Two perceptions of responsibility as two modes of living — existential lie as the core of existential angst
This article addresses one of the most foundational philosophical problems across cultures and centuries: the precise relationship between responsibility, causality, free will, determinism, and existential angst. While I have examined related themes in earlier works — including the narrative structure of values, the Three-Dimensional Orientation Model, and the Four-Level Repression Pathology — the nature of this inquiry requires a step-by-step treatment.
My goal here is to make the core ideas accessible to both academic and non-academic readers, without sacrificing conceptual rigor. To that end, I aim to approach this topic systematically and avoid unnecessary complexity or obfuscation. What follows is not just an abstract investigation, but a practical clarification of two radically different modes of perceiving responsibility — and how these shape our lived experience, identity, and psychological orientation toward life itself.
The idea of quantifiable responsibility and the Responsibility Division Paradox
A recurring theme in both self-help literature and many contemporary therapy models — particularly those derived from cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) — is the emphasis on personal responsibility as a primary lever for life transformation. From a clinical standpoint, this emphasis is intuitively sound: the more responsibility an individual assumes for their current condition, the more agency they perceive themselves to have in initiating meaningful change.
However, in real-life relational and workplace contexts, this principle often gives rise to a practical dilemma: If multiple parties are involved in a situation, how exactly should responsibility be divided between them? To what extent can one quantify personal responsibility when causality is distributed across agents?
This brings us to what I term the Responsibility Division Paradox — a psychologically common but logically flawed intuition: the idea that total responsibility for a given outcome must be divided among participants in a zero-sum fashion. This framing leads to misunderstandings in both personal and organizational settings, where responsibility is perceived as a limited resource to be allocated, rather than a structurally distinct principle that can be fully assumed by each party without logical contradiction.
Quantification fallacy in responsibility attribution
Let us define the elements:
X = the outcome (consequence), whether desired or undesired
Ar = the degree of responsibility of agent A
Br = the degree of responsibility of agent B
RR = total responsibility associated with outcome X
In the Responsibility Division Paradox, people tend to assume:
Ar = 100% – Br
Br = 100% – Ar
That is, the more responsibility one party holds, the less the other must hold — as if responsibility were a finite sum to be apportioned. Under this logic, the total responsibility RR is assumed to be fixed at 100% and mutually exclusive between agents.
But this formulation fails to account for what Kant, and later thinkers such as Viktor Frankl and Sartre, would describe as the structural irreducibility of responsibility: it is not defined by causality alone, but by agency. Two agents can each bear full moral responsibility for a shared outcome — not because they are each the sole cause, but because their choices were independently sufficient to affect the course of events.
We will return to this when we explore the difference between empirical causality and intelligible causality. But for now, we must recognize that trying to divide responsibility as a measurable, mutually exclusive quantity is not only philosophically incoherent — it also leads to psychological disempowerment. Once responsibility becomes conditional upon how much another party is "to blame," it is no longer internalized as a self-initiated position of moral authorship.
The Divisible Cake Approach: Responsibility as Empirical Phenomenon
In practical domains — such as corporate strategy, interpersonal relationships, or competitive sports — responsibility is often approached in an empirical, quantifiable fashion. This is what I call the Divisible Cake Approach. Here, responsibility is treated analogously to a resource or liability that must be shared among the participants involved in an outcome.
Consider the following scenarios:
In a corporate setting, two managers (A and B) co-manage a strategic account and the company loses the client.
In a personal context, a couple (A and B) divorces and each party reflects on what went wrong.
In sports, two teammates (A and B) lose a doubles match and begin attributing blame or reflecting on performance.
In such cases, a common resolution mechanism is to divide responsibility by proportional attribution:
Ar + Br = 100%
When both parties agree to this division — even if the precise ratio differs — harmony is typically preserved. Each takes a measurable share of the burden, and social equilibrium is restored. For instance, one may say: “I take 60%, you take 40%.” If both agree, the matter rests.
However, problems emerge when:
The sum of attributed responsibility falls short of 100%, leading to perceived denial or scapegoating.
The sum exceeds 100%, implying overlapping or contradictory admissions of responsibility.
Most paradoxically, each party claims 100% responsibility, leading to a seemingly illogical state where the total appears to be 200%.
This last case — where both individuals assume full accountability — exposes the underlying flaw in treating responsibility as an empirically divisible commodity. The logic of the divisible cake collapses. If responsibility is like cake, “both cannot eat their cake and have it too.” Thus, the model produces a conceptual impasse.
But what if this impasse points to a deeper metaphysical truth?
Indeed, it does — and this is where Kantian moral philosophy offers resolution. The empirical model of divided responsibility functions well as a pragmatic heuristic. But at the level of moral ontology, responsibility is not governed by arithmetical constraints. Kant would argue that each agent is capable of being the full moral origin of a causal chain, grounded in their intelligible character. Thus, it is entirely coherent — and even necessary — that both parties could assume full moral responsibility for the same outcome, without contradiction, because they are each initiating agents from a noumenal perspective.
This, of course, bridges us to the difference between empirical causality and intelligible freedom, a topic we will explore next.
Two Fundamentally Different Perceptions of Responsibility: Empirical–Phenomenological vs. Spiritual–Noumenological
To begin with precision, the distinction proposed here is not ontological in nature. That is, we are not speaking of two separate species of responsibility, like cats and dogs — or even of qualitatively different entities. Such an approach would already be constrained by empirical categories. In reality, there is only one responsibility in essence, but it can be approached and understood through two different epistemological frameworks.
