Maria Antonietta: Meaning, Authenticity and Responsibility in Difficult Times

Interview with a Fellow Philosopher - Episode 2

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I am continuing my series of interviews with philosophers. The goal is to introduce a wider audience to what philosophers do, as well as some of the ideas that these philosophers are working on. Hopefully it will demonstrate the relevance of philosophical research in our time, when philosophy is often accused of being a remnant of a past activity, and show the complexity and diversity of our field.

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Romaric: Thank you for accepting my offer of an interview. Could you please introduce yourself, your reason for doing philosophy and the question you are interested in?

Maria: It’s my pleasure, Romaric. My name is Maria Antonietta, and I’m from Calabria, Southern Italy. It’s a region where reminders of Magna Graecia—the ancient Greek colonies that profoundly shaped Western culture—still linger. I currently teach English as a foreign language at the local university, though my journey into teaching English was quite unplanned. I originally aspired to have an academic career in philosophy, but after a series of temporary contracts at universities in both Italy and the UK, I realized that I needed more stability in my life.

Around that time, I also started to wake up from what I call a “naivete slumber.” I came to understand that in a fiercely competitive field like academic philosophy, playing politics isn’t just a possibility, it’s a necessity. This became glaringly clear after I submitted an article for publication and received a rather unfocused somewhat negative review. At first, I thought I should have presented my arguments better and replied to each criticism. But I later discovered that the reviewer in question was also the author of the work I had criticised in my article. It was an uncomfortable situation, to say the least.

Eventually, I discussed it with the journal’s editor, whom I knew from a series of post-graduate seminars. He acknowledged that my paper was rigorous and deserving of publication, but also admitted that I had inadvertently sparked a bit of a diplomatic incident. It dawned on me that if I hadn’t already presented my paper at those seminars and gained the support of the editor, my submission might have been rejected outright for reasons entirely unrelated to its merits.

That experience was an eye-opener. It made me realize just how much an academic career can hinge on political maneuvering. For me, this ran completely counter to the essence of doing philosophy, which, in my view, is about exposing fallacies, challenging superficial conclusions, and asking uncomfortable questions. To compromise that in the name of diplomacy or careerism would have stripped philosophy of its meaning and joy for me, reducing it to just another desk job.

Looking back, given the increasing control over thought and language in today’s institutions, if I had managed to secure a permanent academic position, I’d probably have been attacked and eventually pushed away by now, much like contemporary philosopher Kathleen Stock.

Letting go of my academic ambitions was tough, especially after investing so much time and energy into them. But I’m fortunate that I still get to teach university students and, hopefully, make a difference in their lives. And after more than a decade away, I’ve started writing philosophy again, thanks to platforms like Substack, which has rekindled my passion.

As a child, I was always argumentative, much to my parents’ frustration. I constantly questioned anything I thought was unfair or unjustified. This trait only intensified when I began attending catechism, where I relentlessly questioned religious teachings. So when I was introduced to philosophy in high school (I studied at a liceo classico), it felt like coming home. Here was a space where I could be myself without constantly annoying everyone around me. I discovered that philosophers throughout history had been asking the same kinds of questions I had—and perhaps being just as “annoying” to their contemporaries!

My journey into philosophy was academic, but not particularly linear. I didn’t follow one specific research interest consistently, nor did I have a mentor to guide me, as Heidegger had Husserl, for instance. Instead, I took an eclectic route, exploring various areas. 

As an undergraduate student at the University of Calabria, I took quite a few courses on 17th and 18th century British philosophy mainly focusing on metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, and wrote a thesis on a lesser known British 17th century philosopher, Samuel Clarke, on natural religion. On the other hand, I wrote a thesis on Jean-Paul Sartre, a so-called continental philosopher, for my Ph.D., which I obtained from Birkbeck College, University of London, where analytic philosophy is obviously predominant. So, I worked on classic British philosophy on the continent and on a continental philosopher in the UK, which might seem a bit unorthodox. I went where my interests were leading me. I loved the clarity and conciseness of British philosophy and the depth and literary flavour of the prose of existentialist thinkers.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve always had a bit of a rebellious streak when it came to authority and conventional thinking, so philosophy was a natural fit for me. It gave me a space to engage with people who shared that same urge to question everything.

