Abandonment means total responsibility, not helpless passivity

Evidence

I am abandoned in the world, not in the sense that I might remain abandoned and passive in a hostile universe like a board floating on the water, but rather 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, Being and Nothingness, 1292

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharpens the ordinary (‘board floating on water’) sense of abandonment against the technical existentialist meaning: alone, without help, yet wholly responsible.
• XREF: connects to: Beauvoir’s ‘abandon’ means mutual giving, not mindless self-loss. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 137; Flexibility is passivity — conciliation, not resilience — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 252; Doing nothing is self-preservation in the activist sense, not indulgence — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 107

Broader Connections

• Beauvoir’s ‘abandon’ means mutual giving, not mindless self-loss. #qualifies (0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 137
• Flexibility is passivity — conciliation, not resilience #contradicts (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 252
• Doing nothing is self-preservation in the activist sense, not indulgence #exemplifies (0.80) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 107