Chapter 17
    Martin Heidegger:
    Confronting Existential Guilt and Death

     Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), the German existentialist philosopher,
has given us much of the modern formulation of Authentic Existence.

I. INAUTHENTICITY

     As adults we are usually parts of the social mass, the anonymous 'they'.
The complex processes of everyday life so completely absorb our attention
that we might have lost contact with our deepest inner selves.
We live basically scattered and fragmented lives,
pushed and pulled this way and that by the changing tides of fad and fashion.

     Our hectic and 'involved' way of life effectively shields us
from the disclosure of our underlying existential anxiety, guilt, & death.
Our culture provides ready-made ways of interpreting everything.
By keeping ourselves preoccupied with small talk, chatter, & "everydayness",
we lose the uncanniness of existence in a tranquilized and familiar world.

     Thrown into the middle of a fully-formed human culture
—complete with elaborate life-patterns and -purposes—
each of us develops a social personality by slightly modifying the 'they-self'.
We seldom make real choices of our own;
rather we are carried along by the expectations of our culture.
We grow into fundamentally irresolute people, lost in what 'they' say.
To be sure, we might be deeply involved and busily engaged,
but whose life-purposes are we pursuing?
We have become responsible adults but inauthentic persons.

II. AWAKENING FROM OUR LOSTNESS IN THE 'THEY'

     Seeing that we are so completely engulfed by the on-rushing world,
how might we begin to notice our conformity?
How can we find ourselves in the midst of everydayness?

     In order to notice our lostness, fragmentation, & conformity,
something must reach us where we live—submerged in inauthenticity.
How can we become more Authentic
when everything in our culture pulls in the opposite direction,
keeping us uncentered but functional for the social processes?
We have become interchangeable parts of the huge social mechanism:
If we become unavailable for our roles—in family or occupational—
someone else can easily step into our places,
perhaps playing 'our' roles even better than we did.

70  BECOMING MORE AUTHENTIC: THE POSITIVE SIDE OF EXISTENTIALISM by JAMES PARK

How to cite the above page from Becoming More Authentic

    Students and scholars are invited to quote
anything from the above page. 
Here is the proper form for the footnote or other reference: 

James Park  Becoming More Authentic:
The Positive Side of Existentialism
(Minneapolis, MN: Existential Books, 2007—5th edition)
p. 70  

Return to the table of contents for
Becoming More Authentic: The Positive Side of Existentialism.
The contents shows the outline for this chapter on Heidegger.

Created September 11, 2008; revised 3-3-2017;

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