In other words, responsibility as a concept is not divided by its intrinsic nature but by the interpretive structures imposed by the subject — much as Kant proposed in his Copernican turn: that knowledge does not conform to objects, but rather objects conform to the structure of our mind. Likewise, responsibility is not “built into” actions as an objectified property but is structured by the internal mode of understanding possessed by the moral agent.
We therefore propose two fundamental perceptual modes of responsibility:
Empirical–Phenomenological Responsibility
In this mode, responsibility is treated as an effect within a chain of causes. It is allocated, measured, divided, and often debated in practical settings (e.g., legal systems, corporate accountability, interpersonal conflict). This mode operates within the framework of natural causality and is observable in external behavior and outcomes.Spiritual–Noumenological Responsibility
In contrast, this mode sees responsibility not as a divisible empirical consequence but as a moral origin pointgrounded in the intelligible self. Here, responsibility is not assigned through observation but assumed through freedom. It is existential and self-reflective — not determined by external norms, but by the inner capacity of reason to initiate a new moral order. From this perspective, the same event (X) can be viewed not as something merely suffered or assigned, but as something authored through one’s freedom.
Thus, two individuals may witness or participate in the same chain of events, yet experience responsibility in categorically different ways — not because the event differs, but because their epistemological posture toward responsibility differs.
This, then, is the key: the structure of responsibility is not embedded in the event, but arises from the subjective configuration of freedom and understanding. Much like Kant’s transcendental idealism, where space and time are not properties of things-in-themselves but forms of human intuition, so too is responsibility a form of moral intuition shaped by one's orientation toward the noumenal or phenomenal.
The Empirical–Phenomenological Perception of Responsibility
The empirical–phenomenological perception of responsibility is grounded in the assumption that responsibility is quantifiable — a divisible commodity, akin to a cake laid out on the table. Each participant in an event is thought to "own" a specific slice of that cake, and once the slice is agreed upon, the matter is considered settled.
This mode of perception treats responsibility as a phenomenon in the Kantian sense — a thing as it appears to us, situated within space and time, and structured by the conditions of sensibility. Responsibility, in this framework, is an object that can be seen, argued over, measured, or denied — much like a cake visible to all. One enters the room, sees the cake, and says: “Let’s divide it — I’ll take 5%!”
Importantly, this view often involves a filtering mechanism through intent: responsibility is closely linked to conscious volition. If an outcome was unintended or accidental, the agent is commonly seen as less responsible — or even exonerated altogether. This reflects the broader empirical logic that causality must be observable and intention must be demonstrable in order for moral weight to be assigned.
As a result, the empirical–phenomenological approach to responsibility tends to produce externalized, negotiable, and often bureaucratic assessments. It thrives in contexts where accountability is formalized — corporate HR, legal trials, public scandals — where evidence, intentions, and outcomes are weighed in observable and divisible terms.
But as we shall see, this logic breaks down the moment we step outside of the visible chain of causality and ask a deeper question: What sort of being would voluntarily assume responsibility even for what was not visibly their fault? That transition marks the boundary where phenomenological responsibility ends — and the noumenological begins.
Alignment with Hume’s Approach to Causality
Individuals who adopt an empirical–phenomenological approach to responsibility often carry with them a weakened belief in causality itself — at least in the metaphysical or absolute sense. Their conceptualization of events relies more on observed regularities than on any belief in underlying necessity. As such, they tend to attribute responsibility selectively, often assigning near-total credit for positive outcomes and minimizing or externalizing responsibility when events turn negative.
This logic resonates not with Kant’s transcendental framework, but rather with David Hume’s epistemological skepticism regarding causality. As Hume famously wrote:
“All events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any tie between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected.”
(An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section VII)
And further:
“We only observe that one event follows another; we do not perceive any power or necessary connection.”
This Humean framework implies that causality is merely a habit of the mind, not a real metaphysical connection between things. Responsibility, when interpreted under this view, becomes just as psychologically contingent — a projection of perceived patterns, not something grounded in a deeper metaphysical or moral structure.
Consequently, many holding this view resort to loose explanatory frameworks when faced with unexpected events — drawing, for instance, on Jungian synchronicity, the notion of acausal connecting principles, or invoking “Unus Mundus” narratives to explain what cannot be empirically pinned down. This creates a mental flexibility that, while often spiritually comforting, can undermine moral accountability when not kept in check.
In sum, Hume's skeptical empiricism provides the philosophical scaffolding for this approach: no necessary connection, no unbreakable causal chains, and therefore no unassailable moral responsibility — unless one chooses, arbitrarily or socially, to adopt it.
A Real-Life Example: Romantic Infidelity and the Empirical–Phenomenological Responsibility Frame
Consider the following scenario: A woman, dissatisfied with her long-term relationship due to a perceived lack of attention and romantic effort from her partner, begins interacting with another man she meets regularly at a sports club. This new man shows interest, gives her small tokens of affection (such as t-shirts or inexpensive jewelry), and slowly establishes a bond. Over time, this emotional connection escalates into a physical affair, accompanied by repeated deception and concealment from her long-term partner.
Once the affair is discovered, the woman — operating from an empirical–phenomenological perception of responsibility — may attempt to mitigate or reject moral culpability through one of the three dominant epistemological strategies typical of this framework:
1. Synchronicity-based Denial (Denial of Causality)
“It just happened. It was a coincidence.”
This reaction reframes the situation through the lens of Jungian synchronicity, implying the absence of causal structure. The event is positioned as an acausal convergence, stripping it of moral weight and negating the very premise of responsibility. Since no causal chain is acknowledged, no ownership is required.
2. Causal Redirection (Acceptance of Causality, Redefinition of Agent)
“I had to lie because I was afraid of how you’d react.”
