The Age of Responsibility: Luck, Choice, and the Welfare State by Mounk Yascha

Author:Mounk, Yascha
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2017-05-08T16:00:00+00:00

Responsibility for Ourselves

One important—but by no means the only—part of that account is to rethink what it means for us to have responsibility for ourselves. In the current meaning of personal responsibility, citizens take responsibility for themselves when they do what they can to earn their own keep. They fail to live up to their personal responsibility, by contrast, when they need to seek society’s assistance because of their own choices, for example because they do not do enough to find stable employment. Now, it is true that many people value taking responsibility for themselves, and dislike having to ask for social assistance. And it is also understandable that modern states which seek to build just, sustainable welfare states ask citizens to make whatever contribution they can. And yet, it is instructive to think about what we might mean by taking on responsibility for ourselves if we approach the topic from the vantage point of trying to identify reasons individuals have to value responsibility in the first place. Once we do so, we recognize that we need a much broader conception of responsibility. What is actually important to people is not the narrow fact of acquitting themselves of the material preconditions for their own livelihood but rather the—closely related yet importantly distinct—sense that they have real agency over their own lives.

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