Introduction to Preliminary Thoughts on Authenticity
Kevin Boileau for EPIS Education


In order to explore the meaning and value of authentic human being-ness—who we are and what we are seeking ontologically and existentially—we must address questions relating to an interpretation of being that prioritizes having and its relationship to the dialectic between being alone and being with Others. This starting point would be useful in helping us approach transcendental liberations within a master semiology of capitalism, the arch-meaning of our current historical period. This is its value. (See my Genuine Reciprocity & Group Authenticity, 2012 (hereinafter “GRGA” and my An Existential Phenomenology of Responsibility, hereinafter “EPR,” in press, 2019 for extensive discussion of both these topics, EPIS Press. Also, see my Introduction to EPIS Journal, 2018, for comments concerning this semiology and its impact on human experience. Also, see my Critical Existential Psycho-Analysis, chapter 4, On Gabriel Marcel, for extensive discussion concerning the distinction between being and having, EPIS Press, 2014.

Having is a primordial way that we exist in the world and a way that we interpret temporality. It is a mode of being that can be a futile attempt in the ontic realm to overcome ontological anxiety. In contrast, being itself, focusing on the ontological, projects directly into deeper levels of meaning that are mysterious and unknown. It is apparent that contemporary Western culture is preoccupied with having, creating greater distance from the awareness of what and who we are. Having is characterized by acquisitiveness, dominated by the worldview that the aim of life is fulfilled in proportion to what we possess. This tendency has evolved into a western civilization that is structurally regulated by acquisition, possession, and capitalistic structures. (See section III, “Prolegomena to the Possessive Self,” in Essays on Phenomenology and the Self, EPIS Press, 2012, p.255. See Heidegger’s Being and Time for his articulation of the ontological aspect to human existence.)

We can attempt to possess many different sorts of things, such as material objects, people, and even ideas. We accumulate material objects for security, protection, and social status. We attach ourselves to people, especially romantic partners. We attach ourselves to our ideas, arranged in various domains such as the social, scientific, political, religious, and so forth. Learning has become systemized accumulation of facts, and intellectual value comes from the sheer amount of information or knowledge one can access and utilize. We consume the evening television news, buy newspapers, and seek information about the stock market. Formal education is this way too. These individual-social formations support, therefore, instrumental reasoning, which in turn, supports an interpretation of being that focuses on having.

In this mode of having, meaning comes primarily from the subject side of intentionality. Humans then utiize this existential mode to imbue everything in the world with our cultural and personal, subjective values. This leads to a social and political system that encourages individual, idiosyncratic valuation and a subjectivism that become valorized in the bourgeois marketplace. This is a danger for phenomenology because it overshadows and hides the objective source of meaning. However, this goes even further; this desire to have goes all the way down into the foundation of our very consciousness, an inversion of an authentic access to and participation in being. (See Professor Brentano, who originated existential formulations of intentionality, in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Routledge, 2014. Also, see Ernesto Spinelli’s The Interpreted World, Sage, 2005.)

At this fundamental level, we regard our minds, our bodies, and our lives as things to be possessed. They are viewed as objects that we can keep or lose. Yet, there is a gap between the subject-possessor and the object-possessed because the subject alienates and isolates himself from those material objects he possesses. If I am what I possess, I will always be at a distance from those things. In this case, my possession is illusory because I will always fear the loss of anything I can have. This alienation results in ontological insecurity, which includes anxiety, meaningless, and emptiness, as I live in an isolated way among lifeless objects that are always at a distance from me. As I continue to chase those objects that I can “possess,” my being remains empty and superficial. What’s more, this anxiety drives us toward compulsive and violent forms of acquisitiveness – including selfishness, greed, and harm to others. Then we cannot stop ourselves and become ensconced in the purely subjective, losing connection to objective sources of meaning, living in a distorted and false anthropological conception. This is how we lose empathy. (See Soren Kierkegaard’s oeuvre for a sustained, lifetime discussion of anxiety from an existential perspective.)

I am interested in the motivation that underlies the urge to accumulate; about what is lacking that creates this motivation. Something seems missing but it is nothing in particular. It is just a state of nothing-ness. This is to say that there is a void—and emptiness—and we attempt to fill it by acquiring external objects. But this void is epi-phenomenal with consciousness, and impossible to fill by accumulating from the outside. Thus, as we experience with different degrees of awareness, this lack of being that we experience cannot be affected by having. This is so whether the having is emotional, perceptual, imaginative, cognitive, spiritual, or material. It is the seat of transcendence, which is the locus of freedom – and its opposites. (See Jean-Paul Sartre’s, Being and Nothingness, Washington Square Press, 1993 for good discussion on “nothingness.” In ongoing conversation with Professor Hazel Barnes at the University of Colorado, I learned the difference between the ontological and the ontic, in 1978 -1982, which Sartre borrowed from Heidegger’s Being and Time.)

