seriously they take their responsibilities. Often we do this
informally, via moral judgment. Sometimes we do this formally, for
instance in legal judgment. This article considers mainly moral
responsibility, and focuses largely upon individuals. Later sections
also comment on the relation between legal and moral responsibility,
and on the responsibility of collectives.
The article discusses four different areas of individual moral
responsibility: (1) Responsible agency, whereby a person is regarded
as a normal moral agent; (2) Retrospective responsibility, when a
person is judged for her actions, for instance, in being blamed or
punished; (3) Prospective responsibility, for instance, the
responsibilities attaching to a particular role; and (4)
Responsibility as a virtue, when we praise a person as being
responsible. Philosophical discussion of responsibility has focused
largely on (1) and (2). The article points out that a wider view of
responsibility helps explore some connections between moral and legal
responsibility, and between individual and collective responsibility.
It also enables us to relate responsibility to its original
philosophical use, which was in political thought.
1. Introduction
The word "responsibility" is surprisingly modern. It is also, as Paul
Ricoeur has observed, "not really well-established within the
philosophical tradition" (2000: 11). This is reflected in the fact
that we can locate two rather different philosophical approaches to
responsibility.
The original philosophical usage of "responsibility" was political
(see McKeon, 1957). This reflected the origin of the word. In all
modern European languages, "responsibility" only finds a home toward
the end of the eighteenth century. This is within debates about
representative government, that is, government which is responsible to
the people. In the etymology of "responsibility," the Oxford English
Dictionary cites the debates on the U.S. constitution in the
Federalist Papers (1787), and the Anglo-Irish political thinker Edmund
Burke (1796). When John Stuart Mill writes of responsibility, in the
middle of the nineteenth century, again his concern is not with free
will, but with the principles of representative government. At the end
of the nineteenth century, the most notable thinker to speak of
responsibility is Max Weber, who propounds an ethics of responsibility
(Verantwortungsethik) for the politician. For Weber, the vocation of
politics demands a calm attention to the facts of the situation and
the consequences of actions – and not to lofty or abstract principles.
So far as responsibility has a place in eighteenth and nineteenth
century thought, then, this is in political contexts, where the
concern is with responsible action and the principles of
representative government. In twentieth century philosophy, on the
other hand, the emphasis has been on questions of free will and
determinism: Is a person responsible for her actions or character?
Would the truth of determinism eliminate such responsibility? Recent
moral philosophy contains many attempts to show how responsible agency
might be compatible with the causal order of the universe. These
debates obviously center on the individual agent. As such, they pose
difficulties for understanding the topic of collective responsibility
– an issue that twentieth century politics has raised with a new
urgency. Nor does a concern with free will correspond to many everyday
issues about responsibility – for example, questions of mutual
accountability, defining a person's sphere of responsibility, or
judging a person as sufficiently responsible for a particular role.
This Encyclopedia article will mainly deal with the responsibility of
individual persons; another article considers collective moral
responsibility. In fact, there are several important uses of
responsibility as it relates to individuals, which this article will
tackle in turn. There are also important questions about the
distinction between moral and legal responsibility. The article will
then consider what relations there may be between the concept's
individual and collective uses. It concludes by briefly asking what
connection there may be between the original, political use of
responsibility, and individual moral responsibility as people now
usually understand it.
2. Individual Responsibility
There is no philosophically well-settled way of dividing or analyzing
the various components of responsibility, and some components are
often ignored by philosophers. To take a more comprehensive approach,
this article divides the responsibility of individuals into four areas
of enquiry. Recent analytic moral philosophy has tended to ask two
deceptively simple questions about responsibility:
1. "What is it to be responsible?" and
2. "What is a person responsible for?"
The first question is usually taken as a question about moral agency,
the second as a question about holding people accountable for past
actions. As noted, however, this does not capture the variety of uses
that we make of the concept. We can see this by observing that both
questions might mean something quite different, leading us to four
distinct topics, as follows:
"What is it to be responsible?" is most often asked by philosophers as
a question about the foundations of moral agency. What sort of
creature can properly be held responsible for its actions? The simple
answer is: a normal human adult. To explain and justify this reply,
philosophers tend to turn to psychological and metaphysical features
of normal adults, such as free will. We might also approach the same
issue with a somewhat different emphasis: What features of (normal,
adult) human interaction are involved in our holding one another
responsible?
However, in asking "What is it to be responsible?" we might also have
a second question in mind. We often praise some people as responsible,
and criticize others as irresponsible. Here responsibility names a
virtue – a morally valuable character trait. We may also praise an
institution as responsible. One of the word's original uses was to
call for "responsible government." We can compare this with the more
recent demand that corporations be "socially responsible." This aspect
of responsibility has received very little philosophical attention.
"What is a person responsible for?" is a question most often asked by
philosophers in connection with causation and accountability. This
retrospective, or backward-looking, use is closely connected with
praise and blame, punishment, and desert. When something has gone
wrong, we invariably want to know who was at fault; and when something
has gone right, we occasionally stop to ask who acted well. This is
the topic of retrospective responsibility.
Again, however, we might use the same words to ask an entirely
different question: "What is a person responsible for?" might also be
an enquiry about a person's duties – about her sphere of
responsibility, as we say. A parent is responsible for caring for his
child, an employee for doing her job, a citizen for obeying the law.
It is a basic fact of human cooperation that responsibilities are
often divided up between people: for example, the doctor is
responsible for prescribing the right drugs, and the patient
responsible for taking them correctly. As against questions of
retrospective responsibility, this topic is sometimes termed
prospective responsibility, that is, what responsibilities we are
duty-bound to undertake.
These two apparently simple questions ("What is it to be responsible?"
and "What is a person responsible for?") about individual
responsibility thus point to four different topics:
1. moral agency
2. responsibility as a virtue
3. retrospective responsibility
4. prospective responsibility
Each of these topics poses a host of important philosophical
questions. Both the retrospective and prospective uses also raise the
relation between legal and moral responsibility. Many important
theories of responsibility relate to legal concerns, which will be
discussed in a later section. As we pursue these topics, there is also
the difficulty of seeing how they interrelate, so that it makes sense
that we use the same word to raise each issue.
