Obstructing the realization of civil responsibility

political, sociological, historical, and psychological aspects of civil responsibility

Chemi Ben-Noon

pp. 333-348

in: Nimrod Bar Am, Stefano Gattei (eds), Encouraging openness, Berlin, Springer, 2017

Abstract

This article connects two of my research fields: obeying the law (understanding the essence of civil disobedience and civil responsibility in democratic states), and flaws in reasoning (understanding the role of cognitive biases in ordinary and fateful decisions). Prof. Joseph Agassi made a decisive contribution to these research directions and accompanied me over many productive years.My contribution deals with the ways in which our cognitive structure, the state, its organs, and those who cooperate with it (either consciously or unconsciously), obstruct the functioning of responsible citizens in a democratic state. I shall present the actions the state employs for this purpose, along with insights from research into cognitive biases. The paper represents a search for a more accurate presentation of the idea of civil responsibility in a democratic state, along with the state's ways of obstructing responsible citizens' attempts to realize their civil responsibility.

Cited authors

Agassi Joseph