September 16, 2025

Two Faces of Responsibility

Key Points

Attributability emphasizes individual agency and the ethical assessment of actions, impacting how we view personal responsibility.
The significance of attributability lies not in its relation to the deep self but in what it signifies about the agent's character.
The concept of interpersonal accountability remains ambiguous, leading to skepticism regarding responsibility for those with troubled backgrounds.
Understanding these distinctions clarifies societal attitudes towards praise and blame, especially in assessing morally questionable individuals.

Abstract

This chapter distinguishes two perspectives implicated in our ordinary conception of responsibility, each of which reflects distinct but overlapping ethical interests. The most basic perspective is attributability, in which actions are imputable to individuals as exercises of their agency. The attitudes expressed in such behaviour are subject to assessment in ethical terms. The significance of attributable behaviour is not its causal relation to the “deep self ” but that it expresses what the agent stands for in this activity. This “face” of responsibility is of central importance in human life but by itself fails to explain the normative relation of interpersonal accountability. This leaves an opening for a kind of scepticism that is independent of the validity of attributability. This distinction helps to make sense of our ambivalence towards vicious individuals with horrendous upbringings and to clarify apparent asymmetries between praise and blame.

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