The discussion begins with the topics which philosophers have most
often discussed: the nature of moral agency and retrospective
responsibility.
a. Moral Agency
Normal human adults represent our paradigm case of responsible agents.
What is distinctive about them, that we accord them this status?
Thinking of retrospective responsibility in particular, why can be
held accountable for their actions – justly praised or blamed,
deservedly punished or rewarded? The philosophical literature has
explored three broad approaches to moral agency:
* Human beings have free will, that is, distinctive causal powers
or a special metaphysical status, that separate them from everything
else in the universe;
* Human beings can act on the basis of reason(s);
* Human beings have a certain set of moral or proto-moral feelings.
The first approach, although historically important, has largely been
discredited by the success of modern science. Science provides, or
promises, naturalistic explanations of such phenomena as the evolution
of the human species and the workings of the brain. Almost all modern
philosophers approach responsibility as compatibilists – that is, they
assume that moral responsibility must be compatible with causal or
naturalistic explanation of human thought and action, and therefore
reject the metaphysical idea of free will. (An important note: There
can be terminological confusion here. Some contemporary philosophers
will use the term "free will" to describe our everyday freedom of
choice, claiming that free will, properly understood, is compatible
with the world's causal order.)
Among modern compatibilists, a contest remains, however, between the
second and third approaches – positions that are essentially Kantian
and Humean in inspiration. Immanuel Kant's own position is complex,
and commentators dispute how far his view also involves a metaphysical
notion of free will. It is indisputable, however, that our rationality
is at the centre of his picture of moral agency. Kant himself does not
speak of responsibility – the word was only just coming into the
language of his day – but he does have much to say about imputation
(Zurechnung), that is, the basis on which actions are imputed to a
person. Kant was principally concerned with evaluation of the self.
Although he occasionally mentions blame (mutual accountability), his
moral theory is really about the basis on which a person treats
herself as responsible. The core of his answer is that a rational
agent chooses to act in the light of principles – that is, we
deliberate among reasons. Therefore standards of rationality apply to
us, and when we fail to act rationally this is, simply and crudely, a
Bad Thing. It is important to be aware that Kant sees reason as having
moral content, so that there is a failure of rationality involved when
we do something immoral – for instance, by pursuing our self-interest
at the expense of others. Even if we sometimes feel no inclination to
take account of others, reason still tells us that we should, and can
motivate us to do so. Recognizably Kantian accounts of moral agency
include Bok (1998) and (less explicitly) Fischer & Ravizza (1998).
The issue of reason's moral content separates Kantians from Humeans.
David Hume denied that reason can provide us with moral guidance, or
the motivation to act morally. He is famous for his claim that "Reason
is wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a
principle as conscience, or a sense of morals" (A Treatise of Human
Nature, book 3, part 1, sect. 1). If we are moral agents, this is
because we are equipped with certain tendencies to feel or desire,
dispositions that make it seem rational to us to act and think
morally. Hume himself stressed our tendency to feel sympathy for
others and our tendency to approve of actions that lead to social
benefits (and to disapprove of those contrary to the social good).
Another important class of feelings concern our tendencies to feel
shame or guilt, or more broadly, to be concerned with how others see
our actions and character. A Humean analysis of responsibility will
investigate how these emotions lead us to be responsive to one
another, in ways that support moral conduct and provide social
penalties for immoral conduct. That is, its emphasis is less on
people's evaluation of themselves and more on how people judge and
influence one another. Russell (1995) carefully develops Hume's own
account. In twentieth century philosophy, broadly Humean approaches
were given a new lease of life by Peter Strawson's "Freedom and
Resentment" (1962). This classic essay underlined the role of
"reactive sentiments" or "reactive attitudes" – that is, emotional
responses such as resentment or shame – in practices of
responsibility.
The basic criticisms that each position makes of the other are simple.
Kantians are vulnerable to the charge that they do not give a proper
account of the role of feeling and emotion in the moral life. They can
also be accused of reifying our capacity for reason in a way that
makes mysterious how human beings' capacities for reason and morality
might have evolved. Humeans are vulnerable to the charge that they
cannot give any account of the validity of reasoning beyond the
boundaries of what we might feel inclined to endorse or reject: Can
the Humean really hold that moral reasoning has any validity for
people who do not feel concern for others? Contemporary philosophers
have developed both positions so as to take account of such
criticisms, which has led to rather technical debates about the nature
of reason (for instance, Bernard Williams' (1981) well-known
distinction between internal and external reasons) and normativity
(what it is for something to provide a reason to act or think in a
certain way, for example, Korsgaard, 1996). So far as responsibility
is concerned, Wallace (1994) is a well-regarded attempt to mediate
between the two approaches. Rather differently, Pettit (2001) uses our
susceptibility to reasons as the basis for an essentially interactive
account of moral agency.
For our purposes, perhaps the most important point is that both
positions highlight a series of factors important to responsibility
and mutual accountability. These factors include: general
responsiveness to others (for instance, via moral reasoning or
feelings such as sympathy); a sense of responsibility for our actions
(for instance, so that we may offer reasons for our actions or feel
emotions of shame or guilt); and tendencies to regard others as
responsible (for instance, to respect persons as the authors of their
deeds and to feel resentful or grateful to them). In each case, note
that the first example in brackets has a typically Kantian
(reason-based) cast, the second a Humean (feeling/emotion-related)
cast.
Two further thoughts should be added which apply regardless of which
side of this debate one inclines toward. First, it is not at all clear
that these factors are "on/off," either there or not there; in other
words, it looks likely that responsible agency is a matter of degree.
One possible implication of this is that some other animals might have
a degree of moral agency; another implication is that human beings may
vary in the extent of their agency. (This seems clearly true of
children as opposed to adults. We may be more reluctant to believe
that the extent of adults' moral agency can vary, but such a claim is
not obviously false.) Second, none of these factors has an obvious
connection to free will, in the metaphysical sense that opposes free
will to determinism. As we shall see, however, whether we emphasize
the rational or the affective basis for responsible agency tends to
generate characteristically different accounts of retrospective
responsibility, where the issue of free will tends to recur.
b. Retrospective Responsibility
In assigning responsibility for an outcome or event, we may simply be
telling a causal story. This might or might not involve human actions.
