Abstract

While the legal concept of a subject of rights is eminently an abstraction, Ricoeur’s philosophical challenge seeks to rethink its identity within the philosophy of action, in correlation with the ideas of capacity, attestation, and recognition. The terminology Ricoeur employs presents some significant marks of this theoretical stance, as he speaks of a “veritable” or a “real” subject of rights as distinguished from the purely formal one. I argue that Ricoeur’s approach to the legal subject attains its highest meaning in connection with the renewal of the semantics of responsibility in a prospective sense. In particular, I contend that Ricoeur’s idea of a “veritable” subject of rights deploys its full theoretical potential in relation to a prospective idea of responsibility in contrast to the “static” perspective of the ascription of rights and duties. Reciprocally, a prospective idea of responsibility deploys its full meaning in relation to a subject of rights not reduced to a legal abstraction since, as far as narrative identity is implied, this subject is and has to be an embodied one. I shall show that the thesis advocating a projection of responsibility towards the future may have some significant theoretical implications, in particular in relation to the effect of techno-scientific development in areas such as Artificial Intelligence.