Moral Responsibility

'A bears Moral Responsibility for X' usually means one of two things. If X is a past event, it means 'A was the cause of X'. If X is a possible future act, it means 'A ought to do X'. In both cases, the attribution of Responsibility is typically grounds for Blame, i. e. in the former, to blame X for having done A, or for B which caused A, in the latter, to blame A if X does not get done. Even though an analogous analysis applies to Praise, it is rare that the question of Responsibility is raised in order to give credit. So, since Blameworthiness is usually grounds for punishment, the attribution of Responsibility is, generally, a justification for punishing somebody. But the most telling word in 'A bears Moral Responsibility for X' is the one that is seemingly the least significant--'for'. The import of the latter becomes evident in the comparison of 'responsible' with its synonym 'answerable', which is usually followed by a different preposition--'to'. This comparison makes conspicuous the absence of 'to' from a locution that literally connotes a process that is essentially a directed reaction. Without it, 'responsible' is as vacuous as 'answer' would be without a preceding question or address, exposing it, as Nietzsche charges, as a weapon. In the Formaterial Individual, one of the two fundamental processes, Propriation, is a making-one's-own of all one's acts. It thus suffices as an acknowledgement, to oneself, that one was 'the cause of X'. Such acknowledgement exhausts the concept of Phronetic Responsibility. Hence, responsivieness to others regarding what one has done is not to be confused with assuming Moral Responsibility for it, nor do the demands of others make one 'Morally Responsible' for what one might not do.