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A distinctive and controversial feature of contemporary democratic life is its preoccupation with sincerity. In 1970, Lionel Trilling noted our intense aversion to hypocrisy and deep admiration for those who “stay true to themselves,” and in the following years several conservative critics argued that the United States had developed a navel-gazing “culture of narcissism” that mistook self-involvement for self-realization and celebrated ostentation over achievement.1 The more recent emergence of social media has only further encouraged us to display and disclose our “true selves” in ways that would have been unimaginable even a generation ago, and while it is certainly true that platforms like Facebook and Instagram make courageous acts of self-definition possible, it must also be admitted that they encourage users to foist all aspects of their lives – no matter how banal, private, or shameful – on an unsuspecting and largely uninterested group of “friends.” In fact, increasing numbers of social scientists and psychologists have become concerned that social media sites that indulge our appetite for self-disclosure have contributed to an “epidemic” of narcissism and, ironically, have constructed a social reality so superficial that it denies users the opportunity to develop anything like an authentic self.2 Viewed in this unflattering light, our concern for sincerity looks more like a disingenuous justification for obsessive self-concern than a moral commitment. Given the central but ambiguous role that sincerity plays in contemporary democratic life, it seems well worth our time to investigate the historical and philosophical bases of our commitment to this singular value. And to this end there is perhaps no better point of origin than the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who excoriates hypocrisy and otherdirectedness like no other and praises the self-consistency of human types like the classical citizen and his own fictional pupil Emile. Just as

The lie in the soul: Authenticity, hypocrisy, and self-deception in Rousseau