Kierkegaard's Views of the Modern Society and the Lack of Authenticity

Our very own actions make us who we are. So therefore, while we have no control over our ending of life, our death, we have control over the life we live preceding up to it. By ignoring our death, we run the risk of acknowledging the importance of our actions, as the only thinking that is occuring is that of “in the moment”, with no regards to repercussions or reflection on how one might feel ten years or a week down the road.

However, it is difficult to do this in our modern day society, and makes finding one’s own “being” much harder. Kierkegaard condemns aspects of the social world, claiming that “many people have come to function as merely place-holders in a society that constantly levels down possibilities to the lowest common denominator” (Davenport 2012). Here, Kierkegaard is critiquing modern society as causing “inauthenticity” through widespread “massification”. He relates this massificiation, to the extreme development of “despair”. The despair comes from the spiritlessness, denial, and defiance of being merely a function and living inauthentically. In Kierkegaard's view, “becoming what one is” and evading despair and hollowness is not a matter of “solitary introspection”, but rather a matter of “passionate commitment to a relation to something outside oneself that bestows one's life with meaning” (Kierkegaard 13).

This idea is that passionate people care about things that are outside of themselves but give coherence and unity to their lives. One could think of this as acts or thoughts align with their morals and conscious. Individuals can make their lives authentic if they keep their human condition in mind, including their inevitable death. By thinking in this manner, one will have more urgency to act in accord to who they are and who they want to be because before they know there will be no time other time on earth left for them to experience the world and themselves.

Living authentically also provides an individual with justification for their life. For example, if one is on their deathbed, looking back on their life spent on earth, one will be more at ease and content with how their life turned out if they know that they were authentic in various moments. This is because we do not want to have a realization with our final moments on earth filled with regret, knowing that we (as an individual) did not live up to who we wanted to be or maybe we do not even know who we are.

Therefore, keeping one’s own eventual death in mind, helps us constantly reassess our actions and who we want to be in our limited life timed.