Literature and Ethics: Questions of Responsibility in Literary St ...

beginning of this chapter. Hannah Arendt was probably understating things when she claimed that it was

That is a remarkably forthright admission of the law’s need to ignore what we all now know to be true. No juridico-political system, least of all a totalitarian one that denies all manner of individual freedoms, can survive without presupposing personal responsibility, and so without presupposing freedom. The idea may be mythical, but its presupposition is necessary, unavoidable, and doubtlessly fortunate for society as a whole if not for the untold number of guiltless persons who have been persecuted in society’s attempt to satisfy its insatiable desire to hold all criminals and miscreants to account.

The concept of freedom, then, even if it is myth, is deeply entrenched. Examples of this can be found everywhere. Ideas of responsibility and irresponsibility are the very stuff of public discourse. It is hard to imagine how a political life could unfold without them. They are the necessary counterpart to the credit taken for achievements, even if taking responsibility for irresponsible actions have often no consequences. Indeed, taking responsibility is perhaps the most widely admired political performance, even when it amounts to a flat-out confession of egregious faults, and is often the most expedient means of avoiding consequences. These ideas are also, of course, the stock in trade of journalism. As I write, the global economy continues to struggle in the midst of a financial crisis (the so-called “credit crisis”) that developed in the wake of the near collapse of the U.S. housing market in 2007. Resulting in the collapse of major banks and brokerage firms, the crisis brought to a necessarily