Meaning and Authenticity: Bernard Lonergan and Charles Taylor on the Drama of Authentic Human Existence

The language of self-fulfilment, self-realization, and self-actualization (in short, ‘authenticity’) has become common in contemporary culture. The desire to be authentic is implicitly a desire to shape one’s self in accordance with an ideal, and the concern for what it means to be authentic is, in many ways, the modern form of the ancient question what is the life of excellence? However, this notion of authenticity has its critics: Christopher Lasch, for instance, who equates it with a for...