The first half of this book was about retrospective responsibility, with the focus question of what it means to hold an agent responsible now for a discrete act in the past. In this second Part, I want to examine prospective responsibility. Instead of being held responsible for having done something, I am taking responsibility for something yet to come. A certain kind of prospective responsibility is already implied by the retrospective structure. Having been held responsible in the present for my past acts, I now know that I may be held responsible in the future for my present acts – perhaps this means that I will be a bit more careful, I might think things through a bit more, I might look for more reasons or evidence to support the act I am contemplating, and so on. One reason we praise a person by calling her “responsible” – that is, as a character trait – is if she is reliably disposed to consider the future with greater care, imagination and sensitivity than an average person.

In this chapter I want to examine a particular kind of prospective responsibility, that associated with the occupation of a role. So while the class of people under consideration in Part I was essentially any adult human being, and indeed many older children, in this Part we are distinguishing the responsibility of those occupying the role from those who do not. Some roles are in principle open to anybody, but other roles are less accessible.