Ship of Fools: Responsible but not guilty?

Thread: Responsible but not guilty? Board: Purgatory / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

What's the difference between a sense of responsibility and a sense of guilt?

The phrase has come back to me* in the context of some musings about motivation by grace. I'm very hot on motivation by guilt being a bad thing, but I often do things through a strong sense of responsibility.

Early Restorationist Arthur Wallis apparently used to say the Church needed to get rid of "mustery and oughtery" (not sure the house churches did in the end though).

What are the practical, moral, or theological differences between acting out of a sense of responsibiity and acting out of a sense of guilt?

==

*Made notorious, with a rather different but in fact accurate meaning in law, by former French Social Affairs Minister Georgina Dufoix in the context of the infected blood scandal of the early 1990s.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
What are the practical, moral, or theological differences between acting out of a sense of responsibility and acting out of a sense of guilt?.

A sense of guilt involves negative emotions which are likely to interfere with clear thinking. A sense of responsibility allows you to analyze the situation dispassionately and decide what is best to do.

Moo

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

Off the top of my head, with regards to future actions a sense of guilt would focus negatively on what you ought not to do and a sense of responsibility would focus positively on what you ought to do.
Also a responsibility can be enabling or empowering or something you can take pride in.

With reference to past wrongs, to be guilty is a subset of being responsible; to be guilty specifically refers to something morally or legally culpable; to be responsible for a wrong may just mean that you made a mistake or did wrong by accident or were misinformed or not informed by a subordinate.

Posted by Hedgehog (# 14125) on :

Curiously, I have been pondering along the same lines, but with a slightly different angle. I was wondering about acting out of a desire to Not Cheat another. This is more than honesty and comes closer to acting out of a sense of honor.

For example, a few months ago I went to a store to purchase some items. I gave my credit card to them. The machine made a weird noise. The cashier and I both thought it odd, but she said "oh, it seems to have gone through!"

Later, at home, I looked at the receipt. Somehow, it had been processed as if I had paid cash. I thought that odd as no cash changed hands. I waited for my credit card statement. It showed no charges for that day. My conclusion is that the register at the store had a glitch. It rang me up as if I had paid cash, but in fact I had paid nothing.

Technically, I have done nothing wrong. I did not deceive and it was the fault of the store's register. Nevertheless, because of my desire to Not Cheat them (after all, I did get goods and I should, out of a sense of honor, pay for them), I went back to the store, explained what happened and gave them the appropriate cash.

Was that motivated by a sense of "guilt"? Of "responsibility"? I wasn't technically guilty of anything and it was not my responsibility--but I did feel that the honorable thing to do was to correct the error.

More directly addressing the OP, however, how do we define "guilt"? Does that not require the actor to have done something wrong first (to be guilty of) and then act to correct? If not, if it is acting "from guilt" to avoid doing something wrong (i.e., to avoid feeling guilty about something) then the dividing line becomes very hazy: If the actor "should do" something and does it, is that acting from a sense of "responsibility" or from a desire to avoid feeling "guilty" for not doing the act?

To me, that gets to be a difficult hair-splitting. I'd rather say that one acts from a sense of responsibility if one does action X because one "should do it." It is only done from a sense of guilty if the actor has already done a bad action (to be guilty of) and seeks to correct it.

Still, that dodges the question of whether doing an act to avoid punishment is acting from "guilt"--I do such-and-such because I want to avoid the punishment (e.g., of going to hell). In my mind, that is not really acting from guilt, but it is also not acting from a sense of responsibility--it is acting from a fear of punishment, a sort of "pre-guilt" phase.

I should probably stop babbling now. I've managed to get myself confused!

Posted by Pomona (# 17175) on :

Might the difference between shame cultures and guilt cultures explain these differences?

Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :

In the shop case, would failing to pay not be considered a sin of omission (leaving undone those things which we ought to have done), and hence just as likely to cause guilt. The difference being, of course, that you're able to erase any harm done if you act fairly promptly, whereas undoing things you have done is generally harder.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

I know the example I gave was backward-facing, as it were - referring to our past actions. But my thinking was more about actions we're contemplating.

One of our resident church basket cases phones or texts me one or more times a day. He wants me to go visit this afternoon. If I decide to go, am I responding out of a praiseworthy sense of pastoral responsibility, or because I'm afraid of feeling guilty if I don't?

