Abstract
This paper explores the role individual responsibility plays in contemporary political theory. It argues that the standard luck egalitarian view—the view according to which distributive justice is ensured by holding people accountable for their exercise of responsibility in the distribution of benefits and burdens—obscures the more fundamental value of being responsible. The paper, then, introduces an account of ‘self-creative responsibility’ as an alternative to the standard view and shows how central elements on which this account is founded has been prominently defended in the history of Western political thought but are comparatively neglected in contemporary political theory. Relying on this account, the paper argues that society should hold persons responsible when, and only when, doing so enables them to lead responsible lives, and only on the condition that doing so does not infringe other persons’ equivalently valuable ability to lead responsible lives. The account of self-creative responsibility, the paper concludes, plausibly captures the intuitive attraction of holding responsible while respecting the value of being responsible.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Thomas Scanlon calls what could in many ways be considered the parallel view for moral responsibility, responsibility as attributability (Scanlon 1998, p. 248).
Our account of self-creative responsibility holds a critique against the luck egalitarian version of responsibility that is structurally similar to the one raised by Angela Smith against normativist accounts of moral responsibility (Smith 2007, p. 466).
See also G. A. Cohen (2006), p. 441, in his reply to Susan Hurley, where he says that it does not constitute an ‘argument for egalitarianism that it extinguishes the effect of luck on distribution’.
As Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen (2016, p. 74) puts it, responsibility (and luck), on this understanding, ‘serve[s] not to justify equality, but to select the appropriate egalitarian view from among the large family of views that ascribe intrinsic significance to equality’.
See Carter (1995), §2, for considerations on the unconditional value of choice.
We refer to objective personal value here but one could also refer to the impersonal value of choice. The claim about objective personal value implies that choice is valuable in an objective sense for the chooser personally, regardless of whether the actual choice has the best subjective outcome for the particular chooser—e.g. that it is good for you to choose for yourself despite the fact that if someone else chose for you, it would produce a better outcome.
Along similar lines, Scanlon argues that the significance of human choice stems partly from people’s ‘critically reflective, rational self-governance’ (1986, p. 174).
Elsewhere, we elaborate how the standard critiques of luck egalitarianism (and the luck egalitarian responses) neglect this more fundamental question (Axelsen and Nielsen 2020).
See also Clayton (2016, pp. 419–420).
See also Meijers and Vandamme (2019) who convincingly spell out this grounding in Lippert-Rasmussen’s account.
Here, we use these observations to show that the foundations upon which luck egalitarianism is built are compatible with a different notion of responsibility. Elsewhere, we have employed similar observations to show why luck egalitarianism should embrace a broader vision of egalitarianism, which we refer to as moral agency egalitarianism. See Axelsen and Nielsen (2020).
See Axelsen and Nielsen (2020, pp. 667–669).
We say ‘may well be’ because luck egalitarians seldom engage in all things considered judgements.
Interestingly, and uncharacteristically, Dworkin (2002) makes use of something akin to the pluralist reply to the harshness objection arguing that his hypothetical insurance market would ensure a basic minimum for everyone, regardless of imprudent choices. But, as Kristin Voigt (2007), fn. 16, argues, the provision of a minimum standard of living for everyone through the hypothetical insurance market ‘has to be regarded as a deviation from the basic luck egalitarian approach and not, as Dworkin suggests, as part of a theory of equality’. This route is vulnerable to the same objections as the pluralist responses discussed here. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for emphasising this point.
References
Albertsen, Andreas. 2016. Fresh starts for poor health choices: Should we provide them and who should pay? Public Health Ethics 9 (1): 55–64.
Albertsen, Andreas B., and Søren. F. Midtgaard. 2014. Unjust equalities. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 17 (2): 335–346.
Albertsen, Andreas B., and Lasse Nielsen. 2020. What Is the point of the harshness objection? Utilitas. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820820000059.
Anderson, Elizabeth. 1999. What is the point of equality? Ethics 109: 287–337.
Aristotle, (by J. A. K. Thomson) 1976/1951. Nicomachean Ethics. London: Penguin Classics.
Arneson, Richard. 1989. Equality and equal opportunity for welfare. Philosophical Studies 56 (1): 77–93.
Arneson, Richard. 2000. Luck egalitarianism and prioritarianism. Ethics 110 (2): 339–349.
Axelsen, David, and Lasse Nielsen. 2015. Sufficiency as freedom from duress. Journal of Political Philosophy 23 (4): 406–426.