For example: the faulty gasket was responsible for the car breaking
down; his epileptic fit was responsible for the accident. Such usages
do not imply any assignment of blame or desert, and philosophers often
distinguish them by referring to "causal responsibility." More
commonly, however, responsibility attribution is concerned with the
morality of somebody's action(s). Among the many different causes that
led to an outcome, that action is identified as the morally salient
one. If we say the captain was responsible for the shipwreck, we do
not deny that all sorts of other causes were in play. But we do single
out the person who we think ought to be held responsible for the
outcome. Philosophers sometimes distinguish this usage, by speaking of
"liability responsibility." Retrospective responsibility usually
involves, then, a moral (or perhaps legal) judgment of the person
responsible. This judgment typically pictures the person as liable to
various consequences: to feeling remorse (or pride), to being blamed
(or praised), to making amends (or receiving gratitude), and so forth.
This topic is an old concern of philosophers, predating the term
"responsibility" by at least two millennia. The classic analysis of
the issues goes back to Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, where he
investigates the conditions that exculpate us from blame and the
circumstances where blame is appropriate. Among conditions that excuse
the actor, he mentions intoxication, force of circumstances, and
coercion: we cannot be held responsible where our capacity to choose
was grossly impaired or where there was no effective choice open to us
(though perhaps we can be blamed for getting into that condition or
those circumstances). We can be blamed for what we do when threatened
by others, but not as we would be if coercion were absent. In each
case, the issue seems to be whether or not we are able to control what
we do: if something lies beyond our control, it also lies beyond the
scope of our responsibility.
However, although Aristotle thinks that our capacities for
deliberation and choice are important to responsible agency, he lacks
the Kantian emphasis on rational control discussed in the last
section. Aristotle grants considerable importance to habituation and
stable character traits – the virtues and vices. Hence another way of
interpreting what he says about responsibility is to argue that
Aristotle's excusing conditions represent cases where an action does
not reveal a person's character: everybody would act like that if
circumstances provided no other choice; no one makes responsible
choices when drunk. On the other hand, how we respond to coercion does
reveal much about our virtues and vices; the point is that the meaning
of such acts is very different from the meaning they would have in the
absence of coercion.
In its emphasis on character, Aristotle's account is much closer to
Hume's than to Kant's, since character is about tendencies to feel and
behave in various ways, as well as to think and choose. Given that
Kant's moral psychology is usually thought to be less plausible than
Aristotle or Hume's, it is interesting that Kantian approaches have,
nonetheless, dominated modern approaches to retrospective
responsibility. Why should this be so?
Kant's underlying thought is that the person who acts well deserves to
be happy (he continually refers to goodness as "worthiness to be
happy"). The person who acts badly does not: she deserves to be
reproached, ought to feel remorse, and may even deserve punishment.
Since blame, guilt and punishment are of great practical importance,
it is clearly desirable that our account of responsibility justify
them. Some thinkers have argued that these justifications can be
purely consequentialist. For instance, Smart (1961) argues that blame,
guilt and punishment are only merited insofar as they can encourage
people to do better in the future. However, most philosophers have
been dissatisfied with such accounts. Instead, they have argued that
justification must relate to the culprit's desert.
For most people, the intuitive justification for the sort of desert
involved in retrospective responsibility lies in individual choice or
control. You chose to act selfishly: you deserve blame. You chose not
to take precautions: you deserve to bear the consequences. You chose
to break the law: you deserve punishment. (The question of legal
responsibility is considered separately, below.) This way of putting
matters clearly gives pride of place to our capacity to control our
conduct in the light of reasons, moral and otherwise. It will also
emphasize the intentions underlying an action rather than its actual
outcomes. This is because intentions are subject to rational choice in
a way that outcomes often are not. Kant's thought that the rational
agent can choose whether or not to act on the basis of reasons is
sometimes expressed in the idea that we should each be respected as
the authors of our thoughts and intentions. This thought has the less
positive consequence that when somebody chooses immorally and
irrationally, he fails in a distinctive way, so that he is not (in
Kant's terms) "worthy to be happy." Note, however, that this line of
thought is open to a very obvious objection. It can be argued that our
intentions and choices are conditioned by our characters, and our
characters by the circumstances of our upbringing. Clearly these are
not matters of choice. This is why a concern with retrospective
responsibility raises the family of issues around moral luck and
continues to lead back to the issue of free will: the idea that we
are, really and ultimately, the authors of our own choices – despite
scientific and common-sense appearances.
The article on praise and blame discusses this issue in more depth,
contrasting Kant's approach with that of Aristotle and utilitarianism.
Humeans, favoring naturalistic explanation of thought and action, are
likely to be drawn to elements of the last two – namely Aristotle's
emphasis on actions as revealing virtues and vices, and the
consequentialist emphasis on social benefits of practices of
accountability. In particular, Humeans are much more likely to see
retrospective responsibility in terms of the feelings that are
appropriate – for instance, our resentment at someone's bad conduct,
or our susceptibility to shame at others' responses. Clearly, such
feelings and the resulting actions are about our exercising mutual
influence on one another's conduct for the sake of more beneficial
social interaction. In other words, although the Humean analysis can
be understood in terms of individual psychology, it also points to the
question: What is it about human interaction that leads us to hold one
another responsible? Kantians, on the other hand, tend to think of
retrospective responsibility, not as a matter of influencing others,
but rather as our respecting individual capacities for rational
choice. This respect may still have harsh consequences, as it involves
granting people their just deserts, including blame and punishment.
c. Prospective Responsibility
A different use of "responsibility" is as a synonym for "duty." When
we ask about a person's responsibilities, we are concerned with what
she ought to be doing or attending to. Sometimes we use the term to
describe duties that everyone has – for example, "Everyone is
responsible for looking after his own health." More typically, we use
the term to describe a particular person's duties. He is responsible
for sorting the garbage; she is responsible for looking after her
baby; the Environmental Protection Agency is responsible for
monitoring air pollution; and so on. In these cases, the term singles
out the duties, or "area of responsibility," that somebody has by
virtue of their role.
