The Spell of Responsibility

Labor, Criminality, Philosophy

Frieder Vogelmann, Daniel Steuer

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786602350
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Critical Theory

Most people would agree that we should behave and act in a responsible way. Yet only 200 years ago, ‘responsibility’ was only of marginal importance in discussions of law and legal practice, and it had little ethical significance. What is the significance of the fact that ‘responsibility’ now plays such a central role in, for example, work, the welfare state, or the criminal justice system? What happens when individuals are generally expected to think of themselves as ‘responsible’ agents? And what are the consequences of the fact that the philosophical analysis of ‘responsibility’ focuses almost exclusively on conditions of agency that are mostly absent from real life? In this book, Frieder Vogelmann demonstrates how large parts of philosophy have fallen under responsibility’s spell, and he uses a Foucauldian approach in an attempt to break it. The three axes of power, knowledge, and self are used in a detailed analysis of the practical regimes of labour (including the welfare state), criminality (including policing, punishment practices, and criminal proceedings), and philosophy, and of the two subject positions required by ‘responsibility’ – those of the attributors and bearers of responsibility – within them. The power relations between these positions, which Vogelmann carefully excavates from the grounds of our practices, reveal that the deck is stacked unevenly from the start.

Chapter 1

Introduction

The myth of philosophy’s beginnings is the story of a murder: in order to become philosophy, logos needed to kill off mythos. Theoretical violence thus pertains to philosophy from the very outset; and, like any other story of origins, this one also provides relief from the endless brutalities that ensue, brutalities that (as the myth about the necessary death of myth adds) philosophy must commit—thus does the story absolve philosophy of responsibility for its deeds. There are no objections to this, as long as we remain sensitive to the violence of philosophical practices, and this sensitivity is allowed to exert a moderating influence on these practices: the hope must remain that in philosophy we may be able to get by with less than murder—grievous bodily harm, maybe, or perhaps just a black eye.¹ But where this sensitivity is lost, violence threatens to become prevalent and to translate into action. This, in the most general terms, is the topic of this book.

Why do we lose sight of the theoretical violence that we practice? Maybe because the eagerness with which we carry on with our intellectual work does not afford us the inner repose that is needed to trace its consequences. But in order to be able systematically to ignore the damage one is causing, something more than that is needed. In terms of the myth about the death of myth, what is needed is a spell which bewitches and binds (see Mengis 1987; Grimm and Grimm 1854; column 1114f.), and thus distracts the philosophical gaze and lets philosophical practices disregard their own theoretical violence.

Such a spell is cast by the notion of “responsibility.” Large parts of philosophy are under it, and either miss or deny the theoretical, as well as the practical, violence exercised by “responsibility.” Let us not forget, they say, that philosophical reflection on the “correct” concept of “responsibility” must be categorically distinguished from the philosophically “impure” use made of it in the practical contexts of legal proceedings or crime prevention, of enterprise management or the welfare state. But the drawing of this line is as erroneous as it is soothing. As a result of the unity of “responsibility,” beyond the plurality of its meanings, the force of philosophical justifications is transposed onto entirely different practical domains, where it leads to “unexpected” consequences. At the same time, “responsibility” becomes a theoretically indispensable tool, not only for explaining, or disciplining, moral, social, economic, legal, or political practices, but also for understanding the activities and the object domains of philosophical practices themselves. Philosophy is fascinated by a self-explication based on a deeply rooted “concept of responsibility,” and thus goes on to discover everywhere this “responsibility” with which it has furnished every corner of itself, without ever noticing the consequences of its own devotion to this discursive operator. The blind fury with which philosophy labors to legitimize the concept of “responsibility” conceals both what “responsibility” inflicts on the individuals to whom it is ascribed, and the very walls of the theoretical cell in which a philosophy under the spell of responsibility imprisons itself.

Only those philosophical practices which create the spell of responsibility are able to break it—to this end, this book tries to render the spell visible in order to help those who are fighting for their own emancipation.

Theses

Violence and fascination, captivity and emancipation—these concepts indicate the perspective from which this book was written, but they do not suffice to articulate its theses. The scare quotes around “responsibility” already point toward difficulties that necessitate a more precise vocabulary. Although the detailed methodology will only be presented in the following chapter, we may anticipate the most important strategic decision in order to be able to present the theses pursued here.

