Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment

by Francis Fukuyama

As Lionel Trilling brilliantly explained in his book Sincerity and Authenticity, European literature post-Rousseau saw the rise of a genre of writing that began with Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew and Goethe’s Sufferings of Young Werther, which celebrated the artist who is unable to find a home in society, who seeks the authentic expression of his or her creative genius.