The twelfth chapter of Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom, titled “Individual

Freedom as a Social Commitment”, aims at articulating the demands of society with

individual freedom, through the perspective of the individual. Sen operates a change of
paradigm, from the means of society to ensure and promote individual freedom, to freedom as
an individual prerogative, both a right and a responsibility, determined by the individual’s
condition in society.
The chapter is prefaced with an anecdote, meant to introduce the notion of
responsibility through a theological perspective.

“Bertrand Russell, who was a firm atheist, was once asked what he would do if,
following his death, he were to encounter God after all. Russell is supposed to have answered,
"I will ask him: God Almighty, why did you give so little evidence of your existence?”
Certainly the appalling world in which we live does not-at least on the surface- look like one
in which an all-powerful benevolence is having its way.”

Sen deals with atheism as a moral dilemma related to the statement of misery,
dismissing Russell’s scientific approach to religion. When Russell requires actual proof of the
existence of God, Sen confronts God’s infinite benevolence to the reality of misery.

“It is hard to understand how a compassionate world order can include so many people
afflicted by acute misery, persistent hunger and deprived and desperate lives, and why millions
of innocent children have to die each year from lack of food or medical attention or social
care.”

Whereas illness, premature death and accidents are often irrational, and may be
blamed on God, Sen chooses to mention poverty, hunger, “lack of […] social care”, which are
all human-made forms of misery, due to social inequalities and political injustice.
Sen introduces responsibility through the idea that humans are meant to deal with
misery on their own, “people themselves must have responsibility for the development and
change of the world in which they live”.
To what extent does Sen address responsibility as a political and a moral prerogative?

According to Sen, individuals are responsible for “the afflictions that [their] own
behavior may have caused” on a political level. They are responsible towards society for their
actions, and in a broader sense, they are each accountable for the way society is organized.
The fact people live together implies that their actions and choices have direct consequences
on others in many ways. Furthermore, as globalization enhances the connections on an
economic and political level, responsibility extends to a systemic scale. Buying a piece of
clothing made in Bengladesh is not only connecting the consumer to the workers and the
transportation companies, but it also involves the individual’s responsibility on a global scale,
as they endorse the worker’s conditions of living, the consequences of transportation on the
environment, even capitalism at large.
With globalization and the broad diffusion of information through the media, should it
be taken for granted that everyone is aware of the consequences of each of their actions?
Evidence of the involvement of important clothing brands with child labor and slavery can
easily be found online, should people be held accountable for purchasing from them? To what
extent should people who keep acting a certain way knowingly be blamed for the
consequences?
Sen questions accountability by raising the problem of competence. Responsibility
relies on competence; it involves knowledge and intention, as the individual must be fully
aware and in possession of their will power to be held accountable. Sen starts by stating
competence, to discuss it afterwards.

“As competent human beings, we cannot shirk the task of judging how things are and
what needs to be done.”

Not only are individuals aware of the consequences of their action, but they have a say
about the way society should be run.
Responsibility is determined by individual freedom. According to Kant in What is
Enlightenment, freedom relies on adulthood. The individual conquers freedom and self-
sufficiency by waiving the guardianships he is under. Sen defines responsibility as a first-
person matter, he asserts that the consequences of an individual’s actions are “[his]
responsibility-whether or not they are also anyone else's”. Responsibility should be fully
endorsed by the individual, as opposed to delegating or playing victim.
However, as Sen discusses thereafter, living conditions impair freedom. Under certain
circumstances, individuals are deprived of their freedom and responsibility. Moreover, there
are political devices meant to deny individual responsibility. The fully responsible enlightened
adult is a theoretical character, out of context, without a social and political background.

Not only is the individual responsible for the organization of society, but they are also
accountable for the condition of others around them on a moral scale. According to Sen,
responsibility is an attitude rather than specific guidelines:

“It is not so much a matter of having exact rules about how precisely we ought to
behave, as of recognizing the relevance of our shared humanity in making the choices we
face.”

Responsibility relies on empathy, on the recognition of oneself in the miseries of

others and the willingness to help: “As reflective creatures, we have the ability to contemplate
the lives of others.” Individuals relate “to the miseries that [they] see around [them] and that
lie within [their] power to help remedy”. Empathy relies on our “shared humanity”, as a form
of knowledge and feeling.

“As people who live -in a broad sense- together, we cannot escape the thought that the
terrible occurrences that we see around us are quintessentially our problems. “

Sen’s argumentation strongly relies on the reader’s empathy, conveying a sense of

involvement and contributing to the acknowledgement of their own responsibility.
According to Sen, responsibility is based on “our shared humanity”, the fact that
people unavoidably live together, echoing Hannah Arendt’s definition of politics in The
Human Condition, as negotiating a world that is both inherited and shared.
 To conclude, individual freedom and society’s demands are articulated by
responsibility, as the individual’s prerogative towards others, on behalf of living together and
sharing the same humanity.