Abstract

Sixteen works are analyzed to shed light on historical practice in regard to praising, blaming, and ascribing responsibility. Agents are held responsible for the Cold War only if they had an opportunity to prevent it specified goals or norms required that they utilize that opportunity, but, instead their actions, under the circumstances, brought about the Cold War. Historians' diverse ascriptions of responsibility reflect different views as to opportunities, applicable goals or norms, appropriate standards for determining culpability as distinguished from answerability, and bases for comparative judgments. Analysis also discloses that Dray's thesis regarding the interdependence of moral and selective causal judgments is simplistic