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Owning Outcomes: On Intervening Causes, Thin Skulls, and Fault-undifferentiated Crimes

In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel draws our attention to a feature of action that is revealed to us when we agents become aware of our freedom. At that point, he says, both the aims we project and the objects that realize them become ours.’ Of course, this “ours” does not denote a relation of property in any but a figurative sense. Our ideas, after all, cannot be owned, and the objects in which they are realized can as easily be events as things. If, for example, Bob decides to set fire to some trees in a forest and he accomplishes his purpose, then the burning of the trees may be said to “belong” to Bob, though no court will enforce his suit to prevent others from extinguishing the blaze. Clearly, the relation of belonging to which Hegel refers is one of imputation rather than property. Yet while imputation and property are distinct ideas, everyday language hints at an analogy between them. Not only do we use the same possessive pronoun to express both relations, but we also commonly speak of someone “owning up” to, or “disowning” the consequences of, a deed. Furthermore, just as in property discourse a factual relation of possession is said to generate a right (however qualified) to exclude others, so in moral discourse the factual relation of imputation is commonly thought to mark the boundaries of one’s legitimate accountability for one’s actions. Morally (if not always legally) speaking, I have a right to refuse blame for all outcomes of my action that do not belong to the action or that are not in any sense “mine”. Like property, it seems, the relation of imputation is a fortress for the self, rendering it morally invulnerable to all contingencies save those that reflect its own ends.