The Nature of Responsibility

In the January 2012 edition of Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens—possibly the greatest intellectual of the last 30 years—addressed the issue of death from the perspective of one currently experiencing it (he was recently diagnosed with esophageal cancer and died on December 15^th).  He stated that there were only two things keeping him from fatalism and resignation: “a wife who would not hear of me talking in this boring and useless way, and various friends who also spoke freely.”  Not even Hitchens—the great atheist, wordsmith, luminary—was able to exist without partaking in society and relationship. 

During a conversation I had with him last semester, President of the Washington Institute and author of The Fabric of Faithfulness Dr. Steven Garber quoted Vaclav Havel—the recently diseased President of Czechoslovakia—who said that “the secret of man is the secret of his responsibility.”  I began thinking about the elusive nature of responsibility.  In many ways, it seems as though its meaning has remained a mystery in our culture--or, more nefariously, been purposefully subverted to emphasize the supposed victory of reason over emotion in the Modern and Postmodern ages. 

At the core of the idea of responsibility—truly at the core of humanity itself—is the importance of understanding our place within society and relationships.  We, as a culture, have a tendency to equate responsibility with independence.  We see responsibility as living on our own, buying a car, paying a mortgage, etc.  But true responsibility necessitates actively engaging with both our emotions and the values that our emotions articulate.  As New York Times columnist David Brooks discussed in his book The Social Animal, “Your unconscious, that inner extrovert, wants you to reach outward and connect…your unconscious wants to entangle you in the thick web of relations that are the essence of human flourishing.”

Brooks underscores the fact that the dichotomy of reason and emotion—particularly the supposed victory of reason over emotion—is a false one.  We view emotion as an untamed beast, unable to be controlled or even understood.  But Brooks states that “Reason and emotion are not separate and opposed. Reason is nestled upon emotion and dependent upon it. Emotion assigns value to things, and reason can only make choices on the basis of those valuations. The human mind can be pragmatic because deep down it is romantic.”   Far from being outside the realm of reason or understanding, emotion is the very foundation of reason, organizing the principles and value structures of our lives like an architect drawing blueprints for a building.  Our emotions, which guide our subconscious, seek to be in relationships.  We are, as Aristotle called us, social animals.

Even the ancients understood this concept.  Aristotle, writing in the 3^rd century BC, also said that “Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.”  In the ancient poem Inferno, Dante and Virgil traverse the levels of hell passing through those which housed souls guilty of the sins of lust, gluttony, murder, theft, and falsehood.  At the final level resides sinners guilty of disloyalty to kin, country, guests, and lords.  To understand why Dante reserves the final level of hell (where Satan also resides) with the most gruesome of punishments, we must realize that Aristotle’s writings were, in many ways, the foundation of Dante’s thought.  Disloyalty is the worst of all sins in Dante’s conception because it is the destruction of relationships which are at the core of humanity.  It is, in essence, a perversion of humanity itself. 

Havel, reflecting on his time as a playwright, said “What is important is that it is far harder to store a play away in your desk drawer than it is poetry or prose.  Once written, a play is only half done, and it is never complete and itself until it has been performed in a theatre.”  The parallels to Brooks’ work are enlightening.  Writing a play—like living an independent, solitary life—is a wholly irrational, unfinished, and unfulfilling exercise.  Only in its engagement with society at large, the carrying out of its ideas in a physical and social manner, is theater—and life—consummated.  In this principle we find the true nature of responsibility.

True responsibility is understanding the benefit we can receive from and the good we can infuse into our community—whether it be a family, a city, or a church—and doing the work necessary to maintain and build up that community.  It is understanding the foundational role of the emotions and letting them guide our path and order our value structures.  The micro and macro problems we face as a society and as a country are complex and divergent, but at the core of many is a lost understanding of responsibility.  The key to future solutions may lie in the resurgence of this understanding. 

The secret of man is the secret of his responsibility.