 Richard McKeon, in an essay that rarely finds its way into contemporary work on collective responsibility, provides us with important insights into the ways in which the replacement of collective responsibility with personal responsibility in the West was politically, as well as morally, crucial to the development of liberalism. According to McKeon, the replacement of collective responsibility with personal responsibility meant not only that individuals could exercise moral agency as individuals but that the state would no longer be as necessary as it once was, since individuals could now take responsibility for governing themselves (McKeon 1957).