As an undergraduate student, I especially enjoyed learning about 17th and 18th century philosophy with a predilection for Locke, Hume, and Kant. It was a time when the scientific method was still new and physics was still called ‘natural philosophy’. Thinkers were researching the physical world in its complexity as well as its deeper meaning on the metaphysical plane. Newton himself was as serious in his pursuits of the laws of gravity as he was in his biblical studies. Major philosophers such as Locke were thinking deeply and passionately about topics as diverse as the nature of knowledge, personal identity, how to reconcile what we know about the laws of nature with religious doctrine, and foundational political concepts like religious tolerance, the nature of power and individual rights. Although less noticeably, some remarkable women got involved in lively exchanges of ideas with the likes of Descartes (Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia), Henry More (Lady Anne Conway, whose writings, apparently, inspired Leibniz), Locke (Catharine Trotter Cockburn), and Voltaire (Emilie du Chatelet, Voltaire’s lover, a brilliant mathematician and practicing scientist), raising pointed questions and defending their beliefs with remarkable argumentative skill. There were no artificially created specialties across intellectual domains, no compartmentalization or echo chambers within which isolated groups were conducting their self-referential argumentations about some esoteric problem relevant only to the limited number of those enclosed in the ivory tower of some sort of tenured position inside academia. These were mostly men and women actively engaged in the serious task of grappling with and making sense of their daily lives and the world at large intellectually, but also practically on the ethical and political planes.

My later interest in Sartre’s work was what kept me doing philosophy for some time longer. I literally found out about Sartre and his brand of existentialism through literature first, which is another passion of mine. I had read Nausea just before applying for my Ph.D. course and got curious about the philosophy that underpinned Roquentin’s musings and odd hallucinations in the novel. Subsequently, I briefly tackled Camus’s The Outsider and then went back to Sartre determined to really crack Being and Nothingness and have a go at outlining Sartre’s missing ethics on the basis of his ontological work, which was deemed by most of his critics a hopeless task. Sartre himself never published an ethics and his Notebooks for an Ethics were only published posthumously as a series of unpolished but very interesting notes. The main difficulties seemed to be Sartre’s view of Man as a “useless passion” in pursuit of an ontologically impossible project and a fundamentally conflictual relation between Self and Other. Thanks to a total immersion into Sartre’s work, including interviews, first-person accounts, biographies and autobiographies, as well as dedicated secondary literature and the relentless challenges thrown at me by Sebastian Gardner, my supervisor, I think I managed to put together the pieces of the puzzle to form a coherent Sartrean ethics which not only was grounded on Sartre’s ontology, but would have lost its internal consistency and plausibility outside of that ontological framework. I didn’t get my thesis published, I didn’t know how to go about it. Besides, I left the UK to get back home for a couple of years, so I didn’t pursue the matter. However, a couple of my articles, “Bad Faith and Self-Deception: Reconstructing the Sartrean Perspective” and “An Answer to the Problem of Other Minds,” which were published in academic journals, and “Imagination and Creativity in Jean-Paul Sartre,” which was published in Philosophy Now, a philosophy magazine, heavily drew on my Ph.D. thesis.

I loved the way Sartre combines mundane, ordinary experience with metaphysical vision, fascinating descriptive language and analytical rigorous argumentation. That explains how I could immerse myself in his work without getting bored for such a long time.

Romaric: Certainly, a PhD in philosophy can easily lead to boredom, even with a very good research topic. I also understand quite well what you mean by the political dimension of research. It seems that in many cases such dimensions are more important for success or failure in academia than the quality of the research itself, at least in many philosophy departments. I would like to ask you what it was like to write a dissertation in continental philosophy in a department that is more analytically oriented? Are there things you have learned from this experience that would not have been possible in a more continental department?

