Ontologisation of responsibility

The ontologisation of responsibility replaces the Cartesian “I  think, therefore I  am” with “I  am, therefore I  respond.”¹¹ According to this, an individual is seen in the context of responsibility, which characterises their identity. So responsibility is understood as a constitutive attribute of man. In this sense, we use responsibility not to depict fault or as some character trait that may be acquired, but we ascribe this category ontological status describing the structure of a human being. In this perspective, responsibility is a descriptive category according to which man is responsible, and, as Filek notes, irrespective of whether they live responsibly or not. This means that qualifying someone’s conduct as irresponsible assumes acknowledgement of their responsibility, for only if we recognise that a  person as responsible may we charge them with irresponsibility. In this sense, responsibility is not constructed on fault but the opposite. It is because we assume human responsibility that we can classify their acts as irresponsible. In an attempt to characterise responsibility thus understood, let us remark upon Hans Jonas’ distinction between formal and substantive responsibility.¹² When speaking of formal responsibility, we refer to the idea of responsibility for a deed done or omitted. This responsibility is held as a consequence of one’s deeds done, whereas substantive responsibility is presented as a  constitutive quality of a  subject, which obliges moral responsibility.¹³ Responsibility thus understood therefore obliges us to act.

Presenting above mentioned distinction Jonas point out that formal responsibility assumes ascribing of causality of acts. This responsibility pertains to the idea of responsibility in juridical the sense, i.e. in penal and civil laws. The common denominator of formal responsibility is the presumption that it refers to acts committed and becomes real due to the external intervention of some specific subject.

The substantive view refers to responsibility not regarding the act and its consequences, as an “ex-post-facto account,” but by an end, the fulfilment of which demands action. Responsibility thus understood is seen as an positive

10 Jacek Filek, Ontologizacja odpowiedzialności. Analityczne i  historyczne wprowadzenie w problematykę (Kraków: Baran i Suszczyński, 1996), p. 15, Jacek Filek, ed., Filozofia odpowiedzialności XX wieku (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2003), pp. 6 et seq.

11 Filek, Ontologizacja, p. 7.

12 H. Jonas, Zasada odpowiedzialności. Etyka dla cywilizacji technologicznej, trans. M. Klimowicz (Kraków: Platan, 1996), pp. 167–172.

13 Ibidem, p. 16.

qualification. In this sense, responsibility means that the subject is responsible

“for the matter,” as Jonas puts it. This responsibility is ontological, as it is connected with the human being and is by nature morally binding. The grounds for this obligation may lie in the role performed. Formal responsibility refers to misdeed. Courts, for example, refer to this sense of responsibility, qualifying committed acts with causality. Responsibility thus understood assumes, unlike in the substantive dimension, tribunalisation of responsibility in the external sense, for it indicates an institution which qualifies a  deed within formal responsibility. In regard to substantive responsibility, the concept of a tribunal is more elaborate. It is worth stressing that reference to self-responsibility as the inner tribunal does not exclude an external tribunal in the form, for example, of interpretive community.¹⁴

Responsibility in the substantive view is often accused of absolutisation, as it is indicated that in this sense the human being is responsible for everything, including the past.¹⁵ The rebuttal of this charge, on the one hand stresses that one may speak of responsibility for the past, since it determines contemporaneity, while simultaneously the historical dimension of responsibility thus understood is stressed.¹⁶ On the other hand, the chargé of absolutisation is rebutted by stressing that it is not maximalist by nature, but only renders the image of man, who by living responds to the events he witnesses.¹⁷ In this sense, responsibility is not understood as duty being a  consequence of being human, but as a constitutive quality of this state.

The presented ways of considering universality of ontological understanding of responsibility are not the only ones. I would like to have a closer look at the one which views responsibility in the context of the role that man plays in social practice. One of the first authors who paid attention to that was Georg Picht, who indicates that the tasks we are to fulfil in practice build responsibility for the correct fulfilment of the committed role.¹⁸ The thesis is drawn from the assumption that the concept of responsibility is linked with competence to realise the consigned task.¹⁹ By adopting such a view of responsibility, one may accept that the concept that social role sets the scope of responsibility,

14 Filek, Filozofia odpowiedzialności XX wieku, p. 268.

15 Georg Picht, “Pojęcie odpowiedzialności,” (trans. K. Michalski) in Filozofia odpowiedzialności XX wieku. Teksty źródłowe, selection, translation, ed. Jacek Filek (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2004), pp. 146–147.

16 Andrea Folkierska, Sergiusz Hessen – pedagog odpowiedzialny (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2005), pp. 51–61.

17 Paweł Krupiec, Problem odpowiedzialności w kontekście współczesnego sporu wokół moralności autonomicznej (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Papieskiej Akademii Teologicznej, 2005), pp. 39–40.

18 Picht, “Pojęcie odpowiedzialności,” p. 151.

19 Ibidem, p. 151.

within which a human is conscious that their action has a real influence on the reality in which they function. A similar view is formulated by Józef Tischner, who designates the scope of responsibility with the term responsibility field.²⁰ This sets the scope within which we may ascribe to a  certain individual the possibility of real causality. In a similar way, the concretisation of a “universal”

sense of responsibility, by referring to function performed in social practice, is also carried out by Johannes Schwartländer.²¹ It is worth remarking here that Schwartländer refers to the judge persona when writing about the ontologisation of responsibility. He considers judicial activity in the context of duty (first order responsibility) and responsibility (basic responsibility).²² The judge’s obligation boils down to acting according to normative decisions on the level of the legal text, whereas responsibility assumes the inclusion of various other factors, i.e.

not only textual.

