I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning of “responsibility,” specifically in the context of politics and governance. We live in an age of populism, rising authoritarianism, disinformation, climate change, and the slaughter of civilians in places like Gaza and Sudan. The notions of responsibility associated with the so-called “liberal international order” are all under strain.

Most of us, I think, rely on a kind of “duck test.” That is, we know responsibility or irresponsibility when we see it. That may work just fine in everyday life, but it doesn’t provide much guidance when it comes to pressing political problems. In practice, it tends to reduce the claim “that’s irresponsible!” to little more than another way of saying “I oppose you or your policies.”

Much of the news in the United Kingdom right now is about the forthcoming November budget. The Government seems poised to violate its 2024 election manifesto, which promised not to raise taxes. The government claims that they have little other choice: in light of the vast fiscal challenges that Labour inherited from the Tories, raising taxes is the only “responsible” course of actions. Critics charge, naturally enough, the breaking a solemn electoral promise is the height of irresponsibility. 

Which is it? In a sense, both of these claims are true. It is irresponsible to maintain a policy — or, more broadly, continue a course of action — that is obviously failing. It is also irresponsible to abandon promises when they are no longer expedient. How we answer the question depends on the context. In this case, which context we choose to highlight. 

The fact that responsibility is a matter of context, though, only gets us so far. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre tells us that being responsible is because we have the freedom to make choices. Does that mean that any action is responsible, so far as we accept “responsibility” for it?

No small number of social scientists view Max Weber as one of the most important theorists of political responsibility. Weber contrasted an “ethic of responsibility” with an “ethic of ultimate ends.”

We must be clear about the fact that all ethically oriented conduct may be guided by one of two fundamentally differing and irreconcilably opposed maxims: conduct can be oriented to an ‘ethic of ultimate ends’ or to an ‘ethic of responsibility.’ This is not to say that an ethic of ultimate ends is identical with irresponsibility, or that an ethic of responsibility is identical with unprincipled opportunism. Naturally nobody says that. However, there is an abysmal contrast between conduct that follows the maxim of an ethic of ultimate ends—that is, in religious terms, ‘The Christian does rightly and leaves the results with the Lord’—and conduct that follows the maxim of an ethic of responsibility, in which case one has to give an account of the foreseeable results of one’s action.

For Weber, responsibility has more to do with necessity than with any moral law that explains right and wrong. Weber encourages us to ask what it means “to be” responsible. But, as far as I can tell, most work in contemporary political theory is not particularly interested in that question.

Instead, one of the most significant debates about responsibility concerns the agent. Is there such a thing as “group” or “collective” responsibility? Or are only individuals responsible? And if there is group responsibility, when can we hold groups responsible for the actions of individuals, and in what ways? 

This debate, at least in its present form, emerged in response to the Second World War,¹ and the problem of what Karl Jaspers describes as “German guilt.” In recent years, this debate has extended into the domain of structural injustices. Some of the specifics differ. The claim that all Germans were responsible for the Holocaust does not necessarily imply, for example, that all white Americans are responsible for the downstream inequality produced by slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, and the like. But both ask whether someone can be held responsible for something they did not directly cause? As Hannah Arendt put it, can anyone can be held responsible “for things that one has not done.”²

These kinds of concerns — about causality and culpability — have played a major role in current thinking about the meaning of responsibility. One of the more influential arguments from the scholar of collective responsibility, Larry May, treats responsibility as liability — although he expands on that framing in an essay on men and rape where he treats responsibility as a kind of complicity.

Yet, do any of these different formulations and theories about responsibility help us understand what it means to be responsible and how to identify irresponsibility? 

I don’t think that they do.

The pattern seems to be that responsibility explains our connection to an outcome, including the type of agent that can be associated with any particular outcome. Is that all that we can say about responsibility?

I don’t think that it is possible to provide a singular all-encompassing definition. There is something about the meaning of responsibility that makes it another “essentially contested concept.”

But I do think that we can nevertheless still provide something of an explanation of what it means to be responsible.³

My explanation is that responsibility is to live in the world. 

What do I mean by that? We alreadly live in the world. How does that help us identify irresponsibility? 

In his essay, the Politics as a Vocation, Weber makes a fascinating distinction between what he describes as the ethic of conviction as opposed to the ethic of responsibility. 

