From Responsibilities to Rights

Before moving on to refine and develop the theoretical framework that I have only sketched up to this point, I want to mention one other potentially interesting point about the theoretical significance of the VCP.

Thus far we have been looking at the VCP from the point of view of a moral agent who is a position to care for and protect others who are vulnerable and dependent upon them. In such cases, the VCP predicts that the more powerful agent(s) should acquire special moral responsibilities to protect the interests of the weaker and more vulnerable parties to the relationship, particularly when those vulnerable others cannot protect their own interests and are in some ways dependent on others for their care and protection. But what happens when we turn this situation around and look at the matter from the point of view of oneself being the vulnerable party?

In this case, the VCP prescribes that one should regard oneself as entitled to certain kinds of care and protection from others. If one finds oneself in a position of relative vulnerability and dependence, then according to the VCP, one has a moral claim to the care and protection of others. In some cases, these sorts of claims can be addressed to specific others who are in special relationships with oneself, such as ones parents, doctors, teachers, and so forth, while in other cases the moral claims generated by the VCP can be addressed to society at large. If I am specially vulnerable and am depending on others, then I can claim that society has a responsibility to organize some form of care and protection that benefits me.

This insight I believe, suggest a way in which rights can arise from responsibilities. Rights are, at least in part, moral claims that persons advance against other members of society that invoke the responsibility to protect and care for vulnerable others. Thinking that the moral responsibility to protect the vulnerable precedes the existence of a right to claim social protection against some standard threats to ones liberty or well-being, then, offers an explanation for human rights that does not rely on either God or nature nor merely on social conventions. Rights, on this view, derive from the moral responsibility to protect the vulnerable.

If there is a fundamental moral responsibility to protect vulnerable members of one's moral community, then the right to be protected and to claim protection as one's moral right is logically prior to the existence of any social contract among members of society which serves to legitimize these moral relationships. There do indeed come to be moral and legal conventions that we agree upon that recognize specific rights and responsibilities, but from the perspective of the ethics of responsibility, rights derive from considerations of relative power and vulnerability. This turns on its head the standard view of rights in which rights are regarded as theoretically fundamental and are seen as providing the moral and/or legal basis for various kinds of social responsibilities.

The idea that a having a right gives its holder the moral basis to make a claim to social protection against certain kinds of threats can then be seen as the flipside of the social responsibility to protect the vulnerable. In cases in which the right-holder is vulnerable to harm and is depending on other members of society to come to his aid when he is under various kinds of threat, the VCP predicts that other members of his moral community have a standing moral responsibility to protect him. If there is such a standing moral responsibility to protect the vulnerable members of the moral community, particularly when their survival, well-being or freedom is threatened in a serious way, then when I am threatened I can claim social protection. So my right to social protection derives from the social responsibility to protect the vulnerable borne by other members of my moral community.

The human rights violations and abuses that are considered to be 'standard threats' to human freedom and well-being represent lessons learned from historical experiences of oppression in which large numbers of persons have in fact been deprived of these goods and few if any other members of society attempted to protect them. Vulnerability to human rights abuses must then be understood in a particular rather than in a general and abstract sense to refer to specific kinds of harms that persons have been subjected to in our historical experience, for instance, the threat of arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, the threat of torture, the threat of religious persecution, the threat of economic deprivation, the threat of disenfranchisement, and so forth.

Human rights are designed to afford individuals some degree of social protection against these specific kinds of standard threats, particularly when the threats originate because of acts or omissions by governments. But rights are effective normative instruments only to the extent that other members of society respond to the moral claims made in their name. It is the regularity and reliability of the social response to the moral and legal claims that rights provide that determines whether or not human rights are operative or only aspirational.

In other words, without a set of institutions that discharges the social responsibility to protect the vulnerable, human rights provide only the moral basis for claims to social protection, not the protection itself. A menu is not the same thing as a meal. Which is why the most important challenge for the global human rights movement in the twenty-first century is to create and support rights-implementing institutions and thereby make human rights operational for all the people of the earth. In order for this to happen, more people must be made aware of their social responsibilities to protect others against human rights violations and abuses.