Here, causality is admitted, but its origin is relocated. The woman accepts that an effect (the lie) occurred, but asserts that it was compelled by external emotional or relational conditions — in this case, the anticipated reaction of her partner. Responsibility is effectively outsourced to the partner, bringing her own share close to zero.
3. Semantic Reframing (Responsibility Reduction via Redefinition)
“It’s not cheating if we weren’t married.”
This strategy shifts the ontological status of the act itself by altering its definitional boundaries. If the act does not meet the personally accepted criteria for “cheating,” then its moral weight becomes void — and consequently, any fraction of responsibility applied to a zero-value act equals zero. It is not a denial of the event, but of its moral categorization.
In all three cases, the empirical–phenomenological perception of responsibility enables deflection, displacement, or dissolution of moral agency. Whether conscious or not, the epistemological foundation of these reactions remains the same: responsibility is externalized, minimized, or entirely erased.
This may stem from self-protection, repression, or habitual reasoning, but the common denominator is the rejection of full ownership. As such, these responses illustrate how a weakened or relativistic view of causality and agency can profoundly shape — and distort — moral judgment in everyday life.
Spiritual–Noumenological Approach to Responsibility (SNR)
In contrast to the empirical–phenomenological view, the spiritual–noumenological perception of responsibility rests on a fundamentally different epistemological foundation. In this mode of perception, responsibility cannot be quantified — not because it is infinite in magnitude, but because it is not phenomenologically measurable at all. Responsibility here is not a divisible object (like a cake to be sliced), but an indivisible essence — a metaphysical constant that lies beyond sensory or statistical breakdown. In the context of Axiomatology, it represents an unquantifiable reality. In Kantian terms, it is not a phenomenon but a noumenon: a thing-in-itself.
Whitehead, in most occasions, would interpret the inclination to assume maximal personal responsibility as a transmutation toward the initial aim — the best possible realization for that actual occasion, offered by God as a divine lure toward value.
Just as we cannot directly perceive or measure the noumenon or quantify the initial aim, so too we cannot calculate or divide responsibility within the framework of Axiomatology. One cannot say “I’ll take 40%” of the blame — because responsibility is not subject to the conditions of space, time, or quantity, which are required for such mathematical parsing. It is like trying to measure the essence of “cakiness” rather than the size of a physical cake.
Importantly, this view rejects intent as a filter for assessing moral weight — not in the consequentialist sense (where only outcomes matter), but because both intent and outcome are phenomenal expressions that lie outside the domain of noumenal responsibility. In the Axiologos framework, moral responsibility is not something you measure, debate, or apportion — it is something you bear. It is ontological rather than psychological.
As discussed in Axiomatology, there exist “nodes” — entities in time with an exceptionally high influence on the universe. These are occasions where the conscious choosing of greater responsibility is possible, regardless of circumstance. Such entities are loci of intensified moral agency.
This has a striking implication: even if the consequences were unintended, even if the entire act was unconscious, the individual — as a noumenal moral agent — carries the full weight of responsibility. Not because they caused the effect within time and space, but because they are the point of origin — the transcendental ground — of the causal chain itself.
When it comes to unconscious application of responsibility, we must recognize that it is “unconscious” only at that concrete occasion. However, our predisposition — our moral reflexes — have been shaped over time by previous value-choices. Thus, the unconscious element applies only to the specific occasion, not to the continuity of agency across time. What seems unconscious may still arise from a trajectory of conscious transmutations formed in prior situations.
In practice, this means: the only true path to freedom lies in taking total responsibility, regardless of appearances, explanations, or mitigating context. As radical as it may seem, this stance restores moral agency by aligning the self with its intelligible, noumenal nature. Thus, the idea of freedom in Axiologos resonates with the core intuitions of Kant, Nietzsche, and others: it is not liberation from responsibility, but the power to embody it.
Accordingly, the spiritual–noumenological view is not concerned with assigning blame, but with affirming a deeper truth: that we are not merely actors within causal chains, but initiators of them — or, at minimum, that we retain the freedom to reject the prehensions that would justify self-exemption. Responsibility is not a matter of external judgment or quantifiable guilt, but a mark of interior authorship — the capacity to act freely, and therefore, meaningfully, within a moral cosmos.
The Core of Spiritual–Noumenological Perception of Personal Responsibility
At first glance, this account may seem to support determinism: everything we observe is governed by strict causality. Every action, every event, is the effect of some prior cause. If the noumenal world were likewise deterministic, it would follow that freedom is impossible, and with it, the entire concept of moral responsibility would collapse. This view — implicitly or explicitly — is found in many modern spiritual or mystical frameworks that minimize the self's agency, portraying human life as a deterministic unfolding of fate (“life is just happening,” “you are just the observer,” etc.). As one of the concepts Axiologos borrows from are related to Kant’s theoretical philosophy, we shall next explain that lack of such contradiction.
Kant breaks this deadlock with his solution to the Third Antinomy of pure reason. He introduces a dual-aspect view of the self:
As a phenomenon, the human being is bound by causal laws — fully part of the empirical world.
But as a noumenal agent — a thing in itself — the human being belongs to the intelligible realm, and thus has the capacity for free moral choice.
This is the basis of Kant’s doctrine of practical freedom: while we cannot comprehend causality in the noumenal world, we must assume freedom there if we are to act as moral beings. For Kant, morality requires the presupposition of freedom. Therefore, even if we cannot prove freedom empirically, we are justified in affirming it through the moral law itself.
In practical terms, this means:
We may not understand the full causal context of our actions — nor the unseen forces behind them.
But we are always morally responsible for how we respond.
Our freedom is revealed in our decision to act in accordance with reason, not instinct, compulsion, or self-deception.
