Two of Leviathan’s most notable departures from earlier versions of Hobbes’s political theory are its introduction of a concept of “authorization” to describe the relation between subjects and their sovereign, and a vast expansion of Hobbes’s treatment of Judeo-Christian doctrine, history, and ecclesiology in Parts III and IV. The chapter argues that with his innovation of the idea of authorization in Leviathan, Hobbes unintentionally introduces an antinomy of reason into his political philosophy. Hobbes expanded his treatment of revealed religion because he viewed it as an important source of political instability. He deployed several philosophical distinctions to show that moral responsibility for wrongful action done only in obedience to one’s sovereign’s command lies with the sovereign who wills the performance of the action rather than with the merely obedient subject through whose instrumentality the action occurs. Leviathan’s novel doctrine of authorization, imagining subjects each “to own and acknowledge himself to be author of whatsoever” the sovereign “shall act or cause to be acted” (17.13), aimed to insulate the sovereign from subjects’ criticism of its wrongful commands/actions by shifting responsibility onto subjects. After considering the antinomy generated by Hobbes’s introduction of the concept of authorization, the chapter proposes a resolution.

This chapter presents the central claim of the book, arguing that sovereignty practices emerge at the confluence of struggles – on the one hand, by actors asserting the political authority over a specific territory and, on the other hand, through resistance to this move by actors pursuing accountability and the responsibilisation of sovereign actors. I claim that practices of political authority – expressed through effective rule over territory – are central, constitutive acts of world politics, entailing specific obligations. Broadening the study of sovereignty practices beyond state relations, I argue that understanding how specific actors such as international organisations act as sovereign actors opens up new perspectives on international accountability and obligations in world politics.

Chapter 5 focuses on responsibility as an ethical category in a newly articulated political community. Drawing from the intellectual and political work of Bengali writer Syed Waliullah, this chapter offers an analysis of his existential call to freedom in the service of a new postcolonial subjectivity. Canonized on both sides of post-partitioned Bengal, Waliullah’s oeuvre – fiction, drama, short stories, essays and paintings – though composed almost entirely abroad, draws on the land and landscapes of rural Bengal, as it does on certain paradigms of existential philosophy; his protagonists, for example, are wracked by a singular and terrible sense of responsibility. How might we understand this complex negotiation beyond the most basic ascriptions of belatedness and mimicry? Because he was based in Paris for most of his life after government posts in England, Germany, Indonesia, and Australia, I suggest self-translation, as a larger philosophical venture and as a way to understand a metaphysical or existential line of questioning in this work. In the process, we see that both “situation” and “responsibility” become newly imbued with meaning in the context of a rural, postcolonial Bengal.

Justice is central to Islamic ideology, rooted in divine principles and reflected in the structure of the universe. Economic and social justice, according to Islam, are inseparable from faith and must permeate every aspect of life – not just worship. The Qur’an and hadith stress individual and communal responsibility, condemning inequality, exploitation and negligence toward the disadvantaged. Justice is not only a moral value but a spiritual obligation, tied to one’s belief in God and accountability on the Day of Judgment.

Islam assigns collective responsibility to ensure that no one suffers from poverty or injustice. Wealth is viewed as a trust, not private property to be hoarded. Tools like charity (zakat), the prohibition of interest (riba) and profit-sharing (mudaraba) aim to prevent economic exploitation and promote fairness. Contemporary Muslim societies often fail to apply these principles, leading to increasing inequality, alienation and disconnection from faith-based justice.

Musa Sadr calls for scholars and governments to prioritize justice, support the oppressed, reform economic laws and reintegrate justice into educational and legal systems. True Islamic justice demands not charity, but systemic support – interest-free loans, rights for workers and equitable development. Without this, the community is at risk of moral and social disintegration.

Starting from the murmuring stories of Numbers (and Exodus), this chapter shows how questions of punishment, responsibility, and intention plays into the book’s treatment of the motif of murmuring.

