Responsibility in Context Perspectives
This path breaking volume raises a number of necessary questions related to various aspects of responsibility for others through its multidisciplinary approach. Unlike its predecessors it takes a starting point in various empirical contexts and consequent
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Gorana Ognjenovic Editor
Responsibility in Context Perspectives
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Editor Gorana Ognjenovic [email protected]
ISBN 978-90-481-3036-8 e-ISBN 978-90-481-3037-5 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3037-5 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2009938635 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Responsibility – Preface Arne Johan Vetlesen
Ours is the era of globalisation. This means that the world is expanding; pressing a key, I can immediately reach persons living in another continent; products travel across the world to the store just around the corner from me; thanks to modern media, I am cognisant of events taking place right now thousands of kilometers away. The world is expanding in the sense that yesterday’s time-space limits are rendered irrelevant; my communications, my needs, my aspirations, transcend all such givens. Whatever confronts me as part of my here-and-now, as making up my present contextuality, I can – and will – easily transcend and leave it behind. That the world is expanding means I am expanding, insofar as my range of action, my horizon for thinking, indeed for existing, is perpetually expanding. Expansion as such is forever-happening; it is without limits. This is what we are being told about the nature of globalisation. It rings true; or more to the point, it sounds trivial. But perhaps it is neither. Let’s make a new start. Ours is the era of globalisation. This means that the world is shrinking. It is becoming smaller and smaller. It imposes itself upon me, wherever I go, whatever I undertake to do. It exerts all kinds of pressure from all kinds of directions, on all kinds of levels: psychologically no less than physically. I feel ambushed, or cornered, by the events of the world, by the insistence that everything count as “relevant”, as in some way or other impacting on me, on my here-and-now. I am surrounded by the world in its present shape; by its noise, which is becoming ubiquitous; by its sheer invasiveness, jealous at it were of all potential rivals, not least my aspiration to be left alone, to communicate with myself only, to enjoy silence. Is not silence a human right? So much for the philosophical – alternatively: existential – case for regarding the world as shrinking. Now consider the sociological one. The world is shrinking, is closing in on itself, insofar as I cannot escape locally the repercussions of developments inaugurated elsewhere yet travelling fast across the globe to catch up with me
A.J. Vetlesen (B) Department of Philosophy,
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