This usage bears at least one straightforward relation to the question
of retrospective responsibility. We will tend to hold someone
responsible when she fails to perform her duties. A captain is
responsible for the safety of the ship; hence he will be held
responsible if there is a shipwreck. The usual justification for this
lies in the thought that if he had taken his responsibility more
seriously, then his actions might have averted the shipwreck. In some
cases, though, when we are entrusted with responsibility for
something, we will be held responsible if harm occurs, regardless of
whether we might have averted it. This might be true if one hires
(that is, rents) a car, for instance: even if an accident is not your
fault, the contract may stipulate that you will be responsible for
part of the repair costs. In order to hire (rent) the car in the first
place, one must accept – take responsibility for – certain risks.
Legal thinkers, in particular, have pointed out that this suggests one
way in which Kantian approaches – that is, approaches to
responsibility which focus on acts and outcomes that were under a
person's control – may be inadequate. We may think that everybody has
a duty (that is, a prospective responsibility) to make recompense when
certain sorts of risks materialize from their actions. Consider a
standard example: suppose John accidentally slips and breaks a vase in
Jane's shop. This is probably not something John had control over, and
to avoid the risk of damaging any of Jane's possessions, John would
have to avoid entering her shop altogether. Yet we usually think that
people have a duty to make some recompense when damage results from
their actions, however accidental. From the point of view of our
interacting with one another, the issue is not really whether a person
could have avoided a particular, unfortunate outcome, so much as the
fact that all our actions create risks; and when those risks
materialize, someone suffers. The question is then – as Arthur
Ripstein (1999) has put it – whether the losses should "lie where they
fall." To say that they should is basically to shrug our shoulders
about the damage; in that case, the only person who suffers is the
shop-owner. But we often think that losses should be redistributed.
For that to happen, someone else has to make some sort of amends – in
this case, the person who caused the accident will have to accept
responsibility.
In terms of prospective responsibility, then, we may think that
everyone has a duty to make certain amends when certain risks of
action actually materialize – just because all our actions impose
risks on others as well as ourselves. In this case, retrospective
responsibility is justified, not by whether the person controlled the
outcome or could have chosen to do otherwise, but by reference to
these prospective responsibilities. Notice, however, that we might
want to distinguish the duty to make amends from the issue of
blameworthiness. One might accept the above account as to why the
customer should compensate the owner of the broken vase, but add that
in such a case she is not to blame for the breakage. There is clearly
some merit to this response. It suggests that retrospective
responsibility is more complicated than is often thought:
blameworthiness and liability to compensate are different things, and
may need to be justified in different ways. However, this question has
not really been systematically pursued by moral philosophers, although
the distinction between moral culpability and liability to punishment
has attracted much attention among legal philosophers.
The connection between prospective and retrospective responsibility
raises another complication. This stems from the fact that people
often disagree about what they ought to do – that is, about what
people's prospective responsibilities are. This question of moral
disagreement is not often mentioned in debates about responsibility,
but may be rather important. To take an example: people have very
different beliefs about the ethics of voluntary euthanasia – some call
it "mercy killing," others outright murder. Depending on our view, we
will tend to blame or to condone the person who kills to end grave
suffering. In other words, different views of somebody's prospective
responsibilities will lead to very different views of how
retrospective responsibility ought to be assigned. One might even
argue that many of our moral disagreements are actually brought to
light, and fought out, when actors and on-lookers dispute what
responses are appropriate. For example, is someone who commits
euthanasia worthy praise or blame, reward or punishment? These
disagreements, often very vocal, are important for the whole topic of
responsibility, because they relate to how moral agents come to be
aware of what morality demands of them.
Kantian ethics typically describes moral agency in terms of the
co-authorship of moral norms: the rational agent imposes norms upon
herself, and so can regard herself as an "author" of morality. (This
element of Kantian ethics can be difficult to appreciate, because Kant
is so clear that everyone should impose the same objective morality on
themselves.) Whether or not one accepts the Kantian emphasis upon
rationality or a universalist morality, it is clear that an important
element of responsible agency consists in judging one's own
responsibilities. Hence, we do not tend to describe a dutiful child as
responsible. This is because he obeys, rather than exercising his own
judgment about what he ought to do. This issue is not just about how
we judge our own duties, however: it's also about how others judge us,
and our right to judge others. So far as others regard us as
responsible, they will recognize that we also have a right to judge
what people's prospective responsibilities are, and how retrospective
responsibility ought to be assigned. Importantly, people can recognize
one another as responsible in this way, even in the face of quite deep
moral disagreements. By the same token, we know how disrespectful it
is of someone, not to take her moral judgments seriously.
The question of how far we are entitled to judge prospective
responsibilities – our own and other people's – and how far we are
entitled to judge retrospective responsibilities – our own and others'
– raises yet another complication for how we think about
responsibility. As the example of childhood suggests, there can be
degrees of responsibility. Ascribing different degrees of
responsibility may be necessary or appropriate with regard to
different sorts of decision-making. Hence we sometimes say, "He's not
ready for that sort of responsibility" or "She couldn't be expected to
understand the implications of that sort of choice." In the first
place, such statements highlight the close connection between
prospective and retrospective responsibility: it will not be
appropriate to hold someone (fully) responsible for his actions if he
was faced with responsibilities that were unrealistic and
over-demanding. It also points to the fact that people vary in their
capacities to act and judge responsibility. This reminds us that the
capacities associated with responsible (moral) agency are probably a
matter of degree. It might also remind us of a fourth use of
"responsibility": to name a virtue of character.
d. Responsibility as a Virtue
While theories of moral agency tend to regard an agent as either
responsible or not, with no half-measures, our everyday language
usually deploys the term "responsible" in a more nuanced way. As just
indicated, one way we do this is by weighing degrees of
responsibility, both with regard to the sort of prospective
responsibilities a person should bear and a person's liability to
blame or penalties. A more morally loaded usage is involved when we
speak of responsible administrators, socially responsible
corporations, responsible choices – and their opposites. In these
cases, we use the term "responsible" as a term of praise:
responsibility represents a virtue that people (and organizations) may
exhibit in one area of their conduct, or perhaps exemplify in their
entire lives.
