Rethinking Sincerity and Authenticity The Ethics of Theatricality in Kant, Kierkegaard, and Levinas / Howard Pickett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pickett, Howard, 1973- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Theater--Moral and ethical aspects.

Theater.

Sincerity.

Performance.

Authenticity (Philosophy).

Levinas, Emmanuel.

Kierkegaard, Soren, 1813-1855.

Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (pages cm)

Manufacture:

Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2017

Place of Publication:

Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2017.

Summary:

"This above all: To thine own self be true, " is an ideal-or pretense-belonging as much to Hamlet as to the carefully choreographed realms of today's politics and social media. But what if our "true" selves aren't our "best" selves? Instagram's curated portraits of authenticity often betray the paradox of our performative selves: sincerity obliges us to be who we actually are, yet ethics would have us be better. Drawing on the writings of Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, and Emmanuel Levinas, Howard Pickett presents a vivid defense of "virtuous hypocrisy." Our fetish for transparency tends to allow us to forget that the self may not be worthy of expression, and may become unethically narcissistic in the act of expression. Alert to this ambivalence, these great thinkers advocate incongruent ways of being. Rethinking Sincerity and Authenticity offers an engaging new appraisal not only of the ethics of theatricality but of the theatricality of ethics, contending that pursuit of one's ideal self entails a relational and ironic performance of identity that lies beyond the pure notion of expressive individualism.

Contents:

The ethics of theatricality/the theatricality of ethics

Kant: sincerity and the problem of imperfection

The trouble with lying: Kant, character, and self-congruence

Virtuous hypocrisy: incongruence in Kant's quest for character

Kierkegaard: sincerity and the problem of inexpressibility

Inevitable insincerity: inwardness and outwardness in Kierkegaardian ethics and faith

Hidden lives, ironic selves: Kierkegaard and the rise (and fall) of authenticity

Levinas: sincerity and the problem of individualism

Fearsome authenticity: Levinas and the rehabilitation of sincerity

Beyond sincerity: Levinasian substitution in the theater of transcendence.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780813940168

0813940168

OCLC:

1011673606