Who's to blame? Collective moral responsibility and its implications for group members

Midwest Studies in Philosophy

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 94-114

  Gilbert, Margaret ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61049460676     PISSN: 03636550     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4975.2006.00130.x     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. Cf. Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt, trans. H. B. Ashton (New York: Capricorn, 1947), 17: "we differ extraordinarily in what we have experienced, felt, wished, cherished, and done."
2. Michael Bacharach,"Foreword:Teamwork," in Teamwork:Multi- Disciplinary Perspectives, ed. Natalie Gold (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2005), xxi.
3. Bacharach was giving a list of "teams" in what I take to be a broad sense such that it is equivalent to "collective" in the sense I have in mind here. See my "A Theoretical Framework for the Understanding of Teams," sec. 1.1, in the same volume, pp. 22-23.
4. In Margaret Gilbert, On Social Facts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), chap. 4, I offered an account of social groups for which the same list of examples would have served.
5. I have in mind Jaspers, Question, and H. D. Lewis, "Collective Responsibility," Philosophy 24 (1948): 3-18.
6. Lewis's article is reprinted in: Collective Responsibility: Five Decades of Debate in Theoretical and Applied Ethics, eds. Larry May and Stacey Hoffman (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield), which includes contributions from Peter French, Virginia Held, May, and others.
7. Joel Feinberg (1991),"Collective Responsibility." in Collective Responsibility,60 (emphasis mine);
8. originally published in Joel Feinberg, Doing and Deserving (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970).
9. Cf. David H. Jones, Moral Responsibility in the Holocaust: A Study in the Ethics of Character (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), chap. 1.
10. See, in particular, Margaret Gilbert, "The Structure of the Social Atom: Joint Commitment as the Foundation of Human Social Behavior," in Socializing Metaphysics, ed. Frederick Schmitt (1 ,anham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 2003), 39-64;
11. also Margaret Gilbert, A Theory of Political Obligation: Membership, Commitment, and the Bonds of Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2006), chap. 7.
12. I mean to assume no particular theory of reason, having reason, and so on here. For further discussion and references, see Gilbert, Political Obligation, chap. 2.
13. See Gilbert, "Social Atom" for more on how this idea of "readiness" is (and is not) to be construed.
14. For a more complex proposal, and some references to the literature, see Gilbert, Social Facts.
15. On everyday agreements as joint commitment phenomena see, e.g., Margaret Gilbert, "Is an Agreement an Exchange of Promises?" Journal of Philosophy 90 (1993): 627-49,
16. reprinted in Margaret Gilbert (1996), Living Together: Rationality, Sociality, and Obligation, chap. 13.
17. this in part responds to Ulrich Balzer, "Joint Action in Large Groups," in Social Facts and Collective Inlentionality, ed. G. Meggle (Frankfurt: Dr. Hänsel-Hohenhausen AG. 2002), 1-18.
18. See also Social Facts, 212-13.
19. This is true for joint commitments in general and agreements understood to be joint commitment phenomena-in particular. The point is important from the point of view of the evaluation of actual contract theories of political obligation. After a while at least, an "original" society-founding contract will lie in the past. It is sometimes assumed that, for this reason, such contracts cannot obligate people in the present. This supposes-falsely, I would argue-that people cannot "add their names" to preexisting agreements. Gilbert, Political Obligation, includes an extended treatment and partial defense of actual contract theory (chaps. 4, 5, and 10).
20. also Living Together, Sociality.
21. To cite but two classic texts, Thomas Hobbes (1982/1651) writes of the creation of a commonwealth as a matter of people "reducing all their Wills . . . unto one Will" making "a real Unitie of them all" in Leviathan, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, part 2, chap. 17, p. 227.
22. Sociologist Emile Durkheim emphasized that a social group was something "new" in relation to its individual members in Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, trans. W. D. Halls (New York: Free Press, 1982/1895).
23. See, e.g., Gilbert, Social Facts, chap. 4, Living Together, chap. 4, Sociality, chap. 2.
24. In Sociality, chap. 9, e.g..
25. I argue against the capacity of a number of other proposals-including well-known accounts from Michael Bratman and John Searle-to account for the observations in question. Relevant also is my argument against a "moral principle" account of owing in Margaret Gilbert (2004),"Scanlon on Promissory Obligation:The Problem of Promisees' Rights," Journal of Philosophy, to be amplified in a work in progress, Rights Reconsidered, to be published by Oxford University Press.
26. In "Shared Values. Social Unity, and Liberty" (2005), Public Affairs Quarterly 19, I argue, relatedly, that a special standing is needed to rebuke someone for the violation of a moral requirement as such.
27. and Margaret Gilbert (2002), "Belief and acceptance as features of groups," Protosociology (http://www.protosociology.de).
28. There is now a burgeoning literature on the subject with contributions from (in alphabetical order) Alban Bouvier, Austen Clark, Christopher MacMahon, Anthonie Meijers, Frederick Schmitt, Deborah Tollefsen, Raimo Tuomela, K. Brad Wray and others. Gilbert, "Belief and acceptance" responds to proposals of Wray, Meijers, and Tuomela.
29. For accounts of collective emotions, the first I know of within contemporary analytic philosophy, see Gilbert. Sociality.chap.7 (on collective remorse)
30. and Margaret Gilbert,"Collective Guilt and Collective Guilt Feelings," Journal of Ethics 6 (2002): 115-43. Considering two main alternatives, I argue that everyday ascriptions of such emotions as remorse and guilt (feelings) to collectives can best be understood in plural subject terms. In Gilbert, "Shared Values," I contemplate an account of valuing in terms of believing that something has value. However, a plural subject account could allow for a less cognitive or cognitive-sounding account of valuing.
31. Burleigh Wilkins contemplates such possibilities in "Joint Commitments," Journal of Ethics 6 (2002): 149, a thoughtful comment on Margaret Gilbert (2002), "Collective Guilt and Collective Guilt Feelings," in the same volume.
32. See, e.g., Jaspers, Question, 63-70.
33. For more on the relation of protests to joint commitments see Gilbert, "Group Wrongs," 77-78 (a personal protest need not violate a joint commitment to, e.g., intend as a body to go to war).
34. I have discussed the phenomenon of feeling guilty for what one's group has done in a number of places, in particular, e.g., Margaret Gilbert, "Group Wrongs and Guilt Feelings," Journal of Ethics 1 (1997): 65-84. and Living, chap. 16.
35. See also Margaret Gilbert (1998). "Agreements, Coercion, and Obligation." Ethics, reprinted in Living Together, chap. 12.