In such cases, our meaning is usually quite clear. The responsible
person can be relied on to judge and to act in certain morally
desirable ways; in the case of more demanding ("more responsible")
roles, the person can be trusted to exercise initiative and to
demonstrate commitment; and when things go wrong, such a person will
be prepared to take responsibility for dealing with things. One way of
putting this might be to say that the responsible person can be
counted on take her responsibilities seriously. We will not need to
hold her responsible, because we can depend on her holding herself
responsible. Another way of putting the matter would be much more
contentious, and harkens back to the question of whether we should
think of moral agency as a matter of degree. One might claim that the
responsible person possesses the elements pertaining to moral agency
(such as capacities to judge moral norms or to respond to others) to a
greater degree than the irresponsible person. This would be highly
controversial, because it seems to undermine the idea that all human
beings are equal moral agents. However, it would help us to see why a
term we sometimes use to describe all moral agents can also be used to
praise some people rather than others.
However this may be, it is fair to say that this usage of
"responsible" has received the least attention from philosophers. This
is interesting given that this is clearly a virtue of considerable
importance in modern societies. At any rate, it is possible to see
some important connections between the virtue and the areas that
philosophers have emphasized.
The irresponsible person is not one who lacks prospective
responsibilities, nor is she one who may not be held responsible
retrospectively. It is only that she does not take her
responsibilities seriously. Note, however, that the more responsible
someone is, the more we will be inclined to entrust her with demanding
roles and responsibilities. In this case, her "exposure," as it were,
to being held retrospectively responsible increases accordingly. And
the same is true in the opposite direction, when someone consistently
behaves less responsibly. An illuminating essay by Herbert Fingarette
(1967) considers the limit case of the psychopath, someone who shows
absolutely no moral concern for others, nor any sensitivity to moral
reproach. Perhaps our first response will be to say that such a person
is irresponsible, even evil. Fingarette argues we must finally
conclude that he is in fact not a candidate for moral responsibility –
that he is not a moral agent, not to be assigned prospective
responsibilities, not to be held retrospectively responsible for his
actions. In other words, it only makes sense to grade someone as
responsible or irresponsible, so long as holding her responsible has
any prospect of making her act more responsibly. The psychopath will
never be responsive to blame, nor ever feel guilt. In fact, as someone
who will never take any responsibility seriously, he does not qualify
as a moral agent at all – as being responsible in its most basic
sense. This might sound like writing the person a blank check to
behave utterly immorally, but two points should be remembered: First,
society protects itself against such people, often by incarcerating
them as insane ("psychopathy" names a mental disorder). Second, the
Kantian account reminds us that not to treat someone as responsible
for her actions is to fail to respect her as the author of her deeds.
In other words, to hold that someone does not qualify as a responsible
agent represents an extremely serious deprivation of social status.
Looking at the matter positively, we can also say that a person who
exhibits the virtue of responsibility lives up to the three other
aspects of responsibility in an exemplary way. First, she exercises
the capacities of responsible moral agency to a model degree. Second,
she approaches her previous actions and omissions with all due
concern, being prepared to take responsibility for any failings she
may have shown. And third, she takes her prospective responsibilities
seriously, being both a capable judge of what she should do, and
willing to act accordingly.
3. Moral versus Legal Responsibility
As some of the examples of retrospective and prospective
responsibility indicate, law has an especial connection with questions
of responsibility. Legal institutions often assign responsibilities to
people, and hold them responsible for failing to fulfill these
responsibilities – either via the criminal law and policing, or by
allowing other parties to bring them to court via the civil law, for
example when a contract is breached. Accordingly, the justification of
punishment represents a major concern of philosophy of law. Likewise,
legal philosophers, including figures such as H.L.A. Hart, Herbert
Morris and Joel Feinberg, have written a great deal about the
philosophy of responsibility. Their discussions have had considerable
influence on moral and political philosophers.
The most obvious point, that all writers will endorse, is that legal
and moral responsibility often overlap, but will diverge on some
occasions. In the liberal state we can hope that there will be
systematic convergence, inasmuch as the law will uphold important
moral precepts, especially concerning the protection of rights. (In a
corrupt or tyrannical state, on the other hand, it is obviously very
common that legal and moral responsibility have no relation at all.
Tyrants often demand that their subjects be complicit in immorality,
such as harming the innocent.) An example where law and morality
clearly overlap is murder: it is both a legal crime and an egregious
moral wrong. Few would dispute, then, that murder ought to be
punished, both legally and morally speaking.
However, the law does not punish attempted murder in the same way as
an actual murder – that is, it does not prioritize intentions over
outcomes in the same way that many believe that moral judgment should.
The difference between murder and grievous bodily harm may not lie in
the intention or even in the actual wounds inflicted: everything
depends on the outcome, that is, whether death results. Thus the
crimes attract different punishments, though our moral judgment of
someone may be no lighter in the case of a particularly vicious
assault. One way of putting this is to say that the law is concerned
with definite outcomes, and only secondarily with intentions. Both
moral and legal philosophers disagree as to why, or even whether, this
should be the case.
A distinguished line of thought, exemplified by H.L.A. Hart in his
essay "Legal Responsibility and Excuses" (in Hart, 1968), holds that
legal responsibility should be understood in different terms to moral
judgment. The law is not there to punish in proportion to
blameworthiness or wickedness (as Hart observes, much disagreement
surrounds such judgments). Instead, the law provides people who are
competent to choose with reasons to act in socially responsible ways.
Hart focuses on excuses under the law, such as insanity or coercion.
Law admits such excuses in spite of their possible consequentialist
disutility (excuses may well decrease the deterrent force of law,
because some people might hope to misuse these excuses to wriggle out
of legal accountability). For Hart, excuses are an important part of a
system that does not just seek to prevent crime, but also to protect
choice; as a result, law does not punish those who were not able to
choose their actions. Under such a "choosing system," "individuals can
find out, in general terms at least, the costs they have to pay if
they act in certain ways" (1968: 44). In this way, law can foster "the
prime social virtue of self-restraint" (1968: 182). Law can also
respect what Peter Strawson stressed in "Freedom and Resentment"
(1962): that our social relations depend on our emotional responses to
people's voluntary actions. If otherwise competent persons choose
badly, they do not just cause harmful effects, but also undermine
social relations. Hart's justification of punishment, then, holds that
attributions of (legal) responsibility help uphold social order while
respecting individual choice. His account therefore combines a
consequentialist emphasis on external actions and outcomes with an
important mental element: punishment is only appropriate in case of
competent choice, that is, where excusing conditions do not apply.
However, Hart emphasizes that his account does not apply to moral
judgment, about which his views seem to be more or less Kantian.
