Unified Cosmology Series — Paper VII Legacy: The Symbolic Continuity of the Ente and the Externalization of Responsibility

This paper develops the seventh pillar of the Unified Cosmology: legacy as the symbolic continuity of the ente. Legacy is not memory, reputation, or cultural inheritance, but the sealed totality of the ente’s actions across its interior time. Because responsibility is the structural engine of legacy, the ente’s failure to interpret its own continuity leads to the externalization of responsibility into symbolic structures of redemption. These structures—historically embodied in religious and political forms—provide consolation to the powerless and legitimacy to the powerful, but they weaken symbolic authorship by shifting continuity outside the ente. The paper analyzes the dynamics of externalized redemption, the asymmetry it produces, and its long‑term effects on symbolic civilizations. It concludes that a civilization grounded in responsibility preserves its legacy, while one grounded in absolution dissolves it.