Responsibility, Moral and Legal
The term responsibility or one of its variants figures in moral discussion in many different ways. Philosophers have traditionally been especially interested in the concept of moral or personal responsibility. It is with the problems connected with this notion that the following discussion is primarily concerned.
Judgments of Personal Responsibility
F. H. Bradley once claimed that "for practical purposes we need make no distinction between responsibility and liability to punishment." Although it is true that discussions of responsibility have often turned quickly to discussions of blameworthiness and liability to punishment, there is little justification for Bradley's claim. For responsibility is equally relevant to many other forms of social treatment—among others, praise, reward (including special honors such as honorary degrees or titles), legal punishment, legal liability. And, of course, the topic is intimately related to the theological issue of salvation, the allocation of divine rewards and punishments.
Judgments of personal responsibility pertain to this range of practices in a very special way. Unless a person is judged personally responsible for some act or outcome, he would not normally be thought to deserve blame, praise, reward, punishment, and so on. Personal responsibility is generally regarded as a necessary condition of the justice of a person's receiving what he deserves.
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