Abstract
Responsibility is a multi-dimensional, multivalent, cohesionless and independent notion, interwoven into the drama of man and the world, shifting its position in the hierarchy of values of perceiving man, a notion connected with the existence and fate of Man, his feelings, aspirations, actions, and destiny. For all these reasons, responsibility is a notion difficult to describe. One’s responsibility subsists in one’s volitional dimensions; it operates and fulfills itself in the realm of action. Its source is the value of love. If it should not be so, responsibility becomes the tool of a hangman, the tool of oppression of the itself and the Other.
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Notes
Roman Ingarden “Responsibility and Its Ontic Foundations.” In: A Little Book on Man, Cracow, 1972.
Ingarden analyses the phenomenon of responsibility as Verantwortung, but he does not deal with responsibility as Verantwortlichkeit. “I will not deal here with responsibility (Verantwortlichkeit) as a possible trait of man’s character.” Ibid., p. 78.
“All of the enumerated situations of responsibility lose then both their sense and the possibility of realization if values do not exist.” Ibid., p. 107.
Beyond all these values, their ontic connections and the connections between their determinants there is the value of justice. It can be realized through the fulfillment of conditions dictated by one’s sense of responsibility. One could say that justice demands that all possible settlements are reached to balance the negative values by the positive values of compensation realized thanks to one’s sense of responsibility.” Ibid., pp. 106–107.
“‘I’, the organizing center of the human soul, “personalizes” it and “represents” it. It is that which speaks in the name of the human soul, which performs various acts, which undertakes responsibility, etc.” Ibid., p. 156.
“... such a world would have represented a vast number of partly open and partly isolated (‘veiled’) systems, which, in spite of their being partially restricted and veiled, are causally connected.” Ibid., p. 165.
Cf.Note2.
“We consider the retribution for the committed evil as justifiable only if that evil was inflicted consciously, with evil intentions, and if, in addition, the one who did it has been morally responsible for his actions. The notion of intuitive moral responsibility is not clear here; it requires a precision attainable only through the conventional change of the original notion of intuition.” Kazimierz Ajdunkiewicz, “On Justice.” In Language and Cognition;” Vol. I, Warsaw, 1985, pp. 371–372.
“Leading such a life, man may be good and happy, and he may come close to something that he regards as larger and better than himself and the whole of humanity, and that surpasses the noblest ideals of men and the utmost perfection of finite existence — that is, God. Man is then ready to sacrifice his life and even his existence to realize that ideal in anticipation of his full responsibility toward God.” Roman Ingarden, “Man and Nature,” in: A Little Book on Man” Cracow, 1972.
“Only as a result of listening to this [inner] necessity and giving in to it, does, paradoxically, the phenomenon of freedom emerge. This makes it possible to undertake one’s own responsible action. External determinism, by putting in question the very possibility of freedom, at the same time limits responsibility. Responsibility has to accompany both freedom from and freedom to, that is, freedom from what has so far been limiting, what is exhausted and does not lead anywhere, as well as freedom to create something new, some new work of art. However, for that freedom to bear fruit (and in the sphere of creation this is what one takes responsibility for), one has to know the ultimate purpose of such work.” Wladyslaw Strózewski, Dialectics of Creation. Cracow, 1983, p. 169.
“Asking someone a question makes me feel obligated. Now I know what obligation means. Obligation is a responsibility, or a consciousness of the fact that the questioned ones are responsible for the answer, or for fulfilling the request. Responsibility has, it seems, two layers: dialogical and intentional. I am responsible thanks to someone and for something... I am also responsible toward someone... Responsibility is rečiprocity, where one side becomes oneself thanks to the other side... The notion of responsibility has a dramatic sense, and it is futile to try to explain it using the rules of ontology of the stage. No ontological relations and no existential forces can establish the relations of responsibility. Ontology does not know the notion of rečiprocity, neither does it know the notion of participation through rečiprocity.” Józef Tischner, “Between Question and Answer,” Studia Filozoficzne, 5–6 (1983), 121.
Tadeusz Styczen, Outline of Ethics, Lublin, 1974.
“There is a responsibility in love-responsibility for a person, for that other which is included in the most intimate unity of existing and acting... Therefore there is a responsibility for one’s own love, too, so that it is ripe and grounded deeply enough to contain the scope of trust of the other person, and the hope born from such love, by giving of itself, does not lose its’ soul’ but, on the contrary, finds even greater fulfillment... Responsibility for love means, then, responsibility for the other; it stems from it and it comes back to it. But its magnitude can only be understood by someone who has a thorough sense of the value of the other. Such feeling harbors, after all, a concern for the true welfare of the other — a quintessence of altruism and an unmistakeable sign of the expansion of the T and one’s own existence by that other T and that other existence which becomes as close as one’s own... The sense of responsibility for the other can be tinted by concern, but is never in itself unpleasant or painful. Therefore love separated from the sense of responsibility for person is a contradiction, and is usually egoistic. The more sense of responsibility for the person, the more there is true love!“ Kami Wojlyla, “Love and Responsibility,” Znak, Cracow, 1962.
“La responsabilité dans l’obsession est une responsabilité Dušan moi pour ce que le moi n’avait pas voulu, c’est-à-dire, pour les autres... Etre-soi autrement qu’etre, se désinterésse c’est porter la misére et la faillite, de l’autre et meme la responsabilité que l’autre peut avoir de moi; etre soi-condition d’otage — c’est toujour avoir un degré de responsabilité de plus la responsabilité pour la responsabilité de l’autre.” uEmmanuel Levinas, ‘Autrement qu’etre on au-delà de l’essense,’ the Hague, 1974, pp. 146 and 149–150.
“Aber in seiner wahren Bedeutung ist das Verantwortungsgëfuhl etwas völlig freiwilliges; es ist meine Antwort auf die ausgesprochenen oder auch unausgesprochenen Bedürfnisse eines anderen menschlichen Wesens. Sich für jemanden ‘verantwortlich’ fühlen, heisst fähig und bereit sein zu ‘antworten.’” Erich Fromm, Die Kunst des Liebens, Frankfurt 1980, p. 38.
“Liebe ist die Verantwortung eines Ich für ein Dušan; hierin besteht, die in keinerlei Gefühl bestehen kann, die Gleichheit aller Liebenden, vom kleinsten bis zum grössten und von dem selig Geborgenen, dem sein Leben in den eines geliebten Menschen beschlossen ist, zu dem Lebelang ans Kreuz der Welt Geschlagnen, das Ungeheure vermag und wagt: die Menschen zu lieben.” Martin Buber, Ich und Dušan, Heidelberg 1979, pp. 22–23.
C. Rogers. On becoming a Person, Hengton Mifflin Company, 1961, p. 147.
“Um in ihrer Entscheidung und ihrem daraus fliessenden Handeln ‘unabhangig’ von der Umwelt zu sein, muss die Person vor allem ein aktionszentrum in sich enthalten, das es ihr ermoglicht, die Initiative zu ergreifen, und zugleich in ihrem Aufbau Schutzvorsichtungen haben, damit sie in ihrem Handeln nicht gestort wird.” Roman Ingarden, Überdie Verantwortung. Ihre ontischen Fundamente, Stuttgart, 1970, p. 67.
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Danecka-Szopowa, K. (1989). On Responsibility. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Man within His Life-World. Analecta Husserliana, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2587-8_17
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