C. Stephen Evans's "Living Accountably"

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, C. Stephen Evans received his Bachelor's degree from Wheaton College in 1969 and his PhD from Yale University in philosophy in 1974 as a Danforth Fellow. He is currently University Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Baylor University, where he has taught since 2001, and is also a Professorial Research Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Society at the University of Notre Dame Australia. Evans's books include Kierkegaard and Spirituality: Accountability as the Meaning of Human Existence. Several of his books have won prizes and his works have been translated into multiple languages, including Spanish, Finnish, Russian, and Polish.

Evans applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Living Accountably: Accountability as a Virtue, and reported the following:

Page 99 is part of Chapter 6, which is the first of two chapters that deal with “global accountability,” the sense that many people have that they are accountable for the whole of their lives. The chapter considers and criticizes several attempts to see global accountability as grounded in accountability to humans. Page 99 considers whether accountability to oneself would be an adequate ground for global accountability, and begins an argument that this view suffers from several weaknesses. It does not give us a clear sense of what we are accountable for, and this page looks at Sartre’s existentialism to illustrate this problem. It also seems that if we are only accountable to ourselves, we could release ourselves from being accountable, but many people feel that they cannot be released from being accountable for how they live.

A reader who looked only at page 99 would get a very inadequate understanding of the book as a whole. The book is an argument that we should not think of accountability simply as punishing someone for bad actions, as is common in public discussions. Instead, we should understand accountability as a virtue, the trait of someone who willingly embraces being accountable to those who have proper standing to hold them accountable, and who are exercising that standing appropriately. The first five chapter try to develop and explain this virtue, looking at such issues as who has proper standing, the motivational profile of the one who has the virtue, the relation of this virtue to other virtues, and also how the virtue has been understood in the past, particularly in other cultures. Page 99 is part of the discussion of global accountability. Global accountability is interesting and important, partly because many people understand their lives this way, and also because it is closely connected to the origins of religion. However, global accountability is a special type of accountability and most of the book discusses the virtue in a broader way, and also looks at the empirical consequences of the virtue’s exercise.

Understanding accountability as a virtue is important, because accountability relationships are ubiquitous in human life. We should not think of accountability as necessarily hierarchical in nature. Students are accountable to teachers, but teachers are also accountable to students. Holding someone accountable should not be understood simply as punishment; in a healthy accountability relationship, the accountor (the one who holds the other accountable) can offer helpful feedback and positive appreciation as well as sanctions when needed. The concluding chapter of the book tries to show that this understanding of accountability is inherent in the restorative justice movement, which seeks alternatives to imprisonment that would encourage the development of the virtue.

Visit C. Stephen Evans's website.

--Marshal Zeringue