Susan Wolf, “Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility” Response PDF

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Response paper on Susan Wolf's "Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility." Sound analysis and necessary submission for unit response papers. ...

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In Susan Wolf’s “Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility”, one of her most important contributions to the study of the Deep Self View, which has been examined by other philosophers such as Frankfurt and Watson, is the “sanity” condition. Wolf defines sanity as “the minimally sufficient ability to cognitively and normatively recognize and appreciate the world for what it is.” While Wolf accepts the Deep Self View, as previously defined as allowing for self-revision, but not for self-creation, she adds the sanity condition in order to hold an individual morally responsible for one’s actions. The Deep Self View additionally does not deny causal efficacy of our desires, which Wolf claims, is what motivates our actions. The Deep Self View is an attractive model, as it fits with our beliefs about people like children and addicts: they are not responsible for their actions since those actions are alienated from their personal wills. In order to be a responsible agent, our actions are not only within the control of our wills, but because our wills are expressions of our own character. Wolf explains this new condition of sanity as a precursor to moral responsibility in terms of how we treat Nazis and their actions during the Holocaust. She claims, “this new proposal explains why we give less than full responsibility to persons who, though acting badly, act in ways that are strongly encouraged by their societies.” While it is true that the circumstances existent in Nazi Germany were far from typical and distorted the moral senses of much of the population, the Holocaust also revealed a startling fact about human nature: any human can be driven to evil under certain conditions. The thesis of Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and The Final Solution in Poland, written by Christopher Browning in response to the tragedies of the Holocaust, claims that the men who participated in the round-up and mass shootings of Jewish people were not ardent Nazis, but rather, regular, working-class, middle-aged men. Most

notably, even though each of the 500 men who participated in this sub-police group were given the chance to opt out of this brutal practice, almost none exercised this option. How do we account for this revelation about human nature? This thesis would suggest that, since we are all susceptible to commit evil crimes, we may never be able to fully grasp the ability to “cognitively and normatively recognize and appreciate the world for what it is” as it is as much in our natural behavior to treat others brutally as it is to understand the world with a moral lens. Similarly, within the Deep Self View, we are only responsible for the actions that are reflections or expressions of our character. However, Browning’s thesis would claim that tendencies for evil are part of each of our personal characters, so would these actions not reveal our deepest selves? Wolf writes, “In our sense of the term, their deepest selves are not fully sane.” Browning’s argument complicates Wolf’s claim that there are conditions under which we can excuse blame from individuals who commit atrocities against others. If these capacities are always in our human nature, then it is possible that our deepest selves are never fully “sane”. Wolf would likely respond by citing, that despite these horrible atrocities, there are more examples in the world of humans’ ability to do good and remain humane in the face of evil. This is why we are able to apply the sanity condition to the widespread judgement of people, as these cases are much rarer than cases in which people are able to assess a situation and respond in an appropriate way. Perhaps she would note the many individuals, who during the Holocaust, maintained their morality and helped Jews in whatever ways they could. This would indicate that there were conditions beyond just omnipresent Nazi ideology that implicated the choices of the participants in Battalion 101....