Role-Related Responsibilities

In the example of the ship's captain being responsible for the safety of his passengers, we are using the term 'responsibility' in the role-related normative sense. It is this sense of responsibility we use when we say that parents are responsible for the care of their children, doctors are responsible for the care of their patients, and that teachers are responsible for the education of their students. In this sense of "responsibility" persons who occupy particular roles or offices are said to be responsible for the proper management of the affairs associated with the offices or roles they occupy.

Everyone who occupies a socially-defined role has responsibilities of this kind, and persons can also acquire responsibilities of this type by entering into interpersonal relationships such as love and friendship. Role‑related responsibilities cut across the distinction between private and public roles; we can have responsi­bilities associated with our private roles as friend, spouse, or parent, and we can also have responsibilities associated with our public roles as citizens and as members of society, in our particular professions or jobs, or associated with the voluntary offices or roles we enter.

Unlike retrospec­tive responsibilities as liabilities which moral agents incur through their past actions, role‑related responsibilities are always to some degree future‑oriented: they impose constraints on moral agents which guide the performance of their private and public roles in society. We say, for instance, the Department Chairman is responsible for the management of the departmental budget; the store clerk is responsible for seeing that the shelves are neatly stacked with goods; the tennis court manager is responsible for scheduling court time for members, and so on. When understood in this way, having a role-related responsibility grounds attributions of duties, that is, the commission or prohibition of certain kinds of acts. An office‑holder is said to be irresponsible if they omit the performance of tasks which it is their responsibility to perform. Role‑related responsibilities, then, are defined primarily in terms of the sorts of outcomes which are required of persons who occupy particular offices or roles.

However, not everyone has precisely the same set of role-related responsibilities, and some of the responsibilities that are associated with ones roles do not carry any moral special significance, although a person's diligence or lack thereof in fulfilling his or her task or role responsibilities is often taken as an indication of moral character traits such as trustworthiness and conscientiousness. But, I think that even those apparently non-moral obligations attached to specific roles can be understood as carrying some moral implications, particularly in case where others are relying on one to do certain things associated with one’s job. The dependence of others on one’s job-performance gives even these responsibilities a moral dimension.

R. S. Downie has developed an analysis of role‑related responsibilities which distinguishes three models of such responsi­bilities: a model of the morality of roles, a model of the morality of role‑enactments, and a model of role‑acceptance [Downie, R. S (1964). "Social Roles and Moral Responsibility." Philoso­phy, 39: 29‑36]. Downie notes that roles are defined by a "social system," that is, "a complex network of institutions which gives structure to the life of the community" (1964, 29). Duties and responsi­bilities are associated with the social roles defined by the social system independently of the individuals who occupy these roles: "A social system, of course, does not operate on its own: it is operated by individual persons. But the important point is that the individuals who operate the social system are not acting as free and uncommitted agents. Rather they are acting in social roles, understood as patterns of rights and duties the natures of which are determined by the natures of the institutions which give rise to social roles" (29). According to his first model, we can evaluate "a system of social roles conceived in abstraction from its operators as a network of responsibilities for and to" (30). We may, for instance, say that a particular social role, e.g., that of a torturer in a secret military prison, is inherently evil, or that another role, say that of ombudsman in a socially responsible corporation, is inherently good or useful. This sort of evaluation applies to the role itself apart from the individuals who occupy the role.

Sometimes an individual may attempt to escape personal responsibility for his role‑performance by suggesting that he was "only doing my job." For instance, a police officer who arrests a demonstrator with whose cause he is personally in sympathy may invoke this excuse as a way of disowning personal responsibility for his action. However, claiming that an immoral act was performed only because one was doing one's job can function as an excusing or mitigating factor in ascriptions of accountability or liability responsibility only when it is possible for the individual to claim that he did not freely or knowingly accept the responsibilities of his office. As Downie notes, "if moral judgments can properly be made about social roles there must be a connection at some stage between the nature of the role and individual human decision or accep­tance" (30).