What I have described is a loss of the presencing of deeper levels of meaning. It is a loss of sensitivity to and awareness of the transcendental function in consciousness. Thus, we seek having and preclude ourselves from experiencing being except in an alienated way. Derivatively, we lose awareness of the consequences of this alienation by being ensconced in having. The depth of this mode extends further, for even our spiritual and epistemological quests may occur in the mode of having, as we purchase and read one (self-help) book after the other and try several religions. Then, we confuse ourselves even more, as what we believe ought to fulfill us is only more of the same distorted orientation in being. This effect multiplies as we use the Internet as our library of satisfaction. (Professor Tom Flynn at Emory, highlighted the importance of presencing in any discussion of authenticity, in conference in Missoula, Montana. It is essentially a choice of being. EPIS Psychoanalytic Institute & Society Conference at the University of Montana, 2013.)

For example, many belief systems give us the possibility of having a meaningful life and a kind of immortality that comes from identifying a positive, teleological end of some sort. If there are sought-after, “Good” places we can go to, then enlightenment and eternal life are things that we can obtain; they become things that we can have. We are taught to believe that we can gain happiness by a class, a book, or a consultation. Thus, we purchase these teleological goods as merchandise. These commodification process makes us feel good, as a kind of narcotic. It is satisfying because it fills up that nothingness even though its cost is an infinite destruction of life – an eradication of our presencing to life.

In contrast, authentic consciousness awakens to the mysterious dimension of our being, a participation and dialogue with meaning. We gain this by leaning in to it, pursuing it, and remaining open and available to it. Instead of being something that we acquire, authentic consciousness is something that we allow to permeate our whole life. Within this orientation, philosophical foundations cannot be reduced to a system of dogmas or belief systems, for here we risk the danger that we would adopt the belief system instead of allowing authentic awareness into our being. This is the problem with accumulations of “knowledge” that we can have, with instrumental reasoning that is merely operational, which is unaccompanied by understanding, and access to critical availability to objective sources of meaning. (The reader ought to meditate on the difference between understanding, explanation, and instrumental-operational reasoning, such distinctions helpful to the development of an account of authenticity. Regarding the “mysterious,” Gabriel Marcel outlines this in several of his works, which I articulate in my Critical Existential Psycho-Analysis, chapter 4.)

Once we can see our way through the problems created by the mode of having—an over-reliance on the subjective source of meaning—we can begin to re-approach the objective as source of meaning. It is then incumbent upon us to try to understand this dimension of our existence that leads us into mystery and transcendent freedom. For it lacks ontic, positivist forms of description and evaluation that enslave us through well-defined laws, values, and institutions.
(Marcel, who I write about in the CEPA text, chapter 4, and Husserl, both shed light on the distinction between the subjective and objective source of meaning. Such distinction is foundational to an understanding of authenticity. My Vivantonomy, A Trans-Humanist Phenomenology of the Self, illuminates the point. EPIS Press, 2015.)

When we focus ourselves on the objective source of meaning—on being—we are presented with the existential questions some people pursue and most people avoid, concerning the meaning of life, human potential, purpose, responsibility, virtue, value, and other challenging matters. These questions all are iterations of the Socratic question about what I ought to do with my life. These questions have no straight or easy answer, and they always focus on being and mystery. We are often tempted to answer these questions from the orientation of the mode of having (naturalism, intellectualism, positivism) because our cultures and societies are structuralized within this mode. (See my Essays on Phenomenology, chapter 1, p. 1, on the problem of the objective source of meaning.)

In addition, we are tempted to answer them in terms of our own cultural frames, knowing fully well the argument that we cannot transcend them. However, if we move from a having orientation to a transcendental orientation in being – a bracketing of having – focusing on the deeper existential questions, we can understand a) that these questions are always asked by particular people living in a particular time and place with a particular history and b) that we can always see the universal existentials within specific cultural enframings. We can see that our ways of articulating these questions and issues are at best provisional enunciations and we can, therefore, avoid existential sedimentations and dogma. (See the Being and Time, by Martin Heidegger, for a well-developed account of existentials and ontology, Harper, 2008. Also, see, my Critical Existential Psycho-Analysis, chapter 5, on transcendence.)

