Conditioned Responsibility, Belonging and the Vulnerability of Our Ethical Understanding

Angelaki 25 (1-2):181-194 (2020)
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Abstract

In this paper I explore the ethical responsibility of agents who find themselves in situations characterized by what I call the Individual Ethical Gap (IEG). Individual Ethical Gap situations are structured so as to rule out holding individuals responsible for their actions and omissions by virtue of the intentions behind or the consequences of their actions. I argue that, in IEG situations, individuals can nevertheless, depending on the circumstances, be held ethically responsible for their actions and omissions by virtue of the conditions in which they find themselves operating. Individual Ethical Gap situations therefore give rise to what I call conditioned responsibility: responsibility stemming from the conditions in which one finds oneself enmeshed. This notion of an ethics stemming from conditions (rather than from consequences or intentions) gives rise to a particular form of vulnerability to error in our self- and other-ascriptions of ethical responsibility: a vulnerability in our ethical understanding. In the final section of the paper I use Pamela Sue Anderson’s discussion of vulnerability and of Kantian autonomy to show that this vulnerability arising from the conditioned aspect of our ethical responsibility need not be regarded as a threat to ethics but, on the contrary, as an element of belonging and of understanding that renders possible a more honest encounter with others and with the world.

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References found in this work

Responsibility for Justice.Iris Marion Young - 2011 - , US: Oxford University Press USA.
Collective responsibility.Hannah Arendt - 1987 - In James William Bernauer (ed.), Amor Mundi: Explorations in the Faith and Thought of Hannah Arendt. Distributors for the U.S. And Canada Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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