The True Conclusion of an Existential Crisis is Responsibility, not Despair
Questioning Untruth Leads Us to Responsibility and Love, Not Nihilism.
Like many young people who have the privilege of having lots of time on their hands, around the time I started college, I began to experience what some might call an “existential crisis.” For most of my life, I realized, I had simply been following a pattern laid out for me by others. Suddenly, this wasn’t enough. Was a way of life possible that flows naturally from within rather than imitating what is on the outside, I wondered? One philosopher who gave me solace during this time of my life was the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre seemed to understand. Sartre not only described what I was going through in more precise and sophisticated language but also suggested that this existential uncertainty and confusion was not a strange hiccup in my life but something that arose from the very depths of what it was to be human.
Sartre claims, that “existence precedes essence.” For Sartre, every individual first simply exists and then must act to define their own essence, define who they are, and the path their life will take. Sartre calls it “bad faith” to ignore or cover over this radical freedom, which is at the root of each and every moment of our lives. Bad faith encourages us to pretend that what we do, whether in the context of our profession, our social life, or our personal hobbies, is the “right” thing to do. Sartre aims to sober us up by pointing out that seeking an external standard, whether that standard takes the form of social approval or an abstract philosophical notion of what is “right,” is actually a form of self-delusion. We are, in his words, “condemned to be free,” whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not. In each moment, the only ultimate truth is that we have the freedom to define and continually redefine our own lives. This existential crisis and Sartre’s affirmation of it as an experience worth taking seriously began a process of existential deconstruction. This process peeled back and ultimately allowed me to discard layers of identity that functioned as socially agreeable masks, covering up what I was feeling and experiencing inside. However, even though I intuitively knew that Sartre was articulating a deep truth by pushing my attention inside instead of out, it didn’t help too much at a practical or emotional level. In a certain sense, I was worse off. I now had nothing to take solace in except a lonely freedom, unhinged and disconnected from the people and world around me.
J.F. Cordova, a member of the Jicarilla Apache tribe and the first Indigenous American woman to receive a PhD in philosophy describes what she refers to as “autonomy” as “the notion that this individual can act in such a manner that she can become a law unto himself: the ‘I’ is conceived as containing the capacity to be ‘self-determining.’” Sartre would likely agree with Cordova’s notion of “autonomy,” as Sartre thinks the only authentic “law” for us to follow is the one we create for ourselves at any given moment. However, Cordova is not defining this term to agree with it but rather to take it to task. Cordova suggests that this hyper-focus on autonomy by Sartre and many of his contemporaries simply ignores an obvious truth: that the “I” always exists in the context of a “We,” and that the two move so intimately together that if we look for the true identity of the “I,” we find only the “We.” This “We” is not only composed of the human members of our community but also the nonhuman members of the ecosystem in which we reside. Cordova points out that to account for any quality of a given individual—be it their motivations, their values, or even their existence itself—we must refer to the wider communal context of living beings in which they live. We can only physically survive if our social fabric is functioning to support those who produce food and if the ecosystem we live in is healthy enough to grow crops and sustain animals. We can only emotionally and creatively flourish when embedded in a community in which we give and receive mutual support, inspiration, and feedback.
From Cordova’s point of view, the dichotomy between an “internal law” that arises out of free, autonomous choice and an “external law” that arises based on what principles and standards would allow the community and ecosystem we are already embedded in to flourish is a false dichotomy. Cordova’s “external laws” are not the surface-level social pressures and masks that Sartre encourages us to discard. Rather, they are the symbiotic principles and responsibilities which, if followed, produce and maintain deep connection, respect, and intimacy between members of a community or ecosystem. If we could only see, free of the illusion of an individual who holds the key to their happiness in their own two hands, Cordova suggests that it would be abundantly clear that we are always and already embedded in a network of responsibilities, commitments, and relationships that provide purpose, structure, and meaning to our lives.
Cordova shows us that Sartre’s emphasis on the radical freedom of the individual moves within a particular cultural worldview—a worldview that often abstracts the individual outside of the “We” in which it survives, moves, and creates meaning and then treats that abstraction as fundamental. Our Western society is based on principles that perform this feat of abstraction at all levels. Our capitalist system treats each individual as a self-interested rational actor who makes decisions to maximize their personal wealth. The American family is often considered like a nest that gives the child the skills they need to become a self-reliant individual. Even our suburbs are organized into independent houses that give individual families a sense of isolation from the rest of their community. Sartre’s philosophy of radical individual freedom resonates with many in the West not necessarily because it speaks to a universal truth but because it uncovers the way we experience our sense of self within our cultural world.
What I did not realize in college is that this radical freedom of the individual, which seemed to be the existential bottom of the human experience itself, was, in fact, only the bottom of the cultural context of meaning that I had been inducted into without even knowing it. One may argue that each human being is embedded in a cultural context of values and that any process of existential deconstruction can only bring them to the ground of their cultural conditioning. Cordova, however, would disagree. She writes, “From an Indigenous perspective, Westerners are also a conglomeration of the We. The West simply seeks to deny this fact about human existence.”
Cordova suggests that the ground of an individual's existence is the network of mutual biological, emotional, and spiritual reliance they have with their community and ecosystem and the responsibilities and commitments that would allow the entire system to survive and flourish. Indigenous philosophy is not alone in making this claim. Throughout the history of philosophy and religion—from Plato to Hegel, from Confucius to Nagarjuna, from the Prophet Muhammad to Jesus Christ—it is suggested that a deep investigation into our existential ground does not uncover a disconnected and isolated personal will but a bond of love with our fellow beings that carries with it responsibilities of care and respect. (It is only modern Western philosophy, starting with Nietzsche and Kierkegaard in my estimation, that begins to discuss the importance of the individual will disconnected from its context.)
My intention here is not to deny the value of individual expression and creativity. It is undeniable that individual ingenuity is needed to critically contemplate and sometimes transform the principles upon which a community is rooted. Cordova encourages us to consider, however, whether this “I” and its ability to act freely and creatively is truly the fundamental layer of our identity. Cordova’s vision suggests that Sartre does not take the process of existential deconstruction all the way—that if we are ruthless and thorough in tearing down our delusions, we will find that moving from external social pressures to an inner, isolated freedom is only arriving at a midway station and putting up camp. To rest in a deeper authenticity, we must continue the process and remove even the mask of the alienated individual’s despair. Once we do, we find what our culture’s cult of the individual has been asking us to desperately avoid all along—not despair, meaninglessness, or isolation, but the discovery that we are already embedded in a network of commitments and responsibilities to our community, the Earth, and humanity itself. We find that to express our individual creativity in a more meaningful and connected way, we must stop living only for our happiness and stability and allow our center of regard to encompass the larger We which is already at the root of our very identity.
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