ABSTRACT
We saw that the idea of authenticity presupposes a conception of a true self lying within the individual, a self that contains resources of understanding and purpose that are worth accessing and raising to expression. As we shall see in the next chapter, Lionel Trilling argues in Sincerity and Authenticity that the notion of authenticity so understood was not really possible in Western culture until a particular set of ideas had attained currency, and that those ideas did not reach their mature form until the later half of the eighteenth century. Chief among those background ideas is the sharp distinction between inner and outer that enables us to think of the true self as something that lies within while the false self is something outer. Trilling’s claim is that this distinction, with all its ramifications, was not formulated in Western culture until a little over two hundred years ago.
