individual responsibility
Owning your actions
Individual responsibility is the principle that each person is accountable for their own actions, choices, and circumstances.
The phrase often carries political weight, emphasizing self-reliance over collective or governmental support: We need to get back to individual responsibility instead of handouts.
It can frame moral obligation—Taking individual responsibility means owning your mistakes—or shift focus away from systemic factors: They blamed poverty on lack of individual responsibility.
- ownHave legal title to
- dutyRequired moral task
- actionProcess of doing
- culpabilityDeserving blame for wrongdoing
- moralityRight and wrong principles
fault · liability · community · self-control · autonomy · accountability · self-awareness · answerability · consequence · introspection · integrity · choice · free will · citizenship · restitution · conscience · blame · buck stops here
- war crimescrimes against humanity, Nuremberg, war crimes tribunals, prisoner abuse, war criminals
- work ethicdiligence, hard worker, industriousness, go-getter, hard work
- Third WayTony Blair, Bill Clinton, New Labour, triangulation, DLC
individual responsibilitycollective responsibility
Shared blame among members
shared responsibility · communal responsibility · social responsibility · corporate responsibility · mutual obligation
individual responsibilitystructural inequality
Institutionalized unequal treatment
systemic oppression · fate · luck · predestination · cultural conditioning
individual responsibilitycollectivism
Group primacy doctrine
communitarianism · socialism · welfare state · paternalism · social safety net
individual, responsibility, individuals, individually, individuality, individualism, individualist, individualistic, individualize