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Nietzsche's Concept Of Responsibility

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Nietzsche ‘s critique on the traditional concept of responsibility is heavy handed and sometimes quite harsh. It’s ludicrous to believe in this traditional notion, firstly because responsibility and moral judgement is merely a construct and, secondly, free will cannot account for a cause to an action or effect. Nietzsche criticises western notion of responsibility through deconstructing conceptuality and causality. Both are concepts which are, such as language, manmade constructs- fictions. Language is used to communicate, but not to thoroughly explain. How then can moral judgement be passed when actions cannot be thoroughly explained, according to Nietzsche? The traditional concept of responsibility uses causality to attempt to understand …show more content…

It does not condemn morality, but rather reconsiders western morality. Nietzsche’s merely questions the value of responsibility attributes to life. Behind the curtain of abstract concepts lies a world unrestricted by abstract concepts and symbols. Concepts are once again emphasised as man-made constructs. Nietzsche states that concepts, however, are “never the objective grasp of some essence” (Raffoul, 2010, p. 83) and it is not some inherited transcendental knowledge. Concepts were invented by man to make sense of his subjective world. Language and concepts have no anchor in the objective world. It does not come from the ‘real’ world, but from the anthropomorphic world of humans. There’s no objective validity in concepts and are therefore fictitious or false (2010, p. 83). The subjective anthropomorphic view constructs a reality which hides the ‘real’ world. For Nietzsche, language and concepts are the shadows in Plato’s cave. Concepts are vague images of the real which are recognizable to everyone. It eliminates the individual experience with a material object and generalises it (2010, p. 89). Language makes communication easy and fluent, but fails to intimately explain experiences. Concepts also allow humans to understand their world, to appropriate themselves in relation to everything around them. It ‘humanize[s] things” (2010, p. 85) which is almost a type of mechanisms to allow …show more content…

How can moral judgement be passed if the concept (a subjective construct) responsibility and morality is detached from any objectivity? Furthermore, objectivity cannot be restricted by binaries such as good and evil. With that said, it seems life negating to pass moral judgement on a peer based on a code of morals without an objective foot to stand on. Nietzsche is also concerned with another leg of the traditional concept of responsibility: Causality. Nietzsche maintains that: Firstly, free will and unfree will does not exist and an actor does not act out of free will. This allures that the actor is not the cause of an action. Secondly, causality is misused to organize the chaos of life in something comprehendible to human subjectivity. Cause and effect is not objective ordering of events. Cause and effect is used out of fear of the foreign. We connect a sudden action to a memory in our past, which is familiar to us. This link is the cause, which re-establishes a sense of security to the individual. Concepts such as responsibility and causality are flawed and subjective, which for Nietzsche is very problematic when individuals do not recognize these concepts as fiction and rely on them as objective

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In the paper “Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility”, Susan Wolf discusses her ideas on what is necessary for an individual to be responsible for their actions. She argues that in order for the person to be held morally responsible for their actions, they need to be morally sane. To consider one to be morally sane, this individual must have an ideology that is able for them to distinguish right from wrong. Hence, a morally sane person must be able to reason and have a sound mind. Furthermore, Wolf establishes the sane deep-self view by applying other philosopher’s ideas.

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