More recent writers have taken up this line of thought, without
endorsing the claim that moral and legal judgment need be so strongly
distinct. Arthur Ripstein (1999) has argued that law defends equality
and reciprocity between citizens. It therefore has to protect people's
interests in freedom of action as well their interests in security of
person and property. Law has to be concerned with fairness to victims
as well as fairness to culprits. To do this, it defines a system of
prospective responsibilities that protect the interests of all, and
holds people retrospectively responsible for breaches. For instance,
the coercive measure of punishment is called for where a person
disregards another's liberty or security interests. Threats or
attempts also disregard those interests and may be punishable, but
they do not undermine equality in social relations as severely as
successful violations of rights. (As Ripstein notes, his approach
actually descends from Kant's account of punishment, which works in a
different way to Kant's account of moral imputation. On this, see
Hill, 2002.) Ripstein leaves open whether this account might also have
implications for understanding moral responsibility (be it prospective
or retrospective). However, his underlying idea – concerning fairness
to both wrong-doer and victim – does suggest problems for accounts of
retrospective moral responsibility that focus (in more or less Kantian
fashion) only on the culprit's choice and intentions.
A quite different school of thought, recently exemplified in the work
of Michael Moore (1998), endorses a recognizably Kantian view of moral
responsibility, and argues that the law ought to share this approach.
Apart from the theoretical difficulties that face the Kantian approach
to moral responsibility, however, this school of thought has to claim
that large parts of legal practice are misconceived. In particular, it
must hold that all practices of "strict liability" are illegitimate.
Strict liability is the practice of holding a person accountable if
certain harms materialize, even where she could not have done anything
to prevent those harms coming about. (Contrast Ripstein's account just
given, or the above example of the customer who accidentally breaks a
vase in a shop.) Similarly, Moore's approach faces severe difficulties
in explaining why the law should punish on the basis of outcomes and
not only intentions – even though every legal system shares this
feature.
Legal responsibility has another interesting relation to the question
of responsible agency. In addition to admitting "excusing conditions"
such as insanity, systems of law stipulate various age conditions as
to who counts as responsible. For example, all jurisdictions have an
age of criminal responsibility: a person under the age of, say, twelve
cannot be punished for murder. Likewise, law permits only people above
certain ages to engage in various activities: drinking alcohol,
voting, standing as an elected representative, entering into
contracts, consenting to medical treatment, and so forth. Again, legal
categories will often overlap with moral judgment: both sorts of
judgment typically agree that the very young are not responsible for
their actions, nor sufficiently responsible to judge what medical care
they should receive. That said, our non-legal judgments about when a
person becomes sufficiently mature to be responsible invariably depend
on the person, as well as on the difficult question of what degree of
maturity is necessary to responsible conduct in different spheres of
life.
4. Collective Responsibility
In recent decades increasing attention has been given to the question
of collective responsibility. This question can arise wherever the
actions of a group of people combine to generate a particular result –
whether a corporation, or the citizens of a state, or even individuals
who have no particular connection to one another. (A well-known
example of the last is "the tragedy of the commons," when lots of
people use a shared resource – for instance, everyone using the
commons as grazing land for their cattle – resulting in the
degradation of that resource. Our increasing awareness of damage to
environment has given this case particular contemporary importance.)
There are questions about the responsibilities of the collective, and
of the individual as a member of that body. Recall that one of the
original uses of the word responsible" was to describe a desirable
quality of government, and that we still use the word in this way to
praise some institutions, just as we may criticize a corporation or
group as irresponsible.
Many perplexities about shared responsibility arise from the thought
that individuals are responsible agents, in a way that groups cannot
be. A well-known formulation captures this problem neatly: "No soul to
damn, no body to kick" (Coffee, 1981). As pointed out above, it is
usually thought that a person can be blamed or deserve punishment by
virtue of certain psychological capacities ("soul"), as well as by
virtue of being the same person ("body") today as she was yesterday.
On this account, there is a serious puzzle as to how a collective can
be responsible, since a collective lacks the psychological capacities
of an individual person (but see the Encyclopedia article on
collective intentionality) and its membership tends to alter over
time. Note, however, that if we think of responsibility in terms of
capacities to interact in the light of shared norms – as the Humean
account of moral agency might suggest – rather than as a matter of
particular psychological capacities, then we need not be so concerned
with those capacities nor, perhaps, with changes in membership.
A separate article, collective moral responsibility, discusses the
issues that arise here. It may be useful, however, to indicate briefly
how the four aspects of individual responsibility discussed above
might apply to the collective case.
a. The Agency of Groups
In the first place, it is clear that collective bodies can function as
agents, at least in some circumstances. Groups and organizations can
pursue particular policies, respect legal requirements, reach
decisions about how to respond to situations, and create important
benefits and costs for other agents. They can also offer an account of
their previous actions and policies, setting out how and why these
were decided upon. However, these abilities clearly depend upon the
collective's being appropriately organized, which is a matter of
internal communication, deliberative mechanisms, and allocation of
responsibilities to individuals. Clearly, organizations may function
better or worse in all these regards – as may the other organizations
with which they interact and which may, in turn, hold them
responsible.
b. Retrospective Responsibility of Collectives
By the same token, collective bodies can be held responsible. In fact,
law does this all the time, at least for formally established
collectives that are not states, for example, corporations, charities
and statutory bodies such as government agencies. Responsible officers
may be called to account – to answer for their organization's actions,
to be dismissed or even punished if that account is unsatisfactory. As
a body, the collective owns property and acts in systematic ways:
legal measures can therefore make it provide compensation, or exact
fines simply as a punishment; a court can order the body to act
differently or to remedy a particular case or situation.
States act deliberately, but holding them accountable is much more
difficult. States can commit the most serious wrongs, waging war or
inflicting grave injustice upon their own peoples. International law
attempts to codify some duties of states, and the duties of
individuals who govern them. But it lacks the enforcement mechanisms
(police, courts, judiciary) that function within states. Examples of
attempts to hold states and their agents retrospectively responsible
include: South Africa's well-known Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, which addressed the brutalities of the old apartheid
regime; the trial of individuals, such as the 1961 Jerusalem trial of
Nazi functionary Adolf Eichmann; and the exacting of reparations
following the defeat of a state, for instance the notorious Versailles
agreement that penalized Germany for its role in the First World War.