In order to avoid falling into these sedimentations, we must not only look to the structural forms of our answers. Otherwise, we risk losing the inner meaning of what they say. For example, we can see large differences between institutionalized forms of belief and the individuals who exist within these institutional forms. Contemporary protagonists sometimes become more concerned with justifying dogmas and creeds than with understanding the existential significance of these guides to life. These are animated by self-help books and Western happiness experts. Instead, we should be aware that the value of any belief lies in its ability to point us toward deeper truth. When we take the symbolic value of the belief to be final truth, that symbol precludes self-transcendence, and obscures that which it was formerly trying to disclose. Psychoanalytically, it is regressive. Phenomenologically, it creates closure and lacks availability. (The reader ought to acquaint herself with the work of Jacques Lacan, whose structuralist theory is trenchant counterpoint to phenomenology, showing how we are “playthings of the unconscious.”)

There is always a transcendent element or quality to language because meanings cannot precisely and totally be fixed through that language although our bureaucracies, organizations, and corporations try very hard to do so. Through the transcendent function, meaning always escapes into a future horizon of possibilities unless we slip into the mode of having, as beliefs in their institutionalized form become a receptacle of facts and information, traded for future expected gain, in service of instrumentalized rationality. This implies cultural and individual relativism, which always results in subjectivism, which becomes a danger to phenomenology as corrective to positivisms. Furthermore, epistemological and theological answers to existential questions can rise to an idealized level, becoming experience-distant rather than experience near, but not approaching the amelioration of our emptiness, alienation, anxiety, and loneliness. (I write about transcendence in chapter 5 of the CEPA text. Also, note the moral dangers of subjectivism, which inexorably leads to nihilism.)

Addressing our basic situation in life from an existential phenomenological point of view will allow us to see the consequences of living in the mode of having and acquisition, focusing on the subjective. By looking at our initial state, we can see how we end up in the mode of having and how we suspend our use of theoretically-based judgments and confront the phenomena of life exactly as it presents itself. Let us consider the essential structures of our own existence, which I call “existentials.” Let me also suggest that it is very difficult to suspend our judgments that are based on culture, society, family, worldview, and so forth. Thus, whatever understanding we arrive at must only be tentative and preliminary, susceptible to revision and re-evaluation. (See Heidegger’s Being and Time.)

My goal here is to render a preliminary and simple account of the basic structures of human existence, which is our ontological framework for all the derivative beliefs, emotions, and behaviors we create and commit to in our specific cultural and social worlds. Phenomenology is the method that alerts us to various experiences in a pure, descriptive way. We can then catalogue them as a way of identifying the more basic ontological presuppositions of those experiences. (See Introduction to Phenomenology, Robert Sokolowski, Cambridge University, 1999 for a good presentation of the basic concepts of phenomenology.)

By addressing the basic structures of human existence, we can unsettle our received views and understandings about the nature of our humanity in our present condition, which is governed by capitalism, a form of the existential mode of having. This allows us to explore the allocation of meaning within the dialectic between the subjective and the objective. Our goal is to clarify these actual structures of human existence. This will lead to an understanding of all possibilities for being given that they are rooted in the actual structures of our existence. (See Irvin Yalom’s famous text, Existential Psychotherapy, Basic Books, 1980. The basic literature in critical theory, from Marx forward, focuses the essence of its quest on the distortive features of capitalism on the human experience. See Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty, Belknap, 2017.)

We can identify four main ontological dimensions, including the spiritual, the natural-physical, the social, and the intra-personal (i.e. the self) as they are approached by the tension between aloneness and being with others. We always find ourselves alone in a world that includes others and we have choices about how we participate in it. The fact that we are always alone but always in the midst of others is a paradox, for these two poles of our existence are interdependent. They are separate but are also bound up with each other. We understand our individuality relative to our sociality; and we understand our participation with others in terms of our individuality. We live in tension between these two elements and are constantly subjected to the existential disruption that occurs when there is imbalance between them. This tension becomes an interpretive filter in our experience of these ontological dimensions. (See Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy.)

The integration of this dialectical tension within and throughout these dimensions conditions the possibilities that are actualized in our thoughts, words, and actions. Most of this process, we shall see, is inauthentic, which means that the actualization of one’s range of possibility within one’s aloneness and one’s participation is avoided and thereby becomes limited. There is a closure to the presencing of our faculty of transcendence, which governs our range of possibilities, and therefore, our pursuit of deeper meaning. (See my book GRGA. See Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, 1807/2019, for a seminal understanding of dialectical thinking. See An Introduction to Dialectics, Theodor Adorno, Polit, 2017, for a brilliant analysis of dialectics.)

