Moral Responsibility: Descriptive and Normative Approaches

Social Sciences (USA). 2023. Vol. 54. No. 003. P. 95–106.

Sofia Glebova, Перов В. Ю.

Translator: Y. Filippov

The problem of moral responsibility is central to modern ethical research. Based on debates in the academic field, this article examines two main approaches to defining moral responsibility and the conditions under which it arises: descriptive and normative. We show that even though the descriptive approach aspires to objectivity in imputing and ascribing moral responsibility, regardless of the specification of substantive moral requirements, it is insufficient for characterizing responsibility as moral. Therefore, the descriptive approach must be complemented by the normative approach, which makes it possible to define the moral agent not simply as the agent of responsibility but as an actor possessing the capacity to be morally responsible. The key to resolving the issue of the different approaches to moral responsibility is to examine the perceptions of strict and zero responsibility1 as specific conditions of imputing responsibility to an agent that are impossible exclusively within the framework of the descriptive approach. We show that from the ethical viewpoint, these types of legal responsibility “without guilt” imply normative attitudes with regard to actors seen as full-fledged moral agents. Ethical analysis of strict and zero responsibility demonstrates the conditions under which positive moral responsibility arises in the framework of the normative approach, that is, the commitment to maintaining a normative order oriented toward maintaining a “good life.” Combined use of the descriptive and normative approaches with due account of the characteristics of the moral agent gives insights into the phenomenon of moral responsibility.

Keywords: responsibility, good life, moral responsibility, ascription, Normative approach, moral agent, strict responsibility, zero responsibility, descriptive approach