Maria: To be honest, I didn’t experience much difference. My supervisor’s main research interests were philosophy of psychoanalysis, Kant, Nietzsche, and German idealism. My colleagues were working on similar ‘continental’ stuff. Also, I was still leveraging rigorous argumentation, engaging and grappling with the views under consideration. In short, the techniques weren’t substantially different from what I had learned from the classics of philosophy as an undergraduate student. My eclecticism helped a lot. Finally, I think the approach to analytic philosophy I found at UCL in the ‘90s wasn’t the hard-nosed approach taken by the logical positivists, for example.

Romaric: Thank you. That is very nice to hear. Unfortunately, it is not always the case. Are there Sartrian ideas that you find helpful not only in your philosophical research but also in your life? How have you lived these ideas until today and do these ideas continue to be helpful as an English professor in an Italian university?

Maria: Although I’ve never experienced existential Angst through what Sartre calls ‘pure reflection’ or carried out phenomenological reflection, Sartre’s key ideas of authenticity and responsibility resonate with me as a positive, constructive, and dignified way of navigating life, both professionally and personally.

The word ‘authenticity’ is often understood in the context of popular psychology and self-help literature in terms of someone who looks inside themselves and tries to bring about or live according to whatever states, dispositions, feelings, character traits, they discover within. Nothing could be further from Sartre’s position.

On the other hand, it’s often been thought that Sartrean authenticity means that individuals should recognise and embrace radical freedom and live as though they didn’t have a past, a personality, physical and socio-political constraints. I don’t think this is the case. This kind of exhilarating and terrifying absolute freedom appears only from the ontological perspective of the ‘pour soi’ in pure or phenomenological reflection. However, the self is also a being for-others in relation to which ‘heavier’ structures like the body, the psyche and its personality, are revealed in their finitude and vulnerability in the world in the midst of other objects. The meaning of authenticity becomes more nuanced. In particular, it can be viewed as the possibility to pursue an existential project that embraces one’s being as a whole, not just one’s capacity to ignore or evade the limitations of the situation (e.g., I’m not a smoker because I can stop anytime I want) but also one’s capacity to acknowledge those limitations (e.g., my decision to stop smoking will be tested by and will encounter resistance from my nicotine-addicted body). Identifying oneself unilaterally either way involves our denial of responsibility for the totality of our being, which for Sartre is at the core of authentic living.

This understanding of authenticity resonates with me in the sense that I strive to look at my given situation in the face and try to come up with something to make it better. For example, rather than playing the victim after the realization that an academic career in philosophy wasn’t on the cards for me, I reinvented myself as an English teacher. I didn’t become one instantaneously. I grew into this new role, I made it mine by looking at the positive effects I was having on my students’ lives, by getting certified, reading books about language teaching, participating in seminars and conferences, etc. This way, I came to choose my new profession, I wasn’t pushed into it by circumstances or even by an inner calling from the real me.

On the other hand, I didn’t just say “Who cares about philosophy? It’s in the past, it’s got nothing to do with me and my everyday life, I’m a new person now.” We are our past and we take it with us as we project ourselves into the future. I take philosophy into the English classroom as part of my approach to teaching and relating to others, as part of my being-in-the-world.

Sartre’s ideas on authenticity and responsibility remind me to engage with the world actively, acknowledging my freedom while embracing the limitations of my situation—whether those are personal, professional, or social. This ongoing balance between freedom and facticity is something I continue to reflect on in my life and teaching, making Sartre’s ideas somewhat relevant both in and outside of my academic pursuits.

Romaric: Your answer is really interesting. Can you add anything about the specificity of Sartrian views on authenticity in comparison with, say, Kierkegaard and Heidegger? Heidegger had very different political views to Sartre, and Kierkegaard was a devout Christian philosopher! Does that change anything?

Maria: This is a complex question and it would take at least an entire paper to really disentangle the issues involved and their implications. I’ll have a go, anyway, but it’d be great if your readers could offer their insights in the comments to enrich and deepen the conversation.