In the case of being-alone, actualization is limited by ignorance and selfishness; in the case of being-with, by self-concern and disregard for others. These are our existential distortions. These inauthentic states result from too much emphasis on subjectivist modes of being and little regard for the natural, i.e., that which is Other, and that which moves us away from inflexible ego states, Thus, we can create inauthentic aloneness and inauthentic being with others that is contaminated with the subjective. (GRGA, chapters on Sartre)

Foundationally, we are always alone, with a history that is our own, and with a solitude that reveals this aloneness. We see that we entered a world that we did not choose, and that we have features and attributes that are uniquely ours. This thrownness is our facticity, which is an unalterable state of affairs that operates as a set of conditions or boundaries from which we make free choices. Further, we alone know our aloneness and although we can use words to share it with others, there is always a gap between the words and the actual experience that is uniquely ours. Thus, there is both a discursive level and an existential level to our aloneness. It is a fundamental mode of being in the world. We are ontologically alone even though we can create practical-moral relations with Others. (Heidegger has a great discussion on facticity in his Being and Time. Also, see, Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason, 1960/Verso, 2004.)

There are a number of parallel modes of being that emerge from this aloneness as fundamental, including the distinction between actuality and possibility, our own death, responsibility for choice, the movement between anxiety and fear, and the moment of trust and hope. We cannot help but be future directed because of the very structure of our consciousness. As we interpret our facticity, we realize that we have a range of choices within which we constitute the meaning of our lives. These possibilities are limited by our facticity and the choices we make are radically free within our unique situations. Our lives, therefore, are always conditioned by the dialectic between actuality and possibility, as both obligation and privilege. (I develop discussion between actuality and possibility in my text, Vivantonomy, A Trans-Humanist Phenomenology of the Self, “VTHP”), EPIS Press, 2015. Also, see GRGA, for my articulation of the tension between structuralism and our self-constituting faculty.)

Although it is difficult if not impossible to predict the future trajectories of our lives, we do know that death is certain for every one of us. Moreover, it is not just an event that will happen in the future; instead, we live with that possibility in consciousness everyday of our lives. We recognize this as a limit to the regulatory function of transcendence. Further, the way we interpret that possibility conditions the way we operate in space and time, and in all other existential dimensions. It constitutes the very foundation of all our thinking, feeling, and behavior. As we reflect on this possibility, we also realize that we face death alone—in solitude, but in the midst of Others, and without the power to change this destiny. (See Heidegger’s Being and Time, to see how he utilizes the awareness of death as a fulcrum for an ontology of authenticity.)

We are also responsible for the choices that we make and are responsible therefore for our very existence. However, there is an ontological terror that comes with this responsibility and an equal terror in the consideration of our own deaths. We flee in a number of ways, into the particular entities of the world that capture our subjective interest. All too often, these are entities that humans have created, enclosing in cultural value and our subjective judgments about these values. Yet, our essential being resides in our ontological possibility in the face of death, not in the external world. If we pursue the external world, we focus on particular entities, manipulating and organizing them in a way that we hope assuages our anxiety. Our justification comes from doing what is normal or expected by others, being pulled away from our solitude through the ideologies that construct value. The cost is that we lose ourselves. We lose the presencing to our being as we acquire the world of others through having. (I present a well-developed account of responsibility in my VTHP, chapter 3 and in my new, A Phenomenology of Responsibility, EPIS Press, 2019.) Also, see my chapters on Michel Foucault, regarding normalization, in GRGA.)

When we are inauthentically alone, we have chosen to allow ourselves to be absorbed into the particular entities of the world in some way – through the mode of having. In this mode we are blind to beings and Being. Here, we believe that these particular entities are self-sufficient, foundational to our existence, and the primary if not sole source of meaning in our lives. However, when we exist in this mode, choosing predictability and security by concentrating on particular entities, we lose connection to the whole of our being. Unfortunately, this focus does not dispel our anxiety and usually increases it in my experience. This brings us to a consideration of the distinction between anxiety and fear. See, (Heidegger, Being and Time and chapter 2, on Sartre, in my Critical Existential Psycho-Analysis.)

In existentialisms, it is commonly accepted that fear always has as its object a particular entity within the world and can be dispelled by avoiding that object. For example, I might be afraid of bears, so I avoid them when I can. In contrast, anxiety is not focused on any particular object but on our existence itself; further, we are always embedded in anxiety, faced with our thrownness, that we were born alone and will die alone, and that we have a range of potentials for being. In fact, we experience anxiety even more when we recognize the illusory security brought by attachment to particular entities. This anxiety comes when we realize that our whole life’s focus on the false security of particular entities has been an entire project of ignoring our being and ignoring the fact that we will die in the future. Much of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre develops an understanding of human anxiety. The reader can see a brilliant presentation of self-deception in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.)

