Question

Is the principle of collective responsibility justified

Answer 1

Answer:

Explanation:

The notion of collective responsibility, like that of personal responsibility and shared responsibility, refers in most contexts to both the causal responsibility of moral agents for harm in the world and the blameworthiness that we ascribe to them for having caused such harm. Hence, it is, like its two more purely individualistic counterparts, almost always a notion of moral, rather than purely causal, responsibility. But, unlike its two more purely individualistic counterparts, it does not associate either causal responsibility or blameworthiness with discrete individuals or locate the source of moral responsibility in the free will of individual moral agents. Instead, it associates both causal responsibility and blameworthiness with groups and locates the source of moral responsibility in the collective actions taken by these groups understood as collectives.

Since this notion of collective responsibility makes groups, as distinct from their individual members, out to be moral agents, it has undergone a great deal of scrutiny in recent years by methodological and normative individualists alike. Methodological individualists challenge the very possibility of associating moral agency with groups, as distinct from their individual members, and normative individualists argue that collective responsibility violates principles of both individual responsibility and fairness. In response to these challenges, proponents of collective responsibility set out to show that collective responsibility, as well as group intentions, collective action, and group blameworthiness, are metaphysically possible and can be ascribed to agents fairly in at least some, if not all, cases.

While the vast majority of those now writing on collective responsibility in philosophical circles continue to debate the possibility of collective responsibility, a smaller group of scholars has in recent years placed two further—and very important—concerns at the center of our attention. The first has to do with whether groups have to meet the same stringent conditions of moral responsibility that individuals do. (Intentionality becomes a primary site of controversy here.) The second has to do with the advantages and disadvantages of holding particular kinds of groups, e.g., nation states, races, and ethnic groups, morally responsible in practice.

The backward looking notion of collective responsibility cited above is what most philosophers have in mind when they talk about collective responsibility. But during the past several years there has been a growing interest in what has come to be known as forward looking collective responsibility. Forward looking collective responsibility, unlike its backward looking counterpart, does not focus on whether a particular collective agent caused harm in the sense relevant to moral blameworthiness. Instead, it focuses on what, if anything, the agent can be expected to do with respect to remedying the harm. Hence, it is sometimes referred to as remedial responsibility.