Thus, the spiritually–noumenological approach to responsibility does not wait for empirical certainty or absolute comprehension of cause and effect. It affirms that moral responsibility is rooted not in external clarity, but in internal alignment with duty — in the free exercise of will.
As such, even in confusing, emotionally charged, or causally opaque situations, we remain free agents — and therefore, responsible.
The Third Antinomy and the Possibility of Freedom in a Causal World
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant addresses the Third Antinomy — the apparent contradiction between natural necessity and human freedom — by introducing a fundamental distinction between two types of causality:
Causality according to the laws of nature, which governs all empirical phenomena (appearances), and
Causality through freedom, which originates in the intelligible (noumenal) realm.
Kant poses the central question:
“Is it nevertheless possible to regard the same occurrence, which on the one hand is a mere effect of nature, as on the other hand an effect of freedom?” (KrV B566 / A538)
His answer is affirmative — and becomes possible through what is often called the dual-aspect theory of the self.
As phenomena, human beings are subject to causal determination in time: our empirical character and actions unfold according to natural laws. But as noumena — things in themselves — we are not empirical objects and are therefore not constrained by temporal or physical conditions. In this sense, freedom is the capacity of pure reason to initiate a causal chain independently of empirical determinants.
Kant's framework allows for the coexistence of both types of causality. The same human action can be fully explainable in the phenomenal world as a natural event — and simultaneously be grounded in a free decision in the noumenal realm. This noumenal ground is not observable, but it can be inferred through its moral effects: actions that do not appear to arise from natural inclinations, but from a rational will.
As Kant writes:
“Every human being has an empirical character... [but] actions have occurred not through empirical causes, but because they were determined by grounds of reason.” (KrV B585 / A557–58)
Thus, freedom does not violate the laws of nature, because it operates at a different level — not within appearances, but at the intelligible ground that makes moral responsibility possible.
Why Thought Cannot Be Empirically Causal
Thought — especially moral intention — cannot itself be part of the empirical causal chain because it does not occur in time. According to Kant, time is an a priori form of inner intuition: a necessary condition for organizing sensory experience. All appearances (phenomena) must be situated in time to be empirically knowable. However, thought belongs to the faculty of pure reason, which, Kant states, is:
“not subject to the form of time.” (KrV B586 / A558)
Because of this, thoughts cannot appear as empirical causes. We can never perceive a thought in the same way we perceive the firing of a neuron or the motion of a hand. What we do observe are empirical effects of rational activity: a spoken word, a bodily action, a social intervention — but not the thought itself as a temporally conditioned event.
This distinction underpins Kant’s notion of freedom. Freedom is the ability of reason to begin a new causal series, independent of natural determinants. Therefore, moral causality does not contradict natural law — it transcends it. While nature governs what is, freedom introduces the domain of what ought to be.
Conclusion: Moral Causality Without Contradiction
Kant’s resolution of the Third Antinomy enables us to affirm both:
the determinism of the empirical world (the phenomenal domain), and
the possibility of freedom grounded in the noumenal self (the intelligible domain).
We are indeed part of the natural world and subject to its causal laws in our empirical behavior. But as rational beings, we also originate actions from reason itself, which is not conditioned by experience or temporal sequence.
This dual-aspect model makes moral responsibility not only possible but necessary. We are not merely links in a pre-determined chain — we are the origin of new chains when we act from the moral law.
This is one of the most elegant and enduring contributions of The Critique of Pure Reason: it affirms the compatibility of causal necessity and moral freedom, grounding human autonomy and dignity in a philosophy that respects both scienceand ethics.
Moral Agency and the Rejection of Passive Determinism
While all phenomena in the empirical world are governed by strict causal laws, and while the noumenal realm may also contain causal structures (which remain unknowable to us), Kant firmly rejects the notion that we are passive recipients of fate. As rational beings, we possess the unique capacity to initiate new causal chains from the intelligible realm — through the spontaneous operation of practical reason. This capacity is not incidental but constitutes the foundation of both moral freedom and personal responsibility.
This sharply diverges from the assumptions found in many neo-Taoist, Western mystical, and contemporary yoga-influenced frameworks, where the self is often portrayed as a detached observer — a passive witness dissolved into the flow of events. Within those paradigms, agency is minimized or reinterpreted as illusory, which ultimately undermines the grounds for moral responsibility. If the subject is merely witnessing the unfolding of deterministic processes, then the question of ethical choice becomes incoherent.
Kant’s critical philosophy, by contrast, preserves the dignity of the human being as an autonomous moral agent — not because we escape the empirical world, but because we transcend it in our capacity to act from reason. The self, as noumenal subject, is not bound by natural inclination, but is capable of legislation through the moral law. In this way, Kant reconciles the necessity of nature with the freedom of ethics — a move that secures both causal coherence and the possibility of virtue.
A Real-Life Illustration of Spiritual-Noumenal Responsibility (SNR)
Let us now return to a concrete example: a woman, dissatisfied in a long-term relationship, begins an affair with someone she meets at the gym. This scenario, analyzed through the lens of Spiritual Noumenal Perception of Responsibility (SNR), unfolds in three key stages. The framework is fully consistent with Kant’s theoretical and moral philosophy, especially as expressed in the Critique of Pure Reason and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.
1. Idea — A Possible Noumenal Starting Point
Regardless of empirical context or background conditions, a thought may arise — “I could sleep with this man.” This idea does not stem from deterministic sensory input or conscious calculation; it emerges spontaneously, without a traceable origin. As Kant notes, the intelligible self exists outside the temporal-causal sequence of the empirical world. Therefore, we cannot know whether this thought was the result of a hidden noumenal causal chain or whether it constituted a true beginning — a spontaneous origin of a new causal sequence.
