M. Christopher Sardo

Interpreting Nietzsche’s writings on agency and responsibility through the lens of non-sovereignty generates interpretive and political-theoretical contributions. More specifically, I advance three arguments. First, Nietzsche’s genealogical critique of moral responsibility denaturalizes modernity’s conception of individual sovereignty and responsibility, by providing a naturalistic account of agency. Agency and responsibility are neither Kantian presuppositions of practical reason nor pieces of folk psychology to be abolished, but are normative, social, and historical achievements, and thus non-sovereign. Second, this implies a theory of responsibility that is simultaneously more and less demanding than moralistic accounts: while, because agents are not autonomous, they do not bear sole responsibility for their lives, they are called upon to be responsible to and for the world, by maintaining the conditions of possible agency and flourishing. Third, Nietzsche provides both generative resources and cautionary tales for political theories of non-sovereign agency. While non-sovereign responsibility holds emancipatory and potentially democratic implications, Nietzsche’s explicit political writings demonstrate the risk that, rather than tempering existential resentment, this account could generate and intensify a resentful anti-political authoritarianism. Just as non-sovereignty provides a useful framework for making sense of tensions within Nietzsche’s thought, Nietzsche’s post-moral theory of agency and responsibility brings forward tensions, provocations, and paradoxes that must be engaged by theorists of non-sovereignty.

How should responsibility be theorized in the context of the global climate crisis? This question is often framed through the language of distributive justice. Because of the inequitable distribution of historical emissions, climate vulnerability, and adaptation capacity, such considerations are necessary, but do not exhaust the question of responsibility. This article argues that climate change is a structural injustice demanding a theory of political responsibility. Agents bear responsibility not in virtue of their individual causal contribution or capacity, but because they participate in and benefit from the carbon-intensive structures, practices, and institutions that constitute the global political and economic system. Agents take responsibility by engaging in collective political action to transform these structures that generate both climate hazards and unjust relationships of power. By incorporating distributive principles within a capacious conception of political responsibility, this framework advances the theory and practice of climate justice in two ways. First, adopting a relational rather than individualistic criterion of responsibility better makes sense of how and why individuals bear responsibility for a global and intergenerational injustice like climate change. Second, framing climate justice in terms of political responsibility for unjust structural processes better orients and motivates the political action necessary for structural transformation.