We explain what responsibility is and what is the origin of this concept. Furthermore, the definitions of responsibility according to recognized philosophers.
What is responsibility?
Responsibility (from Latin responsum“respond”) is a moral value that is studied from ethics. Being responsible implies the possibility of giving a coherent response, through actions or omissions, to the decisions that are made. Responsibility implies being able to respond to one's own actions.
A responsible person is one who, when making a conscious decision, has the ability to assume the consequences that said decision entails and, thus, respond coherently, when necessary.
For the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), responsibility is the virtue that an individual possesses to freely and consciously conceive the maximum number of possible acts of his or her behavior that can be postulated as universal. This possibility of conceiving acts in order to universalize them is directly related to the Kantian categorical imperative. Kant postulates that the imperative that must govern the ethical or moral act must be able to be taken to a universal maxim. That is, it must be able to be followed by all individuals.
Etymology of “responsibility”
The word “responsibility” comes from latin responsumwhich means “respond”. Hence the idea that responsibility is the “ability to respond.” Responsum comes from the Latin verb I will answerwhich means “to give correspondence to what was promised.” The prefix –re involves the reiteration of –I will respondwhich is “to promise” and “oblige oneself to something”, “to commit”.
The etymological meaning of responsibility as “respond” has been preserved in most Latin languages. While in Spanish it is called “responsibility”, in English it is called responsibilitywhich is a Latin loanword, and in German it is said Verantwortungwhich comes from Antwortwhich means “answer.”
Ethical responsibility
Ethical responsibility is a category that must be limited to the moral field, which is why it is often separated from bordering areas, such as the social field or criminal law.. Responsibility is usually identified with a political or legal category. However, responsibility is not of the nature of the community, but strictly concerns the individual. It cannot be generalized to a group, since it is not inherited or transmitted by circumstance or context of belonging.
One way to characterize ethical responsibility is through its active feature, that is, there is no possibility of being a passive subject of responsibility. This necessarily requires active participation in a given event and, in any case, taking a position in favor of one perspective or another. Even responsibility for omission, if the omission is active, consists of an act of ethical responsibility, as long as one chooses not to act in a certain way out of moral responsibility.
The German philosopher Hans Jonas (1903-1993) maintains that responsibility has power as a necessary condition. The power is condition sine qua non of becoming responsible. Jonas points out that, in the case of ethical responsibility, the volitional aspect is not enough, that is, wanting or will, but the responsible act must be accompanied by the can. Becoming responsible implies the potential ability to carry it out.
On the other hand, and in the same relationship with power, although in an adverse sense, there is no relationship between intentions and responsibility. For an intention to return to a responsible subject, it must pass into the world of facts, that is, it must be phenomenalized.. At the same time, the unintended consequences of an act do carry a degree of responsibility, as they actively participate in the world of events.
existentialist responsibility
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), French philosopher and father of existentialism, is the author of the maxim that maintains that existence precedes essence. This means that there is no way predetermined to be human, but one is born as a proproject. The construction of what each individual is occurs throughout a lifetime of decisions and actions.
In this sense, if existence precedes essence, then everyone is, necessarily, responsible for what they are. The first step of existentialism is to place the human being in possession of himself. This implies that every time you make a decision, you must do it with sufficient responsibility as someone who is choosing how they want to be and, ultimately, how others have to be.
In this way, and as Sartre indicates in his work Existentialism is a humanism, the responsibility of choosing, under this conception, is and is not individual. In a sense it is, since everyone makes a decision for themselves. However, the responsibility exceeds the person himself, since it compromises all of humanity. For each individual, building themselves as a person implies how they believe each person should be, and therefore, their responsibility is to act not for what is best for them, but for the best example they can give.
Levinasian responsibility
Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), Lithuanian philosopher who settled in France, is one of the contemporary thinkers who has contributed the most to ethics. On many occasions, he maintained that the first philosophy is not metaphysics but ethics, while the greatest philosophical concern that can be assumed is that of alterity (the other).
In this sense, His philosophical proposal constitutes a set of relationships between responsibility and the otherness. Lévinas warns that, in order to escape from the Cartesian, solipsistic being, “in itself and for itself”, an ethical encounter with the “other” is necessary. This means that the Cartesian being, which is the being that is closed in on itself and does not have access to others or the world, needs the encounter with the other to break its isolation.
Continuing to Fyodor Dostoevsky, who affirms that everyone is responsible for everything and everyone before everyoneLévinas maintains that the original ethical content in the relationship of an individual with another is responsibility. This responsibility, however, must have a degree of gratuitousness, it must not require reciprocity: the other makes my self responsible for him, but that does not make the other responsible for me.
This is why he affirms that, in order to be able to sustain oneself in one's own person, For someone to be able to say “I”, they must accept that they cannot escape responsibility.. The entire edifice of creation rests on the backs of each individual, maintains Lévinas. Already in Ethics and Infinity He also writes that responsibility is the essential and first structure of subjectivity. I am, he says, above all, infinitely responsible for the other.
References
- KANT, I. (2002), Foundation for a metaphysics of customs (ed. RR Aramayo), Alianza Editorial, Madrid.
- CRUZ, M. (1999), “About the need to be responsible”, in CRUZ, M. and ARAMAYO, RR, The distribution of the action. Trotta, Madrid, pp. 11-23.
- Sartre, J.P. (2006). Existentialism is a humanism (Vol. 37). UNAM.
- Levinas, E. (1999). Totality and infinity: essay on exteriority. in Totality and infinity: Essay on exteriority (pp. 315-p).
