Sincerity. In the modern world the elusive virtue of speaking truly about one's feelings, thoughts, desires. Sincere expression carries risks to the speaker, since the ordinary screens used in everyday life are opened to the outside world. At the same time, we expect our friends, our lovers, our leaders "to be sincere."

Sincerity has not always been a virtue. It appears to have become an ideal for the first time in Europe and North America in the seventeenth century; and it gained considerable momentum during the Romantic movement when sincerity was first celebrated as an artistic ideal.

In more recent discussions sincerity appears threatened by modern developments such as psychoanalysis and postmodern developments such as deconstructionism. More and more, scholars see sincerity as a construct rather than as a thing in itself.

JJM