Autonomous responsibility within the framework of James Griffin’s concept of personhood

Abstract

In this paper I discuss the issue of responsibility based on the concept of autonomy within the framework of James Griffin’s concept of personhood. All the examples on which this text is based come from the report Woman Alone: The fight for survival by Syria’s refugee women by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). In the three parts of the article I analyse, first, the agent’s capacity of being responsible in the perspective of autonomy as some sort of capacity of agency as well as a possible personal virtue. In this section, I intend to show in which conditions autonomous responsibility can emerge in the context of Harry Frankfurt’s concept of caring as well as in the situation of refugee women who are responsible for their children and families. The second part of the paper concerns the issue of knowledge and the role which this factor plays in being a responsible agent. The essential conclusion to be drawn from this issue is that autonomous responsibility is not a static virtue. In contrast, very often the agent must act instinctively for being responsible in his or her own way. The third and final part develops the subject of the internal capacity to defend the agent’s interests, needs and desires. Without this power, the agent could not realise his or her own purposes as well as those of the persons for whom he or she takes responsibility. The issue of autonomous responsibility develops Griffin’s normative statement on agency and can be treated as an introduction to the issue of autonomous responsibility as such.