Abstract

This paper presents the various aspects of the notion of responsibility within the contemporary philosophical debate. To this purpose, I distinguish between: i) an ontological dimension of responsibility, as found in the work Hans Jonas, where responsibility is understood as towards future generations through the preservation of the planet, and is based around the notions of care and ‘heuristics of fear’, as opposed to totalizing technical knowledge; ii) a functional and normative dimension of responsibility in the thought of Agnes Heller, understood as prospective responsibility, linked to the social role of the individual, as well as enormous responsibility, linked to the changes in the background moral paradigms of a community; iii) a renewed significance of the individual dimension of responsibility in Derek Parfit’s environmental ethics, where what becomes more and more relevant, in an increasingly populated world, is the cumulative result of individual actions, in a kind of domino effect, which leads to redefine the concept of respect by adding, to the traditional notions of autonomy and dignity of the individual, a growing attention to the extended consequences of actions. The idea, which I believe to be central to any practical philosophy, is that of a multifaceted conceptual image of responsibility, where the social experience acts as its critical and emerging incorporation into collective practices. A sort of concrete universal, far from too sophisticated models and closer to the reasonable applications of common sense.