There is much debate over the issue that whether a person could assume individual responsibility or not? Some people believe that individuals must take responsibility on the actions according to law or social customs. Others, however, looks at the bigger picture and considers personal responsibility as a function imposed on everyone through the relationships in society. In my point of view, the first statement of responsibility must be discussed on the bases of the second overall view of responsibility, because the main concern in the second statement describes the basic condition of the moment responsibility is formed.
The chief reason of my view is based on the meaning of responsibility. Derrida, a French philosopher, describes responsibility as the ability to respond. This ability is a natural ability that everyone has and operates every moment in our lives. A particular example for this is whenever someone sees or tries to speak to us he calls for our respond and we receive a particular responsibility toward this person. This is the most basic form of responsibility. Under this circumstance, it is obvious that no matter what we are always facing some sort of responsibility.
However, this responsibility is always stuck in an unresponsable condition. Because we can never be responsible to everyone at the same time. For example, we know that there are always some starving children in Africa calling for help and arousing our responsibility but that doesn’t mean that we should let go of all the other responsibility in our lives and rush to their aid.Hence, even though responsibility is a certain condition that we must face as we are constantly involved with others, we can never really take full responsibility in any case. Derrida calls this condition of responsibility a status of responsibility without responsibility.
Consequently, due to the above-mentioned reasons, it is not hard to draw the conclusion that the responsibility we face as an individual is not a fiction, but the condition of which we assume responsibility as a human being makes it almost impossible to truly be responsible. This might be the most fundamental dilemma hidden under the issue of responsibility.
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