Axelsen, David, and Lasse Nielsen. 2020. Harsh and disrespectful: Rescuing moral agency from luck and choice. Social Theory and Practice 46 (4): 657–669.
Carter, Ian. 1995. The independent value of freedom. Ethics 105 (5): 819–845.
Clayton, Matthew. 2016. Liberal equality: Political not erinaceous. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 19 (4): 416–433.
Cohen, G. A. 1989. On the currency of egalitarian justice. Ethics 99 (4): 906–944.
Cohen, G. A. 2006. Luck and equality: A reply to hurley. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (2): 439.
Cohen, G. A. 2008. Rescuing justice and equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Dworkin, Ronald. 1982. Equality of what? Part 2: Equality of resources. Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (4): 283–345.
Dworkin, Ronald. 2002. Sovereign virtue revisited. Ethics 113 (1): 106–143.
Dworkin, Ronald. 2011. Justice for Hedgehogs. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Fischer, John M. 1998. Responsibility and self-expression. The Journal of Ethics 3: 277–297.
Fleurbaey, Marc. 1995. Equality and responsibility. European Economic Review 39 (3–4): 683–689.
Hurka, Thomas. 1987. Why value autonomy? Social Theory and Practice 13 (3): 361–382.
Knight, Carl. 2006. The metaphysical case for luck egalitarianism. Social Theory and Practice 32 (2): 173–188.
Knight, Carl. 2009. Egalitarian justice and valuational judgement. Journal of Moral Philosophy 6 (4): 482–498.
Knight, Carl. 2015. Abandoning the abandonment objection: luck egalitarian arguments for public insurance. Res Publica 21 (2): 119–135.
Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper. 2016. Luck Egalitarianism. London: Bloomsbury.
Long, Ryan. 2011. The incompleteness of luck egalitarianism. Social Philosophy Today 27: 87–96.
McDowell, John. 1995. Two sorts of naturalism. In Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory, ed. R. Hursthouse, G. Lawrence, and W. Quinn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Meijers, Tim, and Pierre-Etienne. Vandamme. 2019. Equality, value pluralism and relevance: Is luck egalitarianism in one way good, but not all things considered? Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 22 (3): 318–334.
Mill, John Stuart 2008 [1859]. On Liberty. London: The Walter Scott Publishing Co. ltd.
Nussbaum, Martha. 2011. Creating Capabilities. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Qizilbash, Mozaffar. 1998. Aristotle and sartre on the human condition: Lack, responsibility and the desire to be good. Angelaki 3 (1): 29–37.
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Raz, Joseph. 1986. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ripstein, Arthur. 1994. Equality, luck, and responsibility. Philosophy and Public Affairs 23 (1): 3–23.
Roemer, John. 1996. Theories of Distributive Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1948. Existentialism and Humanism. London: Eyre Methuen.
Scanlon, Thomas M. 1986. The significance of choice. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 7: 149–216.
Scanlon, Thomas M. 1998. What we owe to each other. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Segall, Shlomi. 2010. Health, Luck, and Justice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Segall, Shlomi. 2012. Health, luck, and justice revisited. Ethical Perspectives 19 (2): 326–334.
Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sher, George. 2014. Equality for Inegalitarians. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sher, George. 2017. Doing justice to desert. In Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, ed. D. Sobel, P. Vallentyne, and S. Wall. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Smith, Angela M. 2007. On being responsible and holding responsible. The Journal of Ethics 11 (4): 465–484.
Stemplowska, Zofia. 2009. Making justice sensitive to responsibility. Political Studies 57: 237–259.
Stemplowska, Z. 2019. How generous should egalitarians be? Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 22 (3): 269–283. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2018.1438785.
Temkin, Larry. 2003. Equality, priority or what? Economics and Philosophy 19 (1): 61–87.
Velleman, J. David. 1992. What happens when someone acts? Mind 101 (403): 461–481.
Voigt, K. 2007. The harshness objection: Is luck egalitarianism too harsh on the victims of option luck? Ethical theory and moral practice 10 (4): 389–407.
Acknowledgements
We thank Andreas Albertsen, Clare Burgum, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Tom Parr, two anonymous reviewers of this journal, and participants at the annual meeting in the Danish Political Science Association 2017 for useful comments.
Funding
There is no funding to declare.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
There are no conflicts of interest to declare.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Nielsen, L., Axelsen, D.V. Being Responsible and Holding Responsible: On the Role of Individual Responsibility in Political Philosophy. Res Publica 27, 641–659 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-021-09506-3
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-021-09506-3