Leadership & Responsibility

"People often assign responsibility based on ideology. For example, Democrats would be more inclined to regard a Republican leader as being fully responsible for his subordinates while being more forgiving of fellow Democrats. And Republicans are far less inclined to hold a fellow Republican, especially Trump, responsible for anything. However, judging responsibility based on political ideology is a poor method. What is needed is some general principles that can be used to assess the responsibility of leaders in a consistent manner."

"Oversimplified, the problem of evil is the problem of reconciling God being all good, all knowing and all powerful with the existence of evil. If God is all good, then he would tolerate no evil. If God was all powerful, He could prevent all evil. And if God was all knowing, then He would not be ignorant of any evil. Given God's absolute perfection, He thus has absolute responsibility as a leader: He knows what every subordinate is doing, knows whether it is good or evil and has the power to prevent or cause any behavior."

"In stark contrast, a human leader (no matter how awesome) falls infinitely short of God. Such leaders are not perfectly good, and they are obviously not all knowing or all powerful. These imperfections thus reduce their responsibility. In the case of goodness, no human can be expected to be morally perfect. As such, failures of leadership due to moral imperfection can be excusable within limits. The challenge is sorting out the extent to which imperfect humans can legitimately be held morally accountable and to what extent our unavoidable moral imperfections provide a legitimate excuse."

Responsibility is often assigned according to political ideology, with different groups holding leaders accountable in biased ways. A consistent method is needed to assess leadership responsibility. Responsibility can be analyzed using an analogy to the problem of evil: if a leader were perfectly good, all-knowing, and all-powerful, then they would have absolute accountability for subordinates’ wrongdoing because they would know everything and could prevent it. Human leaders lack perfect goodness, complete knowledge, and unlimited power, so their responsibility is reduced. Moral imperfection can excuse leadership failures within limits, raising the question of how much accountability imperfect humans legitimately bear.

Read at A Philosopher's Blog