Responsibilitarianism

                    All Ethics presupposes that actors ought to own up the responsibility 

of their actions. The term Responsibilitarianism may sound as a tautology. Unfortunately due to various philosophies & anti-philosophies that have emerged in the course of the on-going enlightenment project, have deviated from the project & have tried to render the project as impossible & in some cases even unwarranted. Rebellions against the very notion of Reason in human sciences on one hand & emergence of reductionist determinism out of the exact sciences on the other have tried to undercut the notion of ‘voluntary agent becoming more & more rational’, by either denying agent-hood or by denying the very possibility of becoming rational. These currents in thought are accompanied by all pervasive welfare State bestowing rights after rights without bothering about the duty-side of any right. Such rights which are not supported from Duty-side tend to become hollow & add to the discontent rather than alleviating it. Re=emergence of religions & communalisms have further harmed the possibility of rational conduct. Aggressive religions are more explicit in making the harm. But non-aggressive ones spread escapism as they preach dissolution of the ego & render agent-hood as illusory.

 We are undergoing a crisis of Responsibility Deficit which tends to cascade with Authoritarianism. With all this, putting Responsibility at the center of Ethics & political philosophy does not at all sound tautological but the very need of the juncture in history.

The Idea of Human-Good

Any political philosophy worth the name can not escape from giving a paradigm-judgment regarding Human-Nature & Human-Good. Responsibilitarianism does not shy away from its universal-rational commitment & does not accept any sort of cultural relativism, as if the individual’s self-responsible choice were a matter of personal taste. It recognizes neither the ‘total pleasure maximization’ nor its ‘equal distribution’ as Human-Good.

Humans have no automatic instinctive capacity to make proper decisions to survive & thrive. They have to think, make conscious decisions, opt for some within available alternatives & own up the consequences. It is Human actions that can be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ as decisions are reached via conscious deliberation. Humans perceive themselves as agents or doers of their action. Their self-appraisals render the sense of responsibility to them.

Each human individual is unique & fortuitous & has to endeavor to improve her lot again & again at each situation she falls into. Responsibilitarianism recognizes faculty of  reason & quest of rationality but also accepts fallibility, imperfection & susceptibility to temptations on the part of humans. Responsibilitarianism envisions Human-Good in every individual rising as much she can towards Autonomy, Responsibility & Maturity. It proposes to encourage the abiders of responsibility & to discourage the evaders of individual responsibility as well as the invaders of individual rights.

Why coercive power is needed at all

Responsibilitarianism cherishes rule of law & despises the arbitrary whims of the rulers. It recognizes no discriminatory privileges or servitudes & seeks proper law that is universally applicable to all, i.e. Isonomy (& not any quantity distributive equality). General principle is that every authority must be redeemed by accomplishment of the responsibility implied in it & that every responsibility must be enabled by the authority required for it. Deficit of responsibility & surplus of authority generates the demand for coercive power.

The supply of coercive power, on the other hand, comes basically from the relation between the victor & the vanquished that is established at the culmination of wars. Warfare, albeit irrupting intermittently, is kept seething in the form of envy & hatred amongst parochial ‘collective identities’ needed by the minds that do not have true self-esteem.

We will keep aside the ‘supply side’ of coercive power & concentrate upon how Responsibilitarianism seeks to minimize the demand of coercive power generated by the ‘Responsibility Deficit’.

Responsibility towards oneself

Responsibilitarianism countenances three basic categories of Responsibilities & corresponding Authorities (or Rights). Each human individual owes a responsibility towards herself & an authority over herself. It is the responsibility to accept one’s lot, (wasting least energy in grudging & blaming) & to improve upon it. This means using one’s opportunities & capabilities in such a way as to enhance them & not to diminish them, while dealing with threats in such a way as not to multiply them. This is only a prudent rationality. (Moral rationality comes in the remaining two categories.)

The corresponding authority is the personal freedom to employ one’s mind, body & legitimate ‘property’ towards one’s own ends. One’s ends could be altruistic as well but they ought not to be imposed by others.

 The responsibility towards self is optional, in the sense that others (or the State) can not properly compel you, to take care of yourself, if you do not do so on your own. There are so many ‘Self-Harming Vices’ in humans. These include avoidance, indolence, addictions, aversions, obsessions, idiosyncrasies, dogmas & even sheer stupidity, only to name a few. Acting under their spell is to do injustice to oneself. No doubt there exists a lot of injustice from (& to) others to be fought socially & constructively. However, by carrying a ‘victim complex’ OR a ‘guilt complex’ only adds to the self harming vices.

 To counter these vices, of course there are self-enhancing virtues of which humans are endowed with, nurtured into & can imbibe them by practicing volitionally. Self-Enhancers not only do justice to their selves but in turn become capable of doing justice (or something more than justice) to others as well.

Conditional responsibility towards particular others

The second basic category of responsibilities & authorities comprises of the conditional ones towards particular others with whom one engages in voluntary contracts (tacit or express).

 These contracts ought to be truly voluntary, i.e. not made by forces of ‘aggressions’ (non-aggression will be coming under third category.). These contracts ought not to be undefined or ambiguous. One ought not to have accepted responsibilities of which one is not truly capable of shouldering. One ought not cheat or falter away in the midst of carrying through the contract. Even in case of unintended failures, it should be clear as to who is to bear their brunt. Contracts should not be one-sided i.e. authorities & responsibilities should be finite & mutually redeeming.

Some faulty contracts are bound to be there & some breaches of the good ones are also bound to occur. Disputes are bound to arise. Arrangements of resolving disputes & giving verdicts of compliances & compensations must be made. However if some party to a dispute simply refuses to honor verdict then the dispute may enter in the area of crime. It is dealt with in the third category.

Unconditional responsibility towards all others

In this category, every human individual owes an unconditional responsibility towards every other human individual. Seeing the finite & little capacity of single individual, it is clear that this responsibility can not be one of positively supplying something but that of refraining from something.

Here we come to the ‘no aggression’ principle. Not to aggress upon others (except in utter self-defense or minimally invasive prevention) is the most revered principle of Responsibilitarianism. The word freedom is used in many senses. We can talk of ‘inner freedom’ whence one can overcome one’s unruly passions. We can talk of ‘freedom to do things’ in the sense of acquiring a capacity or strength or facility to do things. Such other nuances of the word freedom are also important for Human-Good. Political philosophy, however, must focus upon the freedom from others’ wills being imposed on the individual, by force. All ‘softer’ versions of threat, if investigated by asking the question, “What if I defy?” & take it to its logical conclusion; we discover again & again that the ultimate kernel is physical threat. Power, in the final analysis is violent. Extortion is the basic form of all misappropriations, all injustice.

Thus every human individual has a universal responsibility of not aggressing upon other & has universal authority of not being aggressed by others. The moral right to self-defense (not a right to retribution) is most vulnerable because the individual is always in ultimate minority. Any two individuals allying/coalescing for extorting their common singular victim are enough, let alone ‘all’ (about 6.5 billion). A lynch hunting mob is worst possible threat to individual’s right.

 Second, when anyone acts in self defense, there is always a chance of over-retaliation, i.e. a reverse aggression. Therefore we all need some agency that can protect us from aggression. That is the main moral basis of State. From Responsibilitarian point of view, State-coercion is justified only insofar as it is needed to prevent citizen to citizen coercion.

The Vicious circle

Although we have distinguished the three pairs of responsibilities & authorities, in personal, civil & political arenas, these by no means can remain unaffected by each other. Looking from the ‘demand side’ of coercive power the Responsibility-Deficit occurs in all the three categories as there are evaders & invaders. The vicious circle can be traced right from the responsibility deficit in Self-Responsibility. As individuals fall short in the responsibility to themselves (due to self-harming vices & lack of self-enhancing virtues), their capability of shouldering responsibility to others, diminishes. This leads to failures in responsibilities not only towards themselves but also towards others.

