I am responsible for everything . . . except for my very responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being. Therefore everything takes place as if I were compelled to be responsible. I am abandoned in the world . . . in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.
Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Être et le néant: Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique (Being and Nothingness, 1943), Part 4, Chapter 1, III