Responsibility and practical reason: a dialogical perspective

This paper tries to emancipate the concept of legal responsibility from the free will debate, by endorsing a theory of responsibility grounded on practical reason. New emerging neuroscientific findings, indeed, have challenged the traditional idea of responsibility the western legal systems rely on, which is supposed to hold the legacy of the theological idea of free will. Instead, the paper considers the classical roots of legal responsibility as a plausible genealogy of the contemporary notion, following the Oxfordian renaissance of the Aristotelean logos and practical reason. Acknowledging the classical heritage, in particular the peculiar version of judicial Rhetoric epitomized by Roman law, it is thus possible to reconsider the role played by neuroscientific findings in their supposed threaten to legal responsibility, promoting a theory of responsibility based on the dialogical dimension of legal rationality.