This reflects Kant’s dual-aspect theory of the self: we are both phenomena (within nature) and noumena (capable of initiating moral causality).
2. Choice — Intervention of Structured Internal Value Hierarchy (SIVH)
At this stage, moral agency becomes decisive. The woman must evaluate the idea against her Structured Internal Value Hierarchy — her internalized structure of meaning and ethics. If that hierarchy is intact, she may override the impulse. This is the Kantian moment of moral freedom, where the Categorical Imperative — or in contemporary terms, the SIVH — acts as a filter for desires, urges, and inclinations.
“A free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same.”
— Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Ak 4:447
The empirical self may be inclined to act — out of loneliness, resentment, or pleasure-seeking — but the rational self can intervene. This is not merely a veto power but the positive exercise of freedom: the ability not to act according to one’s inclinations.
3. Action — Execution of a Moral or Immoral Choice
The third stage is the execution of the decision. If the act follows the value hierarchy — e.g., fidelity, respect for the other — it aligns with moral law. If not, the individual has freely initiated a causal chain that originates from their noumenal self.
Here, determinism is entirely out of scope. It is not "life unfolding" or a metaphysical “game of fate” — it is the person who acts, no one else. This stance radically opposes thinkers like Eckhart Tolle or Alan Watts, who describe the self as a passive node within a larger, unfolding universal flow. In contrast, Kant — and SNR — affirms the active role of reasonas the originator of a new moral sequence.
Why Responsibility Must Be Total
At this point, we arrive at the decisive claim: responsibility cannot be quantified. One cannot hold "20%" or "60%" responsibility for an act initiated through moral choice. Why?
Because each decision is a potential starting point — or breaking point — for infinite causal chains in both the phenomenal and noumenal realms. We may not comprehend these chains, but their potential is real and ethically binding. A single act — a lie, a betrayal, a moment of courage — may ripple through the world, altering destinies, shaping communities, or reinforcing patterns in others. In this sense:
Responsibility is not only great — it is absolute, because we do not and cannot know its final extent.
Thus, all attempts to relativize responsibility — through synchronicity claims, reframing strategies, or intent-based denial — collapse in the face of SNR and Kantian ethics. These evasions happen before the moment of moral deliberation. Once the SIVH is activated and reason acts, the full weight of responsibility is assumed — not empirically, but metaphysically.
Alignment with Dostoyevsky’s Vision of Causality and Moral Responsibility
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, particularly through the teachings of Elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov, offers a profound metaphysical vision of moral causality. In one of the most spiritually charged lines in Russian literature, Zosima declares:
“Each of us is guilty before all, for all, and I more than the others.”
This statement encapsulates a radical, non-empirical perception of responsibility — one that closely mirrors the logic of Spiritual Noumenal Responsibility (SNR). For Dostoyevsky, responsibility is not to be understood legally, empirically, or phenomenologically. It is moral, existential, and collective: each individual bears some responsibility for the sins, suffering, and corruption of the entire world — not through direct causality, but through moral participation, indifference, or silent complicity.
The Core of Spiritual Noumenal Responsibility (SNR)
At the heart of SNR lies the belief that responsibility is not quantifiable or divisible, nor is it reducible to intention, outcome, or legal frameworks. Rather, it emerges from our moral position within the totality of being. In this sense, responsibility is ontologically expansive: we are responsible not only for our actions but also for how those actions resonate through the moral field of others.
Zosima’s teaching is in perfect harmony with this. He does not speak of empirical fault or inherited blame but of a freely chosen ethical stance — a moral awakening that occurs when one sees oneself as implicated in the structure of the world.
Importantly, SNR is not grounded in original sin or deterministic guilt. The perception of spiritual responsibility here is not imposed by nature or religion — it is not inherited, but assumed voluntarily through the construction and maintenance of one's Structured Internal Value Hierarchy (SIVH).
SNR vs. Inherited Guilt
While some may be tempted to conflate SNR with religious or psychoanalytic models of inherited guilt (e.g. original sin, collective unconscious guilt, ancestral trauma), such interpretations miss the essential point: SNR is not deterministic.The moral burden in SNR is always chosen, not passively borne.
Responsibility for oneself and others arises through conscious participation in the construction of a personal SIVH — the internal moral structure that allows the individual to discern between mere impulse and principled action. It is precisely this voluntary moral architecture that makes responsibility possible. Without a consciously formed hierarchy of values, there is no framework for taking true moral responsibility.
Moral Causality as Active Participation
From the SNR perspective, every moral decision is a participation in the architecture of the world. We shape the moral environment not just through action, but also through omission, cynicism, self-exemption, or cowardice. This is why Zosima’s statement is not a mystical exaggeration but a precise metaphysical insight: to refrain from confronting evil is to allow it; to deny one’s responsibility is to deny freedom itself.
Thus, SNR is not a weight placed upon the individual by fate, dogma, or collective mythology. It is an existential affirmation — a free acknowledgment that the world’s moral architecture is partially shaped by one’s every action, omission, or silence. It is a personal embrace of the idea that freedom without responsibility is incoherent, and that true moral agency always carries with it the infinite weight of moral causality.
Two Principally Opposing Ways of Experiencing Reality
1) Omniscient–Empirical Locus: Determinism Through Absolute Causality
In this worldview, the individual locates their sense of responsibility strictly within the empirical realm — that is, within what can be observed, measured, and causally understood in phenomenological terms. Responsibility, in this schema, is quantifiable, and therefore limited to actions clearly and directly traceable to the agent. This results in a sharply delineated sphere of influence — a metaphorical circle of control — within which the person believes their decisions matter. Outside of that circle, causality is assigned to “other forces,” external and separate from the self.
