Group wrongs and guilt feelings

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 1, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 65-84

  Gilbert, Margaret ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT   (United States)

Author keywords

Collective action; Collective responsibility; Group action; Group intention; Group membership; Groups

Indexed keywords

EID: 61049541143     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1009712003678     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. In what follows, when I speak of a group acting badly I should be taken to mean "in a blameworthy manner," culpably. The same goes for my references to a group's "wrongdoing."
2. See, for instance, L. May, Sharing Responsibility (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 298-402
3. R.J. Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 244.
4. One feels guilt over something. That is what I mean by "the proper basis for guilt."
5. See R. J. Wallace, op. cit., p. 66, note 22, "Guilt is appropriate to one's own violations [of moral obligation]" (my emphasis)
6. G. Taylor, Pride, Shame, and Guilt: Emotions of Self-Assessment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 91, "feelings of guilt ⋯ cannot arise from the deeds or omissions of others."
7. Cf. Taylor, loc. cit.: "Guilt itself cannot be vicarious";
8. J. Feinberg (on the state of bearing guilt) "⋯ there can be no such thing as vicarious guilt," "Collective Responsibility," reprinted in L. May and S. Hoffman (eds.), Collective Responsibility (Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1991), p. 60, emphasis Feinberg's.
9. See P. Greenspan, Practical Guilt: Moral Dilemmas, Emotions, and Social Norms (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 171 and elsewhere.
10. In my book On Social Facts I argue that the term "social group" is standardly under- stood in this way. T shall not repeat the argument here. I take it that the term "group" is often used as short for "social group" interpreted in the way in question.
11. See M. Gilbert, On Social Facts (London: Routledge, 1989).
12. second printing, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), especially Chap. 4.
13. The material on plural subjects that follows here draws on On Social Facts and a number of related articles. Many of these can be found in a forthcoming essay collection, M. Gilbert, Living Together:Rationality, Sociality, and Obligation (Lanham,MD: Rowman and Littlefleld, 1996). Some more specific references are given in later notes.
14. I have discussed plural subjects of belief in a number of places including On Social Facts, Chap. 5, "Modelling Collective Belief," 1987, Synthese, and, most recently, "Remarks on Collective Belief," in F. Schmitt (ed.), Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefleld, 1993). The articles are to be reprinted, with some amendments, in Living Together, In On Social Facts, Chap. 6,1 argue that social conventions are jointly accepted principles with the form of a simple fiat, in other words, those with a convention are jointly committed to accept as a body some simple fiat (373ff.).
15. For more on the first person plural pronoun see below in the text.
16. I take it that there must be at least two parties to a joint commitment, and there can be more than two. In every case, insofar as one is committed through a joint commitment, one's "individual commitment" cannot exist on its own (this is the "interdependence" property). If there are just two potential parties to a given joint commitment, neither can be committed through the joint commitment unless the other is. Hence the "individual commitments" must both arise, and cease, simultaneously. The situation with respect to other cases requires more discussion, and I shall not attempt any pronouncements on this score here.
17. I argue in a number of places, relatedly, that joint commitments involve obligations in an important and distinctive sense of "obligation."
18. See, for instance, "Agreements, Coercion, and Obligation," Ethics, 1993, reprinted in Living Together.
19. D.K. Lewis, Convention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969). Precisely how to define "common knowledge" is somewhat moot. According to one now standard definition, it is common knowledge that p in some population P, if and only if everyone in P knows that p, everyone in P knows that everyone in P knows that p, and soon (ad infinitum). I discuss a somewhat different proposal in On Social Facts, Chap. 4, pp. 188-195.
20. There is some discussion of the case of large group plural subjecthood in On Social Facts, pp. 212-213, and elsewhere. The subject merits more discussion than I gave there or can give here.
21. See Chap. 4, Sec. 3
22. also Chap. 7, Sec. 2.
23. On such uses see On Social Facts, p. 178.
24. The last two paragraphs were prompted by comments from A. Kuflik on the version of my paper "Reconsidering the 'Actual Contract' Theory of Potitical Obligation" presented at the New Jersey Regional Philosophical Association Conference, April 22, 1995.