Questions of this kind concern what Downie calls the morality of role acceptance. In terms of his model, "a person is held to be responsible not just in the sense that it is he who carries out actions with a certain quality, but responsible as he would be supposing he had created the role. In so far as he did not bother to envisage the kind of actions which would be expected of him, he is morally blameworthy. But in any case he can resign or refuse to obey orders" (35). One should still ascribe liability responsibility to someone who voluntarily takes the job of torturer even though he made have tortured someone under the command of another. The possibility of evaluating role‑acceptance in this way suggests that role‑related responsibilities may be reducible to contractual or consensual ones; the torturer’s mistake was in consenting to enter a role in which he would be expected to commit torture. Thus, it may be that some role-related responsibilities may acquire a moral dimension if the agent consented to accepting the role knowing that torture would be a requirement of it.

Downie's third model, the model of role‑enactment, concerns the manner in which individuals who occupy socially prescribed roles fulfill the particular responsibilities associated with them. "It is this quality which is being noted when a person is described as conscientious, responsible, or irresponsible in his actions..." (31). Evaluations of this kind cannot be completely detached from evaluations of personal responsibility, since, as Downie argues, "roles can be more or less formal and hence more or less open to permeation by ideals" (32). He suggests a useful analogy:

The morality of a role and of its enactment may be compared with the performance by a musician of a musical score. On the one hand scores differ greatly: in some the composer has recorded not only every note he wants played but also every nuance of expression he wants brought out; in others the composer has written merely an unfigured bass line and has left the performer to fill in the harmony and melody as well as to perform with expression. On the other hand, musicians differ greatly in their abilities to interpret and perform music. Similarly, some roles may be clearly and meticulously defined. leaving little scope for individual imagination and personal qualities, while other roles may be mere adumbrations which leave everything to the indivi­dual person's enactment. (32)

Many existing social roles carry with them a well‑defined task‑­structure which must be learned by those who occupy these roles. The task structure specifies the particular duties which are normally associated with a particular role. But existing social roles are products of culture and tradition, and their task structures must be renewed and re-adapted by each occupant placed in them, and they evolve with changes in technology. We may enact roles whose scripts are written for us, but we must still interpret those scripts in light of the demands and constraints placed on us by circumstances. We may also, in many cases, redefine parts of our roles by eliminating certain tasks, altering the ways in which they are performed, or incorporating new tasks into the role. We may also in some cases create new roles for ourselves and appoint ourselves to them. In all of these cases we can speak of the responsibilities of our roles in Downie's sense of role‑enactment. In so doing we assume that the bearer of those responsibilities must exercise personal judgment and discretion in determining what particular tasks or duties his or her role requires.

Generally speaking, there is an association among the concepts of authority, responsibility, and role‑enactment such that the greater the authority associated with a particular role, the greater the discretion assumed to belong to its bearers. Responsible persons, in this sense, are those who possess a particular complex of personal virtues which enable them to determine what needs to be done, figure out how to do it, and do that which needs to be done. Such individuals not only enact roles which are given to them, but in a real sense transform and create their social roles giving them new meaning and structure.

What controls the transformation of roles? The natural answer is that ends and outcomes control them. Most roles are defined either explicitly or implicitly by the ends which they are designed to achieve. The doctor's role and the task‑structure of that role is explicitly defined by the end of promoting the health of their patients. The particular tasks and acts need to performed in the doctor’s role are conditioned by this end, as well as by the doctor's medical competence and the state of medical science. Physicians choose to make tests, prescribe medications, and provide treatments which, their medical knowledge leads them to believe will improve their patients' health. When a new form of treatment is developed which is more likely to improve the health of a particular patient, the doctor's responsibility requires that she employ that treatment in preference to older and less effective treatments.

