Herbert Fingarette explores the terrain of moral responsibility. As a philosophical idea, responsibility poses vexing questions such as what does it mean to be a responsible person? or i why is it that some individuals are causaly responsible for something, but not legally or morally accountable? And what is the authority that holds people responsible for their actions?

In exploring these, Fingarette employs a diversse range of ideas including standpoints of moral philosophy, moral psychology, and psychoanalytic psychology. Free of academic jargon and dense references, Mapping Responsibility is written to appeal to the general reader as well as his followers in the scholarly community.