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Introduction to a Philosophy of Responsibility

Lecturer: John Lechte

Originally Taught: Summer School 2026

The aim of this course is to investigate the concept of responsibility as inspired by Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy. For Levinas, responsibility is prior to freedom, prior to the ego-subject, prior to essence. As the philosopher says: ‘Responsibility for another is not an accident that happens to a subject, but precedes essence in it’ (OTB: 114). Moreover: ‘The word I means here I am, answering for everything and for everyone’ (114). The question to by pursued in light of these statements is: How have we arrived at the point where responsibility is prior to freedom of the will and is the cornerstone of ‘ethics as first philosophy’? The following lectures endeavour to answer this question. They will cover existing definitions and understandings of responsibility the better to reveal the difference with Levinas.  

One key point of comparison will be a study of Greek tragedy and responsibility

Course Schedule

Lecture One 

An appreciation of the significance of Levinas’s notion of responsibility can be gained by surveying existing approaches to the topic. Thus, the first lecture will offer a brief literature review. 

Reading

  • Caruso, Gregg D. and Pereboom, Derk (2022) Moral Responsibility Reconsidered, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,  
  • Jonas, Hans (1973) ‘Technology and Responsibility: Reflections on the New Tasks of Ethics’, Social Research , 40 (1), 31-54.  
  • Jonas, Hans (1984), The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an ethics for the Technological Age, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 130-135 (on the parent-child relation as the architype of responsibility).
  • Lucas, J. R. (1995). Responsibility. Clarendon Press, Oxford, Chaps 1-4.
  • Martin, David (2007) ‘Responsibility: A Philosophical Perspective’, 21-42. In Dewsbury, Guy; Dobson, John, eds, Responsibility and Dependable Systems, London: Springer.

Lecture Two

This lecture examines Greek tragedy and responsibility.  The lecture will show that the notion of the self as interiority is foreign to Greek tragedy. Indeed, the very notion of tragedy presupposes the impossibility of a self that can control circumstances. In a reading of Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone (The Theban Plays), the lecture will highlight the difficulty of imposing a modern notion of individuality onto Greek tragedy. 

Reading

  • Vernant, Jean-Pierre (1978) ‘Ambiguity and Reversal: On the Enigmatic Structure of Oedipus Rex’, trans. Page duBois, New Literary History, 9 (3), 475-501. 
  • Mantzanas, Michail (2020) ‘The Concept of Moral Conscience in Ancient Greek Philosophy’, Conatus 5 (2), 65-86. 
  • Kane, Robert L. (1975) ‘Prophecy and Perception in the Oedipus Rex’, Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-2014), 105, 189-208.
  • Hall, Robert (1993) ‘Hamartia and Heroic Nobility in Oedipus Rex’, Philosophy and Literature, 17 (2), 286-294. 
  • McDonald, David (1979) ‘The Trace of Absence: A Derridean Analysis of "Oedipus Rex"
    Theatre Journal, 31 (2), 147-161. 
  • Strauss, Jonathan (2013) Private Lives and Public Deaths: Antigone and the Invention of Individuality, New York: Fordham University Press, 1-48.
  • Lacan, Jacques (1992) The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book VII: The Ethics of Psychanalysis 1959-1960, trans. Denis Porter, New York: Norton, 243-290: Pt. IV. The essence of tragedy: a commentary on Sophocles's Antigone -- 19. The splendor of Antigone -- 20. The articulations of the play -- 21. Antigone between two deaths.
  • Charen, Hannes (2011) ‘Hegel Reading Antigone’, Monatshefte, 103(4), 504-516.

Lecture Three

The influence on the notion of responsibility of the Cartesian cogito will be examined. With Augustine in Charles Taylor’s reading, but more definitively with Descartes, interiority becomes the basis of certainty, the first certainty being self-certainty. Consequently, it can be argued that a text like Wittgenstein’s On Certainty in fact relies on self-certainty as its first principle.  The lecture will discuss this along with the notion of certainty in other thinkers and contexts. The implication is that self-certainty is prior to all human deliberations, a position that Levinas’s philosophy contests, as we shall see in lecture 5. The lecture will offer a reading, with regard to responsibility, of relevant sections of Taylor’s Sources of the Self.

Reading 

  • Descartes, René (2022) Discourse on Method, Part IV. At: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.htm
  • Taylor, Charles (2001) Sources of the Self:The Making of Modern Identity, Cambridge, Mass.: Harverd University Press, 25-54, 127-158, 185-198.
  • Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1975) On Certainty, trans. Denis Paul and G.E.M. Anscomb, Muldon, MA: Blackwell Publishing, paras 1-174.
  • Arendt, Hannah (1958) The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 273-289 (on Cartesian doubt).

Lecture Four

On Hannah Arendt’s distinction between guilt and responsibility. 

Reading

  • Arendt, Hannah (1977 [1963]) Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 296-298.
  • Arendt, Hannah (2003) Responsibility and Judgment, New York: Schocken Books, 17-158.
  • Arendt, Hannah (1994) ‘Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility’, 121–32. In J. Kohn (ed.) Essays in Understanding, London: Harcourt Brace.
  • Arendt, Hannah (n.d.) ‘Moral Responsibility Under Totalitarian Dictatorships’, ms.  [Edited by Adriano Correia. The original manuscript can be found in the Hannah Arendt Papers at the Library of Congress, Box 76 (https://www.loc.gov/item/mss1105601266/)]. Copy to be made available 
  • Alweiss, Lilian (2003) ‘Collective Guilt and Responsibility Some Reflections’, European Journal of Political Theory, 2(3) 307–318. 
  • Greenspan, P.S. (1992) ‘Subjective Guilt and Responsibility’ Mind, 101 (402) 287-303.

Lecture Five

This lecture will engage with the relation to responsibility of the notions of transcendence and immanence as found in Levinas’s philosophy. The argument will be that the immanentist approach to responsibility is inadequate. It will be maintained that Levinas’s philosophy gives inspiration to a transcendent approach to responsibility, and that this runs counter to all approaches to certainty (the first certainty being certainty of self) derived from the Cartesian cogito as this is related to doubt and certainty. 

To get at the real significance of responsibility, it is necessary to understand the notion of infinity. And this we will do. Also, it will be shown that it is important to know what Levinas understands by ‘immanence’ compared with transcendence.

Reading

  • Levinas, Emmanuel (1998) Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press, 114-115, 124-25, 146-47, 198.
  • Levinas, Emmanuel (1999) Alterity and Transcendence, trans. Michael B. Smith, London: The Athlone Press, 24-30, 32-33. 35-37.
  • Levinas, Emmanuel (2012) Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press. Reprinted, 48-52, 84, 86-87; 92-93, 244-45.
  • Levinas, Emmanuel (1989) ‘God and Philosophy’, trans. Richard A. Cohen and Alphonso Lingis. In Seán Hand, ed., The Levinas Reader, 167-189, Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. 
  • Waldenfels, Bernhard (1995) ‘Response and Responsibility in Levinas’, 39-52. In Peperzak, Adriaan, ed., Ethics as first Philosophy: The Significance of Emmanuel Levinas for Philosophy, Literature and Religion, New York: Routledge. 

The MSCP acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land — the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation — and pay respect to elders past and present.