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Abstract
Responsibility is a central political concept, yet the dynamics of contemporary political life call into question commonsense accounts of individual moral responsibility; it is difficult to ascribe responsibility to individual agents when faced with political dilemmas like global climate change. In response to this dilemma, this project engages two questions. First, how do different interpretations of responsibility both emerge from different political discourses and simultaneously shape different responses to political dilemmas? Second, in contrast to ubiquitous narratives of personal responsibility, what contending interpretations could better address contemporary political dilemmas? Drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings and engaging American political discourse, liberal political philosophy, and contemporary political theory, I advance three main claims. First, responsibility should be understood politically: it has an essentially contestable meaning, particular meanings are invoked to settle political disputes, and different invocations envision contending accounts of how the political world is and should be structured. Second, dominant narratives of personal responsibility generate two political pathologies. They both obscure the role of social, economic, and political institutions and structures in generating injustice and generate and direct resentful ascriptions of blame towards vulnerable people for their own suffering. Third, drawing on Nietzsche, I advance a contending interpretation of responsibility, which I call anticipatory responsibility: the obligation that political communities have to maintain the possibility of human flourishing into the future. Rather than retrospectively distributing guilt, debt, or blame, anticipatory responsibility envisions a mobilized democratic citizenry acting claiming responsibility for the structure of the political world, by working to build, reform, and maintain just political institutions. Anticipatory responsibility both can better orient political thought and action, and can only be discharged through political engagement.
