Authenticity and the Everyday

Abstract

This chapter develops two claims that are central to the argument of the book. First, it articulates a conception of authenticity in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy that echoes the conception we find in Division II of Being and Time. This account builds on the treatment of rule following from the previous chapter and contrasts an ‘authentic’ reading of Wittgenstein with Kripke’s sceptical reading. And second, it argues that, for both Wittgenstein and Heidegger, authenticity is not a liberation from the everyday but rather a clear-sighted embrace of the everyday. Our average everyday existence is inauthentic to the extent that we regard that existence as fixed independent of us. An authentic everydayness, by contrast, acknowledges the uncanniness of our everyday practices, which have no external support or justification beyond our own investment in them.