ABSTRACT
Individual Ethical Gap situations are characterized by an apparent gap in the people theoretical ability to account for the responsibility of individuals. Contemporary ethical theory turns centrally on the idea that individual ethical responsibility derives either from intention or from consequences: the author ethically responsible for an action of mine either by virtue of the manner in which she intended it or by virtue of the consequences that the author action produced. Arendt argues that, whereas blameworthiness and guilt are connected to the notion of punishment, political responsibility is not. There is, however, a different line of response, one that draws both on Anderson's work on ethical vulnerability and on her discussion of Kant's approach to heteronomy. By bringing to the fore the importance of relationality and of intersubjective connectedness, the vulnerability of the people ethics opens the way for a more honest encounter with others and with the world.
