Authenticity is a concept developed by Martin Heidegger to refer to the human capacity to maintain who we are despite the pressures around us to be less than ourselves.
Within Heidegger's thought, authenticity is not a constant because humans are fated to struggle with the demands of 'The They', and with their own facticity and hence it is authentic to be often inauthentic.
The word 'authentic' literally means 'self-authoring', as though we are single-handedly writing our own life.
