Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T05:44:53.592Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Responsibility And Accountability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Nicolas Haines
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, London

Extract

His “practical purpose” was first to express the popular notion of responsibility and then to relate it to the philosophical theories of “freewill and necessity.” For he could not approve the suggestion that to understand popular comments on morality was a worthless occupation; indeed, while he respected the Westminster Reviewers for the blunt declaration that vulgar responsibility was a “horrid figment of the imagination,” he plainly considered it his business as a philosopher to examine ordinary morality and to reconcile it, if possible, with philosophical theory.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1955

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

(1) BRADLEY, F. H., Ethical Studies. Essay on “Vulgar Notion of Respon-sibility.”Google Scholar
(2) LAMONT, W. D., The Moral JudgmentGoogle Scholar
(3) PIAGET, J., The Moral Judgment of the ChildGoogle Scholar
(4) RICKMAN, H. P., “Linguistic Analysis and Moral Statements,” Philosophy, April 1954. P. 122 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(5) BRADLEY, supra, p. 15.Google Scholar
(6) BRADLEY, supra, p. 3.Google Scholar
(7) Contemporary exponents of “free” education such as A. S. Neill are, of course, extremists in this field. See. e.g. A. S. NEILL, The Free ChildGoogle Scholar
(8) A pamphlet published by the Inspectors of Schools under the London County Council, entitled, Punishment in Schools and circulated privately to teachers illustrates this point.Google Scholar
(9) “Free discipline” is the vague principle governing a number of schools in their organization. One known to and studied by the writer is the East Ham Grammar School for Girls.Google Scholar
(10) The Protagoras of Plato in Jowett's translation.Google Scholar
(11) PIAGET, supra, p. 3.Google Scholar
(12) K. R. POPPER, The Open Society and its Enemies, revised edition in two volumes.Google Scholar
(13) POPPER, supra. Vol. I, p. 5, etc.Google Scholar
(14) POPPER, supra. Vol. I, ch. X.Google Scholar
(15) POPPER, supra. Vol. I, p. 200.Google Scholar
(16) The Fragment of Antiphon is published in Sir Ernest Barker's Greek Political Theory: Plato and his Predecessors. Third edition, Methuen, 1947, p. 83.Google Scholar
(17) See JOHN BURNET, The Socratic Doctrine of the Soul, Proc. of Brit. Acad. Vol. VII (1916) and POPPER's criticisms and comments in supra. Vol. I. Ch. X, and Note 44 on p. 301.Google Scholar