The Politics of Authenticity. Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society

In this acclaimed exploration of the search for authentic individual identity, Marshall Berman explores the historical experiences and needs out of which this new radicalism arose. Focussing on eighteenth-century Paris, a ime and place in which a distinctively modern form of society was just coming into its own, Berman shows how the ideal of authenticityof a self that could organize the individuals energy and direct it toward his own happinessarticulated eighteenth-century mans deepest responses to this brave new world, and his most ardent hope for a new life in it. Exploring in particular the ideas of Montesquieu and Rousseau, Berman shows how the ideal of authenticity was radically opposed to the bourgeois, capitalistic idea of self-interest.