Does ‘Being True to Yourself’ Excuse Disregarding Others?

Someone humiliates a colleague with a cutting remark in a meeting, then says, ‘I’m just being true to myself—I say what I think.’ This treats authenticity as the public release of an immediate impulse, but that is not what authenticity usually means in philosophy.

In discussing authentic existence, Heidegger asks whether a person can live without merely following what ‘one’ normally does, acknowledge their finite situation, and take responsibility for possibilities as their own. Sartre understands the self as continually formed through choice. Retreating into a fixed identity and treating ‘that’s just the sort of person I am’ as a necessary cause of conduct instead resembles the bad faith he criticises. Their theories differ, but neither treats the first inner reaction as a finished ‘true self’ waiting to be released.

Contemporary discussions of authenticity must also account for social relations. Our language, roles and commitments already take shape among other people. Expressing a feeling honestly may be better than pretending, but how it is expressed remains a choice and alters what others can do. Simone de Beauvoir, in particular, reminds us that freedom which destroys the conditions of shared human life does not become ethical merely because the agent is ‘true to themselves’.

My view is that authenticity can expose conformity and self-deception, but it is not a free pass for conduct. It asks me to say, ‘This is my choice, and I will explain it and bear its consequences’, not, ‘This is who I am, so you must endure it.’

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/authenticity/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauvoir/