Moral responsibility / Christopher Cowley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cowley, Christopher, 1967- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Responsibility.

Physical Description:

viii, 215 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Acumen Publishing, [2014]

Summary:

Who's to blame? In a world of strident public accusation and counter-accusation, of denial and justification and excuse, it can often be hard to determine responsibility with much confidence. And even when we think we have found the culprit, if we dig below the sulfate it's not always clear what exactly we are blaming them for: an action, an omission, an altitude, an unforeseen consequence, a relationship, a character trait, ignorance, or some obscure combination of any of these. There is also a lingering concern about the role of sheer bad luck behind a lot of human wrongdoing, and this can undermine the fairness of our responsibility attributions. This book examines our practice of holding people responsible, of rejecting or accepting responsibility, and of taking responsibility for another person. The first part looks at the sorts of things we say, in the present, about responsibility for something that occurred in the past. One example is the conversation that takes place between prosecution lawyer and defendant, another less format one is the conversation that takes place between intimates when one apologises and the other forgives. The second part of the book explores what it means to take responsibility now for certain people's welfare into the future, especially in the paradigmatic roles of doctor and parent, but also in our "rule" as human beings in a community of other human beings who sometimes need help. The book concludes with a discussion of what it might mean to take responsibility for one's own life when it has been severely constrained by misfortune. Book jacket.

Contents:

I Retrospective responsibility

1 Defining retrospective responsibility 21

2 Responsibility for mistakes 45

3 Apology and forgiveness 65

4 Punishment 91

5 Moral luck 113

II Prospective responsibility

6 Role-responsibility 135

7 Responsibility for strangers 155

8 Learning to love 173.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1844655652

9781844655649

1844655644

9781844655656

OCLC:

865160423

Publisher Number:

99957463923