Culpable and Guilty

Question

I overheard 'culpable' in my daily conversations and realised people are using it instead of 'guilty'. However this was something I've never heard before. I checked some sources and British newspaper uses it like that:

We treat these last as though they are as much a fact of nature as
the damage wrought by a warming climate. Increasingly, though, serious
jurists and campaigners are beginning to ask whether those who stand
in the way of reform, of repairing our climate, should be considered
culpable for their actions – and criminally culpable at that.
--Independent

How correct is that? Does it resemble more with 'responsible' than 'guilty' ?
Source: lengusa | culpable

fev · Accepted Answer

Culpable means

meriting condemnation or blame especially as wrong or harmful :

e.g.
culpable negligence;
The defendant is culpable for her actions.

archaic : GUILTY, CRIMINAL (M-W)

So, to use it as a synonym of "guilty" is archaic, and this is the first meaning with which it was first ever used in English, apparently in the 14th century. It is interesting to know its etymology:

Middle English coupable [which is the current French word for "guilty"], from Anglo-French cupable, culpable, from
Latin culpabilis, from culpare - to blame, from culpa - guilt

So there is clearly a connection between culpable and guilty. If you say that something is "culpable", it means that it is liable to blame (as it is suggested by the adjective suffix -able), considered blameworthy by others in accordance with a commonly accepted ethical standard.
Guilt is stronger in that the idea of wrong is more inherent to it ("guilty" does not emphasise the fact that it is "blamable" by others, whereas "culpable" does).
Also, we mostly say to feel guilty, not to feel culpable (as culpable is used from the point of view of those who blame, not from the point of view of the blamed). In fact, "I feel guilty" can have a positive connotation:

I feel so guilty, leaving all this to you. (Collins)

Here "guilty" sounds more like "remorseful", the speaker wishes to assure the other that he/she is not indifferent to the other's difficulty in bearing the burden of "all this". "Culpable" cannot mean "remorseful".

Culpable and Guilty

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