From where do the criteria for choice come? The self, insofar as one is capable of knowing it. Does the self generate the criteria? No, not usually (although some syntheses are original for a given individual). Instead, one is made aware of criteria from some outside source (speech, text, etc.) and then assents to them (consciously or otherwise). It would be best, in order to increase authenticity, for a person to assent to the rules they use in choosing consciously. Then, through this process of reflective self-endorsement, the individual incorporates the criteria into himself. He says, "I recognize the validity of choosing thus, and so I will choose thus." Thereafter, whenever a specific criterion is operative, the action is authentic (i.e., owned by the person who performs it).
It is better for a person to grab hold of her life once the gift is given to her since she, by default, already holds it weakly (i.e., responsibility is already active).
The question for the living individual who wishes to take possession of her greatest gift is: to what or to whom ought I assent? Depersonalized propositions and personal proposals confront every individual. Some offer themselves directly as propositions to be believed. Others simply pose and it is up to the individual to offer it to herself. Together, they set the table of possible criteria of which the living individual is aware. A person consumes beliefs on the basis of the criteria she assents to. As one eats a salad with a salad fork, one consumes materialistic propositions with an empiricist's knife.
No sooner does one tuck in one's napkin under one's chin than does one run up to another problem. "How am I to choose how am I to choose?" The line of questioning continues ad infinitum. How can one stop it? Through passion.
A man looks at a smörgåsbord and some items make him salivate more than others. How does he get this taste for the salty or the sweet? From his desires. And his desires? From his past and what he's chosen to constitute as his past. "Ah, choice again? But how?" Here we meet with one of the reasons why people are ineffable: they do not know the sum of their contents and neither do their contemporaries.
Passion is a consequence of something unchosen and something chosen. The extent that events press upon us, arousing our emotions, is unchosen. We react beyond how we would have chosen to. The extent that we act upon our passions is chosen. Just as reflective self-endorsement makes the chosen more chosen by making it conscious and sober, self-knowledge makes the unchosen less so by creating an accurate system of expected reactions to events. We live more when we reflectively self-endorse more of what we believe and know who we are and why we believe as we do more.
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