Susan Wolf Delivers 2025 Mala Soloman Kamm Lecture in Ethics

Philosopher Susan Wolf delivered the 2025 Mala & Solomon Kamm Lecture in Ethics to nearly 50 Harvard affiliates on Thursday, examining the relationship between responsibility, blame, and punishment.

Wolf, who previously worked as a professor at Harvard, is now a philosophy professor emerita at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During her lecture, which was hosted by Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics, Wolf explored the definition of responsibility in the context of punishment.

Wolf began her talk by laying out two definitions of responsibility in academic and non-academic contexts. She said that in an academic sense, “responsibility is conceived as the status in virtue of which a person can be deserving of praise and blame, reward and punishment.”

But when discussing responsibility outside of the academic sense, she said the term’s definition is dependent on societal norms and expectations.

“To say that someone is responsible is roughly synonymous with saying that she is reliable and trustworthy,” she said.

After establishing the two different definitions of responsibility, Wolf said that punishments cannot be determined by objectively evaluating an individual’s responsibility to uphold societal norms.

Wolf explained her position using an example of psychopaths and corporations, questioning when the entities should be punished if they do not understand the norms their behavior violates.

“It seems to me inappropriate to hold reactive attitudes towards psychopaths and corporations,” Wolf said. “At least as I understand them, they lack the psychological faculties needed to understand and appreciate the moral reason.”

Wolf further connected punishments and responsibilities to societal norms by providing a personal anecdote.

“You might consider my experience with students who plagiarize,” she said. “I would initially be indignant. How dare they try to get away with cheating? How dare they try to pull something over on me and my TA? What a lack of moral integrity.”

But Wolf said that after further examining the situation, she realized that students often plagiarized because they were struggling with class, and not because of laziness or entitlement. Though Wolf said that punishment was still necessary in the case, she also recognized the reasoning behind the punishment.

“The justification of punishment then need not and I’m inclined to think should not be primarily a reflection of reactive attitudes of anger, resentment, or indignation,” Wolf said.

Attendees said they appreciated an opportunity to hear from a leading scholar in philosophy.

“Susan Wolf is one of the philosophers that has had the biggest influence on the subfield that I work in, the philosophy of agency and responsibility, out of everyone alive today,” Zoë A. Johnson King, an assistant professor in the philosophy department, said.

In an interview after her lecture, Wolf said she hoped attendees would come away with a greater appreciation for the nuance in punishment and blame.

“I think what's most important to me is the idea that there are lots of ways of criticizing people that fall short of blaming them and punishing them,” Wolf said.

“We all have the capacity to do better and be better than we are now,” she said during the talk.