Prompt for On Being Authentic and Flesh and Standing for Something

In the final 2 chapters of On Being Authentic, Charles Guignon makes a few statements that should help us synthesize his proposal that authenticity might more fruitfully be considered a social virtue, as well as a personal virtue He has described the historical movements in intellectual thought that brought us to our present crux where we place high value on the development of our individual being. Yet this understanding of self-fulfillment, as an ends in itself, tends to conflict a bit with the democratic understanding that rights come with responsibilities. Our individual survival is interconnected to the condition of others.

Additionally, Chesire Calhoun, in “Standing for Something” reinforces Guignon’s final point that authenticity can be most fruitful understood as a “social virtue” (156) in which the personal undertaking of seeking to be and act authentically is “made possible by a social world in which certain democratic ideals have emerged.” Thus, “when the ideal of authenticity is understood in terms of its social embodiment [the ways in which we engage with the world] it is clear that being authentic is not just a matter of concentrating on one’s own self, but also involves deliberation about how one’s commitments make contribution to the good of the public world in which one is a participant” (Guignon, 163). Calhoun similarly argues that “integrity” can and should be seen as a social virtue for similar reasons:

Integrity calls us simultaneously to stand behind our convictions and to take seriously others' doubts about them. Thus, neither ambivalence nor compromise seem inevitably to betoken lack of integrity. If we are not pulled as far as uncertainty or compromise, integrity would at least demand exercising due care in how we go about dissenting. (260)

Please think about these ideas and one or more of the following statements in relation to your service using other quotes and concepts from the text and specific illustrations from service:

From “Story-Shaped Selves”:
Guignon describes Charles Taylor’s views:

To have an identity––to be able to answer the question, ‘Who are you?’––you must have an understanding of what is of crucial importance to you, and that means knowing where you stand within a context of questions about what is truly worth pursuing in life…To have an identity is t have some orientation in what Taylor calls ‘moral space,’ where the term ‘moral refers to whatever gives meaning and direction to a life. (136).

From “Authenticity in Context”:

G. summarizes the philosophical views of Bernard Williams:

“It is only through the our social interactions that we become selves whose inner episodes are given enough steadiness and cohesiveness so that our relations to others can be built on cooperation and trust” (155)

Outcasts United

So, what did you think?
Tried to add this to a comment after Joanna's but I couldn't paste the link in.
Go here to find out what Luma was able to do with the support that came after the exposure she got from the New York Times pieces written by Warren St. John, the author of this book. . . . Just as with Farmer's work, media exposure is very important to being able to implement change in a bigger way. . .

Prompt for On Being Authentic, Chapters 5 and 6

Okay, this is a big one--bite off what you can!

Guigon continues, in Chapter 5, to describe the ways in which our world and self views are influenced by “two deeply opposed conceptions of what life is all about” (78) and the ways in which these conflicting views have contributed to a kind of split modern personality and a series of binaries which we, consciously or unconsciously, use to understand ourselves and our relationship to the world. Guignon states that “most of us deal with the conflicting demands on us in the modern world by being instrumentalists in public and Romantics in private. That such an existence is polarized, that it breeds confusions when the private comes to be colonized by instrumentalist tendencies ––these are seen as inevitable problems of living in modern circumstances” (79-80). He goes on to say that what is of interest here is to consider the ways in which the “modern outlook is shaped by a distinctive set of binary oppositions that governs the way we sort things out in everyday life” (80). Use this chapter to explore (briefly) the implications of these opposing conceptions of selfhood and any examples you have from your own life, especially your service experience, this semester. But don’t stop there!

In the beginning of Chapter 6, Guignon sums up the concepts and ideas that he has presented thus far and then goes on to detail the post modern conception of the self which is really a non-self. Basically, the postmodern view, in this depiction, is an extension of the idea that society is a social construct–– now the individual is a product of that construct. Yet, while Guignon dismantles much of this view, he also shows how this “undoing” of the individual is also useful to countering the ways in which the ideals of individualism have gone astray in leading us to strive for an autonomy and “freedom” from worldly constraints which is neither possible or necessarily desirable. Guignon notes Richard Rorty who believed that a recognition of ourselves as socially conditioned was important for helping us to question and challenge that conditioning, even challenging what we think we believe or, as Rorty called it, our final vocabulary. For Rorty, it was important to be an “ironist”—doubting and questioning what we think we know, what may seem like the basis of our identity—for him this was the counter to fundamentalist thinking that has no room for doubt and is dangerous in a world filled with so many different worldviews.

Towards the end of the chapter, Guignon presents a “remedy” that puts the meaning back in a self and that helps us to think about the “unfinished” self that is the catalyst for Freire’s work.

To this end, Guignon introduces the concept of the dialogical self developed: by Mikhail Bakhtin. He tells us:

“The conclusion to draw from the dialogical nature of experience is that we experience the world through a “We’ before we experience it through an ‘I’…The dialogical conception of self has the advantage of making social interactions absolutely fundamental to our identity. It lets us see that being human is inextricably being part of a ‘We’” (121).

Can you illustrate ways in which your own identity has in any way been shifted/morphed/altered through any aspect of the interactions that you have had with others through service-learning?

Prompt for On Being Authentic and Flesh in the Age of Reason

In our reading from Ethics of Authenticity, Taylor points to the ways in which the moral ideal of authenticity was morphed into a focus on self-fulfillment that focuses only on the self, as if meaning/authenticity/true selfhood can best be "achieved" through a solitary process requiring a kind of retreat from the mundane, the everyday aspects of our lives (think Siddhartha as an aesthete). But, Taylor suggests, that in order to find the meaning we seek, that true self, it is important to understand that "we exist in a horizon of important questions" not just our own. We are embedded in a larger and very significant context. Maybe not all good or ideal but part of who we are and the self-defining choices that we make. He writes, "To shut out demands emanating beyond the self is precisely to suppress the conditions of significance, and hence to court trivialization" (40).
Guignon basically takes up Taylor's argument right there by examining the self-help movement and the formulaic approaches to "finding oneself" (again, think Siddhartha!).
Both of this week's readings deal with the tension between different ideas of selfhood and the striving for meaning/authenticity. Taylor and Porter begin to outline two different and often conflicting conceptions relating to the ideal of "being true to oneself," what it means to be "authentic," to "know oneself" that Taylor circled around. Both are extremes: self-denial/self-emptying/self-loss/self-abnegation/releasement vs self-possession/enownment/author of your own destiny.
Porter writes, "Thus, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the sense of self needs rethinking" (16). Guignon believes that the "very notion of an intrinsically good, substantial self lying within becomes increasingly problematic in the contemporary world" (xii-xiii).
Use the texts to explore and illustrate the different, if flawed or extreme, ideals of selfhood that the authors describe. Many of you didn't quite catch the nuanced way in which Taylor forms his arguments, he lays out different perspectives but this doesn't mean that he is defending or putting out these ideas himself. You will see that Guignon does this also, he talks about this methodology in the preface. Philosophical writing is complex, so please try to understand what the authors are saying, what their project is, before deciding to argue a point. Critical thinking/reading is about investigation of and interaction with the text to increase your understanding of the concepts, if you disagree then be sure to use quotes to argue your point and make sure that you understand the larger context from which you pluck them. . .