The search for authenticity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

The search for authenticity - Essay Example In this respect, humans have the capacity to make sense out of the world and out of situations, and through making such sense, they are able to act on their own in different circumstances and situations, if they refuse to be drawn to the usual cultural and social standards and norms that the society has established as the standardized ways of responding to circumstances. Authenticity presents the sense of being practical in addressing matters that are likely to arouse great anxiety, within the abilities of humans, and without having to depend on the spirituality or on the help that might come from outside of the man (Heidegger, 3). The social norms and cultural standards that have been established by the society have made everything in life like just a cycle of regurgitating what others have done in the past. In this sense, there lacks the difference between the current man and the ancient men, because the current man just follows some standardized norms that the society established culturally centuries ago, a concept that Martin Heidegger refers to as unauthenticity (Heidegger, 7). This has been the essence of the reference of human beings as ‘Dasein’, which has just to do with being there (Heidegger, 14). According to Martin Heidegger, humans have existed in the world more or less as a matter of being there, without doing things differently according to their own human capacities, and without depending on external forces (Polt, 54). Humans are born in the world of conformity, where everything that we say, think, believe or act has been done before by the generations that were before us (Heidegger, 22). Human beings pursue the issues they perceive to be worth of their time and effort in a manner that has already been done before, such that the life of one human can be likened to that of the other, since the past