The Sun BabelFish Blog

Nobody is responsible

Peter Sloterdijk animates a program on the major German Television Station ZDF, entitled the Philosophical Quartet. The latest program of his, which could be translated as Risk and Responsibility: the art of being Nobody is very much worth watching (if you speak german). Sloterdijk starts off the program by reminding us of the ancient story of Ulysses and the Cyclops. In order to free himself from the blood thirsty monster, Ulysses boldly plunged a red hot stake into the sleeping monsters only eye who screaming in pain and rage asked who it was who had done that. Ulyses answered that his name was "Nobody". As the cyclops friends then arrived alerted by the screams of their fellow, and asked him who had done this deed to him, that they could avenge him, they received the answer Nobody. Thinking therefore that the Gods had done that to him, and that he was thus responsible for his deeds, they left him to die in his pain.

This story is used as a spring board by the quartet - the 2 philosohpers and 2 guests: Beatrice Weder Di Mauro swiss economist member of the German 5 wise men board of economic affairs, and novelist Bodo Kirchhoff - to look into the question that nobody seems to be to blame, or accepts the blame, for the massive financial meltdown that saw more money evaporate in a year than all the biggest robberies of all time piled one next to the other over the whole course of humanities history. Clearly something went wrong. Something needs to change, some things need to stop, some to die... The point is well made that the bankers that gave themselves such huge salaries on account that they were responsible for the huge benefits they made, seem to have lost all sense of responsibilty in the crisis. What then is it that needs changing? What criteria should be set in to avoid such errors in the future? One proposal - perhaps a very harsh one for all attempts at mergers - is that you should never allow a system to grow to such a level that it cannot fail, or better: never allow a system to grow so that when it is time to ask for responsibility for a crisis, the only answer can be Nobody.

Posted at 06:03PM Jun 19, 2009 [permalink/trackback] by Henry Story in Philosophy  |  Comments[1]