Aristotle's Theory Concerning Moral Responsibility

According to Aristotle's theory concerning moral responsibility, there is neither hard nor fast rule for ascertaining whether a person who has acted due to coercion is blameworthy. Coerced acts tend to be strictly voluntary; therefore, they never get automatic disqualification from responsibility (Eche?ique 14). Thus, responsibility is dependent on facts concerning the situation, for instance the gravity of the threat, along with the temperament of the coerced act.

Aristotle believes that every human being has a responsibility for his or her actions, something that makes others reasonably praise, blame or even punish him or her; he shows this by pointing out various conditions, which lessen or even cancel this responsibility. He converses force of occurrences, threats, along with coercion, bad character, ignorance and intoxication. Taken together, his version shows the basic concepts involved in being a person who ends up getting reasonably praised or blamed.

The primary limitation concerning voluntary action is the force of circumstances. Aristotle gives an example about a ship caught in a storm; in this case, the sailors have to throw goods overboard to avoid the sinking of the ship. Here, the action is not entirely voluntary; therefore the sailors are not to blame for their actions. On the other hand, the storm is not to blame for the undesirable outcome, which is the loss of the goods since it is a natural event that no one is responsible.

Another example is the case whereby my friend accidentally pushes me as a result of getting pushed by a bully; here, she is not to blame considering that it was not here intention to push me, rather, she got pushed, and as a result, ended up pushing me. These cases are extreme instances of the force of necessity whereby we always live and always get forced into our actions by natural facts, though we only notice this when the force happens to be sudden or unexpected (Williams 25). When it comes to responsibility atttributions, interference by other people is what causes grief and problems. This interference tends to take many forms; however, its paradigmatic forms happen to be coercion and manipulation. Concerning coercion, the judgment by Aristotle get balanced since it is dependent on what act my coercer is demanding from me, as well as the threats he is making.

On the other hand, there are some actions, which tend to be extremely heinous that we must be blamed for carrying them out, whatever a person gets threatened with, together with whatever blame also tends to be attached to the coercer; hence Aristotle dismisses the thought that a man may be compelled to killing his mother (Williams 45). Apparently, a central issue at stake when it comes to attributions of responsibility happens to be the expectations that people have each other. Although there are some kinds of coercion that we do not normally expect people to oppose, there are also some forms of action that people should never embark on, regardless of such features. In these cases praise, together with blame tends to work on clarifying and to reinforce these expectations through the provision of a form of moral education.

What determines appropriate or immoral character happens to be the manner in which a person reacts when he discovers the truth or failing to regret their deeds, then they can be blamed, albeit the original choice being justifiable. According to Aristotle, our praise and blame is in most cases, not about an individual act; rather, it is about the character of the one who acted. Importantly, not every form of ignorance gets excused since moral knowledge happens to be extremely distinctive from factual knowledge (Eche?ique 49). However, if a person tends to be morally ignorant, he or she ends up being unable to choose well; here, Aristotle grants that the majority of people of settled villainous character, whether they are morally ignorant or otherwise, are incapable of choosing to act well.

This does not mean that blame is either incoherent or misplaced since even if the vicious person is incapable of choosing to act now, there was a time when his vices were not fixed, when he was capable of choosing not to be vicious thus he can be blamed. Aristotle is famous for emphasizing the significance of proper upbringing, along with habituation considering that the majority of vices got created in childhood, prior to people forming capacities for thinking reasonably with many vices undercutting the capacity for balanced deliberation.

This is a clear inference of Aristotle's own account, whereby the badly brought up person might never be in a position of choosing not to be vicious. Interestingly, that the majority of vices tend to take the shape of moral ignorance, of not being aware that certain things are wrong or even fail in recognizing that certain actions are a representation of wrong-doing. The problem is that the vicious person is incapable or unwilling to see his own vices as such; in this case he is in no position of taking control since he sees no reason in acting differently in the future. However, this does not signify that there is no reason for blaming her, most obviously since there might be hope that blame will be helpful in educating him, morally speaking.

In instances whereby a person seems incorrigible and they get quite settled in some vice, either because he/she is incapable of understanding the criticism or unable to change character or habits, which in most cases, it tend to be somewhere in between. These cases are extremely common, and unless there is an assumption that they are not morally appalling, they tend to undermine the current Kantian assumption, which states that blame should relate just to conduct under a person's control (Williams 76).

Apparently, if we assume a character trait is beyond change, by us or the concerned person, our blaming will not involve an attempt of reasoning with the person getting condemned; rather, our condemnation might take another rationale like clarifying what standards we expect of other people. Clearly, praise often takes this rationale, too since a virtuous person could be quite unable of doing certain things like committing cruelty.

Conclusion Aristotle's account is not quite self consistent since it focused on the qualities of character disclosed by acts regarding our overall moral expectations; this is what responsibility attributions deal with (Eche?ique 71). Nonetheless, he sometimes contends that inferior qualities are to be blamed considering that they are, or were a matter of choice, though this quasi-Kantian assertion is not quite supportable. In spite of this, philosophers have continuously gone back to Aristotle's account to illuminate the key ingredients of responsible agency.

Work Cited: Eche?ique, Javier London : Cambridge University Press, 2012. Williams, Garrath. Moral Responsibility: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2010.

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