La irredimible impersonalidad de la responsabilidad. Comentario a Adscripción y reacción de Sebastián Figueroa

Abstract

In the first section of Adscripción y reacción, Sebastián Figueroa attempts to disambiguate the uses of the idea of responsibility, the relations among these uses and the problems that arise from those relations. In this comment I first offer observations and questions to this proposed organization. Then I offer a general comment about the distinction between legal and moral responsibility proposed by the author, where the first is presented as being impersonal, while the second would be personal. Against what I take to be his view, I argue that all forms of responsibility entail an experience of simplification and submission to a human but external framework of meaning. Every kind of responsibility is shaped and expressed through language and language is generally not a means of self-expression for individuals but rather a space they must inhabit despite themselves. Every interaction where there is a normative interpretation through language is therefore impersonal, and the idea that there would be some more impersonal than others remain mysterious.