At first glance, this seems like a pragmatic and even reasonable framework: one should focus on what is within one’s control and leave the rest. But this logic contains a hidden metaphysical presupposition: in order to confidently assert that a particular effect (e.g., a war in another country) was entirely uninfluenced by any of one’s prior actions, the individual must assume access to a complete map of causal chains. They must be able to determine, with certainty, that no ripple effect — no word spoken, action modeled, connection missed, or silence chosen — has in any way contributed to that outcome.
In short: the person draws a border between their causal influence and everything outside of it — but that very act assumes omniscience. It presupposes that all causal chains are traceable, that all variables are knowable, and that there is no meaningful causal ambiguity. In doing so, this worldview unintentionally adopts a view of absolute causality — one where the entire universe operates under transparent, unbroken chains of cause and effect.
And here lies the paradox: by insisting on a limited sphere of moral and practical responsibility, the individual commits to a metaphysical position where everything is causally determined — even the things they claim to be unrelated to. This totalizing view collapses the noumenal realm entirely. There is no room for spontaneity, freedom, or moral emergence. Instead, we find ourselves in a deterministic universe, closed, calculable, and predictable — where events are not just knowable in retrospect but could, in principle, be fully anticipated if we had sufficient information.
This view of the world is not unlike the Laplacian fantasy of a deterministic cosmos — a universe run by an “intellect” that, knowing all forces and positions of all particles at a given time, could compute the entire future and past of the cosmos. But this is not how human reality unfolds.
If such determinism were true in human affairs, we would expect the system to be optimized for stability — for perfect efficiency, minimal entropy, and predictability. There would be no room for “glitches in the matrix,” no outliers, no true surprises — and certainly no moral responsibility in the Kantian sense. Responsibility would dissolve into the mechanical unfolding of pre-coded events, much like the logic of a chess engine calculating all possible future moves.
But that’s not our world.
What we see instead is emergence, irreversibility, anomaly — and most importantly, moral decision-making. The very fact that we experience conflict, hesitation, regret, and courage indicates that our actions cannot be fully contained within a closed causal map. The omniscient–empirical locus collapses under the weight of its own assumptions. It demands absolute knowledge in order to absolve the self of unknowable effects — and in doing so, it forfeits the only thing that makes human agency meaningful: the possibility that one’s influence exceeds one’s certainty.
2) Potent–Existential Locus: We Just Do Not Know
The second — and fundamentally different — way of living in relation to responsibility begins with a blunt but profound truth: we do not know the limits of our responsibility. This is not a poetic exaggeration but a philosophical axiom rooted in the Spiritual Noumenal Perception of Responsibility (SNR), Kantian metaphysics, and a long tradition of thinkers who affirm the freedom of the will.
Let us pose the same question as before: Is the war in a distant country my responsibility? The immediate, common-sense answer is: probably not. But what does “probably” actually mean? It admits uncertainty — and that uncertainty is everything.
The moment we acknowledge that there are gaps in our knowledge — that we cannot map out every causal chainstemming from our actions or inactions — we are no longer in a world of closed causality. We are now operating in a mixed ontology: part phenomenal (knowable, empirical), part noumenal (unknowable, beyond our direct grasp). And once we accept that causal chains may extend into the noumenal realm, we also accept that we do not — and cannot — know where our personal responsibility ends.
This leads to a radical, but logically sound, conclusion:
We must act as though our responsibility is limitless.
Here’s why: if we believe in free will, then we believe we are agents of moral causality. We accept that we can begin new chains of action, guided by values, not instincts or empirical conditioning. But if we also accept that the world contains noumenal dimensions — causal depths and interconnections we cannot empirically observe — then we cannot draw a definitive circle around “what we caused” and “what we didn’t.” To do so would require omniscience — the very error committed by the deterministic view.
In contrast, this view accepts Kant’s dual-aspect theory: we exist partly as phenomena, fully embedded in time and natural law, and partly as noumena, as intelligible agents of spontaneous, moral action. In this framework, no act is ever "just personal.” The consequences of our decisions may ripple outward indefinitely — into domains we cannot see, into lives we do not know, into futures we cannot predict.
This isn’t mystical speculation. It’s the logical consequence of combining:
Our moral freedom (Kant's practical reason)
The unknowability of the noumenal world
And the recursive, chain-like nature of causality
Thus, any attempt to quantify responsibility becomes absurd — like trying to calculate the weight of a moral decision in grams. Responsibility is not a slice of cake to be divided. It is an unmeasurable condition of moral existence. We are responsible not because we know all effects, but precisely because we don’t.
This is not an argument for guilt. It is an argument for seriousness. To live according to SNR is to live in acknowledgment of the radical potential of our choices, and the impossible-to-fix boundaries of their consequences. It replaces deterministic fatalism with moral attentiveness.
In this sense, our responsibility is not only great —
It is incalculable. And therefore, in principle, limitless.
The Unrecognized Cognitive Dissonance Problem
When we examine the dominant mode of responsibility attribution in modern society, it becomes clear that the vast majority of people operate within the first framework: responsibility as an empirical phenomenon, something quantifiable, finite, and tied to observable actions.
However, this approach—when analyzed carefully—requires the simultaneous belief in at least three propositions:
Responsibility is limited and empirically measurable.
One can accurately draw the boundary between what is and isn’t under one’s control.
Reality is fundamentally deterministic, so that events can be causally assigned and dissected with confidence.
But herein lies the problem: these three assumptions cannot all be held together without contradiction.
