But the problem of responsibility is seen under a different light when one refers to the traditional doctrine that we saw to have been more or less confusedly shadowed by existentialism itself: if one holds on to the idea that whatever one is as a person in the human condition proceeds from an original, prenatal, and pretemporal choice, wherein one willed, in terms of an 'original project' (as Sartre calls it), everything that would define the contents of one's existence. In this case, it is no longer a matter of answering to a Creator, but to something referring to the very dimension of being or transcendence in oneself. The course of existence, though not attributable to the more exterior and already human will of the individual (the person), follows, in principle, a line that has significance for the I, even though still latent or concealed: as an entirety of experiences important not in themselves but for the reactions that they provoke in us, reactions through which that being that one wished to be can be realized. In that case, life in this world cannot be considered as something that one can arbitrarily throw away, nor can it be considered simply as a bad situation in which the only choice is faith or fatalistic resignation (we have seen that, at best, the horizons of modern existentialism end there), or else being locked into a continuous trial of resistance (as happens along the lines of a dark Stoicism, devoid of the background of transcendence). As in an adventure, a mission, a trial, an election, or an experiment, earthly life appears to be something to which one committed oneself before finding oneself in the human condition, accepting in anticipation whatever difficult, miserable, or dramatic aspects it might bring, aspects that are especially likely in an epoch like the present.

• responsibility
• existentialism
• situation
• tradition
• transcendence
• choice
• death
• life
• eternal return
• original project
• fate
• destiny
• amor fati

Q. From the point of view of recurrence, then, may it not be that some important actions we made in a previous life are responsible for our tendencies now? \r\n\r\nA. Quite possibly. Only, there is one thing: this work did not exist before. It may be that some other work did—there may be many different kinds— but not this. This work did not exist before, that I am perfectly sure of.

• life
• work
• recurrence
• the fourth way
• eternal return

'Was that life?' I want to say to death. 'Well then! Once more!

• eternal return
• life
• death

But you see, you are still thinking in terms of the earth we have at present! Why, the earth we have at present may have repeated itself a billion times; you know - become extinct, frozen over, cracked, crumbled to pieces, disintegrated into its constituent origins, becoming the waters again, 'which were above the firmament,' then a comet again, then a sun, then another earth produced from that sun - I mean, this process of development may already have repeated itself an infinite number of times, and always in the same form, right down to the very last small detail.'

• eternal return