It is at that instance that I found the justification for my own action and it is before that instance that I take upon myself the responsibility for others. But this instance does not impose responsibility upon myself as duty or subjugate me. In my will for responsibility , which is only active in communication with the other, lies the basis of my responsibility for the other. Responsibility is therefore the essence of the human existence and not just an attribute. Responsibility is a mode of personalizing man s being, his existence in the relation which constitutes him, i.e., in re-sponding of one person to the other.
Responsibility assumes communion because personhood is a communion.
Without communion there is no responsibility. By disrupting the original communion between man and god we seek to escape from responsibility. When there is no communion with the Holy, when there is no primeval relation that constitutes us in our personhood, then we base ourselves on our individuality, which implies that we attempt to justify and defend our individuality to ourselves. It is in this sense that the primordial sin should be interpreted for which man is responsible and whose consequences he should readily take upon himself because they relate to our identity and integrity. Every human being is in its own idiosyncratic way situated in the universality of sin and it is there that he can delineate the elements of his identity.