As the article on collective moral responsibility discusses, imposing
liabilities, punishments or duties onto collective bodies will finally
involve costs or duties for individuals. This poses many difficult
questions about how the supposed responsibilities of the group might
be traced back to particular individuals. Perhaps the people who were
most to blame have died or moved jobs or are otherwise out of reach.
Should the citizens of a country make amends for the wrong-doing of
their forefathers, for instance? Ought a corporation that has fired
its top managers still be liable to pay fines for the misdeeds that
those former managers led the corporation into? For many, such
questions highlight the most puzzling aspect of collective
responsibility, namely that individuals might justly be required to
make amends for others' actions and policies.
c. Prospective Responsibilities of Groups
For formally organized collectives, prospective responsibilities are
often codified by law, or (in the case of a charity, for instance)
specified in a group's constitution. As in the individual case, of
course, our moral judgment may differ from codified responsibilities:
not only moral but also political arguments often surround these
allocations of responsibility. Proponents of corporate social
responsibility, for example, generally hold that companies'
responsibilities extend much beyond their legal duties, including
wider obligations to the communities amongst which they operate and to
the natural environment. Just as in the case of individuals, attempts
to hold groups and organizations retrospectively accountable often,
therefore, reveal serious moral disagreements, and invariably have a
political dimension, too.
d. Responsibility as a Virtue
Groups, companies, and states can all be more or less responsible.
Originally, "responsible government" described government responsive
to the wants and needs of its citizens; in the same way, we now speak
of corporate social responsibility. As in the individual case, for
collectives to exhibit the virtue of responsibility depends on the
other three aspects of responsibility discussed in this article. With
regard to moral agency, it will require good internal organization, so
that the body is aware of its situation, capacities, actions and
impacts. With regard to retrospective responsibility, it involves a
willingness and ability to deal with failings and omissions, and to
learn from these. In terms of prospective responsibility, the
collective's activities and policies must be aptly chosen, conformable
to wider moral norms, and properly put into effect. As with
individuals, how far a body is likely to do these things also depends
on how far those around it (that is, both individuals and other
collectives) act responsibly. For instance, others will need to form
appropriate expectations of the collective, and be prepared to enforce
these expectations fairly and reasonably.
5. Conclusion
This article has pointed to four dimensions of responsibility,
reflecting the various ways in which the word is used. Moral agency
can also be termed responsible agency, meaning that a person is open
to moral evaluation. This sort of moral status points in two
directions. It means that a person's actions can be judged morally, so
that various responses such as praise or punishment may be appropriate
– this is the stuff of retrospective responsibility. In the other
direction, a moral agent has particular duties or concerns – the stuff
of prospective responsibility. Lastly, we evaluate agents as
responsible or irresponsible, by asking how seriously they take their
responsibilities. This involves evaluating them in terms of how far
they exercise (or possess) the capacities pertaining to moral agency,
how they approach their past actions and failings, and how they
approach their duties and areas of responsibility. As we have seen,
writers differ concerning the connections between moral and legal
responsibility, but it is also true that these four dimensions all
find echo in legal uses of responsibility.
Philosophical discussion often considers these aspects of
responsibility only with regard to individuals, so that the term
"collective responsibility" appears puzzling, despite its frequent
usage in everyday life. The final part of this article briefly
considered how each of these dimensions can be applied to groups,
although it has left aside some difficult questions that arise – for
example, how a group's retrospective responsibilities can be fairly
apportioned to individuals, or how collectives can be organized so as
to be more or less responsible.
This article began by observing that the word responsibility is
surprisingly modern, and that two quite different philosophical
stories have been told about it. Very little was said concerning the
first story, concerning responsibility in political thought. However,
it has pointed out that the concept extends more widely than modern
philosophical debates tend to acknowledge. Prospective responsibility
relates to the fine-grained division of responsibilities involved in
the different roles which people adopt in modern societies – above
all, the different spheres of responsibility which we are given in the
workplace. By the same token, responsibility has clearly become a very
important virtue in modern societies.
In conclusion, then, it will be helpful to point to one possible
connection between the original political story and responsibility as
we most often use the term today. (See also Pettit, 2001, for another
account.) Uncertainty and disagreement about how we should live
together is one of the most marked features of modern life. We live in
an age when both individuals and organizations are asked to be
endlessly flexible. Our roles and responsibilities are continually
changing and continually challenged. Uncertainty and disagreement
about prospective responsibilities are always passing over into
disputes about retrospective responsibility, as we hold one another
accountable. We all face the test, then, of how to conduct ourselves
amid this uncertainty and disagreement. It is surely one hallmark of
the person who exhibits the virtue of responsibility that she
contributes to cooperation in the face of this difficult situation.
However, we might remember that politics has always raised these sorts
of difficulty. In modern societies, negotiation, compromise and
judgment are required, not just of those who take on formal political
office, but of all of us. It is surely no wonder, then, that we no
longer think of responsibility as only a question for the political
sphere.
6. References and Further Reading
* Adkins, A.W.H. (1960) Merit and Responsibility, Clarendon Press, Oxford
o Argues that the Greeks lacked modern, Kantian notions of
duty and fairness in assigning responsibility.
* Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics – the most readable translation is
Roger Crisp's, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000.
* Bok, Hilary (1998) Freedom and Responsibility, Princeton
University Press, Princeton NJ
o A Kantian analysis of moral agency and retrospective responsibility.
* Bovens, Mark (1998) The Quest for Responsibility: Accountability
and Citizenship in Complex Organizations, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge
o Investigates how regulation, organisational reform, and
different means of accountability can address irresponsibility on the
part of institutions.
* Coffee, Jr., John (1981) "'No Soul to Damn: No Body to Kick': An
Unscandalized Inquiry into the Problem of Corporate Punishment"
Michigan Law Review, 79, 386-460.
* Duff, R.A. (1990) Intention, Agency and Criminal Liability,
Blackwell, Oxford, Chapters 3-5
o A careful analysis of moral and legal responsibility,
focusing on the centrality of intentional action.
* Feinberg, Joel (1970) Doing and Deserving: Essays in the Theory
of Responsibility, Princeton University Press, Princeton
o A collection of classic essays on moral and legal responsibility.
