The philosophical inquiry of responsibility is a major and fast-growing field. It not only features questions around free will and moral agency but also addresses various challenges in the social, institutional, and legal contexts in which people are being held responsible.

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Responsibility is an outstanding survey and exploration of these issues. Comprised of forty-one chapters by an international team of contributors, the Handbook is divided into three clear parts – on the history, the theory, and the practice of responsibility – within which the following key topics are examined:

• responsibility and wrongdoing
• responsibility and determinism
• the scope of responsibility
• the responsibility of individuals within society
• the concepts of responsibility
• the conditions and challenges of responsibility
• the practices of being and holding responsible
• the ethics and politics of responsibility
• responsibility in the law

Including suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Responsibility provides an extremely useful guide to the topic. It will be valuable reading for students and researchers in philosophy and applied ethics, as well as for those in related fields such as politics, law, and policymaking.

Maximilian Kiener is a Junior Professor of Philosophy and Ethics in Technology at Hamburg University of Technology, Germany, and an Associate Member of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, UK. He specialises in moral and legal philosophy, with a particular focus on consent, responsibility, and artificial intelligence. His book Voluntary Consent: Theory and Practice is also published by Routledge.