As I hinted at above, ‘authenticity’ is some sort of catch-all term that means different things to different people, both in everyday life and in philosophy. The same can be said with regard to Sartre, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger. I haven’t devoted even half of the scholarship to the last two thinkers I dedicated to Sartre, but I think I can say that, despite the differences in methodology between Kierkegaard on the one hand (deep reflection on his personal journey and a literary, dialectical approach) and Heidegger and Sartre on the other (a more formal approach influenced by Husserl’s methodology), they all seem to arrive at the notion of some sort of metaphysical anxiety which is the experiential correlate of the individual vis-a-vis, not any specific problem in their life, but something non objectifiable and indeterminate which is not separable from existence itself, not any particular existence, but human existence as such, as it is in its a priori nature (not affected by any empirical state of the world or the individual).

Also, this sui generis anxiety involves the individual’s full realization of radical freedom in creating the meaning and value of their life, while at the same time having no escape from that freedom. Authenticity then is one ontological attitude, the alternative being despair/self-alienation or inauthenticity, the individual takes in the face of this revelation, some sort of overall existential orientation, rather than a series of rules or principles for us to live by, that involves embracing and therefore trying to live through with lucid self-awareness the truth of one’s existential condition rather than trying to sugarcoat it.

It’s in how authenticity is articulated in these three thinkers that we can see how their views take different directions. Here, I’d draw a distinction between the philosophical articulation of authenticity and the empirical, concrete choices each of our thinkers made throughout their lives.

Firstly, because, from the fact that someone has conceptualised authenticity in their theoretical work, it doesn’t follow that they’re going to translate that concept into a way of life for themselves, nor that they should be in a constant state of heightened existential awareness each time they make a choice.

Secondly, even admitting that they lived authentically, it doesn’t follow that there is a direct implication between that general stance towards existence and any specific life choice on the empirical plane.

For example, Kierkegaard’s choice of living authentically through religion or embracing God didn’t in itself necessitate embracing any one specific religious creed. 

Finally, as I think authenticity can best be seen as a way of orienting oneself towards existence, this doesn’t prevent someone from taking wrong turns, misinterpreting historical facts, etc. A case in point might be Heidegger’s involvement with Nazism. Heidegger’s nationalism and his affiliation with the Nazis seem to have more to do with an overestimation of how closely the movement aligned with his ideas of rootedness and historical destiny, rather than an inevitable consequence of an authentic orientation towards existence. Once the political reality became clearer, Heidegger distanced himself from that movement. So, his mistake was in his empirical choices, not in a possible authentic stance.

Philosophically, Sartre’s specificity in the way he developed the concept of authenticity lies in the results of his ontological inquiry.

He couldn’t have taken Kierkegaard’s path because ontologically only Being-in-itself (non conscious reality, it just is) and Being-for-itself (conscious reality, always beyond what is, projecting itself towards the permanence of the in-itself without ever ontologically coinciding with it) are revealed to phenomenological reflection. They’re radically different and necessarily related to each other. God, that is, the synthesis of the two kinds of being, can only be attained through an act of the imagination carried out by the For-itself, never a full-blown realization in Being. So, Sartrean authenticity, insofar as it consists in revealing and embracing the nature of Being, cannot but recognise the futility and self-deception of the religious project.

As for the specificity of Sartrean authenticity in relation to Heidegger’s, it also follows from Sartre’s ontological conclusions. Being-towards-Death and the awareness of Dasein’s finitude are not and cannot be given through the For-itself. The self as it is for-itself is only absolute transcendence of reality, a going beyond itself. As such, it could never apprehend itself as finitude, as completed, as being dead. Awareness of one’s finitude can only be, not a structure of the For-itself in its spontaneity, but a secondary structure that necessitates The Other and a secondary kind of what Sartre calls ‘impure reflection’ for Dasein to be able to apprehend it. So, Sartrean authenticity, that is, the self embracing the totality of its being in its transcendence and facticity, cannot consist in embracing just one dimension of being, and any attempt at a synthesis of self-identification with that one aspect could only take place in the realm of the imagination, not of reality.

I’m curious to know what your thoughts are in relation to your question, if I may.

