TY - JOUR

T1 - The Financial Crisis, the Exemption View and the Problem of the Harmless Torturer

AU - Schefczyk, Michael

N1 - Special Issue 'Philosophical Lessons from the Global Financial Crisis'

PY - 2012/3/1

Y1 - 2012/3/1

N2 - Richard Posner avers in his A Failure of Capitalism that managers bear no moral responsibility for the financial crisis. This view has numerous supporters in economics and philosophy, and I shall call it ‘the exemption view’. In this paper, I criticise four arguments for the exemption view and propose a superior alternative, the ‘participation view’. The participation view claims that managers can be co-responsible for harm, even if their actions were not necessary or sufficient conditions for its occurrence. The paper spells out three conditions for moral responsibility according to the participation view.

AB - Richard Posner avers in his A Failure of Capitalism that managers bear no moral responsibility for the financial crisis. This view has numerous supporters in economics and philosophy, and I shall call it ‘the exemption view’. In this paper, I criticise four arguments for the exemption view and propose a superior alternative, the ‘participation view’. The participation view claims that managers can be co-responsible for harm, even if their actions were not necessary or sufficient conditions for its occurrence. The paper spells out three conditions for moral responsibility according to the participation view.

KW - Philosophy

KW - Economics

KW - Bank Manager

KW - Causal Responsibility

KW - Moral Responsibility

KW - Single Bank

KW - Trolley Problem

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85058369423&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.5840/pom20121119

DO - 10.5840/pom20121119

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 11

SP - 25

EP - 38

JO - Philosophy of Management

JF - Philosophy of Management

SN - 1740-3812

IS - 1

ER -