Ray Billington held the French Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in high esteem. What did Ray see in Sartre that brought about Ray’s commitment to him? Sartre was a philosopher who promoted the priority of ‘Authenticity’ in one’s life (or, rather, he inveighed against ‘Inauthenticity’) and so I suggest that Ray, very much an authentic philosopher himself, admired Sartre as a man whose own life could be seen as having been lived in an authentic way.
But ‘Authenticity’ – arguably, living one’s own life in accordance with one’s own principles – proves to be a many-sided and highly contentious philosophical subject. Arguably, it can lead to morally compromised, even reprehensible, actions! The talk will therefore look at ‘Varieties of Authenticity’, largely as exemplified by three Twentieth-Century philosophers: Jean-Paul Sartre, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Ray Billington himself, to help us to understand which varieties of ‘Authenticity’ should be encouraged as being morally positive and which are to be avoided (if at all possible!).
Ray’s approach was positive: his own life and his promotion of philosophy bore witness to his own unique variety of moral authenticity that has led to our ongoing appreciation of the ways in which he has enlightened our lives.