At the same time ‘the others’ do have their authorities as bestowed on them by laws & contracts. Thus the responsibility deficit enters the second sphere. This increases unresolved disputes, breaches of contracts & dishonored verdicts. This process inevitably leads to a situation in which somebody’s rights are encroached. Any authority either has to be redeemed by fulfillment of the corresponding responsibility, so that such authority will retain its ‘voluntary’ basis; OR the authority will have to be coercively imposed on somebody or the other. To the extent authorities become sustainable by coercion, the ‘power’ is required.  The non-violent character of ‘voluntary’ contracts is lost. Crimes breakout & they have to be repressed. Demand for State power increases.

The state power, instead of stopping crimes & implementing verdicts, starts imposing ‘redistribution’ of goods to the self-irresponsible, as well as those who are irresponsible to others, By way of offering bail-outs. The State thereby falsely redeems their responsibilities by bestowing undeserved remittances & grants. For this the State starts extorting the responsible because, qua state, it does not produce any good.

This path of appeasement may earn more popularity but in fact aggravates the problem of responsibility deficit as it rewards the irresponsible & punishes the responsible. Thus the State supposedly the lone protector from all extorters becomes the greatest extorter & the vicious circle continues towards totalitarianism.

Philosophical Blunders of Egalitarianism

What legitimizes the State for neglecting its proper function & usurping proper functions of civil society? The answer lies in the idea of justice of egalitarians who treat the ‘distribution pattern’ as just or unjust without bothering to see whether the incumbents on various point on the distribution ‘curve’ deserve the position or not!

Egalitarians simply assume that all misery is necessarily caused by injustice done by others & all wellbeing is necessarily caused by doing injustice to others. The truth of the matter can be expressed in following equations a) misery = misfortune + self-harming + mutual antagonism + injustice by others & b) Wellbeing = good fortune + self enhancing + mutual complementarity + injustice to others. 

Egalitarians deem any good fortune as if it were snatched away by the fortunate from the unfortunate. Fortuity is neither just nor unjust for it is not a human action at all. (It must be always remembered that fortuity is pertaining to all aspects of life & varies so much from aspect to aspect, in case of same individual, that it is impossible to fix general ranks or to classify individuals as plus/minus on its ‘axis’. Furthermore instead of ranking individuals on the fortuity axis, more often groups are ranked & internal differentiation within groups as well as overlaps amongst groups are overlooked.  )

 If the good fortunes are not ‘deserved as such’ by the fortunate, it does not imply that they are, therefore, deserved by ‘others’ either. The unfortunate deserve compassion but not a right of ‘justice’ to forcefully snatch away the fortunes from the fortunate.

 Politicians, bureaucrats, all the middlemen of ‘redistribution’ who indulge in ‘rent seeking’ for themselves &/or indulge in wastage of the resources to be ‘redistributed’

Indeed, on humanitarian grounds, the fortunate should be generous, compassionate & forgiving to the unfortunate. Responsibilitarianism of course upholds the supererogatory virtues without forgetting that they must flow voluntarily. Responsibilitarianism opposes convicting the fortunate for the crime of being fortunate & extorting them indiscriminately.

This is as far as fortuity goes. But blaming self-enhancers for the self-earned misery of the self-harmers, (or blaming those who achieve mutual complementarity for the self earned misery of those who indulge in mutual antagonism) is a perversion of justice. This idea of equality is nothing but, “Envy draped in a robe of compassion & usurping the chair of justice.”

Paternalism & Demagoguery

Indeed human individuals can fall prey to misjudgments & temptations but they can & do learn from their mistakes & also get expert advice. The State whose proper function is judicial & if necessary, that of enforcement, if called for by citizens qua aggrieved parties, starts deciding on its own as to what is good for its ‘subjects’ & force them to well behave. State invents victimless crimes & bans (which it can not actually implement  but diverts the ‘crime’ in the domain of underworld) them. Such parental stance is called paternalism.