Roles also change and adapt in response to new technologies, and they also decay when the ends which they serve are no longer deemed important, or when the tasks required to accomplish those ends are transferred to another role. The advent of the automobile largely eliminated the blacksmith's role, and created the role of the mechanic. The copy boy in the press room has been eliminated by the electronic computer; doormen have been replaced by automatic doors, bank tellers by ATMs, and so forth. Thus, it is possible to speak of machines as performing certain roles. even though they are not moral agents because they embody the intentionality of their designers and those who deploy them in order to achieve certain results.

That role‑related responsibilities are defined by means of ends and structured by competences needed to accomplish these ends is an important fact about them. It serves to distinguish the kinds of obligations which arise from roles from those obligations produced by rights and contracts. Rights and the recipro­cal obligations they normally entail are, generally speaking, owed to individuals. If we enter into a contract, we have acquired a duty toward the other party of that contract which requires of us the performance of a certain thing. Such obligations are "denotative" since they can exist only between known individuals. My promise to you obliges me to perform some­thing for you and no one else. In this sense, we speak of obliga­tions owed to individuals.

We must, however, sometimes distinguish the beneficiary of a responsibility, from the indivi­dual(s) to whom the responsibility is owed, that is, the object or addressee of one’s obligation. For instance, if I promise to feed your cat while you are out of town, I have a responsibility for your cat (the beneficiary), but I owe my responsibility to you (the addressee or direct object). We sometimes say that person is responsible to another for performing a certain task, e.g., employees are responsible to their employers, but may be responsible for the performance of particular tasks which have no particular benefi­ciaries, but may benefit some general class of moral patients.

In professional roles, professionals are responsible to their patients, clients, students, and so forth. This usually in understood to mean that the agents who occupy these roles are obligated to perform in certain ways towards the individuals whom they serve. Here the beneficiary of the responsibility is the same individual to whom the responsibility is owed. When we speak of responsibilities as being owed to others, we generally cede those persons to whom responsibilities are owed the power or authority to absolve or waive the bearer from the responsibility. An employer may, for instance, relieve an employee of a particular role and its attendant responsibilities.

In other cases in which the beneficiary and the addressee are the same, the bearer maybe relieved of responsibility by actions of the person to whom their responsibility is owed. Physicians have a responsibility to their patients not to disclose confidential information, to get informed consent prior to giving treatment, and so on. On one account, we can think of such responsibilities are arising from a contract between parties, as in a promise. In this case, the intended beneficiary has the power to relieve the physician of her responsibility to maintain confiden­tiality or disclose information relevant to informed consent. On another account, however, we can think of these responsibilities as following from the definition of roles themselves, and being referred "attributively" to whomever happens to come to occupy the position of recipient or beneficiary of one's role‑related respons­ibilities.

Teachers and professors typically have students assigned to their classes without their prior knowledge or consent, store clerks have to serve customers as they come, even physicians are required to treat some patients, for instance, those who walk into an emergency room, without prior knowledge of to whom they owe their responsibilities. When a role‑responsibility is attributive, we have a responsibility of a certain kind to whoever happens to be placed in the position of prospective beneficiary. In these cases, it may not always be possible for the beneficiary to relieve the bearer of a respons­ibility as is the case with voluntarily assumed denotative obligations.

Most role-related responsibilities are "agent-relative" as well as "object-relative," that is, they are only ascribed to some limited class of moral agents who are their subjects and the responsibilities or duties they confer are only directed towards some limited class of beneficiaries or addressees, their objects. However, it is also possible for moral responsibilities to be "agent-relative" and "object neutral", or "agent-neutral" and "object-relative", as well as "agent-neutral" and "object-neutral." What I call "social responsibilities" are "agent-neutral" moral responsibilities that may be either "object-relative" or "object-neutral."

Social Responsibilities

Moral philosophers often seem to think that persons can be understood apart from their social roles. They like to construct thought-experiments in which idealized moral agents interact with other idealized moral agents in sparsely described situations designed to evoke some kind of moral response from an observer sitting in a lecture hall who is suppose to consult his or her moral intuitions and render a judgment about what ought or ought not to be done.

