ABSTRACT
Abstract: This contribution gives an analysis of the concept of responsibility in its predominant uses and discusses the relations between the concept of responsibility and such kindred concepts as obligation, solidarity and social role. It introduces a distinction between ex post responsibility’ as answerability’ for some past act and ex ante responsibility’ as moral or legal obligation to take care of something or someone in the future, and examines the complex structure of both concepts. Specifying the conditions under which a person is responsible in the ex post or the ex ante sense is seen to depend on the answers given to such perennial problems of philosophy as the problem of free will, the problem of positive and negative responsibility, and the question whether solidarity is in principle limited by personal or community bonds or whether the idea of universal brotherhood of men (and perhaps even of nature) can be upheld. In conclusion, the factual distribution of responsibility in modern societies is analysed and discussed from the viewpoint of a universalistic ethics limiting the ascription of responsibility for pragmatic rather than fundamental reasons.
