Moral Responsibility in Collective Contexts is a philosophical investigation of the complex moral landscape we find in collective scenarios such as genocide, global warming, organizational negligence, and oppressive social practices. Tracy Isaacs argues that an accurate understanding of moral responsibility in collective contexts requires attention to responsibility at the individual and collective levels.
This anthology presents the best recent philosophical analyses of moral, political, and legal responsibility of groups and their members. Motivated by reflection on such events as the Holocaust, the exploding Ford Pintos, the My Lai massacre, and apartheid in South Africa, the essays consider two important questions: What collective efforts could have prevented these large-scale social harms? And is some group to blame and, if so, how is blame to be apportioned? Contributors:
Groups of people are commonly said to be collectively responsible for what has happened. Sometimes the groups claimed to be responsible are vast in size, as when collective responsibility is ascribed to the class of all Americans or the class of all white males. In this book the concept of collective responsibility is analyzed. It is examined not only in the light of what philosophical proponents (such as Cooper, Held, Bates, French, Swinburne, and May) have said about it, but a genuine attempt is made to make sense of what ordinary people say about responsibility when it is ascribed to groups of people. Accordingly, it is distinguished from related concepts such as shared responsibility and moral taint. Parallels are examined between the actions of an individual and the actions of a group or collective, parallels which seem to make ascriptions of collective responsibility more plausible. Some philosophers oppose collective responsibility and argue for an individualist type of position; in this regard the positions of Lewis and Sverdlik are critically examined. The final chapter contains the author's own position, a position which affirms that collective responsibility is possible but which also preserves some of the central intuitions of the individualist.
The terrorist threat remains a disturbing issue for the early 1990s. This book explores whether terrorism can ever be morally justifiable and if so under what circumstances. Professor Burleigh Taylor Wilkins suggests that the popular characterisation of terrorists as criminals fails to acknowledge the reasons why terrorists resort to violence. It is argued that terrorism cannot be adequately understood unless the collective responsibility of organised groups, such as political states, for wrongs allegedly done against the groups which the terrorists represent is taken into account. Terrorism and Collective Responsibility provides an analysis of various models of collective responsibility, and it takes into account recent discussions of military responsibility and business ethics. The book also explores the problems that terrorism poses for the just war tradition. The arguments of prominent philosophers against terrorism are critically examined and the claim that terrorism necessarily violates the rights of innocent persons is considered. Wilkins sets forth an original definition of terrorism that is sure to provoke controversy.
The title of our collection is owed to Hannah Arendt herself. Writing to Karl Jaspers on August 6, 1955, she spoke of how she had only just begun to really love the world and expressed her desire to testify to that love in the title of what came to be published as The Human Condition: "Out of gratitude, I want to call my book about political theories Arnor Mundi. "t In retrospect, it was fitting that amor mundi, love of the world, never became the title of only one of Arendt's studies, for it is the theme which permeates all of her thought. The purpose of this volume's a- ticles is to pay a critical tribute to this theme by exploring its meaning, the cultural and intellectual sources from which it derives, as well as its resources for conte- porary thought and action. We are privileged to include as part of the collection two previously unpu- lished lectures by Arendt as well as a rarely noticed essay which she wrote in 1964. Taken together, they engrave the central features of her vision of amor mundi. Arendt presented "Labor, Work, Action" on November 10, 1964, at a conference "Christianity and Economic Man:Moral Decisions in an Affluent Society," which 2 was held at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.
A revolutionary new theory and call to action on animal rights, ethics, and law from the renowned philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum. Animals are in trouble all over the world. Whether through the cruelties of the factory meat industry, poaching and game hunting, habitat destruction, or neglect of the companion animals that people purport to love, animals suffer injustice and horrors at our hands every day. The world needs an ethical awakening, a consciousness-raising movement of international proportions. In Justice for Animals, one of the world’s most influential philosophers and humanists Martha C. Nussbaum provides a revolutionary approach to animal rights, ethics, and law. From dolphins to crows, elephants to octopuses, Nussbaum examines the entire animal kingdom, showcasing the lives of animals with wonder, awe, and compassion to understand how we can create a world in which human beings are truly friends of animals, not exploiters or users. All animals should have a shot at flourishing in their own way. Humans have a collective duty to face and solve animal harm. An urgent call to action and a manual for change, Nussbaum’s groundbreaking theory directs politics and law to help us meet our ethical responsibilities as no book has done before.
Alcohol use by young people is extremely dangerous - both to themselves and society at large. Underage alcohol use is associated with traffic fatalities, violence, unsafe sex, suicide, educational failure, and other problem behaviors that diminish the prospects of future success, as well as health risks â€" and the earlier teens start drinking, the greater the danger. Despite these serious concerns, the media continues to make drinking look attractive to youth, and it remains possible and even easy for teenagers to get access to alcohol. Why is this dangerous behavior so pervasive? What can be done to prevent it? What will work and who is responsible for making sure it happens? Reducing Underage Drinking addresses these questions and proposes a new way to combat underage alcohol use. It explores the ways in which may different individuals and groups contribute to the problem and how they can be enlisted to prevent it. Reducing Underage Drinking will serve as both a game plan and a call to arms for anyone with an investment in youth health and safety.
A long discussed theme concerning Ezekiel 18 and 20 is the relationship between collective and individual responsibility. In the first half of the twentieth century the discussion appeared to end as a result of the introduction of the corporate personality by Henry Wheeler Robinson (1872-1945). This concept became heavily discussed and was dismissed on the grounds of its superseded theoretical basis. The continuing use of the concept requires a redefinition and a new theoretical basis which is provided by the multimodal framework by Geoffrey Samuel from the field of cultural anthropology. Before applying the concept, Ezekiel 18 and 20 are studied extensively relative to textual criticism, philology, grammar, and structural analysis.
This Open Access volume provides in-depth analysis of the wide range of ethical issues associated with drug-resistant infectious diseases. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is widely recognized to be one of the greatest threats to global public health in coming decades; and it has thus become a major topic of discussion among leading bioethicists and scholars from related disciplines including economics, epidemiology, law, and political theory. Topics covered in this volume include responsible use of antimicrobials; control of multi-resistant hospital-acquired infections; privacy and data collection; antibiotic use in childhood and at the end of life; agricultural and veterinary sources of resistance; resistant HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria; mandatory treatment; and trade-offs between current and future generations. As the first book focused on ethical issues associated with drug resistance, it makes a timely contribution to debates regarding practice and policy that are of crucial importance to global public health in the 21st century.
The subject of the book is responsibility for collective crime. Collective crime is an act committed by a significant number of the members of a group, in the name of all members of that group, with the support of the majority of group members, and against individuals targeted on the basis of their belonging to a different group.The central claim is that all members of the group in whose name collective crime is committed share responsibility for it. This book's special interest is with analytical and normative defense of arguments that purport to explain reasons for, and the character of, responsibility of decent people. Those who did not intend, support, or committed wrong, are still accountable in a non-vicarious manner. The basis of their responsibility is the crime-specific relationship between group identity and personal identity.
