PHILOSOPHY 201 (STOLZE)
Notes on Thomas Wartenberg, Existentialism
Chapter Seven: Authenticity
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Conformity vs. Authenticity
Facing Death Squarely
Acting Authentically
MLK on the Need to be “Maladjusted”
Conformity vs. Authenticity
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Ex: Stranger than Fiction
Facing Death Squarely
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Heidegger’s analysis of “being-towards-death”
Ex: Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych”
Discovery or creation of an authentic self (pp. 132-33)
Acting Authentically
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Nietzsche’s criterion of the Eternal Recurrence of the same
(p. 138)
An objection: the problem of an “authentic tyrant”
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Sartre’s solution (p. 141)
De Beauvoir’s solution (pp. 142-45)
Simone De Beauvoir’s Argument
against the Possibility of an “Authentic Tyrant”
1.
Assume that there existed one individual who freely decided to
enslave everyone else by making them subject to his or her decisions;
call such an individual an authentic tyrant.
2.
But individual freedom necessitates the existence of others in a world
within which one can concretely exercise one’s freedom in relation to
those others.
3.
Freedom that cannot be concretely exercised is a contradiction in
terms.
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Therefore, if there were only one free individual, then the exercise of
that individual’s freedom would be impossible.
5.
Therefore, an authentic tyrant would not in fact be free.
6.
Therefore, there could be no such thing as an authentic tyrant.
MLK on the Need to be “Maladjusted”
Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word. It is the word
“maladjusted.” Now we all should seek to live a well adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and
schizophrenic personalities. But there are some things within our social order to which I am
proud to be maladjusted and to which I call upon you to be maladjusted. I never intend to
adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to mob rule. I
never intend to adjust myself to the tragic effects of the methods of physical violence and to
tragic militarism. I call upon you to be maladjusted to such things. I call upon you to be as
maladjusted as Amos who in the midst of the injustices of his day cried out in words that echo
across the generation, “Let judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty
stream.” As maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln who had the vision to see that this nation could
not exist half slave and half free. As maladjusted as Jefferson, who in the midst of an age
amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out, “All men are created equal and are endowed by
their Creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness.” As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth who dreamed a dream of the
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. God grant that we will be so maladjusted that
we will be able to go out and change our world and our civilization. And then we will be able to
move from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man to the bright and
glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.
(Excerpted from Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Power of Nonviolence,” in A Testament of Hope:
The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by James M.
Washington [New York: HarperCollins, 1986], pp. 14-15. This is only a partial transcript from
a lecture King gave to the YWCA at UC-Berkeley in 1957.)