Do other people limit or even threaten our freedom and our projects, or are they necessary to their realisation? Do we only answer to ourselves for our actions, or are we accountable to other people as well, and if so, to whom? Do we have a responsibility for the welfare of other people? These questions, which Beauvoir addressed in the works she wrote from the Second World War onwards, have lost none of their relevance. Chapter 3 explores them by analysing many of her works, including The Ethics of Ambiguity, Pyrrhus and Cineas, America Day by Day, and her novels The Blood of Others and The Mandarins, which focus on social responsibility, communal action, and groups. Her anti-individualistic concept of freedom, focussed on projects and solidarity, is contrasted with the so-called negative concept of freedom and versions of the liberal concept of freedom. Beauvoir’s concepts of freedom, solidarity, and responsibility are proposed as tools to reflect on current issues, including some uses of social media, assisted suicide, the environment, and what should be done about historical wrongs such as slavery.

This chapter concerns international organisations, from their inception to their rise. Regional organisations are described in Europe, Central and South America, Arabia, Africa and South East Asia. This is followed by an examination of some legal aspects of international organisations, such as their definition, and the question of legal personality. A discussion of the constituent instruments of such organisations is noted before the question of their powers is examined. The applicable law of such organisations is described, followed by an analysis of the responsibility of international organisations. The liability of member states of international organisations is considered, as is the accountability of the organisations. This is followed by a consideration of the privileges and immunities of international organisations. The chapter concludes with a look at the questions of withdrawal from such organisations, the dissolution of international organisations and the succession of international organisations.

Completing the arc from the desire to assert membership and rights as an handicapé, the final chapter considers how disabled Kinois turned away from this identity to pursue one of becoming a responsable, someone ‘responsible [for others]’. While controversial, begging and brokering gave access to hard-won economic resources that made it possible to have and care for children. Aspiring to such responsibilities, disabled people showed that integrating economic and social values was both means and ends. By successfully fulfilling the responsibilities of parenthood – the comparatively stable, higher value of social respectability that was once considered impossible for disabled people to achieve – they sought to become ‘valuable people’ (batu ya valeur). Claiming full adult personhood, they both conformed to and transformed the measurement of this highest regime of personhood, enjoining a debate over whether it is good to have many or fewer, well-supported children. Between action and aspiration, a testing and critiquing disposition towards value demonstrates how the extraordinary livelihood strategies of disabled people in the margins of urban society may be a most productive stage from which to examine the emerging debates about what is, or should be, good in society.

Alcohol and other drug use (AOD) use tends to hold a privileged position within legal decision-making (Seear, 2020; Flacks, 2023), and the criminal case of R v Taj (2018) was no exception. The defendant, who was – it was agreed by all parties – experiencing paranoia and psychosis, launched a violent attack on a man he suspected of being a terrorist. Mr Taj had been drinking on eve of the incident, and the night before that, but tests on the day found no trace of alcohol in his bloodstream. He was nevertheless unable to plead self-defence on the basis that he honestly believed there was a risk to life and limb because, successive courts argued, he was already at fault for drinking alcohol, which led to the psychotic thoughts. There were some significant and potentially far-reaching claims in the case, including that intoxication-related behaviour does not require the presence of alcohol in the body, and that psychosis can be caused by alcohol alone. This allowed the court to conclude that Mr Taj was wholly responsible for his actions and so could not claim excuse or mitigation.

International organizations perform activities in areas in which states can no longer operate effectively in isolation, and in which there is a common interest in cooperation within a permanent international framework. This chapter will examine international organizations primarily from a legal perspective. The chapter aims to present a general overview of the law of international organizations. This chapter discusses the legal status, privileges, and immunities of international organizations. The chapter further deals with membership issues, powers, and institutional structures. The chapter also looks at decisions of international organizations: the way in which they are taken and the different types of decisions. The chapter briefly examines the finances of international organizations. There has been an exponential increase in the activities of international organizations over the years. Not all of these activities have been successful, however, and there have been failures and wrongdoings. In recent years, a much-debated issue is to what extent international organizations and/or their members may be held responsible for such failures and wrongdoings.

