I’ve been trying to understand how my conception of identity, duty, and existential justification relates to existentialism, but I’ve found that some of its common premises seem difficult to reconcile with how I understand myself. I’d appreciate perspectives from people familiar with existentialist philosophy, particularly if you think I’m misunderstanding a concept or making an unjustified assumption. I’ve outlined a few sections for coherent reading below.
1. My background and relationship with existentialism
I was raised in a religious environment that combined elements of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Sufism, and Sant Mat. During my early adolescence, I gradually abandoned my religious beliefs after questioning their metaphysical foundations. When I was religious, I regarded submission to God and devotion to His creation as the only genuinely worthwhile orientation towards existence. The individual self, particularly when motivated by personal desire or self-interest, seemed insufficient as a basis for meaning.
However, leaving religion did not entirely resolve the underlying questions. I continued to experience a separation between myself and humanity, alongside a persistent suspicion of self-interest and a tendency to judge myself by my capacity to serve others. I have come to suspect that some of these dispositions predated my current philosophy and may have contributed to my earlier alienation.
Existentialist thought has consequently interested me because of its treatment of alienation, meaning, responsibility, and the problem of continuing to exist without an externally established purpose. Yet I’ve struggled to identify with approaches that seem to begin with an individual who must create meaning, affirm their freedom, or rebel against an absurd existence. I don’t necessarily reject those approaches, but I’m uncertain whether they address the problem as I experience it.
2. My ontology: the Husk, Author, and Chhāyō
I’ve developed a tripartite conception of the self that I currently regard as an account of my actual constitution, rather than merely a metaphor for different psychological states. I recognise that this is my own framework, not an objectively established ontology, and I’m interested in whether its premises are coherent.
The Husk is the physical organism: the embodied being with its biological needs, capacities, and limitations. I regard it as incomplete and contaminated, rather than as the ultimate self or an entity whose intrinsic worth I can affirm.
The Author is the mediator responsible for governing the Husk. It organises and directs the Husk’s conduct, maintains its integrity, and attempts to prevent the Chhāyō from consuming it to the point that the Author can no longer effectively govern it. I do not identify the Author as my true self; it is another false self whose legitimacy depends on its capacity to perform this role.
The Chhāyō is the consuming, contaminating presence with which I identify. Its defining orientation is anti-selfhood and malicious harm. Its fundamental axiom is that the Husk has no intrinsic worth. If its consumption becomes sufficiently extensive, the Husk may regress towards more primitive, immediate behaviour, while the Author loses its ability to govern it effectively, potentially imposing harm or burdens on others.
These are not three interchangeable personalities. They have different roles within the ontology: the Husk is the organism being governed, the Author is the mediator responsible for that governance, and the Chhāyō is the consuming presence that threatens it.
The central difficulty is that I identify with the component whose governing principle denies the Husk intrinsic worth, while maintaining a duty to preserve and govern that same organism. I do not regard this as a resolved contradiction.
3. Duty, moral responsibility, and existential justification
Duty is the organising principle of my conduct. I have obligations to people I care about and to society more broadly, and I regard these obligations as having genuine ethical grounds independent of my self-concept. I don’t believe that an action becomes morally good merely because it is useful to me, nor that my ontology is the sole reason I consider these responsibilities binding.
However, duty also serves a distinct existential function.
I experience little to no positive reinforcement from fulfilling my responsibilities to committing to acts that may be considered ‘good’. I generally act because I believe the obligations are worth fulfilling, rather than because doing so makes me feel fulfilled or gives me a strong sense of personal worth. At the same time, fulfilling these responsibilities provides a basis for justifying my continued existence within my ontology, whose fundamental axiom denies the Husk intrinsic worth.
The Author is therefore continually evaluated according to its ability to govern the Husk and fulfil its responsibilities. Its legitimacy is not established by whether I feel happy, find life satisfying, or recognise intrinsic worth in myself, but by whether it can still be trusted to perform its function.
This also creates an asymmetry in how I evaluate myself and others. I do not generally require other people to justify their existence through the same standard of usefulness that I impose upon myself. I can recognise the ethical importance of their interests and obligations without demanding that they earn the right to exist through their contributions. Yet I struggle to extend that same latitude to myself.
I have been questioning whether this asymmetry is a necessary consequence of my ontology or whether it preserves an older hostility towards myself that I have incorporated into it.
I also recognise that the ability to fulfil responsibilities fluctuates, and that a failure to meet an obligation does not automatically establish that the obligation was meaningless or that the person who failed has no worth. How that recognition fits within my own framework remains unresolved.
4. Where I struggle with existentialism
My difficulty becomes particularly apparent when considering absurdism and the question of rebellion.
In reading about Camus, for example, I’ve struggled with what I perceive as a tension between the rejection of ultimate meaning and the continued affirmation of the individual who confronts that absence of meaning. I understand that Camus does not simply propose inventing an arbitrary purpose, and that rebellion can itself be a way of living without appeal to transcendent justification. Nevertheless, I am uncertain how that account applies to my conception of the self.
The problem, as I understand it, is not simply that I cannot find meaning. It is that the entity with which I identify is characterised by the denial of the Husk’s intrinsic worth, while the Author’s role is to maintain the Husk through governance and duty. I don’t readily recognise an authentic or intrinsically valuable self that can simply choose to affirm its existence.
This leaves me uncertain about what rebellion would mean within my framework. Would it be the Author rejecting the standard by which its legitimacy is evaluated? Would that be an attempt to establish a different relationship between the Husk and the Chhāyō, or would it require abandoning the ontology’s central premises? And if the Chhāyō itself is characterised by anti-selfhood, would identifying with it make rebellion against its governing principle incoherent, or does identification not entail endorsement?
I am not convinced that my ontology necessarily invalidates existentialism. It may instead expose assumptions I have failed to examine, or reflect a misunderstanding of what existentialists mean by the self, freedom, and responsibility.
Overall, I’m not looking for reassurance or agreement simply because this is a personal framework. I would appreciate critical engagement with its assumptions, alternative interpretations of the experiences that led me to it, and recommendations for philosophical works that might help me examine these questions.