If responsibility is limited (1), then in order to define its boundaries with confidence, one must also assume omniscience (2)—an epistemic position akin to playing God.
If determinism is true (3), then individual responsibility itself becomes incoherent—because the very freedom required to be morally accountable evaporates under total causal necessity.
If one denies omniscience (2), then the very act of drawing a fixed boundary of responsibility becomes impossible.
In other words, these assumptions are mutually incompatible. Yet many people hold on to them vaguely and inconsistently, without tracing them to their logical conclusions. This produces a latent form of cognitive dissonance—rarely recognized explicitly, but felt deeply and chronically as existential tension.
This inner dissonance manifests in behavior:
People aggressively claim maximal credit for outcomes deemed "positive," bolstering their sense of agency.
Simultaneously, they deny or deflect responsibility for outcomes deemed "negative," shielding themselves from guilt or shame.
This contradiction—pressing the gas and brake at the same time—creates an unstable psychological state. The result is often:
Increased neuroticism, due to unresolved inner conflict between control and helplessness.
Avoidance of moral responsibility, masked as therapeutic relativism or spiritual bypassing.
A retreat into short-term gratification, escapist behaviors, or depressive withdrawal, because the dissonance makes meaningful long-term orientation impossible.
In this way, generations of people have become trapped in a double-bind of their own making — seeking the illusion of autonomy while outsourcing responsibility; desiring meaning while denying the cost of claiming it.
To break free from this paralysis, one must adopt a different framework altogether — the Spiritual Noumenal Perception of Responsibility — which neither quantifies moral agency nor draws impossible boundaries, but affirms the seriousness and mystery of freedom as a lived, transcendent responsibility.
The Existential Lie as the Core of Existential Angst
The psychological architecture of existential anxiety, as famously described by Irvin D. Yalom, rests upon four fundamental concerns:
Death – The inevitability of mortality.
Freedom – The burden of radical freedom and the responsibility it entails.
Isolation – The unbridgeable gap between self and others.
Meaninglessness – The absence of intrinsic meaning in life.
While each of these appears distinct, they share a common psychological and metaphysical root: a fundamental dishonesty in how we relate to our own agency. This dishonesty can be called the Existential Lie — the tacit construction of a worldview in which we attribute partial responsibility to ourselves only when it is convenient, while avoiding the weight of full responsibility when it becomes morally or emotionally burdensome.
This lie is not necessarily conscious. It functions subtly — embedded in the way we explain our actions, rationalize our failures, or attribute outcomes to external forces. It is this inner deception — the denial of one's full moral agency — that ultimately amplifies all four dimensions of existential anxiety.
Death: Fear of Judgment and Unearned Existence
The fear of death becomes more acute not merely because life will end, but because we suspect — often subconsciously — that we have not earned our life. If our successes are claimed as personal victories, but our moral failures are disowned, then death does not merely mark the end of life, but the possible beginning of judgment. The terror of “what comes after” is amplified by what was not owned during life. The existential lie — our failure to take absolute responsibility — taints our sense of completion and integrity at life’s end.
Freedom: Disconnected from Responsibility
Freedom, in this framework, feels hollow. It becomes an abstraction rather than a lived experience. The paradox of modern life is that although we are freer than ever in terms of external choice, this freedom is disconnected from inner commitment and moral responsibility. When we see responsibility as quantifiable and situational, we detach it from the freedom that defines our moral character. Hence, we become passive choosers rather than responsible agents. Freedom without responsibility becomes existential disorientation — a surplus of options with no weight.
Isolation: The Result of Disowned Influence
Existential isolation is often understood as metaphysical: no one can suffer or die on our behalf. But there is also a moral dimension to isolation. Many of the relational fractures people experience are self-generated — the consequence of patterns of action that drive others away, emotionally or behaviorally. Yet, because we tend to disown the causal role of our actions in these outcomes (using Empirical Phenomenological Responsibility constructs like “I didn’t mean to” or “they overreacted”), we deepen our isolation. Not only are we alone — we believe we are innocent in our loneliness, which makes it irredeemable.
Meaninglessness: The Result of Repressed Potential
Finally, meaninglessness is not merely the absence of cosmic significance. It is the result of failed moral actualization— the quiet, persistent awareness that we have not lived up to our potential. And the most tragic part is this: within the Empirical model of responsibility, one can never reach that potential. Why? Because the perception of responsibility as divisible, situational, and negotiable prevents the radical commitment required to live meaningfully. We become actors in partial roles, never stepping into the full authorship of our life story. Thus, meaning eludes us not because life has none, but because we refuse the existential price of claiming it.
Final Synthesis
All four existential anxieties intensify when we live inside the Existential Lie — the inner split between what we are(moral agents) and how we behave (rationalizing agents). The lie is not intellectual; it is existential — rooted in how we interpret responsibility, causality, and freedom.
The remedy is not more self-help rhetoric about “taking control” or “believing in oneself.” It is rather the painful but liberating shift to what we have called the Spiritual Noumenological Perception of Responsibility: the stance that we are not merely participants in causal chains but origin points of moral agency, and thus must live as if every act could reverberate endlessly.
To stop lying to ourselves is to stop fearing life — and to finally be able to carry its weight with meaning, freedom, and dignity.
The Existential Lie in the Context of Grand Narratives: Matthew 12:31 and the Spirit of Responsibility
The existential lie — the dissonance between what we are (free moral agents) and how we perceive ourselves (empirically bound, partially responsible actors) — is not a modern invention. It echoes across the grand narratives of the world’s religious and philosophical traditions. When values are understood as Live Photos of cosmic narratives — as briefly animated revelations of higher moral order — then our rejection of responsibility becomes something much deeper than a psychological habit: it becomes a metaphysical transgression.
