Instantaneous Retroactivity, Or, How Being Responsible Means Being a Historian

This post's title is absurd.

Part of me chose the title because I like the absurdity so much.

But I really am trying to say something with that title.

Right now the thing I'm trying to think about is the retroactive elements in responsibility. I want to know, Why is it that responsibility can be claimed days, months, or years after an event has occurred?

How is it that the idea of responsibility leaves room for such retroactivity?

Responsibility contains these retroactive elements because its core, I suspect, is narrative (and history).

Responsibility, in other words, is nothing more (and nothing less) than telling a story in which we are responsible.

But what about those moments in which responsibility is immediately claimed? Because, while responsibility can be retroactive, it can also be instantaneous. We can approach a situation and know fully what we are doing, and claim responsibility for in that moment, with zero retroactivity. Responsibility is fully claimed in the moment, and no (or minimal) retroactivity exists.


But is it possible to fully claim responsibility for an action in the exact moment in which it occurs?


I have two doubts about this.


First, we never know exactly what our actions will do. Perhaps in the short run, in 5 minutes we see the anticipated results. But there will always be unforeseeable longterm consequences. If we never know quite what we do does, then we can never quite assume full responsibility for our actions (unless we do it retroactively). 


Second, I believe that human action only becomes intelligible in terms of narrative and story telling. So, for us to claim full responsibility for an action we must have a full narrative of the action and its outcomes. But that narrative can never be perfect. So I guess this second point is really just an extension of the first point. 


In either case, my conclusion is the same: Responsibility can only be claimed after an action through the construction of an explanatory narrative that renders our own actions intelligible.


We cannot claim responsibility in the precise moment of an action because we never know what we do does.


Responsibility can only be retroactive.

Responsibility can only be a form of historical thought. 


It may be possible that there is such a thing as instantaneous retroactivity, or near instantaneous. Because maybe we have a good narrative that predicts the outcomes of an action, and we can apply that narrative to our actions in a moment with minimal reflexivity.

But, at best, this is a sort of instantaneous retroactivity.

We cannot claim full responsibility for an action until it has been performed. No matter how quickly we do it, it is still a past action that we are claiming responsibility for.


Responsibility is a species of historical thought, through and through.


To be responsible is to be a special kind of historian.

This is the claim I am working on in my latest essay.

This conclusion is sitting more and more comfortably with me, but I don't yet know how I intend to demonstrate it.