Reflective Responsibility

Abstract

Here, we are helped by understanding that responsbility is built into our very being as humans. We are the "responsible" animal. We do not simply "respond," as do other animals to their environments, their enemies, their lusts. We are given what Mudge calls the "gift" of responsibility: we can assess and plan and be accountable; we can take responsiblity for our responses; we can think through what is demanded by the situation; we can place that situation into broader and broader frameworks; we can analyze our own feelings and reactions so that they do not have the same hold over us that they would otherwise have. In all of these ways, we can be reflectively responsible.