This is precisely where Matthew 12:31 enters the picture:
“Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” (ESV)
This verse has long puzzled scholars, mystics, and moral philosophers. But if we frame it within the concept of values as distillations of cosmic order — and the Spirit as the animating glimpse of that higher order — the meaning becomes clear. The “blasphemy against the Spirit” is not a single transgressive act; it is a mode of being — the sustained willful rejection of the truth, the active refusal to acknowledge the Spirit as the bearer of moral reality.
In this context, the Spirit corresponds to that part of reality which carries moral weight, which speaks from the noumenal realm into our lives through conscience, insight, or narrative. To reject this is to embrace the Existential Lie.
The Structure of the Existential Lie
The contradiction lies in holding the following mutually exclusive beliefs:
My personal responsibility is empirically measurable, limited, and divisible.
I am not God; I am not omniscient and cannot fully trace causal chains.
The world is not wholly deterministic (i.e., free will exists to some degree).
These three cannot coexist without generating internal contradiction. If you deny omniscience, you cannot confidently delimit the boundaries of your own responsibility. If you accept non-determinism, you must allow for your freedom — which immediately implies moral agency. But if you quantify responsibility only within the bounds of visible causality, you deny the very premise of that freedom.
This is the Existential Lie: to live as if responsibility were partial, while simultaneously believing in freedom and rejecting determinism — all without claiming godlike omniscience that would be required to draw those boundaries.
Blasphemy Against the Spirit as Ontological Rejection
The Spirit, then, represents the intuitive signal from the cosmic order, the noumenal echo that reaches us through value-laden experiences, moral narratives, and moments of conscience. To live inside the lie is to repeatedly, systematically, and willfully reject the truth that the Spirit reveals: that we are free, responsible agents whose decisions initiate unforeseeable causal chains, and that we cannot outsource our agency to circumstances, personality, or external justification.
This blasphemy is not a single denial — it is a structural disposition of the will. It is the lived commitment to empirical rationalizations, to causal self-minimization, to “explaining away” moral weight. It is the meta-sin: the refusal to allow oneself to be addressed by value.
In this sense, Matthew 12:31 is not a threat of damnation for the heretical — it is a warning about what it means to exit the moral plane entirely. For a person who refuses the possibility of responsibility, there is nothing to forgive, because there is no one left who accepts the call of value in the first place.
The Shift to Spiritual Responsibility and the Necessity of Structured Internal Value Hierarchies (SIVHs)
The transition from an empirical-phenomenological to a spiritual-noumenological understanding of responsibility is not a gradual shift in attitude; it is a fundamental transformation in one’s perception of reality. This transformation can only occur through the internal adoption of a value structure grounded in what may be called a monotheistic top value — a unifying, absolute aim that hierarchically organizes all other values. This is the essential function of a Structured Internal Value Hierarchy (SIVH).
A person who possesses such a hierarchy does not merely believe in moral truth; they live in a different ontological framework. For them, value is not a subjective preference but a reflection of cosmic order. Responsibility is not distributed based on convenience or empirical appearances; it is indivisible and rooted in the recognition that every act initiates or continues moral causality — whether visible or invisible.
A Revisited Example: Why Adultery Becomes Impossible
Take again the example of a woman engaging in adultery. In the empirical-phenomenological model, her actions may be rationalized, minimized, or contextually justified — “I was lonely,” “He was emotionally unavailable,” “It wasn’t really cheating.” The goal is damage control, narrative manipulation, and blame redistribution.
But under a spiritual-noumenological framework supported by an SIVH, such behavior would become ontologically impossible. The woman would not even entertain the decision because her perception of causality, selfhood, and future is rooted in a radically expanded field of responsibility. She would not be thinking “Can I get away with this?” but rather: “What will this act initiate — in my family, in my children, in the cosmos?”
If she had, for example, three children, her reflection would stretch across time and identity: “How will this betrayal form the psychic architecture of my daughter?” She would be able to imagine, with a painful lucidity, the suicide of her daughter at 19 — not as a prediction, but as a recognition of the invisible moral threads woven by her actions across decades. That may sound grave — and it is. That is what it means to live in truth.
The Failure of Compensatory Behaviors
Those who reject this spiritual model often resort to compensatory mechanisms. Rather than confronting the full, infinite weight of responsibility, they attempt to bypass the existential lie with acts that feel meaningful but are ultimately morally disconnected from the original breach.
They buy their children more toys. They support “responsibility initiatives” at work. They become therapists, coaches, activists. These compensations may even be noble on the surface — but if they arise from a denial of fundamental moral causality, they function more as palliatives than transformations. They reduce guilt to utility and truth to narrative comfort.
The long-term effect of this denial is predictable: existential stagnation, chronic low-level neuroticism, and a gnawing sense of inauthenticity. These individuals may “function” well socially, but they live under the shadow of an unresolved ontological contradiction — they believe in free will but act as if responsibility is partial; they believe in moral agency but fragment their culpability across circumstance and character.
Final Insight
SIVHs are not only moral tools — they are metaphysical antidotes to the existential lie. Only when one fully integrates a structured value hierarchy — crowned by a singular, unshakable top value — does the spiritual perception of responsibility become actionable. Without it, all discussions of ethics collapse into utilitarianism, and all narratives are flattened by convenience.
Living in truth, then, is not merely doing the right thing. It is living in alignment with cosmic narrative responsibility: the idea that our smallest actions echo in the most distant futures, and that meaning is not made by minimizing responsibility, but by bearing it fully — even when no one else sees.
