Moral Responsibility: Velleity and Vocation

In “The Reasons for My Involvement in the Peace Movement,” Abraham Joshua Heschel stakes the claim: “morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”[1] Heschel’s words speak to the need for collective responsibility for wrongs committed and suggest that, though an individual may not be guilty for an act of evil, they can become guilty for failing to respond to evil. While maintaining the truth of Heschel’s claim that indifference to injustice is itself an act of injustice, I want to consider the impact of this idea on individuals who care deeply about the web of atrocities, wrongs, and systemic injustices they encounter on a daily basis. While we can easily picture the individual who fails to feel anything for the suffering of human beings, we may just as easily picture the individual who constantly considers the suffering in the world around them, who, through their own compassion and desire to respond, carries enormous guilt and anguish for feeling like they are never doing enough. What does Heschel’s claim that “there is no limit to the concern one must [emphasis my own] feel for the suffering of human beings” do to the individual who possesses what Lisa Tessman terms a “burdened virtue” of compassion?[2] 

It is the goal of this paper to argue that there is a limit to the responsibility an individual has towards acts of evil--a limit that comes not out of indifference or lack of compassion, but out of human finitude. Moral agents often occupy a position of wanting to thoroughly invest and respond to the ever-growing lists of evils they encounter, while being limited in their time, resources, and capacities. For the individual who takes Heschel’s words to heart, this inability to address every injustice with the level of concern it demands has the effect of inculcating undeserved guilt for failing to keep to an impossible standard of moral responsibility. This is especially true as we navigate decision-making in the face of structural issues which constrain agency and present fewer clear-cut ways on how to act. 

Drawing on Thomas Aquinas’ idea of complete and incomplete acts of will, I argue that moral agents can fail to respond to an evil in external action while not being guilty of indifference.[3] In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas argues that the will is the cause of external action and a complete act of the will is only in respect to what is possible: one cannot will an impossible choice. He develops, however, the idea of an incomplete act of will (velleity) in respect to what is impossible, wherein one would will such a thing were it possible. My contention is that it is an impossible choice to concern oneself with the suffering of every human being. While moral agents can be blameworthy for certain failures to respond in certain instances, they should not be considered blameworthy for failing to respond to every evil in complete acts of the will. What matters in assigning responsibility to individual agents regards an agent’s velleity, what they would will to do were no obstacles in their way--in this case, obstacles created by the limitations of human finitude. I contend that a moral agent is not responsible for every failure to respond to evil in external action, but this is only the case when the agent would will external action were it possible. In other words, what matters is what an individual would do given infinite time, resources, and capabilities. 

To make my case, I first review the relevant passages from the Summa Theologiae to draw out Aquinas’ concept of the will. Then, in conversation with Tessman’s analysis of the virtue of compassion, I suggest that compassion requires a practical deliberation about what is within the realm of possibility for an individual agent to do. Moral agents will have to decide which evils necessitate immediate, full-fledged engagement in their external actions and which are beyond an individual’s capacity to concern themselves. In this section, I develop guidelines for how this discernment can take place within a moral community via a division of labor. I engage and develop Alex Zakaras’ idea that individuals can excuse complicity in injustices committed by their government by doing their share of the work in “focusing on a few injustices in particular.”[4] I further suggest, drawing on Robert Adam’s description of vocation as divvying up ethical concerns in the universe, how this division of labor can be connected to an individual's vocation.[5]

Finally, bringing all these components together, I argue that every individual should be held responsible for their velleity towards acts of evil, but what they are responsible for in their external actions will depend upon their vocational responsibility within a moral community. While in a free society some are guilty but all are responsible, not all are responsible in the same way, at the same time, and to the same extent. The hope in making this argument is not to give individuals a carte blanche when it pertains to issues of injustice, but to provide relief for the individual who suffers guilt from their inability to respond to every act of evil.

[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997).

[2] Lisa Tessman, Burdened Virtues: Virtue Ethics for Liberatory Struggles (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

[3] ST I-II.13.5.

[4] Alex Zakaras, “Complicity and Coercion: Toward an Ethics of Political Participation,” in Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, (Oxford University Press, 2018), 216.

[5] Robert Merrihew Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (Oxford: Oxford university press, 2002). In Chapter 13, Adams asks “Is there some task in the universe that is mine in a morally valid way? Are there ethical concerns that have my name on them?” (292).