Whose Responsibility? — An Excerpt from a Case Study

5,141 characters2007.11.18

I’ve lately found myself from time to time recalling a passage in An Invitation to Philosophy; I might as well excerpt it here:

Page 113 … responsibility is the necessary product of freedom, the opposite of freedom, or perhaps, as Hume pointed out, responsibility is itself the basis of the demand for freedom: actions must be free in order for it to be possible that someone be responsible for each action. The subject has the freedom to carry out a certain action, but not the freedom to escape the consequences corresponding to it. Both Sophocles and Shakespeare like to speak of a “guilty” freedom; this is by no means because of some sensational taste for the personal and the lurid, but because when freedom makes us yearn for it and responsibility makes us fear it, or when we are confronted with some temptation, the connection between freedom and responsibility becomes even more apparent. In our age, there are far too many theories that are trying to free us from the burden of responsibility and let us enjoy freedom alone. We are already tired of these theories: the positive results of my actions are mine alone, while my faults can be shared by many people together—for example, my parents, my genes, the education I received, the historical background in which I find myself, the economic system, and any other environmental factors beyond my control. We are all responsible for all faults, and the result is that no one can bear primary responsibility for any fault. In my ethics class, I usually give the following example, adapted from a real case that deeply inspired me: there was a woman whose husband went away on a long trip, and she took advantage of his absence to meet secretly with a lover. One day, the suspicious husband suddenly announced that he was returning and asked his wife to pick him up at the airport. To go to the airport, the woman had to cross a forest, where, it was said, a terrible murderer was hiding. The woman was frightened, so she asked her lover to accompany her, but her lover refused, because he did not want to run into her husband. The woman then asked the town’s only security guard to escort her, but the guard also said he could not go with her, because he had to stay behind to ensure the safety of the town’s other citizens. The woman then looked for several neighbors, both women and men, but they all refused as well, some out of fear, others to avoid suspicion. In the end, the woman went out alone, and as a result she was killed by the criminal in the forest. Here we must ask: who is responsible for her death? I have received all kinds of answers; depending on the personality of the person being asked, the answers differ as well. Some blame the husband’s inflexibility and lack of tolerance, some blame the lover’s cowardice, some blame the guard’s poor professionalism, some blame the inadequacy of society’s safety mechanisms, some blame the neighbors’ lack of sympathy and mutual aid, and some even blame the murdered woman herself for being foolish—very few people, that is, are able to answer the most obvious fact of all: the chief person responsible for this homicide is the murderer who killed this woman himself. True, in the responsibility for every action there are numerous external factors involved; these factors can weaken, and even to a large extent blur, the responsibility of the action itself, but they are never sufficient to completely “absolve” the subject who deliberately carried out the action of the relevant responsibility. Taking into account all aspects of an action can allow us to understand it to some degree, but it can never completely erase the responsibility of the free subject. Otherwise, it would not be an action, but a fatal accident. Yet for human beings living in society, isn’t freedom precisely a fatal accident?

I used to say as well that what environmental ethics is now discussing—issues of nature’s “intrinsic value,” and what philosophy of technology is discussing—the question of the “value-ladenness” of tools and technology—may look very sophisticated, but in fact it falls into the trap of modern ethics: it quietly shifts the center of ethical concern. Modern ethics, with “norms” and “values” as its themes, not only casts aside “virtue”; it even sets aside the question of “responsibility,” that is, it sets aside “freedom,” in short, it sets aside “human beings.”

Of course, we can and should talk about whether things like “systems” and “technology” are good or bad, just as we can discuss whether a hammer is good or bad; but if this hammer is of poor quality, it is not the hammer itself that can bear responsibility for its poor quality—the blacksmith who forged it is the one who can “take responsibility” for the hammer’s crudeness. Or if the hammer was bought from Zhang San’s hardware store, then Zhang San should bear some responsibility; if you asked Li Si to buy it for you, then Li Si may also have to bear a bit of responsibility. Here I will not yet discuss who bears primary responsibility; the key point here is that the subjects who may “take responsibility” for this are all “human beings.” Only a free subject can bear responsibility.

In the “snippets” from the previous installment, I mentioned a passage: “Fundamentally speaking, social and cultural problems are always systemic. Under a system, every screw is at the mercy of forces beyond itself. But if we only say that—ah, everyone is at the mercy of forces beyond themselves, there’s nothing to be done, one person’s strength is irrelevant to the overall situation… then who will shoulder history? Everyone pushes responsibility onto the system; then who will shoulder history? … Whether it is the fault of the system or the illness of culture, the system, culture, and the times themselves are not subjects capable of ‘taking responsibility.’ Only human beings can be responsible and can bear responsibility.” That was also the point.