Individual Autonomy and Responsibility in Late Imperial China
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Chapter 8:  Questions on Moral Responsibility
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Notes

1. Honoré, Responsibility and Fault, 1, 14, 24, 128–142. Tony Honoré develops some of Herbert Hart’s theses (Causation in the Law), which includes those about personal rights, moral luck, difference between true cause and circumstances, and the importance of the recognition of human capacity of agency in the formation of an individual personality. Furthermore, Honoré (Responsibility and Fault) has examined basic questions on corrective, retributive, and distributive justice; the role of luck versus fault; strict legal liability; the capacity to act and decide, the limited control over actions, and the justification and function of punishment. For instance, one of the questions concerns the selection of the causal links between actions and consequences and the presence of a “coincidence,” and the balance between “corrective justice” and the degree of awareness in civil responsibility.
2. About juristic and moral responsibility discussed in analytic philosophy, see Hart, Punishment and Responsibility, especially “Postscript: Responsibility and Retribution” (211–230), which deals with role-responsibility, causal responsibility, legal-liability, moral blame, and capacity-responsibility, and changing conceptions about criminal responsibility. My inquiry will not examine the responsibility as engagement (pledge/warranty) at the legal and political levels. On the complexity of moral categories, beyond the “forbidden,” “obligatory,” and “permissible” “institutional duties” and “values,” see Feinberg, “Supererogation and Rules,” 276–288, and Doing and Deserving. Due to space constraints, this part will cover only some aspects of moral responsibility. Except for short references, it will not deal with retribution, inner sanctions, moral responsibility in forensics and law, the extension of moral responsibility (e.g., doxastic responsibility), and its relation with “moral luck.” Other possibly envisaged types of responsibility, such as responsibility for ancestors’ behavior or responsibility for other motives (e.g., health and luck) will not be considered here. For general questions on responsibility, see Wertheimer, Coercion; Arnold, “Coercion and Moral Responsibility,” 53–67; Zimmerman, “Moral Responsibility and Ignorance,” 410–426; and Athanassoulis, Morality, Moral Luck and Responsibility. There will be no discussion on the phenomenological concepts of responsibility, the