The distinctive depth and seriousness of moral responsibility is often thought to stem from the seriousness of violating moral obligations. But this raises questions about being morally responsible for normative failure that does not belong to the deontic realm. This paper focuses on actions that we might, in the Aristotelian tradition, call ethical, and which concern how we order relations with ourselves; they concern certain fundamental conditions for agency. The paper provides a novel defense of the depth of self-directed aretaic appraisal as intrapersonal responsibility; it also explains and provides a defense for Gary Watson’s claim that “Responsibility is important to issues about what it is to lead a life, indeed what it is to have a life in a biographical sense, and the quality and character of that life.” The depth of self-directed aretaic appraisal, I argue is a function of three features: its structure, the violation of normative standards and the reflective activity that it requires. Reflective human beings have an interest in leading lives that are rich, rewarding and expressive of our values and concerns. From the first-personal point of view, a life that is impoverished along any of these dimensions is defective in the aretaic sense. Protecting these interests requires discernment of these values and is accordingly a deep and serious form of appraisal. Because violation of these standards explains why at least one class of responsibility appraisal is deep and serious, depth and seriousness may have a plurality of explanations.

道德责任的独特深度和严重性通常被认为源于违反道德义务的严重性。但这引发了关于对不属于道义领域的规范失败负有道德责任的问题。这篇论文的重点是我们在亚里士多德传统中可能称之为道德的行为，这些行为涉及我们如何安排与自己的关系；它们涉及代理的某些基本条件。该论文为自我导向的评估深度提供了一种新的防御，作为内部个人的责任; 它还解释并为加里·沃森的说法提供了辩护，即“责任对于过上什么样的生活，实际上从传记意义上过什么样的生活，以及这种生活的质量和性格等问题很重要。” 我认为自我导向的评估的深度是三个特征的函数：它的结构、对规范标准的违反和它需要的反思活动。善于反思的人有兴趣过上丰富、有益并能表达我们的价值观和关注点的生活。从第一人称的角度来看，在这些维度中的任何一个方面都处于贫困状态的生活在 aretaic 意义上是有缺陷的。保护这些利益需要对这些价值观的洞察力，因此是一种深刻而严肃的评估形式。因为违反了这些标准解释了为什么至少一类责任考核是深重的，深重的可能有多种解释。