The ethic of conviction presumes a kind of moral aloofness. For those who adhere to this conviction, outcomes are out of one’s hands. They are the result of God, or the world, or perhaps stupid people. There is no accountability, no answerableness, in the ethic of conviction. In contrast, the ethic of responsibility “means that one must answer for the (foreseeable) consequences of one’s actions.”

Someone who subscribes to the ethic of responsibility:

Does not feel that he can shuffle off the consequences of his own actions, as far as he could foresee them, and place the burden on the shoulders of others. He will say, ‘These consequences are to be attributed to my actions.’ The person who subscribes to the ethic of conviction feels ‘responsible’ only for ensuring that the flame of pure conviction… is never extinguished.

Weber’s distinction means that to be responsible is not necessarily to be moral or follow some universal rule of right and wrong. It’s not even to be liable for a specific outcome. Responsibility is to recognize that our actions carry consequences.

Someone who follows the ethic of conviction will justify any means to suit the ends and has no qualms about changing their position regarding what means are justifiable or, presumably, what ends are desired. Conviction, or perhaps attitude is all that matters. That’s a problem. It’s not responsibility. Significantly, from Weber’s perspective, such a person does not live in the world.⁴

That’s interesting. 

It’s almost as if Weber is saying that the ethic of conviction is something of a fantasy-land. Those who take seriously the ethic of responsibility need to think carefully about the world they inhabit. Moreover, in politics, the ethic of responsibility is considerably more important than that of conviction. In politics, consequences matter. (I’d argue they matter in other areas as well, not just politics).

Weber seems to be saying that even if we are ignorant of the long-term consequences that our choices have, we need to be prepared to acknowledge our role in shaping them, whether we like it or not. 

Weber’s focus on consequences is important, but not because it could emphasize liability. 

It is important because it emphasizes judgement. 

He is clear that sometimes the consequences of a decision in politics might not be felt for a generation. That temporality complicates liability and brings us back to Arendt’s question about being responsible for something you didn’t do. Rather, Weber is telling us that the hallmark of responsibility is the capacity to understand how our actions contribute to making the world that we, and future generations, live in.⁵

That sounds very much like judgement.⁶

If we are to identify responsibility and irresponsibility it depends on the capacity of judgement, and the ability to think through how we become involved in producing a world. Crudely put, responsibility involves judging past actions based on future outcomes. 

When I suggest that responsibility is to live in the world I am getting at something very specific. Responsibility is to take on the capacity to judge how our actions shape the world around us in ways which are likely to be felt by other people. Political responsibility is the same thing but involves people we are unlikely to meet. Responsibility is to see yourself taking ownership of your actions by thinking through how your choices contribute to producing a world with other people who are like us and not like us. 

That means that judging irresponsibility is not necessarily about liability (or the national interest). It can be, but it is also about seeing ourselves as moral beings whose choices involve other people. Consequences are not always foreseeable. They might take time and they can be unintended. We might not like all of the consequences of our actions, but we cannot ignore that there are always consequences. An irresponsible world is a world without consequences although I don’t think such a place exists.

Where does that take us? Irresponsibility is when we act is though there are never any consequences. It is to see yourself outside of the world you live in. Whereas responsibility is to see yourself as part of the world where your choices contribute to making that world. 

¹ He does not discuss the war directly, but one significant work from 1948 is H.D. Lewis’ article on “collective responsibility.”

² Hannah Arendt, “Collective Responsibility,” In Responsibility and Judgment, edited by Jerome Kohn, 147–258. New York: Schocken Books, 2003. 147.

³ This is the concern of my current book project which in addition to theory also engages with dystopian and science fiction, Carl Sagan and Octavia Butler. Coming to a bookstore sometime in the future. Once I finish writing it. And find a publisher. Maybe also an editor. (If you are an editor I can be reached at ilan.baron@durham.ac.uk).

⁴ There does seem to be an interesting similarity with how Sartre explains responsibility in his essay on “Existentialism and Humanism.” Both acknowledge something important about how responsibility comes from living in the world (“existence before essence”, would be how Sartre would put it), although they obviously differ in important respects. Weber was no existentialist. 

⁵There does seem to be an interesting similarity with how Sartre explains responsibility in his essay on “Existentialism and Humanism.” Both acknowledge something important about how responsibility comes from living in the world (“existence before essence”, would be how Sartre would put it), although they obviously differ in important respects. Weber was no existentialist. 

⁶ It also sounds very close to what Hans Jonas explores in his discussion about “thoughtlessness.”