Faking It

by William Ian Miller

• ISBN13: 9780521830188
• ISBN10: 0521830184
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-08-18
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book is about the intrusive fear that we may not be what we appear to be, or worse, that we may be only what we appear to be and nothing more. It is concerned with the worry of being exposed as frauds in our profession, cads in our love lives, as less than virtuously motivated actors when we are being agreeable, charitable, or decent. Why do we so often mistrust the motives of our own deeds, thinking them fake, though the beneficiary of them gives us full credit? Much of this book deals with that self-tormenting self-consciousness. It is about roles and identity, discussing our engagement in the roles we play, our doubts about our identities amidst this flux of roles, and thus about anxieties of authenticity.

Author Biography

William Ian Miller is the Thomas G. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
1 Introduction: Split in Two	1	(8)
2 Hypocrisy and Jesus	9	(11)
Ostentatious Alms	11	(2)
Motes and Beams	13	(1)
Stoning Adulterers	14	(2)
Hypocrisy and Formalism	16	(4)
3 Antihypocrisy: Looking Bad in Order to Be Good	20	(11)
Of Hairshirts	20	(4)
Non-Self-Tormenting Virtue? Et in Arcadia Ego	24	(2)
Putting Vanity to Good Use	26	(5)
4 Virtues Naturally Immune to Hypocrisy	31	(17)
Courage and Faking It	31	(4)
Politeness	35	(7)
Self-Command: Sense, Sensibility, and Shallowness	42	(6)
5 Naked Truth: Hey, Wanna F*** ?	48	(10)
6 In Divine Services and Other Ritualized Performances	58	(19)
Staying Focused during Prayer	61	(7)
The Amidah	68	(5)
Cynical Ceremony	73	(4)
7 Say It Like You Mean It: Mandatory Faking and Apology	77	(19)
Accidents versus Intentional Wrongs	78	(3)
Regret versus Remorse	81	(2)
Making Faking Hurt	83	(7)
Forgiveness and Punishment	90	(6)
8 Flattery and Praise	96	(13)
Tainted Praise	98	(6)
In Small Praise of Flattery	104	(5)
9 Hoist with His Own Petard	109	(12)
Talking to Hamlet	110	(5)
Ironists	115	(3)
Experience: Becoming What You Pretend to Be	118	(3)
10 The Self, the Double, and the Sense of Self	121	(11)
Stripping Off the Layers	128	(4)
11 At the Core at Last: The Primordial Jew	132	(9)
A Bowdlerized Jewish Joke	132	(3)
The Jew at the Core of Christian Identity	135	(6)
12 Passing and Wishing You Were What You Are Not	141	(13)
An American Tragicomedy	143	(5)
Passing	148	(6)
13 Authentic Moments with the Beautiful and Sublime?	154	(13)
Phoniness by the Sea	154	(4)
Anxious Experts	158	(2)
Faking It in the Museum	160	(1)
Postcards and Memories	161	(6)
14 The Alchemist: Role as Addiction	167	(11)
Elster's Alchemies	167	(3)
The Canon's Yeoman	170	(8)
15 "I Love You": Taking a Bullet versus Biting One	178	(8)
It's the Word "Love"	179	(3)
Winding the Clock Once a Month	182	(4)
16 Boys Crying and Girls Playing Dumb	186	(9)
17 Acting Our Roles: Mimicry, Makeup, and Pills	195	(16)
Diderot and Actors	195	(5)
Pretending versus Faking It	200	(2)
Making Up Is Hard to Do, or Masking for It	202	(5)
Surgical Masks	207	(4)
18 False (Im)modesty	211	(9)
False Modesty	214	(2)
Self-Mockery and Frank Confessions	216	(4)
19 Caught in the Act	220	(12)
Faking Sleep	221	(3)
Facing Those Who Know or You Fear Might Know	224	(5)
Did You Know How Big You Blew It Back Then?	229	(3)
Afterword	232	(7)
Notes	239	(27)
Works Cited	266	(13)
Index	279