Anxiety is comprised originally of the potential ontological insecurity that we all have by virtue of being alive. This is the existential terror that causes us to limit our radical freedom by strategies of absorption into a world of entities and through a kind of self-deception that facilitates this absorption. It is also true that humans realize that these absorptions and deceptions are futile and, as a result, become depressed, alienated, hopeless, and even desperate. This is the plight of those who are compulsively addicted to pursuing drugs, alcohol, things, ideas, people, and anything else that they think they can possess. (Sartre, Being and Nothingness; and my GRGA.)

Unfortunately, there is always a letdown that occurs after every attempt to fill emptiness by absorption in these things. This letdown quickly moves into a deeper anxiety that can become chronic, along with a giving up and a belief that the world is dark and meaningless. On the other hand, we can use the anxiety as fuel to continue searching for meaning, purpose, and greater potential in ourselves. In short, we can welcome our anxiety as a signpost for discovery, creativity, and new awareness of our potentials for being.

In this new existential attitude, we fully accept our ontological condition in its entirety and thereby accept our radical aloneness and finitude. When we accept this, we accept the fact that we have both being and non-being. We are, materially, and we are conscious ideally, in an interplay of being and non-being that provides us possibility of transformation and change toward the future. In simple terms, we are, and we are not. (See Sartre’s Being and Nothingness for a good articulation of this formulation, and a good presentation of the difference between actuality and possibility.)

When we fully appreciate our beingness and our consciousness of this beingness—our existence—we can begin to ask the questions about the purpose and meaning of our lives. But this state of being is pre-conceptual, at the ontological level. This is the level in which we apprehend our existence as a whole—fully aware of an open phenomenological field that underlies and animates our facticity. We must realize that the conceptually reflected-upon question, even though it refers back to the ontological level, is not the same level of experience as the ontological level. (See my VTHP, which is a good exercise toward developing a new foundation for meaning.)

The articulation of the existential question is a conceptual reflection of a deeper concern. Yet, we must then realize that we cannot simply provide a conceptual answer to these existential questions, for they never satisfy us. There is a certain degree of hollowness to the conceptual articulation unless it is tied and connected to the existential-ontological. It is something of a paradox that we can never fully apprehend the existential through the conceptual-intellectual level though we cannot dispense with the existential. (A good starting point for understanding the difference between epistemology and ontology is Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy, Discourse on Method, and the Passions of the Soul, followed up by all of the early Husserl.)

This originary level is prior to the level of concepts and belief, and it involves the creation and development of an ontological bond between our facticity and our possibilities, reaching toward hope and fulfillment, and responsibility. This is the genesis of our worlding and our freedom. It is when this deeper level of existential concern is forgotten, and conceptual belief systems assume primary importance that we fall prey to the loss of real ontological security. Thus, we can see that it is the bond between the existential and the conceptual, the ego and the deeper self, that is most important and that we must discover and create new ways of apprehending and presencing ourselves within it. Both inform and enrich each other. (It is important to note that existential phenomenology and classical psychoanalysis are based on different philosophies of mind. These different meta-psychologies produce very different taxonomic structures of mind, its nature, and its component parts. Also note that the relation between the existential and the conceptual could be construed as the seat of authenticity.)

In short, by re-invigorating this connection between the ontological and the conceptual – between our deeper self and our ego – we reinvest in our whole being and sometimes can re-structure it. This allows the totality of our undiscovered and non-created potentials to unfold. This is a process of moving toward authentic being, reintegrating our fragmented existential continuity. Let’s now address being-with-others.

It is easy to see that though we are sometimes alone – and always ontologically separate – we are always in a world with others. This is a basic existential because it is an ontological relation that is constitutive of the way we are in the world; it is a fundamental part of our anthropology. It is difficult to conceive of being without others. Thus, even though we have solitude and experience loneliness, and understand ourselves as individuals, we are never without the Other. We are always bound to each other in some way, through practical relations and also by our very existence. Our very existence implies the Other. We are, therefore, inter-relational in our very nature. Thus, the quest for authentic human experience must always consider our inter-relational nature.

We can see evidence of our inter-relational being in our use of language, for example. While it is true that we formulate language and speech by ourselves as individuals, it is also true that those thoughts always exist within the context of a shared language, belief, and value system. Our speech is meaningful only because it occurs within this social context. It is not just the individual words or their utterance that gives them their ontological quality. Rather, it is the sharing of inner experience through language that creates a connection with (human) others.

