ABSTRACT
The existentialist doctrine of freedom and authenticity has had, and can further exert, a valuable stimulating effect on moral philosophy proper, and perhaps more so on the theory of practice. Applied, however, as a secondary and corrective principle, or injected into everyday conscience as an enlivening zest, the existentialist concept of Authenticity may certainly be turned to good use. The frigid schematic monotony of the existentialist outlook, with its strict indifference to concerns of welfare and to the material world, itself presents a paradigmatic specimen of uncontrolled abstraction and deadening inauthenticity. Even a conspicuous and indubitable lack of genius does not preclude a measure of authenticity in a person's intellectual, artistic or reformatory interests, nor a possibility of objective value in his work. Much like 'the early Marx' although in a different setting of concepts and accents, Heidegger and Sartre regard the existence of empirical man as warped, veiled, debased and lost by reification and alienation.