Although such idealized philosophical though experiments can sometime be useful, I find such exercises strange. I understand persons as always being embedded within certain social roles which they can enact well or not. Sometimes person enter these roles through their free consent, but sometimes not. It is not, in my view, possible to really think of persons as “bare moral agents” who are not assumed to be embedded in some particular social context or another. At the topmost level we can think of all human persons, and indeed most other kinds of moral agents as embedded within societies in which they interact with other agents and patients in various ways. Human beings do not enter society as if they were tele-ported there from some distant galaxy. We are born into particular families, in particular countries, at particular times, and as we grow from childhood into adulthood we come to occupy the role of member of society and eventually other special roles such as that of student, citizen, parent, employee, doctor, soldier, politician, and so forth.

In talking about moral responsibilities philosophers often draw a distinction between general moral obligations which every moral agent has, and special moral obligations which only some moral agents have. Such special moral obligations are also termed “agent-relative” responsibilities because they are borne by some moral agents but not others. When considering general moral obligations, such as the responsibility not to knowingly cause harm to others, we tend to assume that bearers of this obligation should be seen as bare moral agents apart from any of their particular special social roles. However, I think this is a mistake. On my view, moral agents should be understood as having certain general social responsibilities that derive from their occupying the role “member of a moral community” When we say that “everyone” has certain responsibilities we really mean that every member of our moral community has it, irrespective of any additional special social roles they may happen to occupy within their moral community.

I prefer the term “social responsibilities” to designate the "agent-neutral" kind of moral responsibilities that individuals and corporate entities have toward their moral communities. Social responsibilities are different than religious duties (to observe the Sabbath), personal moral responsibilities (for instance those of friendship), role-related social responsibilities (such as those of parents), or professional responsibilities belonging to particular professional roles (such as those ascribed to doctors, lawyers, managers, accountants, engineers, and so forth). Social responsibilities, as I understand them, are better understood as shared or collective moral responsibilities which can be ascribed to all competent moral agents who are members of a moral community.

Social responsibilities should not be understood on the model of strict legal obligations since they are discretionary in nature and call upon human moral agents, and organizations, to utilize the power and capacities at their disposal in a conscientious fashion in order to contribute to the solution of important social problems. It is difficult to specify the specific normative contents of our social responsibilities, because what they will require an agent to do will vary greatly depending on their particular position in society, their capabilities, the other demands upon them, the opportunities that present themselves for constructive action and the particular character of the social and environmental problems that confront them.

We can, for instance, say of a person that she is “socially responsible" and here we mean that she reliably enacts her social responsibilities. People who are socially responsible are motivated to respond creatively to challenges and threats to collective values and moral ideals. Being socially responsible, in this sense, applies to those who take an active role in attempting to transform social roles and institutions, and in attacking the problems of the society in general in an attempt to improve their moral quality. This is the sense of the term which John W. Gardner, social activist and founder of Common Cause employs when he writes,

...the men and women who undertook to regenerate the society did so on their own. No one appointed them to the task; they were moved by some deep impulse to accept responsibility. And so it must always be. Some fraction of the population must commit itself to do what is needed: to reinterpret old values in light of contemporary reality, and, where necessary, to forge new values. (Morale, New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1978, p. 26)

In illustrating this sort of commitment, Gardner cites a statement by a friend of his who realized his own maturity when he "decided to accept responsibility for my world‑‑to the limit of reality. Obviously I couldn't accept responsibility for thunderstorms or nationwide depressions. But where I could possibly imagine that a fraction of responsibility lay on me, I resolved to welcome that responsibility" (Gardner 64).

There is a difference between 'accepting responsibility' and 'taking responsibility.' In the former there is the implication that the responsibility is external and is offered to one to acknowledge or not as one's own. One can be said to have accepted responsibility for one's role in producing past harms, for instance. But, when one takes responsi­bility one assumes a prospective responsibility which did not exist in a defined social role or which was defined but ownerless in the sense that no one occupies the role. When one voluntarily takes it upon oneself to act to promote a valuable end of some kind one can be said to take responsibility or to act in a socially responsible fashion.

