responsibility（责任，负责）来自拉丁语respondere，指“响应，回应”。

13世纪的法语是responsible，16世纪指answerable to（可回应的），再后来指accountable for actions（对行为负责），trustworthy or reliable（值得信赖或可靠）。

所以，responsibility的原意是“回应的能力”，而人的回应能力是无限的，与有限的“行动能力”（action）有别。

在此意义下，人与世界的互动、响应，就是“责任”，就是说，人对周遭的一切“负责”，而且这种能力是无限的，。。。

参考文献：

https://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/responsibility

The noun responsibility comes from the Latin verb ‘respondere’, meaning ‘to respond’, via the past participle stem ‘respons-’. In the 13th century, the French was ‘responsible’ and at the end of the 16th century this meant ‘answerable to’ or ‘expected to justify’, as in ‘required to justify or answerable to someone for something’.

In the 1640s, responsible meant ‘accountable for actions’ and 50 years later responsible was in use with the sense of ‘trustworthy or reliable’.