We have arrived at the eleventh and final principle of Marine Corps Leadership: seek responsibilities and take responsibility. The idea of responsibility asserted in this leadership principle is comparable to the ideas of duty and obligation, but there is another, compatible meaning one may attach to “responsibility” that can cast some light on the idea of responsibility as a quality of one’s character. In 1962, an ethicist at Yale University named H. Richard Niebuhr gave a series of lectures in ethics in Scotland and the United States, later published as The Responsible Self. In part Niebuhr had in mind an effort to resolve a problem in contemporary ethics. In the mid-20^th century, there were two broad classes of moral theories intended to explain why an action thought to be morally right is in fact morally right. One class of theories rests on the view that what makes an action right is the quality of the outcome, that is, it creates for people more benefits than burdens. Among the problems with this position is that if the outcome of an act justifies it, then one cannot know until an act is done whether it is morally right. In other words, moral theories that claim actions are justified by their consequences cannot guide our action before we act.

The other broad class of moral theories holds that conformity to moral duty is what justifies an action. Of course, this raises the question of how reliably to identify our moral duty, but in practice, duty-based moral theories are subject to unworkable rigidity. We can say with some confidence that it is morally wrong to tell lies, but does this mean it is always wrong to lie? For example, does a war that is clearly just become unjust because we use deception in battling the enemy? Perhaps a more everyday example of this involves a beloved aunt with a passion for silly-looking hats who buys yet another one and asks you what you think of it.

Many people by mid-century could see that outcome-based and duty-based moral theories were defective, but too many thinkers sought to contrive “fixes” that never worked. The reason for this is that modern moral philosophy tended to treat people as moral technicians possessing the skill of applying a theory to the situations in which a moral choice is to be taken, rather than attending to human beings as moral creatures in need of growth and development. Before the modern era, thinkers in the West were concerned with the moral quality of a human being and with how one comes to be a well-developed person. This concern was largely dropped in the early modern period in preference to focusing on what makes an action right and what makes an action wrong. The problem with seeking to explain the rightness of an act with reference to just one feature of it, like an act’s outcome or its conformity with duty, is that moral action is complex involving not only what is done, but the inner processes by which a person chooses a particular action. In the Middle Ages, it was common to hold that in order to evaluate the moral quality of an action one needed to know what was done, the circumstances under which it was done, and the intention of the one who acted. This approach takes proper regard for the moral dignity of the human person by recognizing that we often have to assess a situation and act according to that assessment, and that often there is no single correct assessment of a situation. Niebuhr sought to revive the concern for people as morally and intellectually developed individuals who are able to see the right thing to do in the many different circumstances in which we must act. The responsible self responds to others in their situations, addressing them as fellow human beings engaged together in common enterprises that often require skill, cooperation, and the honesty without which cooperation is not possible.

The eleven principles of Marine Corps leadership and the fourteen traits of a leader describe someone who is well developed morally and intellectually. This is clear when we recognize that moral and intellectual development are concerned with bringing discipline to the will and to the mind so that the two may function together identifying and choosing what ancient thinkers would have called the right things at the right time in the right way for the right reasons. This is what is intimated in the first principle of leadership: know yourself and seek self-improvement. One may think with good reason that this principle is first on list of leadership principles because leaders are human beings endowed with the human nature that is common to us all with both its strengths and its weaknesses. A well-developed person is a human being who has worked over time to convert the moral and intellectual potential latent in all of us at birth into actual skills of mind and body. A leader should develop a sense of responsibility among subordinates, but central to doing this is setting the example by seeking responsibilities and taking responsibility.
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