Irresponsibility

Irresponsibility takes three forms: reducing one's context of responsibility, shifting or reducing to whom or to what one is responsible and denial of freedom of choice. Frequently in business, government or day to day situations the statement is made that it is not one's responsibility, one is not on duty or the phone ringing is not one's. This is reducing the context of responsibility. Shifting to whom one is responsible is illustrated by responses like the corporate officer telling customers that the business is responsible to shareholders. Another form of this is the suggestion that one is only responsible to one's self. Denial of freedom of choice is exemplified with the excuse of one is only following the law or doing what they were told.

From one perspective, both the free spirit acting on their own and the individual tied to a Kantian ethic of duty are equally irresponsible. The free spirit has reduced their obligations to their own feelings, intuitions or insights and thus enslaved their scope of choice to themselves while proclaiming themselves as ultimately free. The person of duty has reduced their obligations to a set of rules, authorities, or principles abdicating even the capacity of free choice. This perspective suggests that responsibility is found only in being both ultimately free and ultimately obligated.