accordance with this genuine centre or essence–who seems to be nothing
other than he really, essentially is. This presents us with a static picture of
human beings, according to which one is either being genuine (action
corresponding to essence) or not. Needless to say, a full discussion of this
idea is beyond the scope of this chapter, but a couple of broad concerns
can be made clear. First, why can’t it be part of somebody’s‘essence’or
‘authentic centre’to be different things to different people at different
times? Second, can’t the actor, in playing different roles in different con-
texts, be a very good indication of what we all do in one way or another?
Anybody who, for example, has taught in a classroom will have an idea
that teaching is very often a kind of acting. And people often talk about
being different at work, and at home, and with their friends. These var-
iations needn’t be seen as a failure to be authentic; they might just be
perfectly understandable adaptations to differing circumstances. Indeed,
this thought has been taken further, by those who think that we are in
some sense acting or performingall the time–that when we interact with
other human beings, and perhaps even when we present ourselves to
ourselves, we are acting or playing a part. Such‘role-playing’needn’tbe
understood as deceptive or treacherous, but rather as a necessary and often
benign function of human social interaction.^72
Emotion or craft?
The claim to inauthenticity might be spelled out in a rather different
way, without appealing, as Rousseau does, to the idea that the actor will,
once the performance is done, go about using his special deception skills
to steal your money and your dutiful, housebound wife. Diderot’sParadox
of Actingis a reaction to a long tradition, traceable to Aristotle and to
Horace, of viewing the art of the actor as that of being emotional in
accordance with the part.^73 According to the view Diderot opposes, that
is, the actor succeeds best when hefeels, say, the wrath of Lear at his
daughters’betrayal or the intoxicating passion of Romeo for Juliet. This
makes the actor a person of extreme passion, of sensibility–someone who
gets very emotional very easily. If that is the case then Rousseau is wrong
to cast suspicion on the actor for getting emotional‘in cold blood’. If the
actor really does feel the part, then it’s not a question of pretending to be
emotional, it’s just a matter of getting emotional very easily.
For Diderot, this gets things exactly wrong. If actors were so emotion-
ally fragile, they’d have trouble appearing every night, remembering their
lines, and knowing where to stand. An actress who really felt the intense
passion of Phèdre would have great difficulty remembering and reciting
such beautiful poetry.^74 An actress who was sufficiently emotional to feel that
distraught every night would frequently be so completelyincapacitated by
A school of morals? 119