G. Strawson and Aristotle on Moral Responsibility and Punishment

Abstract

In this paper, I bring G. Strawson’s famous 1994 paper “The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility” and Aristotle into conversation. I argue that his Basic Argument is best taken as targeting solely desert-based moral responsibility. I then present Aristotle’s discussion of the causal role that humans play in their actions, with a focus on morally significant actions. I ague that, contrary to Strawson’s speculation, Aristotle did not believe us to have the desert-based moral responsibility that the Basic Argument purports to prove impossible. Instead, Aristotle’s causal account presents us as having attributional moral responsibility, and comments he makes elsewhere show him to believe we also have accountability moral responsibility. The paper concludes with some consequences of accepting both author’s accounts, and also considers the question of why so many believe themselves to have desert-based responsibility, when a simple argument shows that to be impossible.