaging with the views of Richard Rorty.
Keywords: alienation, self-alienation, freedom, self-determination, self-realization, authenticity, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, heteronomy, Richard Rorty
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