Shared Responsibility for Wrongs and Harms
How might witnesses to the wrongful or harmful actions of other people share in the responsibility for those actions?1 In our simple case of the mugging, the bystander bears responsibility for neither the wrong done (the assault on the victim, the theft) nor the harm caused (the victim’s pain, fear and loss).
As we will discuss in the next section, the bystander, in virtue of witnessing the assault, might have a responsibility to provide aid to the victim. But he does not appear to bear responsibility for the wrong or the harm themselves. The mugger is responsible, not him. In other cases, though, attempts to place responsibility for wrongs and harms solely on the party who proximately causes the ill in question will be illegitimate.For example, in the aftermath of political atrocities, ordinary citizens often plead that the crimes were the responsibility of officials, and that they were merely bystanders. “I tortured no one, killed no one, ‘disappeared’ no one. The leaders, the police, and the soldiers did that.” Yet surely citizens share in the responsibility for such atrocities if they actively encouraged others to act wrongly or helped put people in positions of power while knowing they were likely to perform such wrongs (Gilbert 2006; Mellema 2006). Parties who provided such forms of encouragement or empowerment to perpetrators in ignorance of their likelihood to act wrongfully may also share responsibility if their ignorance was itself culpable (May 1992). In cases like these, claims to be a bystander or third party are implausible; the party in question makes a causal contribution to the wrong.
A witness to another person’s act of violence might also share responsibility for the wrong in virtue of omitting to act (May 1992; Mellema 2006). Suppose this witness could have prevented the wrong without facing any unreasonable forms of risk to herself, such as by warning the victim or calling for help.
Here, the witness does not help cause the wrong, but she omits to prevent it. By judging her to share responsibility for either the occurrence of violence or its consequences, we are still judging her for something that is in her control.Witnesses to other people’s wrongdoing or harm-causing might also come to share in responsibility by making things worse or blocking efforts at improvement. For example, studies of bullying suggest that bullying typically takes place in front of an audience (Flaspohler et al. 2009). The presence of the audience both provides an incentive to the bully and exacerbates the humiliation and other ill effects for the victim. Audience members need not express approval of the bullying to have a negative influence; passivity is sufficient (Coloroso 2009; van Heugten 2011). Similarly, being a member of the group in whose name wrongs are done, without registering opposition, may render the bystander complicit in the wrong (Hill 1979; Harvey 1996; Crawford 2014). Passivity adds to the credibility of wrongdoers who claim to represent the group, as well as the sense of isolation or hopelessness suffered by the victims. In these ways as well, the witness’s responsibility rests either in her making a causal contribution to the wrong or harm, or else in omitting to act.
An even subtler dynamic is at work in the case of opportunists who knowingly accept the benefits of wrongdoing perpetrated by others. For example, when the Nuremburg Laws pushed Jews out of various professions, those positions were snapped up by others, typically without any overt protest. Each of these opportunists might have claimed the status of a mere bystander by pointing out that the victim had already been ousted before she took the position. However, such opportunists helped perpetuate and normalize the system of oppression of which the particular wrongs from which they benefited were but a part.
Less intentional forms of benefitting from wrongdoing may also be grounds for sharing responsibility (Isaacs 2014).
One of the pernicious features of institutionalized oppression, as a type of wrongdoing, is how difficult it can be for members of favored groups to avoid benefiting from injustice (Young 2011; Stahl 2017). Even those members of favored groups who are vocal opponents of the oppressive institutions in which they live may be unable to shed those advantages (Esquith 2013). For example, male allies who speak against the discrimination against women in the workplace are frequently treated as more credible than the women they defend. White allies against anti-black racism still enjoy advantages in education and employment. As such comparative advantages and disadvantages accrue, even those who try to be part of the solution remain part of the problem. In these cases, one might argue that, even if the unwilling beneficiaries are not culpable for the existence of the injustice, they share in the responsibility to rectify those injustices. An analogy here might be the moral responsibility of someone who unwillingly received stolen property to return it to the rightful owners.Another very common way in which witnesses to the actions of others make things worse or block improvement is by providing markets for goods and services that are produced through wrongful or harmful practices (Zoller 2015). The business owners who actively engage in abusing workers or destroying the environment only do so because there are customers for their products. Perhaps these cases strain my definition of a witness to wrongdoing, since the consumer who helps provide a market may be quite distant, temporally and geographically, from the wrongs in question. Yet many of us have read or heard enough to be aware that such practices take place and that we are likely buying goods and services that are tainted by wrongdoing. It is extraordinarily difficult for consumers in contemporary Western markets to completely avoid complicity in such practices. Though information is often available on particular goods if one looks for it, taken all together, the time it would take to research all of one’s consumer choices and locate better alternatives is significant.
The effort and resources it would take to avoid these forms of complicity might well be better invested in traditional charitable work (Lichtenberg 2010).In this section, I’ve identified various ways in which one who may claim to be a bystander instead shares in the responsibility for (what are still reasonably described as) others’ misdeeds. Attributions of shared responsibility are often met with resistance, especially in cases of political atrocity and oppression like those I have used in my examples. In those cases, I have suggested that very large groups of people share responsibility for terrible wrongs. Widely distributed responsibility seems to entail widely deserved guilt, blame, and punishment; and to endorse guilt, blame, and punishment is to endorse suffering, humiliation, and loss. So, one might object, the arguments for shared responsibility I’ve defended here threaten to treat individuals in harsh ways that exceed what they deserve.
Yet this line of reasoning rests on at least two faulty assumptions. First, it assumes that attributions of shared responsibility for wrongdoing and harm-causing cannot differentiate among group members based on the significance of their individual contributions. Yet, our discussion already highlights such differentiations. Second, it assumes that to hold someone responsible for wrongs and harms is to punish, overtly blame and/or encourage feelings of guilt. The parties who make the largest and most direct contributions to wrongdoing might well deserve to be held responsible in these ways. But other modes of accountability will be more appropriate for those who play smaller, less direct, or less voluntary roles. Among those who share in negative responsibility, a sense of obligation may be more fitting than guilt, shame or remorse (May 1992; Thompson 2006; Young 2011). Rather than deserving censure and punishment, more marginal figures may only deserve to share the burdens of paying compensation, returning ill-gotten goods, repairing relationships with members of victimized groups, taking steps to prevent future wrongdoing, or preserving the memory of the past.
These other modes of accountability need not carry the stigma we associate with guilt, blaming, and punishment; they are not as psychically threatening to those held responsible (Darby and Branscombe 2014). Indeed, some of these modes of accountability, such as repairing relationships, working to prevent future harms, and preserving memory, offer members of wrongdoing groups opportunities for building virtue and creating positive good in the world (Thompson 2006; Radzik 2014a).One strand of the literature on the moral responsibilities of bystanders emphasizes the things individuals can do to recognize how they contribute to systematic oppression and other group- based ills (Hill 2010; Esquith 2010; Young 2011). Once individuals become more aware of themselves as actors in these dynamics, they can find ways to disrupt them, even if only through protest (Hill 1979; Harvey 1996). The overall message is that individuals can avoid or lessen their susceptibility to sharing in negative responsibility for the actions of others by becoming more active.
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