Socially responsible individuals are those who take seriously the responsibilities associated with their roles as citizens, or as inheritors of cultural traditions, or simply their roles as members of society. If we take this course, then we lay ourselves open to the charge of so enlarging the notion of a "role" as to make it virtually useless as a concept. If everything which an individual does is done because of a social role which he or she occupies, then the distinction between role‑related responsibilities and personal responsibilities, on the one hand, and social responsibilities on the other, collapses. As Downie notes, "there are areas of our lives in which we are role‑free and can devote ourselves completely to the pursuit of our ideals or inclinations" (Downie 31‑32). We may, for instance, speak of having "responsibilities to ourselves", or instance, for caring for our own health, our happiness, and the development of our talents and abilities.

However, I think that such self-regarding responsibilities are also defined by social roles. Becoming a responsible adult who is able to live independently and take care of himself or herself is a kind of personal achievement, one which once attained, generates social expectations about how other should treat that person, that is, as an autonomous adult. Not all human beings have this capacity; young children, the infirm, and persons with severely impaired abilities, are not expected to take care of themselves but depend upon others for various kinds of assistance and so become the beneficiaries of other people’s other-regarding responsibilities. So, even in those areas of life where we are free to pursue our own ideals and happiness, I think we are enacting a socially-defined role.

But there is still a difference between social responsibilities and special role‑related responsibilities in that the particular ends associated with a role are often spelled out in the description of the role itself, while for these broader types of social responsibilities are not, and instead require that individuals respond creatively to the social problems which they perceive as most urgent and most important.

Here again we see the association between responsibility and discretion, which serves to mark off the notion of responsibility from that of duty. Duties are obligations to carry out or omit specific actions, while responsibilities are moral obligations to see to it that certain states of affairs are brought about, in which we determine how to best to achieve those outcomes. As Gardner says, social activists create new roles and appoint themselves to them because they intend some end or good to result for the larger society to which they belong. Being a socially responsible person, in this sense, denotes a particular complex of dispositions and virtues which individuals possess in varying degrees.

Social responsibility requires an attitude of commitment to moral ideals, a determination to achieve social goals, and responsiveness to the needs of others. It is generally regarded as a goal of moral education to nurture the development of the attitude of social responsi­bility and encourage people to work for the general betterment of society. Thus, in understanding the notion of social responsibil­ity, we must focus attention on these personal attitudes and dispositions that prompt some people to act in socially responsible ways and seek to promote the general good of society. In other words, we also need to think about the concepts of 'responsibility' and 'social responsibility' as kinds of moral virtues.

Responsibility as a Virtue

Responsibility as a virtue denotes an uncommon excellence in the exercise of the skill of moral judgment and action. Being responsible in this sense involves several interrelated skills, motives, and dispositions: e.g., a skill of moral perception in which the person is sensitive to the moral aspects of their behavior; a skill of moral evaluation and judgment, skill in moral decision-making, and a disposition to respond creatively to what one perceives to be a moral need or problem.

Ordinary moral competence, that condition deemed to be necessary for the ascription of liability responsibility, entails only being able to give an account of one's actions when required to do so, and the ability to distinguish between right and wrong according to conventional standards under most circumstances calling for moral judgment. Responsibility as a virtue, however, describes the person who exhibits an uncommon degree of moral awareness and sensitivity. The responsible person is one who seems to know better than most how best to respond in a given situation calling for moral judgment.

Dewey and Tufts distinguish responsibility as liability in which an individual may be held accountable to society for his or her actions, and liable to praise or censure for them, from what they term "positive responsibility." In the latter case, "one responds, answers, to the social demands made; he is not merely called to answer,"

When society looks for responsible workmen, teachers, doctors, it does not mean merely those whom it may call to account; it can do that in any case. It wants men and women who habitually form their purposes after consideration of the social consequences of their execution. Dislike of approbation, fear of penalty, play a part in generating this responsive habit; but fear, operating directly, occasions only cunning or servility. Fused through reflec­tion, with other motives which prompt action, it helps bring about that apprehensiveness or susceptibility to the rights of others, which is the essence of responsibility, which in turn is the sole ultimate guarantee of social order." (Ethics. New York: Henry Holt 1910, p.437)

