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Monday, August 12, 2019

Being yourself



In his book on identity, the French philosopher Vincent Descombes tells a fable made by Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) for teaching one of his pupils (1). Usually I look up the original source of such a text, but since it’s not important here, I’m too lazy to do this and I follow Descombes’s interpretation (more or less). Here is the story:
A shipwrecked person is washed ashore on an unknown island. By chance, not so long before the king of the island had disappeared and the islanders couldn’t trace him, despite their efforts. However, since the shipwrecked person resembles the disappeared king, the islanders think that he is the lost ruler and they reinstall him on the throne. The person doesn’t protest and accepts being the king. From now on he has double thoughts, so Pascal. On the one hand he has the thoughts as the king he now is, but behind these thought he hides the thoughts of the person he really is. We can also say that from now on the shipwrecked person leads a double life: In public as the king and in his heart as the man he really is. In fact, so Descombes explains, we have here an identity problem: Because the “king” doesn’t want to reveal his real identity, he must continuously be on the alert, just as impostors must be.
Pascal used this fable to teach his pupil, the son of a duke, that in future he’ll come across the same problem. Of course, the future duke is not an impostor, but once when he has become duke, people will bow for him, will praise him, will be friends with him, simply because he is the duke and not because of the person he “really” is and because of what he thinks of it himself. For the duke then the problem is how to handle this double identity. He can behave like two very different persons: in public as the duke and in private as himself. Then he must fully separate the two persons functionally as much as he can. Or he can try to integrate both persons and to put as much of himself in his function as the duke, in addition to what the function formally requires. Rules are always open to a strict interpretation or a lenient interpretation and not everything is prescribed. In other words, the boy who has become the duke must continuously ask himself: Who am I? On the one hand, I am the duke, a function that I inherited from my father; a function with rules I didn’t make myself; a function I got without desiring it but imposed on me by others. On the other hand, I am myself, with all my personal preferences, desires, likes and dislikes, characteristics, and so on. To what extent must I, can I and do I want to keep these functions apart?
Actually, the problem that Pascal puts forward here is one of the basic problems of life: How to be authentic and when to be authentic? How and when to be yourself? In fact, Pascal wasn’t original when he raised the problem, for implicitly we find it already in Shakespeare’s words “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”. In his fable Pascal dealt with a function that we are thrown in by others; a function we cannot help to be charged with. But functions – or roles, to go on with Shakespeare’s metaphor of the world as a stage – can also be chosen by ourselves. They can be taken up voluntarily. But even when the choice of the role (function) is voluntarily, the rules of the role usually aren’t. It’s an exception that the main lines of a role are made by ourselves. Usually they are already prescribed. So in any role we play, in any function we occupy the basic question always is: Will I be authentic in this function or will I not; and to what extent? Will I play a role or will I play myself?
In the Internet you can find many websites on how to be authentic and how to be yourself. I arbitrarily mention two websites (both by chance from Psychology Today): “Develop Authenticity: 20 Ways To Be A More Authentic Person” (2) and “4 Ways To Be A More Authentic Person” (3). It seems simple: Follow the rules there and you’ll become more authentic in what you do (if you wish). However, I can assure you that being authentic, being yourself is not as easy as that. Being yourself is very difficult and often it is impossible, even if you are and want to be honest. The reason for this is simple: Being yourself is not only dependent on you but also on the people around you; the people you go along with or those you meet in your role. Often authenticity is not valued by them.

Sources
(1) Vincent Descombes, Les embarras de l’identité. Paris: Gallimard, 2013 ; esp. pp. 147-156.

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