Alfred Schutz, "Some Equivocations of the Notion of Responsibility" (1957)
Alfred Schutz (1899-1959), "Some Equivocations of the Notion of Responsibility."
1) in Determinism and Freedom, Edited by Sidney Hook, New York University Press, New York, 1958, pp.206-208
2) in Collected Papers II Studies in Social Theory, Edited & Introduced by Arvid Brodersen, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1964, pp.274-276
◆Alfred Schutz, "Some Equivocations of the Notion of Responsibility" (1957)
Our discussion of the problem of responsibility was mainly concerned with the question: On what grounds might a person be held answerable or accountable by law or from a moral point of view for something he did or omitted to do? The consequence of responsibility, in this sense, is the affliction of punishment, if we take this term in a sense broad enough to include reprehension, criticism, and censure. But even if used in this sense the notion “to be responsible” may mean two different things: on the one hand, a man is responsible for what he did; on the other hand, he is responsible to someone – the person, the group, or the authority who makes him answerable.
This distinction between “being responsible for” and “being responsible to” becomes of particular importance if another equivocation of the notion “responsibility” is taken into account, namely that between its use in terms of the third (or second) person and in terms of the first person. I submit that the notion of “responsible” is an entirely different one if used in a proposition of the type “This person is responsible for this and that” and in a proposition of the type “I feel responsible for this and that (e.g., for the proper education of my children).” Furthermore, I submit that these two notions of responsibility cannot fully coincide and that any philosophical analysis of the problem of responsibility must remain incomplete without taking into account its subjective aspect.
In using the expression “the subjective aspect” for the notion “feeling responsible” in terms of the first person, we adopt an unfortunate but by now generally accepted, terminology of the social sciences, viz., the distinction between the subjective and the objective meaning of human actions, human relations and human situations. It was Max Weber who made this distinction the cornerstone of his methodology. Subjective meaning, in this sense, is the meaning which an action has for the actor or which a relation or situation has for the person or persons involved therein; objective meaning is the meaning the same action, relation, or situation has for anybody else, be it a partner or observer in everyday life, the social scientist, or the philosopher. The terminology is unfortunate because the term “objective meaning” is obviously a misnomer, in so far as the so-called “objective” interpretations are, in turn, relative, to the particular attitudes of the interpreters and, therefore, in a certain sense, “subjective.”
To elaborate on the difference between the subjective and the objective meaning of responsibility would require a rather lengthy analysis. We have to restrict ourselves to some scanty remarks. If I feel merely subjectively responsible for what I did or omitted to do without being held answerable by another person, the consequence of my misdeed will not be reprehension, criticism, censure, or other forms of punishment inflicted upon me by someone else, but, regret, remorse, or repentance – or, in theological terms, contrition and not attrition. The resulting state of grief, anguish or distress are marks of the true sense of guilt which is phenomenologically something entirely different from the “guilt-feeling” in psychoanalytic terminology. It is the outcome of the feeling of being responsible for something done or left undone and of the impossibility of restoring the past. Orestes in Aeschylus’ Eumenides was not redeemed before the goddess reconciled the Furies, although the judges of the Aeropagus had placed an equal number of white and black bells into the urn. In our times, we find certain eminent scientists suffering under a deep-rooted sense of responsibility for having cooperated in the production of atomic weapons, in spite of the honors bestowed upon them by a grateful government. On the other hand, the law might hold me answerable for an act which my personal sense of responsibility motivated me to perform (Antigone’s conflict is an example). And here the distinction between being responsible for something and being responsible to someone appears in a new light. I may agree with the Other’s verdict that I am responsible for a particular state of affairs but maintain that I feel accountable for my deed merely to God or my conscience but not my government.
These are merely examples for the complicated underlying dialect of the subjective and the objective meaning of responsibility. But the same dialectic underlies the meaning a norm has for the norm-giver and the norm-addressee. Any law means something different to the legislator, the person subject to the law (the law-abiding citizen and the lawbreaker), the law-interpreting court and the agent who enforces it. Duty has a different meaning as defined by me autonomously and as imposed on me from outside. The whole question of determinism in law and ethics will have to be answered in a different way if formulated in subjective or objective terms.
The preceding remarks dealt with the dialectic of the subjective and objective meaning of laws, values, morals, and responsibility merely from the point of view of individual. But the same dialectic recures on the level of group relations. Adopting Sumner’s classical distinction between in-group and out-group, it can be said that “responsibility,” for example, has a different meaning if an in-group acknowledge responsibility for its acts and holds some of its members responsible, or if an out-group makes the in-group and its members responsible for misdeeds. It is one thing if, in the Nuremberg trials, the Nazi leaders were held responsible by the Allied Powers, and quite another thing if they were held answerable by the German people.
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