Responsibility for Collective Inaction:The Seinfeld Paradigm

Why would we want to help somebody? That’s what nuns and Red Cross workers are for!

George Costanza (“The Finale” 1998)

Twenty years after it aired to an audience of 76 million, the final episode of Seinfeld still looms large in the popular imagination.

Here is how the thought experiment unfolds: the scene of the crime is Latham, Massachusetts (Jerry, the New Yorker, calls it “Sticksville”). Jerry and friends are hanging out on a street corner—joking around about nothing, as usual. Across the street, and in full view and hearing of the four, a carjacker pulls an overweight man named Howie out of his car, robs him at gun­point, and flees the scene in his vehicle. Kramer stands by, filming the entire incident on his camcorder. Meanwhile, Jerry, Elaine, and George crack sarcastic, fat-shaming jokes at Howie’s expense. Howie, who could see that the four did nothing whatsoever to come to his aid, relays his plight to Matt Vogel, the reporting police officer.

In fact, several European countries and ten U.S. states had similar laws on the books by the time the curtains closed on Seinfeld in 1998. These laws tend to include criteria similar to those proposed by Held, who holds that a random collection can only be held responsible for their inaction “when the action called for in a given situation is obvious to the reasonable person and when the expected outcome of the action is clearly favorable” (Held 1970: 476). According to what in the U.S. are called “duty to rescue” or “Good Samaritan” laws, the penalties for failing to come to another’s aid are typically minor. In “The Finale,” though, they are much stiffer: the local law calls for a maximum fine of $85,000 and as much as five years in prison. As the epi­sode unfolds, the defendants in the controversial “Good Samaritan Trial” (the aptly named “New York Four”) are ultimately found guilty of criminal indifference and sentenced to a year in prison. The upshot of the thought experiment is clear: pace Jackie Chiles, defense lawyer extraordinaire, there surely is such a thing as a “guilty bystander,” and such bystanders can and will be made to pay for their crimes of omission (“The Finale” 1998).

I’m struck by how frequently “The Finale” comes up in discussions of responsibility for collective inaction. Incidentally, most philosophers working on the topic make use of a handful of thought experiments that conform to what I have come to call “the Seinfeld paradigm.” In these relatively simple “coordinated bystander cases” (Isaacs 2011: 143), a particular harm (say, a carjacking) cannot be prevented through the isolated, uncoordinated actions of indi­viduals, but only through a collective action undertaken by an as of yet unformed organized group (say, by Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer joining forces to scare off a gunman).

Following Held’s lead, each of the above-mentioned philosophers makes use of similarly- structured thought experiments in the course of arguing that a random collection can some­times be blamed for failing to act collectively. However, Isaacs (2011) has recently broadened the focus of conversation by asking: what do these accounts suggest are our present responsibilities with respect to some of the most urgent and complex problems of our time, such as climate change, ecological degradation, and global poverty? Although there has been some disagree­ment about when it makes sense to say that a random collection could have done otherwise, and over how responsibility ought to be distributed when such a group has failed to act, there has also been considerable agreement both methodologically and substantively.

In this chapter I consider the costs ofthis striking convergence in methodology. I wonder: What questions about collective responsibility cannot be asked when the focus of inquiry is narrowed to cases fitting the Seinfeld mold? I argue that the use of fictional thought experiments in philo­sophical analyses of collective responsibility unhelpfully constrains our thinking, precisely in those places where it needs to be at its most generative. While there are many possible avenues of criticism here,³ I focus on how the received way of thinking about responsibility for col­lective inaction ignores and renders irrelevant the epistemic agency and creativity of ordinary people,4 while excluding from consideration a range of problems that clearly call for coordinated responses, yet have no obvious, readymade solutions. What is needed, I propose, is not a different, more nuanced set of thought experiments, but an altogether different approach to thinking about responsibility for collective inaction. In the course of exploring a concrete case of collective brilliance in action, I suggest that the production of new questions, ideas, and knowledge in and through collective struggle ought to be at the very center of future inquiry.⁵

The remainder of this chapter proceeds in two parts. First, I offer a critique of the received way of thinking about responsibility for collective inaction. Second, I propose an alternative approach that takes as its point of departure the epistemic agency exhibited by people navi­gating impossible situations together. One such situation is becoming increasingly common in the context of climate change, particularly in coastal regions: so-called “natural” disasters, such as hurricanes and superstorms, wreaking havoc on communities—flooding homes, collapsing infrastructures, and straining the capacities of existing organizations to safeguard lives and livelihoods. What happens when philosophical reflection begins here—in places where the institutions and practices that have emerged over the last century seem incapable of addressing the problems communities face now,⁶ and where people find themselves turning to one another for the sake of their own survival?

14.2