Demagoguery is the misuse of the majority principle of democracy. The majority principle is for attaining maximum possible consent to the election of personnel for holding offices or such other decisions where principles of civil rights are not flouted. Any true democracy ought to be a liberal state & not totalitarianism. If majority principle is interpreted as that a majority has a right to forgo democracy itself, then it is not properly democratic. The rights of liberty must be above the popular opinion at a point in time. This is often called as constitutionalism.

Demagogues are the politicians who try to win over masses by offering them ‘free gifts’. Outright impossible promises are at least better in one sense. These are not to be implemented in any case. But there are promises that can be implemented by taxing others &/or flouting ‘fiscal discipline’. Unjust & ‘positive’ rights (i.e. rights of getting supplies or quotas or share in power) are instituted. Irregularities are ‘regularized’. Demagogues create ‘favor/loyalty’ relations with voters & vote banks. Democracy becomes a method of sharing maximum spoils with maximum people where demagogues make politics an office of profit. In the name of democratizing the market, democracy is marketized.

Collectivism:

Treating any set of individuals as a bearer of a common subject-hood is resorting to collectivism. Only single individual is a proper bearer of subject-hood. It is an individual who switches over to ‘mob mentality’ by misusing the anonymity of being one of a crowd. Mob is set of individuals bearing ‘mob-mentality’.

 Class, caste, gender, language, region, race, nationality or whatever variable that is used to define a set can be misused for resorting to collectivism. It obscures the differentiation & power relations within the set. This suits the vested interest of the powerful individuals within the set.

 Even a proper organization consciously formed by individuals & operating as a singular legal entity does not bear a common subject-hood. Finally it is the individuals that are held responsible, as per their roles, for whatever happens within or ‘to’ that organization. The organization proper (role specific) & the set of individuals engaged in that organization (irrespective of the roles) construed as a ‘collective’, are two different things. Bosses of a firm appeal to their subordinates, “We are one family”, in order to suppress discontent within the organization (as if family were less oppressive than a firm).

 Collective identity lures individuals to believe that whatever happens to any ‘member’ of the collective has happened to ‘them’. They unnecessarily take pride, shame or resentment coming in equal share & multiply the ‘case’ into the ‘case of all’. Within a collective there emerges an evil complementarity between evaders of self-responsibility with the paternalistic invaders of others’ responsibility.

 Collective always needs some external threat or enemy. Collectives project their ‘favorite’ enemy upon each other & convert the false claim of enmity into a self fulfilling prophecy. Collectivism is a tool for political manipulators on one hand & a psychological security cover for the evaders & the mediocre on the other. Advocates of collectivism often give a big cry that One’s individuality itself is socially constructed (hence not real in itself) & deny any self-making of individuality. Even if this claim is, for the sake of argument, held true, it can be answered that ‘the collectivist individuality’ that tries to refuse individuality is also a socially constructed fiction.

Collectivists often make a charge that the individualists treat individuals as atomistic & social organization as a heap of potatoes. Truth is exactly the opposite. Individualists seek to formulate the social ‘molecules’ in terms of actual bonds of ‘role-ions’. It is the collectivists who put a set of individuals into ‘bags’ of collective entities, all (supposedly) equal within the bag, like potatoes.

Collectivists seem to revere solidarity & sense of belonging. No individualist has recommended loneliness. Individualists want to build authentic mutuality & togetherness from within the minds of individuals & not an imposed allegiance or ownership by others. If one does not overcome the fear of loneliness one can not taste the bliss of solitude & it the bliss of solitude that one can hope for authentic togetherness.

Whatever may be the process of social decision making, it can not be other than some structure of connections between severally occurring decisions, in singular minds. Collective mind is a figure of speech at the best & monster of tyranny at the worst.

Responsibilitarianism is a continuing ideological battle, again & again re-awakening the sprit of Enlightenment. Dare to think! Throw away the self-earned-tutelage (Svayam-Arjit-Aashritataa).