I've only recently found Joe Folley's philosophy Youtube channel, but I'm liking what I've watched so far.
This video, about the modern idea prevalent in self help advice, of the importance of "finding" and living in accordance with your "authentic self" is pretty good and expresses scepticism I have long had with the whole approach:
I would have liked it to reference Aristotelian virtue ethics more, and also perhaps make more of a connection to the whole free will debate as well, but it's a good start!
It also reminded me about how long "acting authentically" has been in the psychological parlance. I remember a snippet of a conversation with a priest in my teenage years who was leaving the priesthood, and I am sure that he said that the reason was that he found too many people in the church were not living "authentically." I think he was into a particular series of Catholic pop psychology books at the time, the name and author of which I now forget, because I never found them very convincing or helpful. And, who knows?, given that we are talking of the 1970's and the post sexual revolution period, he may have been making a coded reference to either him or other priests being gay (or straight) and living out a secret sex life. Anyway, I didn't quite know what the term was meant to cover then, and didn't care for the looseness of meaning, and haven't shaken that feeling for 50 odd years!
Update: I also am often reminded of CS Lewis's book Til We Have Faces whenever this issue comes to my attention.
2 comments:
There are a few channels like that which are very good. I Why are you still thinking aboutthe free will debate? It is of no consequence.
"Forever shall I be a stranger to myself." Camus wrote that a long time ago and there is truth to that. To fully understand ourselves we would need to think very carefully, and with the help of other people, to examine how our childhood shaped our behavior. Failing to do that makes the exercise pointless because it is abundantly clear that childhood influences play a huge role in shaping our behavior.
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