* Fingarette, Herbert (1967) "Acceptance of Responsibility" in his
On Responsibility, Basic Books, New York
o The essay referred to above, which takes the example of
psychopathy and argues that responsibility attributions are
intelligible only insofar as they connect up with a person's existing
moral concern.
* Fingarette, Herbert (2004) Mapping Responsibility: Explorations
in Mind, Law, Myth, and Culture, Open Court, Chicago
o A collection of notably succinct essays, summarizing a
life-time's careful reflection on many aspects of responsibility.
* Fischer, John Martin & Mark Ravizza (1998) Responsibility and
Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge
o Contemporary restatement of the idea that responsibility
relates to rational control over one's actions.
* Hart, H.L.A. (1968) Punishment and Responsibility, Oxford
University Press, Oxford
o A noted twentieth century legal theorist analyses legal
and moral responsibility, strongly defending distinctions between
moral and legal responsibility, and between "punishment" and (in case
of insanity) "treatment" .
* Hill, Thomas E (2002) Human Welfare and Moral Worth: Kantian
Perspectives, Clarendon, Oxford
o Chapters 9 & 10 explain how Kant's account of punishment
is distinct from his account of moral imputation.
* Hume, David (1777) An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of
Morals (various editions)
o Appendix IV, "Of some verbal disputes," argues that there
is no real line between a talent and a (moral) virtue, and that the
real question concerning any character trait is whether it elicits
approval (praise) or disapproval (blame) .
* Jaspers, Karl (1947) The Question of German Guilt, translated by
E.B. Ashton, Dial Press, New York
o A classic reflection on the issues facing Germany after
the second world war, posed in terms of criminal, political, moral,
and metaphysical guilt.
* Jonas, Hans (1984) The Imperative of Responsibility, University
of Chicago Press, Chicago
o Argues that our new power to destroy nature creates a
historically novel responsibility toward future generations.
* Kant, Immanuel (1793) Religion within the Limits of Reason
Alone, books I & II (various translations)
o Kant's most sustained investigation of the basis on which
individuals can be held accountable for failing to live up to
morality. .
* Korsgaard, Christine (1996) "Creating the Kingdom of Ends:
Reciprocity and Responsibility in Personal Relations" in her Creating
the Kingdom of Ends, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
o A sophisticated Kantian account of responsibility, that
quietly takes leave of Kant's own views on the matter.
* Korsgaard, Christine (1996) The Sources of Normativity,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
* Kutz, Christopher (2000) Complicity: Ethics and Law for a
Collective Age, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
o A study of collective responsibility, arguing that
individuals can justly be held responsible for group actions, in ways
that need not mirror their individual contributions.
* McKeon, Richard (1957) "The development and the significance of
the concept of responsibility" Revue Internationale de Philosophie,
XI, no. 39, 3-32
o A historical study of the concept, stressing its political roots.
* Moore, Michael (1998) Placing Blame, Clarendon Press, Oxford
o Argues that legal responsibility and moral (retrospective)
responsibility should both be understood in Kantian manner, based on
the culpability that can only owe to a person's free choices.
* Pettit, Philip (2001) A Theory of Freedom: From the Psychology
to the Politics of Agency, Polity, Cambridge
o An account of responsible agency that emphasizes both
responsiveness to reasons and the interactive nature of responsibility
attribution, and explores the connection between individual agency and
political contexts.
* Ricoeur, Paul (1992) "The concept of responsibility: an essay in
semantic analysis" in his The Just, trans David Pellauer, University
of Chicago Press, Chicago
o A demanding but astonishingly rich essay analyzing the
concept historically and in relation to the fundamentals of human
agency.
* Ripstein, Arthur (1999) Equality, Responsibility and the Law,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
o An important recent discussion, that disavows the
"voluntarism" (the focus on individual capacities underlying
responsible agency and the fairness of retrospective responsibility)
of many moral and legal accounts of responsibility, by suggesting that
legal practices of responsibility are essentially about fostering fair
terms of interaction.
* Russell, Paul (1995) Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume's Way of
Naturalising Responsibility, Oxford University Press, New York
o Shows how Hume's approach is more sophisticated than a
narrow utilitarian "economy of threats" theory.
* Scanlon, T M (1998) What We Owe to Each Other, Chapter 6:
"Responsibility," Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA
o Attacks a simple account of retrospective responsibility
in terms of choice ("the forfeiture view"), for a more sophisticated
"value of choice" view.
* Sher, George (1987) Desert, Princeton University Press, Princeton
o A careful, advanced study of the concept of desert.
* Smart, J.J.C. (1961) "Free will, praise and blame" Mind 70, 291-306
o A clear and succinct utilitarian account of praise and blame.
* Smiley, Marion (1992) Moral Responsibility and the Boundaries of
Community: Power and Accountability from a Pragmatic Point of View,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago
o Criticizes conventional discussions of freedom and
determinism, claiming that they fail to investigate the idea of
responsibility.
* Strawson, Peter (1962) "Freedom and resentment" Proceedings of
the British Academy 48, 1-25, reprinted in his Freedom and Resentment
and Other Essays, Methuen, London, 1974
o A classic essay, that seeks to bypass "free will" based
accounts of responsibility for one based on moral sentiments such as
resentment, reflecting the line of thought labeled above as Humean.
* Wallace, R. Jay (1994) Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA
o Seeks to mediate between the Humean and Kantian accounts
of (retrospective) responsibility sketched above, by asking when it is
fair to hold someone responsible and thus expose them to "reactive"
emotions such as resentment or indignation.
* Watson, Gary (1982) Free Will, Oxford University Press, Oxford
o A useful anthology of twentieth century treatments of free
will, including Strawson (1962) .
* Williams, Bernard (1981) "Internal and external reasons," in his
Moral Luck, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
* Williams, Bernard (1993) Shame and Necessity, University of
California Press, Berkeley
o Argues that the ancient Greeks had a sophisticated account
of responsibility attribution. Though Williams relies on ancient Greek
texts, his own views are identifiably Humean, and can be read as a
reply to Adkins' (1960) quasi-Kantian critique of Greek morality.
* Williams, Bernard (1995) Making Sense of Humanity and other
Philosophical Papers, 1982-1993, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, Chapters 1-3.
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