The painful secret of gods and kings is that men are free, Aegistheus. You know it and they do not.
Jean-Paul SartreOne can ask why the I has to appear in the cogito {Descartesโ argument โI think therefore I am.}, since the cogito, if used rightly, is the awareness of pure consciousness, not directed at any fact or action. In fact the I is not necessary here, since it is never united directly to consciousness. One can even imagine a pure and self-aware consciousness which thinks of itself as impersonal spontaneity.
Jean-Paul Sartre