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In this book, Eric E. Hall takes up the question of the meaning of a vigorously used concept in the liberal west: authenticity and the pursuit of personal originality. By uncovering this idea´s uses within three deepening contexts - the ethical, the ontological, and the theological - the author unfolds authenticity´s origins and implications. To the degree that authenticity seeks in all contexts freedom from social horizons, the conclusion renders attempts to embody this ideal secularly impossible. The goal requires a total transcendence that only the divine could fulfill. Human authenticity thus emerges in creatively imitating God´s self-sacrificial expression on the cross, which both transcends and revalues the horizons of this world.

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