This sharing is constitutive of the ontological properties of language. This ontological constitution of being with others is dialectical in a couple of ways. One way it is dialectical is that our being with others comes fully to life in speech acts with others; thus, these acts we share. A second way it is dialectical is that there is an intimate connection between the intellectual and the existential. Thus, developing the sophistication with which we articulate our ontological structures actually helps us deepen our connection to our existential dimension, helping us to bring reality to light. Developing our intellectual and language tools will aid us in maturing our being with human others. Further, developing our inter-species communication tools will lead to the evolution of our authentic and moral relations with members of other species.

It is easy to see how others are unavoidable in everything we think, feel, and do because we are relational beings. Furthermore, we can open to this fundamental constituent of our being or we can close ourselves off from it. We can have a greater or lesser concern for the plight of others. We have a choice about it. It is my belief that living in the mode of having causes humans to ignore this unity of being with others, and therefore moves us away from more authentic being. On this point, let’s note that empathy is foundationally based in presencing ourselves to our inter-relational nature.

This is the phenomenon of self-concern, which includes the derivatives such as selfishness, egotism, and narcissism, and its more extreme forms, greed, reckless disregard, and sadism toward the welfare of Others. By being overly concerned with the self, even in our sociality, we distort the possibility of being with the other in the fullest way. This is a type of alienation that limits more developed possibilities for each one of us and for our communities. (Note that my new book on violence explores alienation. EPIS Press, 2020, forthcoming.)

This involves the problem of presencing, i.e., how we show up in the lives of others and how we show up for ourselves. It is truly a magnificent phenomenon as well as a difficult task for all humans. When we de-presence ourselves to this existential dimension of being with others, we treat others not as whole persons—as subjects—but as objects – as “its” or things. When we treat others as objects, we create a different constellation of thoughts, feelings, and actions toward them than when we treat them as subjects. (Note that this noematic distortion implies a noetic falsity.)

When we do this, we do not see the Other in his or her reality; instead we see the other in terms of what I call the “possessive self.” This is the self that posits itself as the center of all reality, thereby losing all other perspective about the other. We simply do not see the other from his perspective, nor do we see the Other from a non-narcissistic viewpoint that is generated from our own interests and desires. In this mode of de-presencing, we only see the Other in terms of our own categories, formulating attributes and characteristics about him that come from our own anxiety and our own distorted resentments and not from their reality. (See my Essays on Phenomenology and the Self ,“EPS”), EPIS Press, 2012, for introduction of the term “possessive self,” and VTHP throughout for its development. Also note that Nietzsche’s Geneology of Morals is perhaps the most trenchant account of resentment in the Western literature.)

When we exist in this mode of having—in which we “have” our categories to experience the world—we lose connection to our deeper ontological roots, seeing only the exterior of the other (which is by definition, distorted), and not anything of their interior reality. There is, therefore, a completely different constellation of phenomena in an alienated dynamic than there is in a fully developed and presenced being-with-others. To the extent that one creates this alienated, possessory dynamic, he or she cripples chances for authentic being and relation, removed from intimacy, and fragmented in existential continuities, closed off and isolated. Some of these ontological attitudes include fear, seductiveness, avarice, jealousy, dishonesty, aversion, indifference, inconsideration, cruelty, and sadism. (I gained a solid understanding of the implications of the idea of narcissistic categories of meaning through extensive conversations with Prof. D.A. Boileau, deceased, and Prof. Roget Burggraave, while co-teaching moral psychology summers in the early 2000s, in Leuven, Belgium, at the Catholic University there.)

There are more derivations from this ontological orientation to consider, but the basic ontological structure is alienation and a choice not to be with others – to reject the Other. Any dynamic that disparages the other, or that avoids concern for the other is a variation of this ontological distortion. This is far from realistic possibilities for a larger, broader, and deeper anthropology of the human, all of which require an ontological shift in ourselves. Moreover, these inauthentic attitudes always disrupt the continuity and flow of a fuller being in the world, creating fragmentations that always lead to disease and unhappiness.

When we overcome our inauthentic modes, we can actually approach and develop our authentic being with others. This always goes beyond self-concern to an ontological region in which we apprehend possibilities for ourselves and the Other simultaneously within that foundational space. That is, we discern the ground from which those possibilities emerge. This requires us to regard each other, including oneself, as significant; that we not allow repugnance just like we not allow attachment that comes from desire. I have written on this topic before, in my analysis of sado-masochistic psychological dynamics, which always involves dominating/dominated attachments to the Other (and derivatively to things, ideas, places, and the like), but it always involves the seeking of [false] ontological wholeness through these attachments. (I write about sado-masochism in GPGA, CEPA, EPS, and my new text, A Phenomenology & Psychoanalysis of Violence, in press. I also wrote of it in literary form in my Make Me Stay, 2014.)

