Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age

by Christopher Kutz

• ISBN13: 9780521594523
• ISBN10: 0521594529
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-10-09
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

We live in a morally flawed world. Our lives are complicated by what other people do, and by the harms that flow from our social, economic and political institutions. Our relations as individuals to these collective harms constitute the domain of complicity. This book examines the relationship between collective responsibility and individual guilt. It presents a rigorous philosophical account of the nature of our relations to the social groups in which we participate, and uses that account in a discussion of contemporary moral theory. Christopher Kutz shows that the two prevailing theories of moral philosophy, Kantianism and consequentialism, both have difficulties resolving problems of complicity. He then argues for a richer theory of accountability in which any real understanding of collective action not only allows but demands individual responsibility.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(16)
The Deep Structure of Individual Accountability	17	(49)
Introduction	17	(3)
Social accountability as an example of the fundamentally relational nature of accountability	20	(5)
The relational bases of moral accountability: conduct, consequences, and character	25	(21)
A complication: the dynamics of accountability	46	(3)
The irreducibility of accountability	49	(4)
Ethical functionalism without consequentialism	53	(3)
Nietzsche's challenge	56	(3)
Legal accountability and the limits of response	59	(5)
Conclusion	64	(2)
Acting Together	66	(47)
Introduction	66	(2)
Methodology: generality, reducibility, and functionalism	68	(6)
Collective action as intentional participation	74	(7)
The contributory content of participatory intentions	81	(4)
The reducibility of collective action to individual intention	85	(4)
Collective action: the minimalist approach	89	(7)
Participation and the perspective of command	96	(7)
Ascribing collective actions	103	(4)
Attributing collective intentions	107	(5)
Conclusion	112	(1)
Moral Accountability and Collective Action	113	(33)
Introduction	113	(2)
Common sense and the disappearance of moral accountability: Dresden	115	(9)
The inadequacy of moral theory to collective wrongdoing: individual consequentialism	124	(5)
The incompatibility of collective consequentialism and individual accountability	129	(4)
Kantian universalization and marginal contributions	133	(5)
Understanding collective action and individual accountability	138	(6)
Conclusion	144	(2)
Complicitous Accountability	146	(20)
Introduction	146	(1)
Whether complicit actors are less culpable than direct actors	147	(17)
Conclusion	164	(2)
Problematic Accountability: Facilitation, Unstructured Collective Harm, and Organizational Dysfunction	166	(38)
Introduction	166	(2)
Complicity without participation	168	(23)
Collective accountability and holistic responses	191	(11)
Conclusion	202	(2)
Complicity, Conspiracy, and Shareholder Liability	204	(50)
Introduction	204	(2)
Epistemic constraints upon legal accountability	206	(3)
Criminal complicity doctrine and the scope of liability	209	(11)
Justifying complicitous accountability	220	(16)
Against the limited civil liability of shareholders	236	(17)
Conclusion	253	(1)
Conclusion: Accountability and the Possibility of Community	254	(7)
Notes	261	(50)
Bibliography	311	(14)
Index	325