Rri And Neoliberalism Similarities

6. A tale of two subjects: responsible agents in neoliberalism and RRI

The preceding sections has briefly described the main features of the two heterogeneous topics we are examining: Responsible Research and Innovation on the one hand, and neoliberalism on the other hand. At a first glance, a striking similarity concerns the insistence on a clearly entrepreneurial view of the responsible subject. The following paragraphs examine further this aspect, as it seems instructive to illustrate the similarities and differences between the ways in which RRI and neoliberalism defines responsibility. We suggest the following dimensions are significant for this comparison:

1. Temporal orientation: responsibility is, in both cases, inherently future-oriented

Relation to uncertainty: both RRI and neoliberalism assume uncertainty as opening opportunities for action rather than a motivation for adopting a merely precautionary stance. It is uncertainty that opens the possibility to purposefully pursue individual and collective goals. With uncertainty, comes opportunity. It is important to notice that we do not maintain that RRI excludes precaution, but the ambition to shape the trajectories of research and innovation in their initial stage is certainly predominant. This idea of powerful, yet prudential agency resounds in the neoliberal idea of reflexive, entrepreneurial agents maximizing the “return on investment” of their actions and

However, a closer look can demonstrate that this is not the case, as the discussion above has sought to clarify. On the contrary, neoliberalism has a distinct view of society and of the links between individuals and the collective, which are commonly based on the “prudent management of self and others” that Lessenich (20012) associates to neosociality. Interestingly enough, the collective dimension of responsibility in RRI is the similar result of the interaction of “mutually responsive” societal actors (von Schomberg 2013, Owen et al. 2013), rather than, like it happens in what we have called the “paradigm of safety”, of objective conditions for and consequences of action that, in turn, determine a shared, collective, and equal responsibility (see, for instance, the logic underlying Jonas’s (1984) categorical imperative to maintain the possibility of human life on earth). What marks a difference between the two is how individual and collective responsibilities are coordinated. Neoliberalism is (neo)social insofar it considers common good as the consequence