Indifference, repugnance, and the use of another for ontological wholeness are all distortions of authentic being with others. These attitudes all result from the mode of having, and therefore, from viewing others as things. Of course, there are variations of these attitudes, yet they are all ontological projections of our need for wholeness: eventually we learn that wholeness cannot be experienced this way. One way to test this is after these projections have gained some level of satiety. For example, desire always runs its course, and often our aversion to others is balanced by later wistfulness at lost opportunities. Indifference demonstrates an absolute disregard for and lack of seeing the Other. It is such a powerful disregard that it is a phenomenology that can easily be understood by the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur.

This kind of destabilization in our inauthentic relationships is based on our subjective projections about what we imagine them to be instead of who they are. In fact, our inauthentic attitudes say much about ourselves and nothing about the person we falsely imagine. In short, they become placeholders in our imaginary theatre. However, we can let go of this theatre with all its distortions, and therefore detach from these subjectivist, ego-driven ways of treating others.

In this new ontological experience, we view each other as the same—equal in value—and everyone has significance. The dialectic between repulsion and seduction is replaced with a calm, even equanimity that does not engage in projection. This involves compassion and empathy. As I have written about extensively in previous works, we can engage in rigorous examination of our values and of our social relations, one by one, to assess whether they are inauthentic or authentic. (See GRGA, VTPS, EPS, as noted.)

By comparing our tendency toward inauthentic modes with this achievable reflective equanimity/compassion, we can begin to see a clear distinction between the authentic and the inauthentic. This is the method that brings us to reflective clarity, seeing each and all of us as equals. Once we do this, we can live through a practice of building authentic relationships. The important element here is that we must unbind ourselves from being overly attached to the subjective component of meaning. Instead of focusing solely on the subjective source of meaning, we can look beyond ourselves to an objective source of meaning. This is the meaning that resides in the ontological-existential structures that exist in all cases. This is the objective source of meaning that I believe must inform a new anthropology of what we consider to be the human. (See EPS)

By learning this practice—which is more than seeking insight and which requires regular action—we develop a much greater capacity for empathy. This is not only empathy for the other; it is empathy for our-selves. This presencing of empathy allows us a greater discernment of all those things that make us human and, in fact, allows us to open to a much greater perspective and vision of what we mean by the human. However, this empathy is grounded by the ontological insight that an essential part of our humanity is being-with others. This means all Others, both human and non-human.

Further, as I presence myself in my empathy, I come to realize that everything that is basically important to me—the avoidance of pain and fear, and the seeking of happiness and safety—is concomitantly true of all others, human and non-human, universally. By opening ourselves to this truth we also open to our natural equality with others. At the same time that we lessen our self-importance, we start to see others as subjects and not as objects. (See my VHPS, which theoretically grounds an account of empathy.)

We recognize their participation in being just like our own, and this encourages us to deepen our awareness of the ontological presuppositions and dimensions for all humans, as I have outlined. This provides a motivation to practice this awareness and even more so, to actively avoid alienating and harming others and, instead, engaging in behavior that promotes their wellbeing and happiness. More radically, we may come to see that self-concern is not actually part of our essential ontology; that it is illusory.

It is crucial to my thesis that we understand the truth of our ontological foundation; similarly, it is important that we understand the connection of our ontological foundation to our lives as we lead them—with historical, social, familial structures in which our individual narratives proceed. To focus solely on conceptual thought without becoming aware of its roots in ontology inevitably focuses us toward subjective sources of meaning in our human experience. In contrast, when we see and acknowledge our true ontological roots, we become open to objective sources of meaning, which reside universally, outside of self-concern.

By incorporating this ontological awareness into our lives, we open up a set of possibilities in our experience that goes far beyond the constellation of possibilities we discover in inauthentic social relations that are based on self-concern. Moreover, our fulfillment can only come from actualizing a life that emerges from an awareness of our essential ontological structures. Self-concern closes our authentic possibilities; regard for each, all, and ourselves opens them. What is more, we move from passivity to proactivity that deepens and enlarges our concern for all of us equally. This concern enlarges and deepens because we are able to apprehend greater sources of objective meaning, understanding how we form subjective sources of meaning and how they can become distortive if they are not well grounded in the knowledge of our ontological structures.

