Full Responsibility

On Pragmatic, Political, and Other Modes of Sharing Action

Steven G Smith author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:State University of New York Press

Published:2nd Mar '23

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Full Responsibility cover

Explores the basic forms of responsibility that we willingly assume and the collaborative fulfillment that we find in each.

Starting with an appreciation of the practical realizations that move us to assume responsibility, Full Responsibility develops an ontologically-grounded model of different forms of responsibility and the challenges and fulfillments found in each. Special attention is given to pragmatic and political responsibility, highlighting considerations for right action that are not accurately recognized by universalizing ethics. Issues in abortion decisions, providing for responsible work, and immigration and refugee policy are examined in the complex frame of political responsibility. Moving past the standoff between political moralism and political realism, Steven G. Smith offers an account of political responsibility as an unstable combination of all modes of responsibility. The book concludes by reviewing different approaches to the impossible but compelling ideal of full responsibility. The distinctive natures of ethical, historical, and religious forms of responsibility are discussed in appendices.

"A very close examination of responsibility in most of its nuances, Smith's hypothetical scenarios breathe life into what, for other authors, might otherwise be dry dead husks of generalities and formalisms, demonstrating that such everyday activities as agreeing to move a piano for a friend are woven full of aspects of responsibility." — Marc M. Anderson, author of Hyperthematics: The Logic of Value

ISBN: 9781438489827

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

232 pages