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

You could go out of the warmth compassion.
This motivation might fall somewhere between the emotional heat of guilt and the cold logic of responsibility.

One difference between responsibility and guilt is that responsibility can be shirked, not so easy with the other one.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I know the example I gave was backward-facing, as it were - referring to our past actions. But my thinking was more about actions we're contemplating.

One of our resident church basket cases phones or texts me one or more times a day. He wants me to go visit this afternoon. If I decide to go, am I responding out of a praiseworthy sense of pastoral responsibility, or because I'm afraid of feeling guilty if I don't?

I reckon you are going to shut him up! [Razz]

I pick up and bag my dogs’ poo and bring it home to put in our dustbin. I pick it up wherever we are and whoever is or isn’t around at the time. I do it because it’s the right thing to do, and have always done so - long before there were penalties for not doing so.

If I find money in the atm I take it in to the bank, because it’s the right thing to do.

How do we learn ‘the right thing to do’? From our parents. If these things are not taught well and consistently when children are young they grow up with no sense of responsibility.

My parents never shamed or made us feel guilty. They simply reminded us, every time and set a good example.

My SIL has a huge ‘guilt button’ and feels guilty about the oddest things. She tries to make others feel guilt too. I don’t buy any of it. If I’m going to feel guilt it will be my own, thank you very much!

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

There is inappropriate guilt and there is appropriate guilt. Maybe a strong sense of personal responsibility can lead to inappropriate guilt? People with a strong sense of personal responsibility can take too much on themselves. It's a kind of boundary error.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I know the example I gave was backward-facing, as it were - referring to our past actions. But my thinking was more about actions we're contemplating.

One of our resident church basket cases phones or texts me one or more times a day. He wants me to go visit this afternoon. If I decide to go, am I responding out of a praiseworthy sense of pastoral responsibility, or because I'm afraid of feeling guilty if I don't?

Doing your pastoral duty isn't praiseworthy. Completing our responsibilities should be considered the baseline, not an achievement.
We should do things because we feel they are the correct thing to do. B62's appropriate guilt is a positive thing in that we still recognise the right thing.

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
There is inappropriate guilt and there is appropriate guilt. Maybe a strong sense of personal responsibility can lead to inappropriate guilt? People with a strong sense of personal responsibility can take too much on themselves. It's a kind of boundary error.

This is what I see all the time more so with church people than others, though perhaps they are freer to express it. People who take responsibility for things that aren't their doing and feel guilty about stuff that isn't their's.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

I think there is such a thing as an appropriate sense of guilt. If we do something which we know to be wrong and continue to know that it was wrong, we rightly feel guilty. But that guilt can be absolved by God's grace, freely given to all who 'truly and earnestly repent [them] of [their] sins'.

[ 21. October 2017, 17:26: Message edited by: Albertus ]

Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :

If I do something, with good intentions, and the result is good, I should feel responsible and perhaps proud.

If I did not have good intentions, then I probably am not entitled to pride, but I should still be responsible.

If I do something I have been warned against, and the result is bad, then I should feel responsible and guilty.

It is easy enough to invent a whole spectrum of such statements: I do something (or fail to do it); I have been told this is a good or bad thing to do (or not do); my intentions were good, bad or neutral; the result was good or bad. (No one cares much about neutral effects, perhaps an error.) In each case, I may feel responsible, proud or guilty.

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

Feeling responsibility without guilt is normally a positive thing. E.g. "I didn't make this mess but it's on my patch so it's for me to clear it up." It's constructive.

Feeling guilt without responsibility would be like survivor's guilt - "I know I'm not responsible but I feel guilty that the bad stuff happened to someone else and not to me". That's not constructive at all.

But often there's a lot of overlap. In many systems of moral thought, if you should do something, then it follows both that you have a moral responsibility to do it and that you're guilty if you don't.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

It's interesting to compare two concepts like this, as quite often, the words have a range of meanings, they are 'fuzzy' in the jargon.

Thus responsibility can refer to something negative - you are responsible for the break-up of our marriage - and something positive - Einstein was responsible for the flowering of modern physics.

There is also the sense of duty - I have a responsibility for my family.

Guilt is about blame, I guess, often of oneself, but obviously has a subjective sense and an objective sense.

So it's difficult to compare one family of meanings with another family, unless one carefully specifies which branch one means! That's why papers in linguistics which do this kind of thing, often use hundreds of examples, trying to capture some of the shades of meaning. And even then one fails.

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