The presented reflections indicate that it is possible to consider the ontologisation of responsibility in reference to particular professional groups.

This view is legitimised by Jonas, by making a distinction between natural and contractual responsibility.²³ The author indicates that natural responsibility is related to being human. The archetype of this is the parent-child relation.²⁴ Contractual responsibility, in turn, is a  consequence of social obligation; of accepting a specific task. In this way, responsibility does not arise in consequence of an action, but obliges one to do a deed:

this is circumscribed in the content and time by the particular task; its acceptance has in it the element of choice, from which one may later resign or be released. Also, in its inception at least, if not in its course, there is some degree of mutuality involved.[…] the responsibility draws its binding force from the agreement whose creature it is, and not from the intrinsic validity of the cause.²⁵

Contrary to natural responsibility, the contractual form is founded on the social role played and has strong social foundations.²⁶ According to Jonas,

20 Józef Tischner, “Etyka wartości i nadziei,” in Wobec wartości Dietrich von Hildebrand, Jan Andrzej Kłoczkowski, Józef Paściak, Józef Tischner (Poznań: W drodze, 1982), p. 100.

21 Johannes Schwartländer, “Odpowiedzialność jako podstawowe pojęcie filozoficzne,” in Filozofia odpowiedzialności XX wieku. Teksty źródłowe, selection, translation, ed. Jacek Filek (Kraków:

Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2004), pp. 177–180.

22 Schwartländer, “Odpowiedzialność jako,” p. 182.

23 Jonas, Zasada odpowiedzialności, pp. 174–176.

24 Ibidem, pp. 180–182 and 232.

25 Ibidem, p. 175.

26 Nowicka, Odpowiedzialność: ujęcie deontologiczne. Status pozytywnej odpowiedzialności prospektywnej w filozofii Immanuela Kanta, p. 5.

contractual responsibility as role responsibility may delimit two modes for the person holding such responsibility: leaving room for choice or not.²⁷ The presented division into natural and contractual responsibility leads to the distinction between responsibility “for someone” and “for something,”

respectively.²⁸ Accepting responsibility as being responsible “for someone” is borne out in the context of the primary experience of the other person’s face.

By adopting this view, it is indicated that one is responsible for “the other.” This responsibility may be ascribed in the sense of referring to natural responsibility distinguished by Jonas. When responsibility is viewed as being responsible “for something,” the reflection focuses on public activity.

The presented view of responsibility is related to the legal discourse by Wilhelm Weischedel.²⁹ For this purpose, he distinguishes legal responsibility as a  paradigm of social responsibility.³⁰ In discussing legal responsibility, Weischedel starts by laying out its juridical sense. In analysing it he becomes convinced that responsibility thus understood concentrates on the perpetrator and more specifically on ascribing to him guilt on the grounds of having committed an illegal act.³¹ However, he acknowledges that this is not the only possible view of discussing a legal act in the context of responsibility. Continuing this thought, he indicates that carrying out the presented qualification precedes the thought process, and in this context he discusses the fundamental notion of responsibility, describing it as legal responsibility of the second degree.

This responsibility focuses on the act of arriving at a  decision. This process contains various stages of the decision-making. One of them concerns the way of answering the question on right course of action. In this scope, the choice is between opening oneself to the analysed case or adopting a closed stance.³² When given a choice, making a decision requires, according to Weischedel, to bring out and engage in the existential understanding of “I”.³³ To denominate this act the author uses the term basic responsibility. For this reason, he assumes that the substantive dimension of formal responsibility may be understood from the perspective of its foundations.

27 Jonas, Zasada odpowiedzialności, p. 176.

28 Jan Kiełbasa, “Wciąż więcej pytań,” Znak 1995, No. 10, p. 30; Picht, “Pojęcie odpowiedzialności,”

p. 139.

29 Wilhelm Weischedel, “Istota odpowiedzialności,” in Filozofia odpowiedzialności XX wieku. Teksty źródłowe, selection, translation, ed. Jacek Filek (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2004), p. 85.

30 Weischedel, “Istota odpowiedzialności,” p. 86.

31 Ibidem, p. 87.

32 Ibidem, p. 90.

33 Ibidem, p. 91.

Weischedel thus draws attention to the possibility of looking into legal responsibility as an illustrative category: a) ascribing to the perpetrator a specific qualification (legal responsibility of the first degree) and b) the process of arriving at a decision, in which the formal and substantive dimensions may be distinguished (basic legal responsibility).³⁴ Basic responsibility, contrary to the first degree, concentrates on self-conscience (however this does not preclude the concept of community as an institution before which one is responsible).

Responsibility thus understood focuses on the decision-making process, in which the subjective “I” meets “I” as a social being. The above perspective of legal responsibility refers to the individual. In this light, the jurist’s behaviour is not passive but requires activity.