Abstract

A plan of life requires primary goods. I need the opportunity to build. I need tools, income and wealth, to construct an individual pathway for living. Others must recognize the worth of my project. Freedom requires basic resources. The influence of society impacts my ability to design a pattern of existence. Society can frustrate the exercise of freedom by limiting the availability of its required conditions. ;Though outward circumstances make liberty possible, there are internal enabling conditions as well. Authenticity is the freedom to determine an original principle of organization, a self-definition that articulates a standard distinct from that of general society. This free capacity requires development; it requires cultivation, training, and exercise. I must learn about the world and myself, before I can draw a measured valuation of either. A meaningful vision and ranked order of self only exist within an antecedent horizon. ;The given horizon of significance is something that I inherit from society. I am brought up and educated in communal patterns of thought, action, and meaning. I internalize this horizon, and it is an enabling condition for freedom. Freedom requires both a worldly environment and an inward atmosphere. Authenticity requires an awareness of the human condition of being free in a situation; the recognition that I am responsible for my freedom but that free choice is only meaningful in a social context. ;There is a tension between freedom and structure; the internalized, social structure is at odds with my capacity to constitute a valuation of self. Perhaps the given horizon is too narrowly drawn, and freedom cannot become aware of itself. Perhaps the communal patterns have veiled a recognition of my own inwardness. I need to recognize a capacity in order to exercise it, yet the capacity only discloses itself when it expands. If I am curtained from the nature of my ability, freedom can be obstructed. My dissertation examines the problem that occurs when the enabling conditions for freedom are themselves obstacles to authenticity. I argue that self-overcoming is the inward condition for authenticity; it is the antecedent to expressing an original way of life