ABSTRACT
This chapter clarifies the concept of ethical responsibility, a concept that is utterly fragmented in contemporary discussions in moral philosophy and the human sciences. Discussing the differences between the Latin and the Hebrew words for responsibility, spondeo and acharayut, I articulate their different implications for ethical life. Spondeo often forms a juridical logic that ties responsibility to particular tasks or contents, whereas acharayut invites an ethical-existential logic that emphasizes how personal relationality as such involves responsibility for others. Following the ethical-existential logic of the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, I forward my own vision about what it means to be personally implicated in transgenerational responsibility for absent others. This is also an ultimate claim of my book.
