Responsibility in the metaphysical sense

Abstract

To speak about moral responsibility (in a strong sense) two conditions have to be fulfilled: man must be a free and there must be some transcendent objective task posed to man. I propose to focus on this second component and look at modernity as a gradual crumbling of the vision of the transcendent goal.  If responsibility – in a sense – lies in the fact that someone is responsible for something in front of someone, the image of being responsible to a personal God is the strongest form of responsibility. In connection with secularization, this type of responsibility decreases in the western (liberal) world, contributing to the crisis of subjectivity and virtue (atomization, egoism, narcissism, hedonism, claim attitudes). Numerous opinions of sociologists and philosophers (including communitarians), diagnosing the crisis of Western culture connected with the crisis of the individual and the sense of responsibility. If the diagnosis is accurate, one should not be afraid of the “return of religiosity” (connected with the discoveries of modern physics); on the contrary, it is necessary to look at this process with optimism, because it can contribute to rebuilding the sense of metaphysical responsibility. Which, in turn, may contribute to the growth of dynamism and cohesion of liberal societies, preventing them from “autointoxication”.