A relação entre a identidade pessoal e a responsabilidade moral: um estudo da filosofia de Harry Frankfurt

Abstract

Philosophers discuss the nature and relation requirements that apply to moral responsibility and, in general, they assume that a person can be morally responsible for his/her action, as long as he/she has the right relation to it. One of the most accepted answers to the question “what makes an action mine for accountability purposes?” is that we can only be held responsible if we are numerically identical to the person who performed the action. However, some thinkers suggest that the moral responsibility of the agent is not better evaluated under its numerical reidentification aspect: what we need to know is whether one's desires, motivations, and actions can be attributed to his “true self”. Studying the ideas of Harry Frankfurt, our research aims to investigate the relation between personal identity and moral responsibility. We will analyze what criterias, provided by Frankfurt, allow us to justifiably say when an action is genuinely someone's and, thus, when a person is morally responsible.