In some vicarious cases of compensation, an agent seems obligated to compensate for a harm they did not inflict. This raises the problem that obligations for compensation may arise out of circumstantial luck. That is, an agent may owe compensation for a harm that was outside their control. Addressing this issue, I identify five conditions for compensation from the literature: causal engagement, proxy, ill-gotten gains, constitution, and affiliation. I argue that only two of them specify genuine and irreducible grounds for (...) compensation, and that factors determining the agent’s obligations may be beyond their control. However, I suggest that this is unproblematic. There is thus no problem of circumstantial moral luck for compensation. (shrink)

The article presents critical examination of theories about collective responsibility attempting to cover responsibility for historic injustices. The author will also try to establish the possibility of collective responsibility for the present members of the group to make recompense for the injustices committed by their ancestors depending on two factors expounded in the article.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

How do experiences of shame and guilt shape or reflect the ways in which the vanquished are reconciled (or not) to the new world order established by the victors? Shame and guilt are universal experiences in the emotional landscape of post-war politics, albeit for different reasons and with radically different political effects. An examination of Germany after 1918 and of Japan after 1945 reveals that experiences of shame and guilt may be pivotal for creating conditions of possibility for reconciliation marked (...) by political and moral transformation. This transformative potential of shame and guilt, however, is a double-edged sword. In threatening old identities, values and beliefs, experiences of shame and guilt may provoke defensive, reactionary and violent political responses, and thus may precipitate hideous rather than salutary transformations. Political leadership and political culture are crucial factors in shaping the kind of reconciliation — reactionary or transformative — as well as the specific nature of transformations that experiences of shame and guilt may motivate the vanquished to pursue. (shrink)

This essay provides a critical overview of the debate about corporate moral responsibility. Parties to the debate address whether corporations are the kinds of entities that can be blamed when they cause unjustified harm. Proponents of CMR argue that corporations satisfy the conditions for moral agency and so they are fit for blame. Their opponents respond that corporations lack one or more of the capacities necessary for moral agency. I review the arguments on both sides and conclude ultimately that what (...) divides the two is not so much competing conceptions of the corporation as it is disagreement about what moral agency requires. Homing in on the real site of contention will, it is hoped, allow future participants in the debate to focus their efforts more productively. (shrink)

In this paper we claim that Rawls’s theory is compatible with the absence of rectification of extremely important historical injustices within a given society. We hold that adding a new principle to justice-as-fairness may amend this problem. There are four possible objections to our claim: First, that historical rectification is not required by justice. Second, that, even when historical rectification is a matter of justice, it is not a matter of distributive justice, so that Rawls’s theory is justified in leaving (...) it unaddressed. Third, that dealing with historical injustice is outside of the scope of ideal theory, so that even when historical rectification is required by justice, Rawls’s theory starts with the assumption that no such historical injustice has occurred. Fourth, that while historical injustice is within the scope of Rawls’s theory, there is no need for further principles of justice to deal with it, so that the correct regulation of the principles of justice-as-fairness would ensure the rectification of all relevant historical injustices of a particular society. While we offer several arguments against the first and second objections, we address the last two at length and show that both fail. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, I examine the extent to which military officers are morally responsible for the actions of others by virtue of shared membership in various groups. I argue that career military officers share membership in morally relevant groups that include their branch of service, Department of Defense and the entire Executive Branch of Government, and I outline the circumstances under which career officers bear moral culpability for the actions of members of this group. A number of implications arise from (...) these findings. The first and most important is that military officers have an interest in ensuring the moral rectitude of government agents specifically as it pertains to their official capacities. Additionally, military officers have a duty not only to be informed about problematic government policies but also to educate themselves on the pertinent legal jurisprudence or ethical considerations. Finally, the Constitutional Paradigm of Military Ethics may be an insufficient guide for the part.. (shrink)

Current norms among professional military officers that govern obedience and dissent strongly discourage officers from offering public criticism of policy enacted by civilian authorities, even if that policy is immoral, illegal, or unconstitutional. We identify a set of circumstances that create a moral imperative for an officer to take action and we leverage prevailing ethical guidelines to argue that in certain cases, even individual officers not directly involved in the execution of the policy have moral standing to offer public criticism (...) of it. We consider the consequences of relaxing norms prohibiting public dissent and explore the trade-off between tolerating immoral policy and the likelihood of mistakenly criticizing appropriate policy. Finally, we offer evidence that current military-civilian relations in the United States are such that placing higher value on dissent would benefit professional military officers and may improve policy. (shrink)

En este trabajo respondo una objeción a la tesis de que la teoría de Rawls debe atender problemas relacionados a la injusticia histórica. Esta objeción sostiene que dicha teoría está justificada en no considerar problemas de injusticia histórica debido a su supuesto carácter exclusivamente prospectivo. La objeción tiene dos presentaciones diferentes. Primero, como la idea de que hay razones internas a la propia teoría de Rawls que justifican dicho carácter exclusivamente prospectivo —tales como el problema de elección modelado en la (...) posición original y el hecho de que la justicia-como-equidad debe ser una concepción de justicia no-comprehensiva. Segundo, como la idea de que hay razones externas a la teoría de Rawls —en concreto, la supuesta existencia del así llamado problema de la no-identidad, que justifican el carácter exclusivamente prospectivo no sólo de los principios de justicia rawlsianos sino de cualquier otra concepción de justicia distributiva. Trataré de mostrar que esta objeción, tanto en su presentación interna como externa, es equivocada. (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of David Miller's recent account of inherited national responsibility. It is argued that the account leads to a dilemma: either it does not make sense to say that we can accept the national inheritance; or; on a different sense of acceptance; it does; but then we encounter a serious conflict with one of our important intuitions about responsibility.

Do those of us living in the present have an obligation to rectify injustices committed by others in the distant past? This article is an attempt to revisit the problem of historical injustice by bringing together recent work on structural injustice in relation to the problem of wrongful benefit. The problem of benefitting from injustice, I argue, provides firmer grounds of obligation in forward-looking accounts of responsibility for historical injustice specifically. I argue (1) that if the negative effects of historical (...) injustice endure into the present, and (2) if we participate in structures that allow for its reproduction, then (3) our moral responsibility to set matters straight increases to the extent that we derive a benefit from the perpetuation of an unjust _status quo_. Finally, (4) a general moral obligation to make the world less unjust generates a motive for individuals to learn more about their place in a structure that reproduces the negative effects of historical injustice. (shrink)