The concept of authenticity in Heidegger's Being and Time: thoughts and revisions on a critical theme

Addressing the meaning of Martin Heidegger's much-discussed concept of 'authenticity',this study challenges the view, put forward by Charles Guignon and others, that that concept chiefly concerns the significance that an individual life can acquire. Emphasizing the crucial distinction between relational and transcendant meaning, the study sees that distinction as critical to Heidegger's treatment of authenticity, and, more broadly, to the manner in which authenticity figures in the situating of Being and Time in the general context of nihilism and belief Drawing on arguments put forward by Hubert Dreyfus, and especially attuned to Kierkegaard's influence on Heidegger, the study repositions the concept at the point where Heidegger's existential analytic and the all too human desire for deeper meaning meet. The result serves at once to clarify the concept and refine understanding of its place in larger histories.Arts, Faculty ofHistory, Department ofGraduat