Romaric: This is not a question I have really thought about as a philosopher. Authenticity to oneself, however, is something I have had to deal with in the past. My family had nothing to do with academia or the intelligentsia. I grew up in a modest single-parent family and had to work after high school. My first job was as a policeman in France. I had been reading philosophy for years when I started working as a policeman, and I had a high ideal of what such work should be. This ideal was, of course, in phase with who I was, but in many contexts it was at odds with what the institution expected of me. I always prioritized what my work should be according to my ethical values and tried to act authentically to who I was, even when circumstances would lead people not to follow strict ethical views. I worked in this way for several years before resigning, always feeling an unresolvable tension about what the function of such an institution should be and what was really expected of me and my colleagues. I am certainly not an anarchist. But I disapproved of the influence of contemporary French politics on an institution like the police. I believe that the function of such an institution is to protect people, while ensuring their freedom in everyday life as much as possible. Of course, there is a tension between these two goals, and it is less an equation to be solved than a possibility to be realized.

In the first part of this interview you mention the case of Kathleen Stock, who was more or less forced to resign from her position at the University of Sussex. Without going into the polemics that drove her out of that institution, I would like to ask you how you see the freedom of research and even the freedom to take a strong position in philosophy today. 

Maria: Freedom of research, and particularly the freedom to take strong positions in philosophy, has always been crucial to the discipline. Philosophy thrives on the exploration of ideas that challenge prevailing norms, question assumptions, and push boundaries. However, the case of Kathleen Stock, while emblematic of broader social and political tensions, highlights a deeper concern in academia today, which is the difficulty of maintaining open intellectual spaces when positions become contentious or politically charged.

In many ways, philosophy demands a kind of intellectual courage. Whether we agree or disagree with a particular viewpoint, we should be committed to the principle that ideas can and should be debated in good faith. This is not only the foundation of philosophical inquiry but also of democratic discourse. That said, the current climate, in which certain positions are swiftly labeled as unacceptable or harmful, raises the question of whether we are allowing sufficient room for philosophical rigor and honest debate.

This isn't to deny the responsibility philosophers have to engage sensitively with topics that affect people's lives directly. There’s a balance to be struck between free inquiry and ethical consideration of how ideas impact various groups. But when philosophers, like Stock, are pushed out of academia for their views, it signals a shrinking space for dissent, which is problematic for the vitality of any intellectual tradition. Moreover, if establishing, for example, a biological fact, offends a group of people, then between hiding or misconstruing that fact and causing offense, an ethics of academic research, I’d say, should prioritise the search for truth. Opposition should take place by rational and scientifically established means. 

As a member of the teaching staff at a university, I believe it’s important to encourage students and colleagues alike to express and critique ideas openly, without fear of institutional reprisal, while fostering an environment where these discussions are respectful and informed. Without this, we risk turning philosophy into an echo chamber, which is antithetical to the very nature of the discipline. 

Romaric: Thank you for sharing your views on such a difficult subject. I agree that freedom in academia, and in philosophy in particular, is essential and should be encouraged. However, "real" freedom has probably become more difficult with the institutionalization of philosophical education and research, with its philosophy chairs, academic publishers and academic journals. All of these need to be funded, and all of them have the effect of placing philosophy under institutional scrutiny. Can you tell us what you are doing today, especially on Substack, where I read some really interesting posts you wrote?

Maria: Thank you for allowing me to talk about my publication. 

For a while, I was content to remain on the sidelines, just reading and reflecting. But then COVID happened, and I saw the West reveal its more authoritarian tendencies. The way governments, supported by the media, imposed restrictions and sought control over people’s lives was alarming. The vilification of those who questioned the narrative only deepened my concern. It was this, more than anything, that drove me to return to the public arena of philosophical debate with the mission of redirecting people’s attention to philosophy as a pathway to resistance against subtle manipulation and propaganda.

I believe critical thinking and philosophy have been marginalized in our education systems, and we need to bring them back to the forefront. Substack has become my platform for doing just that, for encouraging independent thought and critical debate.

