Conclusion

We may think that bystanders have a collective duty to rescue the victim of an accident, that the EU ought to work together to protect the basic rights of fleeing refugees, and that UN member states have a collective duty to meet the SDGs.

Notes

1 Though I single out the EU in this example (mainly because, as I write this, the member states of the EU are in negotiations on how to collectively deal with a new influx of predominantly Syrian migrants/ refugees escaping violence and persecution), one can make the case that even though the states who are confronted with migrants at their borders may have a special obligation with respect to these migrants, the crisis impacts the wider international community and moreover obligates them to participate in a collective solution.

2 A word about the terminology I will be employing: I will be referring to a plurality of individuals or a plurality of agents as “groups” or “collectives” or “collectivities.” Not all groups or collectives are agents in their own right; when they are, I will refer to them as group agents or collective agents.

3 Cripps goes even further to argue for a non-intentionalist model of collectivity. On her account, a set of individuals constitutes a collectivity if and only if they are mutually dependent on each other for the satisfaction of their fundamental interests. She then is able to appeal to our collective self-interest in cli­mate change mitigation to ground a collective duty of “the Young” to organize themselves to mitigate climate change (Cripps 2013, especially ch. 2).

4 Cripps adopts a similar strategy but puts it in terms of a “potential collectivity” and, in some contexts, a “should-be collectivity,” where the latter describes “a set of individuals who would constitute a collect­ivity were they to espouse some goal and who ought (morally) to do it” (2013: 59).

5 Though several onsite managers were charged for acting negligently in their supervision of safety tests, and some others were charged with obstructing justice for covering up information relevant to the investigation, the corporations executives were not charged.

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Further Reading

French, P, and Wettstein, H. (2014) “Forward-Looking Collective Responsibility,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXXVIII.

Isaacs, T., Hess, K., and Igneski, V. (2018) Collectivity: Ontology, Ethics and Social Justice. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

May, L., and Hoffman, S. (eds) (1991) Collective Responsibility. Five Decades of Debate in Theoretical and Applied Ethics, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.