Abstract

Many moral and legal theorists have recently endorsed a Humean view of responsibility, according to which attributions of responsibility depend on character assessment. In the first part of this paper, the major contemporary developments of this view are presented, and some historical and theoretical reasons of its appeal are briefly discussed. In the second and third part, characterbased theories of responsibility are shown to be untenable on both theoretical and ethical grounds. They seem to reflect a too simple view of the conceptual connection between character, personal and moral identity, and action. Moreover, they lead to very counterintuitive results in concrete cases such as those of an intentional wrong action "out of character". In the final part, some additional reasons against character-based theories of responsibility deriving from some general reflections on the nature of responsibility are given.