In what follows, the term “responsibility” refers to something that is both more and less than a concept—more, because “responsibility” is active in practices and so exercises power, produces knowledge, and exerts an influence on the subjectivity of those who use the concept of “responsibility,” or who are affected by its use, and less, if by “concept” we mean a philosophically well-defined, ahistorical entity.² In this latter sense, responsibility has been defined as an n-ary relation (where n can take any value between one and six),³ as a human mode of being (Thomé 1998), as the ontological foundation of morality (Buddeberg 2011), or simply as “the nobility of the human person” (Schuster 1947; 332). The present work, by contrast, adopts a different perspective. Historically speaking, “responsibility” is a fairly new term, and one with an exceptional history. It is a controversial concept, and innumerable philosophical analyses have been dedicated to it. But most of all, it is a discursive operator which transforms power relations, knowledge formations, and processes of subjectivation within the practices into which it is introduced.⁴

“Responsibility” has become a spell because—and this is the most important thesis of this book—this discursive operator has become a highly effective paradigm of normativity.⁵ Large parts of philosophy today understand the distinctive binding force of normativity on the basis of “responsibility.” This has far-reaching practical and theoretical consequences. If we want to understand the practical effects of this discursive operator, we require a detailed analysis of those practices into which it has been introduced, or in which its importance has emerged. Such an investigation is further complicated by the fact that the transformation of the practices effected by “responsibility” does not take place without a transformation of “responsibility” itself. The third and fourth chapters will look at these interlocking transformations of practices and of the discursive operator “responsibility” in the cases of the practical regimes of labor and criminality.

The theoretical effects of “responsibility” as a paradigm of normativity can easily be seen in those sciences that are traditionally concerned with the practices of labor and criminality, that is sociology, economics, political science, and legal studies. But the theoretical consequences of its new-found importance become clearest in the discussions of “responsibility” that take place in philosophy. Despite this fact, these discussions will be considered only in the final chapter. The reason for this decision is my conviction that philosophy should not begin on its home turf if it wants to be able to say something about the present times. The hope is that we will thereby regain a sense of the practical importance of what is discussed inside philosophy according to its own rules.

This first characterization of the fundamental thesis of “responsibility” as a paradigm of normativity already raises further questions that the present work needs to address. There are historical questions: how did “responsibility” acquire such importance? What turned a marginal legal concept into such a powerful discursive operator? Which transformations must “responsibility” have been subjected to in order to play this new role?

This inevitably leads to the methodological question of how to ground the supposed unity of “responsibility.” What reasons are there to believe that all the different uses of the word responsibility indicate anything more than mere “family resemblance” between their different senses?⁶ What kind of unity permits us to treat the diverse concepts of responsibility in common?

And finally, we should take care not to lose sight of the political questions that are raised by this initial characterization: what does it mean not to seek to legitimize the concept of “responsibility,” or to search for the “right” concept of responsibility, but instead to ask what price we pay for our very focus on these analyses? What political consequences are associated with identifying the spell of responsibility?

Although it will only be possible to give sufficiently precise answers to these questions in the course of the actual analyses, we may outline some preliminary hypotheses. The most important hypothesis is the supposed unity of “responsibility.” Half of this hypothesis has already been explained: the unity of “responsibility” is not situated at the conceptual level; only when looking at “responsibility” as a discursive operator within various practices is the commonality within all the different uses of the word “responsibility” revealed. While this first half of the answer to the methodological question provides a perspective, the second half specifies what this commonality consists in—namely the relationship to self which is associated with “responsibility,” the structure of the manner in which “responsibility” influences the subjectivity of those who are “responsible,” are made “responsible,” or try to be “responsible.” The common structure of the responsible relationship to self is ambivalent because it is constituted by the way individuals deal with the fact of their own subjugation, both in the sense of being subjugated and of subjugating oneself or others. A responsible self-consciousness is therefore directly concerned with the exercise of power (subjugating) and with power that is exercised (being subjugated). Both aspects are treated by it as facts, and this points toward an objectification at the heart of the relationship to self under “responsibility,” an objectification which must be both preserved and concealed.⁷

The historical question of the mutually transformative relation between “responsibility” and the practices in which this discursive operator is used must be answered separately for each of the three regimes of practice that will be investigated: labor, criminality, and philosophy. What they share is the intensification of the responsible relationship to self: it becomes more permanent, more significant, and more abstract. This is evident, for instance, in the case of wage labor. Not only those in executive positions are expected to be responsible subjects, but so are also those who are employed by the hour by temporary work agencies. It is also evident in the case of local crime prevention, where not just the state and its institutions, but all decent citizens are made responsible for the prevention of crime. And last but not least it is evident in philosophy, which no longer views “responsibility” as an occasional, existentially disturbing event, but describes it as a continual relationship to oneself and others, and ends up understanding subjectivity itself as responsibility.

