Abstract

This paper deals with the relationship between legal responsibility and causation. I argue that legal responsibility is not necessarily rooted in causation. The general claim I aim to disprove is that responsibility is descriptive because it is fundamentally rooted in causality, and causality is metaphysically real and founded. My strategy is twofold. First, I show (in §1) that there are significant and independent non- causal form of responsibility that cannot be reduced to causal responsibility; second, in §2, I show that the very notion of causality is— lato sensu—not plainly descriptive. I will suggest that even causation is tied to evaluative elements, contrary to what is assumed by many theorists and practitioners working in normative domains.