Eight essays by leading legal theorists--based on papers presented at two workshops, one in Canberra in November 1999 and the other in New York in March 2000--outline reactions to Tony Honore's (emeritus, civil law, Oxford U.) post-retirement writings on issues related to responsibility, including determinism and luck, causation, responsibility for outcome, and the morality of strict liability. A ninth essay, by Honore, responds to them. The contributors are lawyers and philosophers based in Australia, the US, Canada, and the UK. Distributed by ISBS. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The first book-length treatment of a central concept in Hegel's practical philosophy - the theory of responsibility. This theory is both original and radical in its emphasis on the role and importance of social and historical conditions as a context for our actions.

Explains what responsibility is and ways to be responsible.

A look at the duty of nations to protect human rights beyond borders, why it has failed in practice, and what can be done about it The idea that states share a responsibility to shield people everywhere from atrocities is presently under threat. Despite some early twenty-first century successes, including the 2005 United Nations endorsement of the Responsibility to Protect, the project has been placed into jeopardy due to catastrophes in such places as Syria, Myanmar, and Yemen; resurgent nationalism; and growing global antagonism. In Sharing Responsibility, Luke Glanville seeks to diagnose the current crisis in international protection by exploring its long and troubled history. With attention to ethics, law, and politics, he measures what possibilities remain for protecting people wherever they reside from atrocities, despite formidable challenges in the international arena. With a focus on Western natural law and the European society of states, Glanville shows that the history of the shared responsibility to protect is marked by courageous efforts, as well as troubling ties to Western imperialism, evasion, and abuse. The project of safeguarding vulnerable populations can undoubtedly devolve into blame shifting and hypocrisy, but can also spark effective burden sharing among nations. Glanville considers how states should support this responsibility, whether it can be coherently codified in law, the extent to which states have embraced their responsibilities, and what might lead them to do so more reliably in the future. Sharing Responsibility wrestles with how countries should care for imperiled people and how the ideal of the responsibility to protect might inspire just behavior in an imperfect and troubled world.

François Raffoul approaches the concept of responsibility in a manner that is distinct from its traditional interpretation as accountability of the willful subject. Exploring responsibility in the works of Nietzsche, Sartre, Levinas, Heidegger, and Derrida, Raffoul identifies decisive moments in the development of the concept, retrieves its origins, and explores new reflections on it. For Raffoul, responsibility is less about a sovereign subject establishing a sphere of power and control than about exposure to an event that does not come from us and yet calls to us. These original and thoughtful investigations of the post-metaphysical senses of responsibility chart new directions for ethics in the continental tradition.

Almost every manager today knows that satisfying customers by meeting their quality demands is a critical component of business success. Quality management is a given in modern companies – a competitive imperative. Yet it was not always so. Back when the quality movement was getting started, few managers really understood either the importance of quality to customers or how to manage for quality. Much the same could be said today about managing responsibility. Why and how should responsibility be managed? What is responsibility management? Total Responsibility Management answers these questions while at the same time providing a systemic framework for managing a company's responsibilities to stakeholders and the natural environment that can be applied in a wide range of contexts. This framework uses managerial familiarity with quality management to illustrate the drivers for responsibility management. Companies know that product or service quality affects their customer relationships and the trust customers have in the company's products and services. So, too, a company's management of its responsibilities to other constituencies affects its relationships with those other stakeholders and the natural environment. But why bother? The answer is quite simple. Never has it been easier for employees, reporters, activists, investors, community members, the media and other critical observers to find fault with companies and their subsidiaries. A problem identified, even in a remote region or within a remote supplier, can instantaneously be transmitted around the world at the click of a mouse. Ask footwear, toy, clothing and other highly visible branded companies what their recent experience with corporate critics has been and they will tell you about the need to manage their stakeholder responsibilities (human rights, labour relations, environmental, integrity-related) or face significant consequences in the limelight of public opinion. Managers will discover that whether they do it consciously or not, they are already managing responsibility, just as companies were already managing quality when the quality movement hit. This manual makes the process of managing responsibilities to and relationships with stakeholders and nature explicit. Making the process explicit is important because too few of today's decisions-makers yet understand how they are managing stakeholder responsibilities as well as they understand how to manage quality. Managing responsibilities goes well beyond traditional 'do good' or discretionary activities associated with philanthropy and volunteerism, which are frequently termed 'corporate social responsibility'. In its broadest sense, responsibility management means taking corporate citizenship seriously as a core part of the way the company develops and implements its business model. The specifics of responsibility management are unique to each company, its industry, its products and its stakeholders, yet, as this manual illustrates, a general approach to managing responsibility is feasible – indeed, is increasingly necessary. Based on work undertaken by Boston College and the International Labour Office, Total Responsibility Management is the first CSR manual. Its original case studies add value to a range of tools and exercises that will make it required reading for all managers in need of a practical guide to managing responsibility and to students and researchers looking for an overarching framework to contextualise the changing responsibilities of global business.

Unlike most other discussions of responsibility, which focus on the idea that to be responsible, agents must in some sense act voluntarily, this book focuses on the relatively neglected idea that they must in some sense know what they are doing. Because it integrates first-and-third personal elements, this account is well suited to capture the complexity of responsible agents, who at once have their own private perspectives and live in a public world.

Besides acting, we often omit to do or refrain from doing certain things. Omitting and refraining are not simply special cases of action; they require their own distinctive treatment. This book offers the first comprehensive account of these phenomena, addressing questions of metaphysics, agency, and moral responsibility.