The Origins of Responsibility

Two. Kant: Responsibility as Spontaneity of the Subject

58 two Kant: Responsibility as Spontaneity of the Subject Personhood and Responsibility Kant situates responsibility within the sphere of rational agency, within the horizon of subjectivity. A certain conception of freedom (as causa sui, self-determination,andautonomy)makespossiblesuchresponsibility,and Kant’s philosophical reflection on responsibility takes place within the horizon of the freedom of the subject, further specifying what Aristotle had metaphorically designated as the “paternity” of the act. Here agency, the principle of the act, is further determined in terms of freedom and spontaneity, freedom being defined as “absolute spontaneity,” a capacity bythesubjecttobeginabsolutelyanewseriesofcauses.Foritisindeedthe subject—the subjectum, the spontaneous I—that is the causal foundation and absolute beginning (transcendental freedom) here, and which Kant designates in the Critique of Pure Reason as the locus and basis of responsibility as imputability (Imputabilität). Responsibility is understood in terms of the subjectum that lies at the basis of the act. Kant determines responsibility as imputation, based on the freedom of the subject, and claims further that responsibility as self-responsibility defines personhood as such. Ultimately, Kant privileges the notion of personhood within his interpretation of subjectivity, personhood actually being defined by responsibility and self-responsibility. The Kantian determination of the essence of subjectivity is indeed threefold, corresponding to the three determinations of the I that he retains: There is the I in the sense of the determining I (the “I think” or transcendental apperception); Kant: Responsibility as Spontaneity of the Subject · 59 theIinthesenseofthedeterminableI(theempiricalI,theIasobject);and the I in the sense of the moral person (the end in itself). But this threefold determination of subjectivity in Kant can in turn be divided into two fundamentalsenses :Ontheonehand,thereisthebroadformalconceptofthe egoingeneral,inthesenseof self-consciousness,whetherastranscendental consciousness (the I-think) or as empirical consciousness (the I-object), that is, personality taken in the sense of rationality; on the other hand, there is the strict and proper concept of personality, namely, that of the moral person who is defined by responsibility. Kant follows the traditional definition of man as rational animal. However, the union of animality and rationality does not suffice to fully definetheessenceofpersonalityorpersonhood,throughwhichmanisnot only considered as a particular entity among others, but as capable of freedom and self-responsibility. Strictly speaking, personality applies to the subject only as it is recognized as capable of responsibility or imputation, thatis,responsibleforitself.Theessenceofthepersonisself-responsibility. The practical subject enjoys a certain preeminence over the theoretical subject,becauseunlikethetheoreticaldeterminationoftheI,deemed“impossible ” by Kant in the Paralogisms, the practical determination of the subject alone is capable of establishing a positive account of personhood, as end in itself and self-responsibility. For instance, the person’s being an “endinitself” (Selbstzweckhaftigkeit),suchasit is displayed in theKantian theoryofthemoralperson,couldbepositedasoneofthemostfundamental determinations of the human being, as Kant situates the ultimate ends of man in morality. In fact, the characterization of the subject as moral, with its distinction between persons and things, is determinative for the notion of responsibility, or more precisely, of imputation: As person, the human being is understood as a being who is capable of imputation, as a being who is responsible for itself. The Foundation of Responsibility in Transcendental Freedom Responsibility indeed constitutes for Kant the differentiating feature between persons and things, the defining characteristic of personhood. In contrast to things, Kant asserts, a person is a subject that is capable of imputation. In his Doctrine of Right, Kant explains that a person is “a subject whose actions can be imputed to him,” whereas a “thing is that 60 · the origins of responsibility to which nothing can be imputed.”1 This capacity to be a subject as ground of imputation is owed to the faculty of freedom, taken as “transcendental freedom,” which determines the possibility of responsibility and moral responsibility. In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant insists that freedom is the ground for all subsequent responsibility, writing that “the question of freedom . . . lies at the foundation of all moral laws and accountability to them,” which means that “without transcendental freedom in its proper meaning, which is alone a priori practical, no moral law and no accountability to it are possible.”2 Responsibility rests upon the subjectivity of the free subject. Kant states that an action is called a deed insofar as it comes under obligatory laws and hence insofar as the subject, in doing it, is considered in terms of the freedom of his choice. By such an action the agent is regarded as the author (Urheber ) of its...