Responsibility and Coercion

This chapter considers the complexities of the relation between responsibility and coercion. Coercion is generally understood to cancel or diminish the voluntariness of one’s action and, correspondingly, affects the agent’s responsibility for action. The chapter argues that the relation between coercion and responsibility is more complex than it appears. First, there are cases in which agents can be held accountable and take or claim (moral) responsibility for their submissive action because and insofar as they exercise some agential powers in deliberating about what to do. The analysis of these cases highlights the distinctive ways in which victims of coercion are wronged. It also calls attention to the conditions under which coercion exempts, excuses, or blocks reactive attitudes such as blame while favoring others, such as forgiveness. Second, coercion may exploit and build upon oppressive cultural, social, or economic structures that limit the agents’ sense of opportunities of action, and undermine their authority, and efficacy. These cases raise important questions regarding the grounds for resisting coercive threats, and the normative expectations, and moral responsibilities associated with the capacity for refusal and resistance, in a prospective and interpersonal dimension.