This changes our motivations and action potentials, readying us for new concrete life practice – a praxis. This new practice involves, therefore, an awareness of our ontological structures; a constant practice of renewing this awareness; and putting this awareness into practice as we modify our behavior. This requires that we constantly engage in a dialectical process between an orientation based on self-concern and an orientation based on a new ontological awareness. By engaging in this dialectic within ourselves, we come to realize that our interests are equal, and not only equal, but the same. (See K. Boileau, Radio Conversations Concerning a New Human Anthropology, EPIS Press, 2019, for an understanding of praxis.)

This gives us new perspective to challenge the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that come from self-concern and a distorted understanding of the sources of meaning for humanity. Most importantly, this new attitude comes about not only from analysis and/or apprehension of cultural values; it also comes from a presencing to our essential ontological structures.

Thus, meaning comes from our being and how we live our lives. It does not come from acquisitions within a mode of having. As I have shown earlier, when we allow ourselves to be absorbed into a world of things, ideas, places, and people that we can possess, we live in illusory meanings. What is worse is that when we live in a possessory, having mode, we assume that others do as well. This creates assumptions about relationships that interpret the “Good” instrumentally, in which we see others in practical ways that are based on their use to us. In this paradigm there is no intrinsic value to human beings. In this lifeworld, moral structures emerge from the mode of having and not the mode of being.

My motivations toward others are thus based on facilitating the acquisitions of others, thereby promoting their absorption into a world of things, ideas, people, places, and the like. This creates a world that primarily values experience in terms of possession and acquisition, and the exchanges thereof. However, as I have shown, a society that operates primarily in the mode of having loses connection with the deep ontological roots that provide us with the sources of meaning, and thereby create a broader and deeper set of possibilities.

Further, these possibilities that are based on our human ontological roots contain more of what is truly human than do relational dynamics that focus on accumulation, acquisition, and having. Without actualizing our social and individual possibilities that are based on the truth of our being, we diminish our chances for our wellbeing. Instead, we must realize that our welfare and the welfare of others is interdependent, and that it is solely based on being and not having. This is our authentic nature.

There is much more to develop than this preliminary sketch. There is the spiritual dimension, the natural-physical, along with the self in its apprehension of being alone, and the social in the mode of being with others. There is temporality and death, uncertainty, and structures that we did not create. There is the dialectic between the emotional and the intellectual, the mystical and the discursive. I will leave the development of these dimensions and ideas for a later work. Nevertheless, the dialectic between being alone and being with others is obviously a deep ontological truth about our humanity. Our struggle is to figure out how to be alone with others in ways that are authentic and to avoid the ways that are inauthentic. That which is inauthentic lives in the mode of having, thereby drawing the sources of meaning almost solely from the subjective.

Finally, the inauthentic mode limits our possibilities for growth and development and also restricts our responsibility and closes the range of our experience. This usually results in a nearly exclusive life that resides in being alone, absorbed in entities, but not in the relations with others. Self-concern is paramount. In contrast, we can turn away from acquisitiveness, understand that we begin and end alone, but that through the life journey we are fundamentally related to others at an ontological level. This is the beginning of an understanding of solidarity, where we acknowledge that we participate as individuals, but that our aggregations are more than practical; they are ontological. Furthermore, solidarity can be interpreted in a number of ways and thereby lead to a number of groups of like-minded individuals who recognize that all groups are common ontologically.

Opening to this new existential orientation allows us to focus individually on our development in being without compromising our solidarity and our responsibilities. This self-development, if it focuses on a greater awareness and responsivity to the Other, leads to a greater participation in our ontological connection, both individually and socially. We can thus deepen our ontological awareness through community with others.

By participating with others, we are awakened in our aloneness to reflect on a more authentic orientation toward ourselves and all others. This motivates a greater care and concern for others, to facilitate their participation in being. Both modes of being inform and interpenetrate each other thereby developing an integrated life that is more consonant with our ontological foundation.

We restrict our possibilities if we denigrate or ignore either side. Likewise, we disable our fullest anthropology to the extent we ignore Being—to the extent that we ignore objective sources of meaning that reside in being and not in our subjectivity. This requires us to detach from our self-concern and to actively promote the interest of others, which is always located in the ontological foundations of the being of our humanity. This operates as a new Archimedean point, allows us to think against ourselves, and to create ontological distance from the master signifier – a semiology of capitalism that is a variation of the mode of having. This is a question of responsibility. (An Existential Phenomenology of Responsibility, EPIS Press, 2019.)