ABSTRACT
Leaders of governments and businesses are often reluctant to take responsibility for harms associated with their organizations. One theory—Susan Wolf’s-- suggests that there is a failure in cases like these to exercise a “nameless virtue” related to generosity. Roughly, someone with the nameless virtue spontaneously takes personal or official responsibility for a harm they are not strictly responsible for but which occurs in their sphere of influence. A lack of the nameless virtue can be seen behind the half-hearted apologies of bank executives in the financial crisis. But things can go wrong even in the presence of the nameless virtue. I shall argue that in the few cases where bankers have displayed the nameless virtue, its operation has sometimes obscured a failure to satisfy requirements of justice. I also question the association of failures to take responsibility with ungenerous action. In general, I shall try to indicate the moral limits of expansive-blame-taking by leaders of institutions, as well as by individuals acting in their own right or in domestic roles.
