Marshall Berman’s conception of authenticity: European thought in the American 1960s

Authenticity has emerged as an important idea in European thought, arguably since the early Enlightenment, especially in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This article examines Marshall Berman’s conception of authenticity and explores its theoretical complexities, through a close reading of his reinterpretation of Rousseau’s work in the context of the American 1960s. Berman was an American philosopher, political scientist and, as this article portrays him, a humanist thinker who deeply cared about individuals and their circumstances in the modern world. He primarily explores the idea of authenticity in his debut book, The Politics of Authenticity . This article argues that Berman views individual authenticity as being born of not only the tension but also the confrontation between the self and the external forces of society, rethinking authenticity as linked to self-determining freedom and self-actualisation.