A full draft of chapter 9\u00a0is now available to download.<\/p>\n
It analyses the eudaimonist arguments for the virtue of authenticity found in\u00a0Fanon\u2019s\u00a0Black Skin, White Masks<\/em> and\u00a0Sartre’s Being and Nothingness<\/em>. It argues that, because these are psychoanalytic arguments aimed at diagnosing and treating the sources of anxiety and distress, they cannot establish the moral conclusion that we all ought to adopt the\u00a0project of authenticity irrespective of our other commitments.<\/p>\n In the\u00a0absence of an argument for that conclusion,\u00a0it looks as though existentialism entails\u00a0the absurdist view that although we are each committed to our values, none of us actually have\u00a0any justification for\u00a0our values or for rejecting those we find abhorrent.<\/p>\n The chapter concludes by suggesting that Sartre’s Kantian comments on the moral requirement of authenticity in Existentialism Is a Humanism<\/em> might best be read as summarising the argument Beauvoir gives in Pyrrhus and Cineas<\/em>. The next chapter is devoted to that argument.<\/p>\n Please do let me know what you think of the chapter, either by posting in the Comments thread to this news item or sending me\u00a0an email<\/a>.<\/p>\n