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AbstractPhilosophy generally seeks to define moral responsibility in absolute terms, taking care to remain at a distance from the empirical reality of the social world. This article, however, provides a pragmatic approach that seeks to narrow the gap between philosophy and the social sciences when analysing responsibility. It proposes to examine the “practices of responsibility” rather than fundamental principles of or criteria for responsibility. The approach involves tracing the structures of interaction by which social agents engage in concrete practices of assigning responsibility. Doing so, the approach seeks to appreciate the realities of the moral order in advanced modern societies. These should be understood as an open, changing system constantly under reconstruction. In such a system responsibilities are not assigned in an authoritarian way, according to strict rules and fixed and predefined criteria. Instead, for the most part they are left to the initiative of social actors.
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565.