Rather than merely speaking of an "apprehensiveness and susceptibility to the rights or others" I would rather say "concern for the interests and well‑being of others," since the possession of rights does not fully guarantee the enjoyment of the goods rights are intended to protect. 'Responsibility' in this sense is a particular moral disposition, which once formed operates independently of fear of punishment or promise of reward. The responsible person is one who has cultivated a disposition to regard the interests of others, and the general interests of society, as part of the normal way in which they calculate reasons for action. We use the term 'taking responsibil­ity' to describe their actions, since it is they themselves who determine that they shall respond and how they shall respond to a perceived moral interest.

Being a responsible person, then, means being able to exercise proper moral perception, proper moral judgment and discretion, and to respond appropriately to the moral demands of the particular situation in which one finds oneself. Responsible people are moral agents who can be generally relied upon to apprehend what is the right thing to do, and to do it.

The theologian H. Richard Niebuhr has discussed this meaning of responsibility and has made it central to what he terms an "ethics of responsibility," a moral paradigm that he thinks is distinct from both consequentialism and deontology:

...we may say that purposiveness seeks to answer the question: "What shall I do?" by raising the as prior the question: "What is my goal, ideal, or telos?" Deontology tries to answer the moral query by asking, first of all: "What is the law and what is the first law of my life?" Responsibility, however, proceeds in every moment of decision and choice to inquire: "What is going on?" If we use value terms then the differences among the three approaches may be indicated by the terms, the good, the right, and the fitting; for teleology is concerned always with the highest good to which it subordinates the right; consistent deontology is concerned with the right, no matter what may happen to our goods; but for the ethics of responsibility the fitting action, the one that fits into a total interaction as response and as anticipation of further response, is alone conducive to the good and alone is right. (Niebuhr, H. Richard. The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy. Intro. James M. Gustafson. New York: Harper and Row, 1963: 60-61)

If we accept this view, then responsibility is not the name of another particular moral virtue like honesty, courage, loyalty, or beneficence, but rather it functions as a kind of master‑vir­tue. The virtue of responsibility denotes the ability to determine in particular situational contexts which moral obligations are the highest. One must exercise moral discretion in order to determine what is fitting, in Niebuhr's sense to a particular situation; to balance the competing claims of various duties and obligations which the actor might have, and to decide which should take precedence at a particular moment; or to determine what is the proper moral response to a situation which requires moral reflec­tion, deliberation, or judgment.

Responsibility, in this sense, cannot be reduced to a particular actions or rule of conduct, nor can it be said to serve any particular ends. Sometimes, being respons­ible will means doing ones duty while at other times it will mean striving towards some end in one's actions. It is forward‑looking, but unlike some versions of consequentialism, it does not abstract the actor from history, either from his or her own past history of action and interaction with others, nor from possible future interactions which the actor's response calls forth.

Being respon­sible means being engaged in an ongoing context of relationships and fitting one's conduct to the moral demands created by those relationships in that context. Responsibility is, then, a particu­larly important moral notion when relationships are dynamic, that is, in cases in which the morally relevant qualifications of action are changing, and one must adapt one's behavior to the evolving demands of the situation. Responsibility calls upon the whole person to determine what it is most fitting for them to do, as concrete historical actors, in particular historical situations, and also what is fitting for them as a way of life.

The sense of responsibility as a virtue is particularly important for understanding my notion of social responsibility. A socially responsible person is one who appreciates the particular moral problematics of his or her time and circumstance, and directs his or her actions in order to respond morally to them. This moral response can take many forms, is highly discretionary, and is shared with other members of the moral community. However, social responsibilities are not, on my view, optional. While moral agents have a large degree of discretion in determining how and when and to what degree they discharge their social responsibilities, they do not have the liberty to ignore them entirely. Social responsibilities, then, are not merely supererogatory.