The Stoic concept of integrity (the wholeness of the virtuous soul, which cannot be compromised by external misfortune) runs through the tradition of philosophical poetry from Horace to Henley ("I am the master of my fate") that celebrates the moral self's independence from fortune; A poet writing about ethical compromise — the slow erosion of principles under social pressure — might use integrity as a philosophical concept to examine what it means to remain whole when all the pressures of circumstance push toward accommodation; Adrienne Rich's poetic autobiography is structured around the concept of integrity — the long process of stripping away false selves to achieve the integrity of a woman who speaks her own truth rather than the truths expected of her; Heidegger's concept of authentic being has an integrity dimension — the authentic Dasein owns its existence as a whole, including its past, its projects, and its mortality, rather than splitting off aspects of its life that are uncomfortable to acknowledge; The philosophical tension between integrity as wholeness and integrity as honesty — the claim that genuine integrity requires not only internal consistency but honest engagement with the world's complexity — is a productive tension for the confessional and autobiographical poet; Philosophical pragmatism's (Rorty's) reconception of integrity as narrative coherence rather than fixed essence — the self's integrity as the coherence of a story one can tell about oneself — has influenced contemporary poetry that understands the lyric "I" as a narrative construction rather than a metaphysical given