I’ve organized my Substack into three main pillars:

• Current issues through a philosophical lens | Here, I use philosophical arguments to tackle contemporary topics.

I’ve been doing this not only to make philosophy relevant to everyday life so that people find it engaging, but also to show how philosophy can be a fitting tool to analyse and make sense of what we see happening around us and of how people talk about it. I do this using philosophers’ arguments and where they’re missing I supply arguments that adhere as faithfully as possible to their framework. I also try to do so by showing authentic examples of philosophy in action as I leverage the dialectical exchange of arguments and counter arguments which is typical of the best philosophical tradition from the Socratic dialogues to Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and in recent years the debates between, for example, Daniel Dennett and John Searle on the hard problem in relation to consciousness.

For example, in “Is Harmful Speech a Reason Against Free Speech?,” I critique online censorship by exploring Mill’s ideas in On Liberty. In “Can AI Companions Truly Be Our Friends?,” I use Aristotle’s view of friendship and its role in the good life to question whether AI companions can truly be our friends.

• Philosophy 101 | This is an introductory course for anyone without formal training who is interested in philosophy.

The first post, “A Map to Academic Philosophy,” was published not long ago. Although my intent is to keep things accessible and interesting on Substack, I won’t compromise on the complexity that is characteristic of the subject. Because I think that, no matter where philosophy is done, whether within or without the academy, or who does philosophy, whether professional academics or a contemporary Socrates on the street corner, I wouldn’t want to discount the fact that philosophy is not only something you can just do because you’re a thinking being, but it also involves knowledge of the philosophical conversation and its main interlocutors throughout time. In particular, I think it’s important to be conversant with the main areas of philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, etc.), the key approaches (rationalism, empiricism, etc.) and its main representatives (Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, etc.). Also, I recommend getting familiar with the main arguments and counterarguments which have been raised throughout the history of the discipline. One key difference, in my view, between someone who simply states a reasonable opinion and someone who argues a point philosophically is a kind of argumentative naivete shown by the former in contrast to the sophistication of the latter, who takes advantage of the deep awareness of what’s already been said as well as the techniques leveraged in saying it by the best in the field. To illustrate what I mean with a simplifying analogy, it’s a bit like playing chess: the beginner chess player has just learned how to move the pieces, the seasoned or professional player leverages their experience in applying those same constraints to the given configuration of pieces on the board made more powerful by their knowledge of past moves and countermoves carried out by the best chess players in history. 

This is not to say that philosophy is just a game of arguments and counterarguments and that reading a philosophy book cannot be done just for pleasure or as a self-help tool to better understand oneself and others, for example. However, I feel that ignoring the philosophical tradition, that is, those features that make philosophy also a subject taught in schools and universities (alas, less and less), would be like doing both philosophy and oneself as a practitioner or would-be practitioner a disservice.

• Critical Thinking 101 | This section complements “Philosophy 101” and is focused on honing readers’ debating skills and intellectual discipline. 

More specifically, carrying out the analogy of chess, rather than surveying the body of arguments in the field of philosophy, it details the rules of the game, how the pieces can be moved, which moves are allowed and which aren’t. In other words, here I’d like to introduce readers to the techniques needed to identify or reconstruct, assess, and formulate arguments, spot inconsistencies and biases, and raise pointed questions. The first post in this section of my publication, “Arguments: How to Identify Premises and Conclusion in Short Arguments” does exactly what it says on the tin.

A cursory glance at the ways disagreements are handled on social media is sufficient to gauge the extent of the decline in public debate: people seem to prefer launching accusations, insults, and self-righteous injunctions to a clear-headed exchange carried out with intellectual honesty and willingness to learn from other points of view. It’s interesting to notice how high the quality of public debate was during those times in history when philosophers had to make do with in-person symposia and letter writing, compared with the poor state of a good deal of today’s TV and online debates, despite the sophisticated, ubiquitous and fast means of communication we can enjoy today. Ultimately, I hope the content in my Substack contributes to increasing the appetite in anyone who reads it for free and respectful debates embodying what John Stuart Mill referred to in On Liberty as “the real morality of public discussion.”