25. Cf. V. Medina, Social Contract Theories (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefleld, 1990), p. 139: "Even to acquiesce and not openly challenge the authority of the state is not sufficient to generate political obligations, since our acquiescence can be a matter of habit, intimidation, or simply apathy."
26. On the question whether pressure, and, indeed, coercoion, precludes joint commitment see "Agreements, Coercion, and Obligation."
27. Clearly, I am not attempting a complete discussion of what it is for an individual human being to perform an action. I aim only to show that if we take an individual to be performing an action (more or less) when that individual's behavior is guided by an intention, then groups can fulfill analogous conditions: the behavior of the group's members can be guided by the group's intention, as opposed to the personal intentions of the individual members.
28. The account I would give of "our" intention (sometimes referred to as shared or joint intention) is not, therefore, a "summative" account: our intention to do such-and-such is neither wholly or in part constituted by an aggregate or "sum" of closely corresponding personal intentions, one for each of the people concerned. I argue for my non-summative account in "Shared Intention" (1993ms), invited contribution to a symposium on "Shared or Joint Intention," American Philosophical Association Meetings, Pacific Division, San Francisco, March 25,1993.
29. Cf. M. Bratman, "Shared Intention," Ethics 104(1993), pp. 97- 113. I take Bratman and myself to have the same analysandum in mind, a certain standard sense of "our intention." According to Bratman, it is a logically necessary condition of our intending to paint the house together that each of us personally intends that we paint the house together. Thus for Bratman "our intention to do such-and-such" is in part a "sum" of closely corresponding personal intentions. For discussion and criticism of a number of summative views of shared, joint or (what I call) collective belief see On Social Facts, Chap. 5, and elsewhere.
30. Precisely what a given person could "reasonably have been expected to do" in a given case may not be clear. This may be the occasion of serious moral debate. In what follows I shall simply take it that there are some relatively clear cases of doing what one reasonably could have, been expected to do in the. circumstances.
31. Perhaps this does not count as "doing everything I could to prevent the action," since it is not clear that unexpressed condemnation goes any way to prevent the action. On the other hand, in these special circumstances this is as far as I can go towards preventing the action. Condemnation is the first step to deliberate preventive action.
32. This point added in response to a conversation with D. Luban, October 1995. Precisely when and why some ignorance is culpable is a matter of some delicacy into which I make no attempt to enter here. Evidently people sometimes experience guilt because they ignored signs that something bad was going on.
33. The simple ignorance of one's country's wrongful act may seem to be sufficient rebuttal, already, of the appropriateness of feeling guilt in its regard. The case in the text will, if anything, be even more persuasive.
34. Cf. J. G. Gray, "The Stains of War," in R.W. Smith (ed.), Guilt: Man and Society (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1971), pp. 291-293
35. J. Horton, Political Obligation (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1992), p. 153
36. P. Greenspan, op. cit., p. 162. Greenspan gives the example of "white American guilt about slavery or guilt felt for various other misdeeds that occurred before the birth of those who felt guilty." T shall not here consider the case of guilt over "misdeeds" of one's group which occurred before one was a member. The story here may be at least somewhat different - though perhaps not wholly different - from that of those who were group members at the time the misdeed occurred.
37. As I read K. Jaspers in his fine, probing essay The Question of German Guilt, he feels that this is so. He writes that"⋯ in a way which is rationally not conceivable, which is even rationally refutable, I feel co-responsible for what Germans do and have done - As a philosopher I now seem to have strayed completely into the realm of feeling and to have abandoned conception", tr. E.B. Ashton (New York: Capricorn Books, 1947), pp. 80-81. My argument in Sections 4 and following suggest that he may, after all, not have "abandoned conception" or strayed from what is rationally conceivable. I hope to treat Jaspers's work more directly and in greater length in another place.
38. Taylor, op. cit., pp. 91 and 93.
39. As proposed by Greenspan, op. cit., p. 171 and elsewhere.
40. "Thin" in part because it does not go so far as to say that a feeling of guilt over a blameworthy act presumes that the act is one's own.
