Literary notes about Culpability (AI summary)
In literature, the term culpability is deployed to convey layers of moral, legal, and emotional responsibility. Authors invoke it to express public outcry and collective blame, as seen when military actions are broadly denounced ([1], [2]), while it also serves in legal discourses to measure the gravity of offenses and assign punishment proportionate to intent ([3], [4]). At a more personal level, writers use culpability to explore inner guilt and the inertia of self-reproach, revealing how an individual’s failure to act or confess may lead to enduring remorse ([5], [6]). Such usage underscores the complexity of ascribing fault—not merely as an external accusation, but as a profound internal state that reflects ethical and psychological conflict.
- The outcry against the Military rose to a high pitch; the air was reeking with denunciations apropos of their culpability for—things in general.
— from The Siege of Kimberley Its Humorous and Social Side; Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902); Eighteen Weeks in Eighteen Chapters by T. Phelan - That government is too proud to lie! too wise to criminate its future conduct by admitting the culpability which the disavowal implies.
— from Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2) or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850 by Thomas Hart Benton - The degree of culpability depends on the presence or absence of intention, to which the degree of punishment should correspond.
— from Laws by Plato - This study is of especial importance when the question is one of determining the culpability of the accused with regard to a certain crime.
— from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross - The great melancholy of the land, attending him hauntingly, oppressed him with a sense of culpability.
— from The Yoke A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt by Elizabeth Miller - When Mrs. Prigley saw the hole in her turn, she was overwhelmed with a sense of culpability, and felt herself to be little better than a murderess.
— from Wenderholme: A Story of Lancashire and Yorkshire by Philip Gilbert Hamerton