The criminal law comprises a state response to wrongdoing on the part of the population, proscribing conduct that lies outside of the normal expected conduct of citizens. As such, the criminal law seeks to regulate socially transgressive or unacceptable (criminal) behaviour.In providing a framework of rules to address these behaviours, the criminal law actually comprises two discrete branches: substantive criminal law and procedural criminal law. This chapter is divided into two main sections. Section 1.2 looks at the nature of the criminal law; its purposes, limits and sources. This part examines a number of important issues, such as the purposes of the criminal law, the legitimate limits on its scope and its sources. Section 1.3 examines the notion of criminal responsibility, looking at who may be held liable for a criminal offence and the principles that underlie the state’s obligations in proving an offence.

This chapter delves into everyday administrative work at the Ministry of Culture, with a specific focus on the Mass Culture Institute, the ancestor of the current General Organisation for Cultural Palaces. Based on the personal papers of Saad Kamel, this chapter provides a brief institutional history of the Institute and the low- and mid-ranking bureaucrats who worked to accomplish its mission of cultivating the rural masses. This mission was influenced by diverging ideas about Arab socialism after the socialist turn of 1961. Thus, this chapter contributes to an intellectual history of Arab socialism, by showing how the Mass Culture Institute enacted a grounded version of ‘the socialism of culture’ (ishtirakiyyat al-thaqāfa). Moreover, the chapter explores the key relationship between responsibility and achievement at the Mass Culture Institute. Low- and mid-ranking bureaucrats are constantly concerned by what falls under their responsibility, which is managed by both avoiding to take responsibility for problems and seeking to take credit for achievements (however small). These everyday achievements embody, on a smaller scale, the postrevolutionary state project.

Takes up another aspect of free will, the challenge of scientific determinism. I argue that Jewish tradition contains surprisingly many thinkers who either deny free will or (more commonly) greatly limit its scope, question its value, or embrace compatibilism (the thesis that free will and determinism are compatible). Some of what these thinkers say can be transferred to the challenge of determinism as it exists today.

This chapter illustrates how a biblical text can bring certain philosophical problems to the fore, especially when attention is paid to its literary techniques. Such techniques are used in midrashic interpretations but have been put to extensive use by contemporary biblical scholars like Robert Alter. The story in Genesis of Joseph and his brothers provides a dramatic rendition of a philosophical problem: the seeming opposition between God’s control of history and human free will. I show how the problem is expressed through the narrative; discuss how a variety of midrashim and biblical exegeses address the problem; and relate the issue at hand to work by analytic philosophers such as Harry Frankfurt, Thomas Flint, and Peter Van Inwagen.

Deals with divine actions: are events in the world caused by divine interventions or by laws of nature? If both, which dominates? While some Jewish thinkers maintain that God is the only cause of anything, and that belief in other causes is a form of paganism or idolatry, others surprisingly endorse some form of naturalism (the idea that events in the world are brought about by natural causes). In the chapter I explore, through Jewish texts reasons that have been used to ground a theistic naturalist position.

The book begins by situating my key phrase ‘making-good-again’ through contrasting the history of the terms Wiedergutmachung and restitution. I give a brief history of understandings of responsibility and introduce my argument regarding material practice. Part two gives a brief overview of the methods used in the book, situating my approach in relation to jurisprudence and current approaches in law, humanities and their intersections.

Remote work in Korea rapidly accelerated mainly with digitalization and covid-19, posing challenging issues for traditional labor law in this country. The practice of long working hours, and the crisis of the country’s low birth rate and aging population demand fundamental changes of working style. With the development of information and communication technology, traditional ways of direct command and supervision by employers seem to be reduced, while the discretion of workers expanded. However, technologies themselves also make possible more detailed direction by employers - even by the contractors of the employers. The character of the employment contract as a mutual contract presupposes fair distribution of obligation and responsibility. Changing situations surrounding working conditions such as remote work may encourage the re-distribution of responsibility. This chapter explores the impact of remote work on the employers’ responsibility from the standpoint of the response by Korean regulation and policies.