Abstract

This thesis centres on the following question: What are the necessary conditions of persons becoming able to act as responsible selves? My attempt to answer this question proceeds by means of direct engagement with two schools of philosophical thought relevant to the issues at hand, Heideggerian and feminist theory, respectively. The thesis focuses in particular on Heidegger's account of authenticity, singularization and responsibility, and relationality accounts' emphases on both the importance of interdependent relationships of care and potential problems with overly individualistic accounts of the self. I argue that the Heideggerian notion of singularization should be seen as a necessary precondition of responsibility, while Heidegger's account of care for others is ultimately an unsatisfying one, as it constitutes what I term a caretaking. I then argue that the relational accounts' presentation of one's need for care from others should be maintained in an adequate account of responsibility, while criticizing these views for what I call an over-problematization of the notion of the individual. My own account of the responsible self maintains both singularization and relationality, in the manners I characterize them here, as necessary conditions of one's ability to be responsible, and I argue that responsible caregiving for particular others should be seen as one way of enacting responsibility so conceived