Moral Responsibility and Blame

Moral responsibility is anticipated for not only at judgments concerning right or wrong. At times, they are intended for at determining whether a person or organization is morally answerable for having done something wrong. People are not always guilty for their wrongful or injurious acts: moral responsibility is incurred only when a person intentionally and freely acts in an immoral way or fails to act in a moral way.

Incapability and ignorance to do are two conditions, called excusing conditions that completely eradicate a person's moral responsibility for causing wrongful injury. However inability and ignorance do not always excuse a person. When one intentionally keeps oneself ignorant to escape responsibility, that ignorance does not excuse the wrongful injury. A person is morally answerable for an injury or a wrong if:

1.   The person caused or helped cause it, or failed to prevent it when he could and should have;

2.   The person did so of his own free will.

3.   The person did so knowing what he or she was doing;

Ignorance may concern the relevant moral standards or the relevant facts. Usually, ignorance of the facts eradicates moral responsibility. This is because moral responsibility requires freedom, which is not possible in the case of ignorance of the relevant facts. Inability removes responsibility because a person cannot have a moral duty to do something over which he or she has no control. A person is NOT morally guilty for an injury or a wrong if:

1.   The person did not inflict the injury or the wrong of his own free will;

2.   The person did not know he was inflicting the injury or the wrong;

3.  The person did not cause and could not prevent the injury or wrong;

In addition to the excusing conditions, there are three justifying factors that reduce moral responsibility. They are:

1.   Circumstances that leave a person uncertain (but not unsure) about what he or she is doing;

2.   Circumstances that minimize (but do not remove) a person's involvement in an act.

3.   Circumstances that make it difficult (but not impossible) for the person to avoid doing it;

The extents to which these explanatory situations can diminish an agent's responsibility depend on the earnestness of the injury. Normally, the more serious the injury, the less the mitigating circumstances will diminish responsibility.

Let's start  with  a  discussion  of  apartheid-era  South  Africa  and  Caltex,  an  American  oil company working in South Africa during that time. A large number of Caltex stockholders opposed the company's operations in South Africa and introduced a series of shareholder resolutions requiring Caltex to leave South Africa, which they saw as immoral and racist. Caltex's management did not agree. Rather than focusing on the financial aid they were giving the South African government, they pointed to the optimistic effects their operations had on black workers.