This book offers a much needed overview of the neglected notion of responsibility. Instead of
offering vague talk about individual responsibility or corporate responsibility Daryl Koehn
examines in detail four accounts of responsibility taking care to specify what responsibility
does and does not mean in each account. She argues for a return to the ancient concept of
Socratic dialogical responsibility a concept that avoids many of the problems inherent in the
other accounts. After examining the Anglo-American criminal legal system's treatment of
responsibility as intentional agency she critiques Hans Jonas's concept of responsibility as
ontological care and Hannah Arendt's notion of communicative responsibility. She provides a
careful analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each approach to responsibility. The final
chapter makes the case for Socratic dialogical responsibility. Dialogical responsibility
hasmany strengths in its own right and avoids the major pitfalls of the other notions of
responsibility examined in the book. It serves as an eminently practical way to hold ourselves
responsible for our actions and speech. In addition dialogical responsibility alone qualifies
as a virtue integral to the good life.