41. L. May, Sharing Responsibility. Page references that follow will be to the excerpt from this book in L. May and S. Hoffman (eds.), Collective Responsibility: Five Decades of Debate in Theoretical and Applied Ethics (Savage, MD: Rowman and Little field, 1991). I shall not discuss the relationship of May's notion of metaphysical guilt to that found in Jaspers's essay. As I understand Jaspers, metaphysical guilt in his sense has to do with human solidarity as opposed to membership in particular human groups such as families, and would not appropriately be invoked to explain the kind of case at issue here. Jaspers's notion of "political guilt" may be closer to out topic. On the other hand, it appears not to involve a group's wrongdoing so much as its vanquished status. I shall not pursue Jasper's discussion further here.
42. May and Hoffman, p. 240.
43. May and Hoffman, Ibid.
44. Cf. op. cit., p. 241.
45. Op. cit., p. 247.
46. Op. cit., p. 247, second full paragraph.
47. See, for instance, Horton, op. cit., pp. 15Iff.
48. Taylor, loc. cit.
49. J. Feinberg cites "solidarity" as a "necessary condition of the vicarious emotions" (he refers to pride and shame), "Collective Responsibility," p. 65. Feinberg gives a complex account of what he calls "solidarity" (p. 62). Some elements of this (for instance "sharing a common cooperative purpose") have some affinity with the background conditions T describe in the text below. See also his brief allusion to "the plural possessive 'our'," p. 63. It is not clear that Feinberg would allow that guilt, as opposed to shame, is a possible "vicarious emotion." I shall not attempt here any close comparison of my views with Feinberg's.
50. "We may bear moral guilt...."I take it that according to the intuitive picture we do
51. Should it be rejected otherwise? I shall neither explore nor pronounce upon that issue here.
52. It is possible, of course, that in some groups a rule of the group may forbid the expression of personal disapproval of the. group's actions According to the present argument, such a rule would be needed to supplement the understandings implicit in the joint commitment underlying the intention of a plural subject: it is not implicitly present, I discuss group conventions and rules in On Social Facts, Chap. 6, and an essay "On Social Rules: Some Problems for Hart's Account and a New Proposal" (ms).
53. I shall not attempt to explore here the conditions under which it is appropriate to ascribe guilt or blameworthiness to a group in relation to a given action of the group. The intuitive picture assumes that there are such conditions, and for present purposes I shall not question this.
54. Similarly, "altruism" (roughly, concern for "others") finds its natural contrast in "egoism" (roughly, concern for "self"). For thoughts on this contrast which parallel those in the following paragraphs, see M. Gilbert, "Me, You, and Us: Distinguishing 'Egoism,' 'Altruism,' and 'Groupism'," in Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17(4) (December 1994), pp. 621-22.
55. Here I consciously echo J.J. Rousseau's reference to people uniting so that "their forces are directed by means of a single moving power and made to act in concert." The passage in question has been translated rather variously. Here I quote from - and echo - the translation of D.A. Cress, On the Social Contract (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1983), p. 23.
56. Punishment-of-oneself-as-a-member may be an example of something which inevitably has a "double effect," one of which (self-affiiction) is not intended.
57. Possibly my thought of this example was influenced by J. Feinberg's reference to joint bank accounts, op. cit., p. 63.
58. I have in mind the possibility that one is committed qua resident in a particular part of the world, so that leaving that place would bring one's commitment to an end without one's fellows having to agree to a rescension of the joint commitment. On the topic of the "alienablity" of membership see also the text, above.
59. Pride often concerns the achievements of those "representing" the group, and guilt may also. I will not be exploring this aspect of the question of collective guilt or glory here.
60. I do not go so far as to say that a member should feel guilt in such a case. Probably this is not true in general If the wrong in question is very minor, for instance, a feeling of guilt may not he called for because the wrong is too trivial (I owe this example to J. Raz, in discussion at Columbia University). In other cases there may be a sense it which it is called for. This may not amount to its being the case that members should feel guilt then, that it is some sort of requirement that they do. I am not entirely sure what the requirement that someone feel guilt in some context would amount to. In any case, if the wrong is great a feeling of membership guilt is not ruled out on the grounds of having an improper object, and is appropriate in the sense that one's group has indeed acted veiy badly.