invention and appiah: Invention and Authenticity there are two false dichotomies for what is considered to shape one’s indiviudualism
- romantic - finding one’s self by means of reflection or careful attention to the world, a meaning for ones life that is already there & waiting to be found
- being true to who you really care
- existentialist - existence precedes essence, indiiviudality is valuable bc only a person who has made a self has made a life worth living ⇒ neither is right ⇒ romantic suggests there is no role for creativity in making a self & self is already and in its totality fixed by our nature Mill: “Man “has, to a certain extent, a power to alter his character… We can not, indeed, directly will to be different from what we are. But neither did those who are supposed to have formed our character directly will that we should be what we are We are exactly as capable of making our own character, if we will, as others are of making it for us.4.” he writes in A System of Logic”
⇒ existentialist picture is wrong bc it suggests there is only creativity & noting for us to respond to
Mill: . “Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow … according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing,”
Appiah’s Definition of authenticity: constructing an identity is a good thing but the identity must make some srot of sense (constructed in response to facts outside of ones choise)
Sartre:
Sartre avoids the idea of the self as something that is given to us, but through the moral notion of authenticity, he turns back to the idea that we have to be ourselves—to be truly our true self. I think the only acceptable practical consequence of what Sartre has said is to link his theoretical insight to the practice of creativity—and not to that of authenticity. From the idea that the self is not given to us, I think there is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as a work of art
However it’s NOT jsut self choice:
One thing is needful. To give style to one’s character.
To create a life is to create a life out of the materials that history has given you.