Q&A: Responsibility Is Not Guilt
Responsibility Is Not Guilt
Question
Hello Rabbi,
After the Meron disaster, Minister Ohana said that he was responsible for what happened, but that “responsibility is not guilt.” Can one say such a thing? (In my opinion, yes, in certain cases.)
After all, a person can be very responsible for managing a certain event, and in the end something unforeseen can happen there. For example, if I am responsible for managing a soccer game with many fans in a stadium, would I be considered guilty if something unexpected happened there—for example, if a soccer player pulled out a gun and killed several fans, or if a meteor struck the stadium and thousands of fans died? Do we claim the person/body in charge is guilty on the assumption that he should have taken every risk into account, even the slightest one, so long as it crossed some threshold of probability? Or would we say that if the scenario had only a very small chance of occurring, he is not considered guilty even though he was responsible?
Thank you.
Answer
Absolutely yes. For example, if a minor is pursuing someone with intent to kill, it is permitted—and required—to kill him in order to save the person being pursued. He is not guilty, but nevertheless their blood is preferred over his. The reason is that he is responsible for the consequences, even if he is not guilty. Another example is someone who drove negligently. If nothing happened, then he is guilty, but he has no responsibility for anything, because nothing happened. But if there was an accident with damage, he is responsible for repairing it, even though his guilt is similar to that of the first person.
A minister can be responsible for things of which he is not guilty, simply by virtue of being the minister. The question, of course, is what the minister intends to do with that responsibility—that is, what is the meaning of this statement? If he intends to do everything to prevent harm in the future, to resign, or to take some other step, then his words have meaning. But if it is just a declaration, then of course it has no meaning.
Discussion on Answer
I disagree. Payment by a driver who caused damage is not punishment but compensation. Therefore it is not done in order to prevent future negligence, but because of responsibility for what happened.
Statements about responsibility are meant to inform the public that he recognizes his responsibility and that he will do things to correct the wrong. I don’t see a problem with this, as long as it is sincere and genuine.
In my view, even leaving a person with his own money is for the sake of the future and not because of the past.
Resignation as an act of taking responsibility is simply a farce. A person responsible for a failure should fix it, not run away (to the sound of the public’s applause) and leave his mess to someone else.
If a person recognizes that he does not have the ability to fix it, then indeed he should say so and resign. But that is not taking responsibility; rather, it is recognizing that he lacks the ability to take responsibility (and that too is something. Certainly better than staying and not fixing it).
Avi, in a private company I think that if a CEO is responsible for a failure, then usually they will fire him—out of anger, out of the belief that it has been proven that he is flawed and not successful enough, and in order to make clear to future CEOs what is expected of them. With elected officials (and also sometimes indirectly with public servants), the reckoning comes only at the ballot box, and that is only once every few years (…) and together with an entire list. Therefore dismissal (much better than resignation!) is the whip raised over his head and is supposed to spur him to let the demands trickle down all the way. Just like the salary and status showered on the person at the top are meant to incentivize him.
Tolginus, indeed that also happens in commercial companies, though less so. From what I’ve seen, CEOs are usually removed when the failures are attributed to their bad decisions (and then there is guilt and not only responsibility), or when the board gets the impression that the CEO simply lacks the ability to get the company out of the mud. And when that is not the case, they really are making a mistake.
The conduct you see in public life is more like what happens in soccer (the team lost twice, so the coach is out), not what happens in the business world. People are put on the grill for no real reason, and the public loses good people, forcing them to play the media game instead of working.
Nowadays people take responsibility upon themselves in order to get applause for taking responsibility. Like those who publish some petition and then their whole milieu cheers them in unison for their extraordinary courage. Ehud Barak (whose supporter I am), in a moment of charlatanism, was once asked in an interview about his responsibility for the Tze’elim disaster and answered: “I am responsible. Unequivocally! I am responsible for everything that happens in the army.” And of course by that he emptied all his responsibility of any content.
But why do you write that the significance of his words depends on actions like resigning or leading a large investigation process (as Dan Halutz writes in his book that he did in the IDF after the Second Lebanon War, in keeping with the Air Force’s best tradition of debriefing. What came of it? Not clear). A person cannot determine “I am responsible” for a failure just as he cannot determine that he is responsible for a success. And whether he takes action or not, why is that interesting at all? Seemingly this should come from outside, in a reliable way, and identify the person who is really responsible. The idea that people step forward and admit it about themselves seems to me actually harmful. His opinion is like that of any other person, and he has no advantage in this matter. Therefore the considerations that motivate him are public ones (what the public expects of him and what the public will tolerate), and not really that his beating heart compels him by the force of the holiness of a sense of duty and justice. And why should we care about the beatings of his heart?
[By the way, this metaphysics of guilt/responsibility seems to me completely empty and unnecessary. The consequences that can be derived even without it (that is, not because of the past but for the sake of the future) should be derived—for example, making the negligent driver who caused harm pay, in order to incentivize drivers not to be negligent. And whatever cannot be derived without this metaphysics is best simply erased. But that’s just me blurting out my feelings, and it doesn’t really touch on the issue.]