Collective responsibility, universalizability, and social practices

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 38, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 486-503

  Sadler, Brook J ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77952304124     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9833.2007.00393.x     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (29)

1. These six types of concern are obviously interrelated and often overlap in the literature. For related views see David Silver, "Collective Responsibility and the Ownership of Actions," Public Affairs Quarterly 16, no. 3 (2002): 287-304;
2. Ton Van Den Beld, "Can Collective Responsibility for Perpetrated Evil Persist Over Generations?" Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 5 (2002): 181-200;
3. Linda Radzik, "Collective Responsibility and Duties to Respond," Social Theory and Practice 27, no. 3 (2001): 455-71;
4. Seumas Miller, "Collective Responsibility," Public Affairs Quarterly 15, no. 1 (2001): 65-82;
5. Jan Narveson, "Collective Responsibility," The Journal of Ethics 6 (2002): 179-98;
6. Patricia Marino, "Moral Dilemmas, Collective Responsibility, and Moral Progress," Philosophical Studies 104 (2001): 203-25;
7. Juha Raikka, "On Disassociating Oneself From Collective Responsibility," Social Theory and Practice 23, no. 1 (1997): 93-108;
8. Gregory Mellema, "Moral Luck and Collectives," Journal of Social Philosophy 28, no. 3 (1997): 144-52;
9. P. S. Greenspan, "Subjective Guilt and Responsibility," Mind 101, no. 402 (1992): 287-303;
10. Larry May, "Collective Inaction and Shared Responsibility," Nous 24, no. 2 (1990): 269-77;
11. Torbjorn Tannsjo, "The Morality of Collective Actions," The Philosophical Quarterly 39, no. 155 (1989): 221-28;
12. Steven Sverdlik, "Collective Responsibility," Philosophical Studies 51 (1987): 61-76;
13. A. Flores and D. Johnson, "Collective Responsibility and Professional Roles," Ethics 93, no. 3 (1983): 537-45;
14. Stanley Bates, "The Responsibility of Random Collections," Ethics 81, no. 4 (1971): 343-49;
15. Virginia Held, "Can a Random Collection of Individuals Be Morally Responsible?" Journal of Philosophy 67, no. 14 (1970): 471-81;
16. Joel Feinberg, "Collective Responsibility," The Journal of Philosophy 65, no. 21 (1968): 674-88;
17. and H. Gomperz, "Individual, Collective, and Social Responsibility," Ethics 49, no. 3 (1939): 329-42.
18. For discussion in a political context, see Annette Baier, "How Can Individualists Share Responsibility?" Political Theory 21, no. 2 (1993): 228-48.
19. Kant offers several formulations of the categorical imperative. The universal law formulation, which pertains to the demand for universalizability, reads: "Act only on that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" (Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Thomas E. Hill, Jr. and Arnulf Zweig [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1785/2002], 222). A variation of the universal law formulation reads: "Act as though the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature" (ibid.). I will treat these as two expressions of the same demand that maxims for action be universalizable.
20. For support for the idea that the categorical imperative tests the agent's maxims, not her actions, see Barbara Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), esp. chap. 4;
21. Onora O'Neill, "Consistency in Action," in Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: Critical Essays, ed. Paul Guyer (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), esp. 121;
22. and Thomas E. Hill, Jr. and Arnulf Zweig, "Editors' Introduction: Some Main Themes of the Groundwork" in Kant: Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: Critical Essays, ed. Paul Guyer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), esp. 66-67.
23. O'Neill, "Consistency," 106-7.
24. Hill and Zweig, "Editors' Introduction," 67.
25. Arguably, (5) and (6) express roughly the same ideas as (1) and (2), respectively. Interpretations (1), (4), and (5) address what Kant calls "inner impossibility," while interpretations (2) and (6) address a somewhat weaker sense of contradiction, which is not a strict logical contradiction or natural impossibility, but a volitional inconsistency. For Kant's summary of these types of contradiction, see Kant, Groundwork, 225.
26. Notice that if one looks to the empirical interpretation of universalizability all sorts of actions or activities turn out to be non-universalizable, though they are not immoral or even morally suspect. For instance, not everyone can become a pastry chef, and not everyone can rely upon social welfare programs, but there is no moral error in either. The fact that not everyone can pursue these things is a prudential concern. For elaboration on this point, see Roger J. Sullivan, Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), chaps. 11 and 12.
27. John Rawls, "Two Concepts of Rules," Philosophical Review 64, no. 1 (1955): 3-32. Rawls' concern in this essay is foremost to distinguish the two different ways of thinking about rules and secondly to offer a defense of utilitarianism that depends upon this distinction. (The defense is provisional, for Rawls does not ultimately seek to defend utilitarianism.) Importing Rawls' distinction in the context of consideration of a Kantian position is, admittedly, to apply it to a significantly different theoretical context; nonetheless, the point is expedient to discussion.
28. Rawls, "Two Concepts," 3, n. 1. He also discusses promising and punishment.
29. Rawls, "Two Concepts," 24, emphasis added.