Schopenhauer on Responsibility
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
In taking responsibility for an action, we are not really taking responsibility for the action as an action. We assume responsibility for that which makes the action our action. And that is not the motive, which is the cognition of things outside us, but the character, which is our own very inner being.
Responsibility involves the satisfaction or regret, as the case may be, over the fact that one is who one is, that one has the character that one has, as revealed in the things one did provided certain motives.
Implicit in the feeling is the recognition that one would have acted differently had one been a different individual – a being with a different character.