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Varieties of answerability
Publikationstyp
Book Part
Date Issued
2023-11-07
Sprache
English
Start Page
204
End Page
216
Citation
in: The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Responsibility / ed. by M. Kiener. - Taylor & Francis Group (2023)
Publisher DOI
Scopus ID
Publisher
Taylor & Francis Group
ISBN
978-1-000-99012-6
978-1-032-25239-1
This chapter explores responsibility in terms of answerability. At its core, the concept of answerability purports to describe when and why it is apt, fitting, or even obligatory for a person to explain, justify, or excuse their conduct to others, not because doing so would have beneficial consequences but rather because there is some intrinsic connection between said conduct and a person’s moral agency. The chapter discusses three of these approaches in greater detail. They all start from the description of answerability given so far but differ from each other by explaining answerability more specifically in terms of the reflection of evaluative judgments, as a social or legal practice, and as a disposition for an inner dialogue. The overall aim of the chapter is to show that an adequate view of moral responsibility must incorporate insights from each of these approaches and, most notably, make use of their potential to cross-fertilize each other.
DDC Class
300: Social Sciences