QUESTIONI DI RESPONSABILITÀ: LE SCUSE E IL PERDONO

Abstract

This article focuses on the themes of « excuses » and « forgiveness », in order to elucidate the genealogy and the different trends of the contemporary debate about responsibility. To this purpose the themes of “excuses” and of “forgiveness” will be examined through three axes, which structure the essay. The first one is an historical-philosophical perspective, which aims at grasping continuities and discontinuities in the centuries-old history of responsibility, by offering an overview of the theorization of the theme of excuses, since Aristotle’s  Ethica Nichomachea until Hegel’s Principles of the Philosophy of Right. The second axe is an analytical perspective, which attempts at highlighting the multiple ties that – within analytic philosophy - link the elucidation of the nature and of the structure of the responsible action with the efforts of conceptual determination of the notions of “excuses” and of “forgiveness”. Finally, the third axe consists in a comparative perspective, which assumes the conceptual pair ‘excuses-forgiveness’ as a privileged point of view, in order to grasp convergences and divergences between the analytical debate on responsibility and the reflexion on responsibility within French post-phenomenological philosophy.