‘Living Unrest and Excitement’ – Grammars of Responsibility

Today, we see the emergence of new disagreements about where to draw lines of individual moral responsibility, not only on specific responsibilities of individuals, but also on the criteria that decides such responsibilities. This paper is part of a larger book project on philosophical understanding of these conflicts and changes in questions of responsibility. I present two different theoretical understandings of what we take responsibility for, considering these theories as models of descriptions of the moral grammar of responsibility. This approach allows for a description of one such conflict in contemporary discussion on individual responsibility in the light of climate change.

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Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen is Professor of Practical Philosophy, University of Southern Denmark. Her main fields of expertise are Wittgensteinian ethics, virtue ethics and professional ethics. She currently works on issues in contextual ethics and ethics in healthcare and is writing a monograph on changing practices of responsibility. Her latest books are Moral Philosophy and Moral Life (Oxford University Press 2020) and Wittgenstein and Ethics (Cambridge University Press). She is the Chair of the Centre for Philosophy and Ethics of Health, also at SDU.