Original sin is my upsurge in a world where there are others

The expression “Original sin is my upsurge in a world where there are others” describes guilt as rooted in the condition of appearing among other people. Each person encounters others as free subjects but also makes them objects through their own acts of self-assertion; this reciprocal implication cannot be escaped or undone by good intentions, indifference, or withdrawal.

Meaning and Scope

The expression identifies an original situation rather than a discrete transgression. A person comes into a world where others are already present and is, in turn, present to them. The resulting guilt is not first a matter of breaking a rule: it arises because one’s own existence and self-assertion affect how others appear and experience themselves.

The passage traces two related forms of guilt. Beneath another person’s look, one experiences alienation and exposure as a fall that must be assumed. When one looks back, one makes that other person an object and an instrument, subjecting them to a corresponding alienation. The expression gathers these reciprocal moments into the idea of original sin: relations with others may vary, but they remain variations on this initial entanglement.

Freedom and Helplessness

The account makes guilt inseparable from powerlessness. Attempts to act for another person’s freedom still treat that person as an instrument and reduce their freedom to an object of one’s project. Yet force cannot reach the other person as a free subject: it can only encounter them as an object, while their freedom remains beyond control.

Consequently, another person’s freedom can neither be increased nor diminished, directed nor possessed by one’s actions. Actions can provide occasions for that freedom to manifest itself, but they cannot take hold of it. One is guilty because one’s emergence gives the other a new dimension of being, yet powerless either to benefit from that implication or to repair it. The passage thus refuses to present responsibility as mastery over another person’s freedom.

Ethical Implications

The expression also frames the limits of respect as a practical problem. Persuasion and gentleness do not escape the problem of imposing values: education still selects principles by which a child is to be trained. Even a project explicitly aimed at respecting another person’s freedom risks violating that freedom through the attitudes and choices it adopts. Total indifference offers no exit, because people already exist together in a world where each is implicated in the presence of others.

This is why the expression cannot be reduced either to a confession of an avoidable offense or to a claim that particular actions are inconsequential. It describes a structural predicament in which self-assertion affects others while never granting control over their freedom. Guilt persists alongside helplessness, and the possibility of relating to others does not erase that original condition.