By contrast, the historical development of the power relations between the two subject positions necessary for “responsibility”—the one which makes responsible (which may attribute or remove, accept or reject, responsibility) and the one which bears responsibility (is being held responsible or is exempted from responsibility)—followed different paths in different contexts. The two subject positions may be occupied by one and the same subject. Reflections on “responsibility” in philosophy illustrate this: the closer we come to the present, the more likely it is that being responsible is described simply as the counterpart of the power to act, and especially of the capacity to make responsible. By contrast, in the practices of wage labor or “unemployment” of crime prevention or the rule of law (but not of legal theory!), the two subject positions have increasingly moved apart. They are asymmetrically decoupled, giving the attributors of responsibility an advantage over the bearers of responsibility. The contrast between the practical asymmetrical decoupling and the theoretical amalgamation of subject positions, which differ in the power they have, again highlights the problematic aspect of philosophical analyses of concepts that lose sight of their own practical consequences.⁸

The answer to the political question, finally, can at this point only be grasped in negative terms. The consequences resulting from an analysis of the spell of responsibility should help to make possible an escape from it. For that reason, we will avoid all the critical arguments which can be found throughout discussions of “responsibility.” Neither the questioning of a retrospective responsibility in favor of a prospective, caring responsibility for the future, nor the replacement of a legalistic, accountability-based responsibility with a responsiveness-based responsibility are suitable for a critique of the discursive operator “responsibility.” At best, these forms of opposition question the local dominance of certain concepts of responsibility whilst promoting others. They thus remain under the spell of “responsibility” and actually perpetuate it.⁹

In order to create a genuine distance between our own position and the discursive operator “responsibility,” what is needed is a transformation “of the relationship we have with ourselves and those parts of our cultural universe where, so far, we did not see any problems: in a word, with our knowledge (savoir)” (ROM; 37; trans. modified). It is the ambition of this work to act as a support for those who want to try to find a path to a new relationship with our knowledge about “responsibility.” And it is this ambition which does not allow me to state the political consequences yet, to anticipate the results of the analyses to come. However, this ambition also requires me to reflect on the understanding of critique that underpins this work.¹⁰

In short, the present work will show that within the practical regimes of labor, criminality, and philosophy, one and the same “responsibility” functions as a discursive operator; that its unity rests in the ambivalent relationship to self of the bearers of responsibility; and that it acquires sovereignty through self-objectification. While in the practical regimes of labor and criminality this self-objectification is intensified by the dissociation of “responsibility” and the power to act, in philosophy this intensification results from the opposite tendency toward the amalgamation of the power to act and “responsibility.” Philosophy thus provides legitimacy for a discursive operator the theoretical and practical effects of which it ignores, because “responsibility” as a paradigm of normativity is useful to it for defending philosophy’s status as a science. In that sense, the spell of responsibility is not fate. Rather, a large number of philosophical practices take it upon themselves to cast this spell.

The remainder of this introduction will provide some points for the orientation of the reader. I shall first present some elements of the conceptual history of “responsibility,” before presenting the three most widely known social analyses of “responsibility” and pointing out where they differ from the hypotheses that have been formulated here. Finally, I shall justify my choice of labor, criminality, and philosophy as the practical regimes to be examined, and why they shall be treated in this order.

Conceptual History

There are three truths that can be found in nearly all works on “responsibility.” Firstly, there is reference to the fact that it is a comparatively recent term from the area of law—the Deutsches Wörterbuch of the Grimm Brothers puts the date of the first occurrence of “responsibility” in the second half of the fifteenth century.¹¹ Secondly, it is noted that responsibility experienced a “meteoric rise” (Bayertz 1995; 3), accompanied by an equally meteoric increase in laments over the inflationary use of the word. And thirdly, we find an astute reference to the etymological connection between “responsibility” [Verantwortung] and “response”...