Publication details
Publisher: Springer
Place: Berlin
Year: 2000
Pages: 147-165
Series: Contributions to Phenomenology
ISBN (Hardback): 9789048153961
Full citation:
, "Taking responsibility seriously", in: Phenomenology of the political, Berlin, Springer, 2000
Taking responsibility seriously
pp. 147-165
in: Kevin Thompson, Lester Embree (eds), Phenomenology of the political, Berlin, Springer, 2000Abstract
The concept of responsibility lives in the shadow of the hagiographic life of rights in the modern West.1 Western modernity has privileged rights while handcuffing and marginalizing responsibility. Ours, in particular, is the land of rights talk, and our political and legal thought has been enslaved to and by it. As Amy Gutmann recently points out, "most prominent political philosophers are now rights theorists."2 Today rights talk has invaded and colonized even the nonhuman world of nature: we speak of the "rights of nature" and "animal rights" as well as "civil rights" and "human rights." We are indeed possessed and compressed by rights talk. So-called "retreat" from or the "reclamation" of responsibility is a phantom expression because responsibility has never assumed conceptual prominence or strategic equity with rights in Western modernity.
Publication details
Publisher: Springer
Place: Berlin
Year: 2000
Pages: 147-165
Series: Contributions to Phenomenology
ISBN (Hardback): 9789048153961
Full citation:
, "Taking responsibility seriously", in: Phenomenology of the political, Berlin, Springer, 2000