Tollefsen, Deborah (2006). The rationality of collective guilt. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 30 (1):222–239.
If emotions are partly constituted by desire then they play a significant role in motivating us to act morally,and if they are perceptions, they may be responsive to values and norms that lie at the heart of our moral life (Gibbard 1990;D’Arms and Jacobson 2000).
Emotions such as resentment, guilt, and moral indignation have played a particularly large role in discussions of moral responsibility.
According to Strawson, to be morally responsible is just to be the appropriate target of reactive attitudes. I argued that certain groups, such as corporations, are the appropriate targets of reactive attitudes and hence, this is all we need to know in order to count them as moral agents.
But to many, moral agency requires not only that one be the target (or object) of reactive attitudes but that one be subject to reactive attitudes as well. In particular, the attitudes of self-assessment, those of shame, guilt, and pride, are thought to be essential to genuine moral agency. These are the emotions that reveal our capacity for self-reflection or normative competence. Those that cannot engage in self-reflection—children, animals, and in some cases the mentally disabled—are often exempt from our reactive attitudes and ascriptions of moral responsibility. But how can groups feel shame, guilt, and pride?
I addressed this issue briefly at the end of “Participant Reactive Attitudes and Collective Responsibility.” The present paper aims to develop a richer understanding of these sorts of collective attitudes.
I will argue that the very natural and common phenomenon of feeling pride, guilt, and shame for the action of one’s group are expressions of the collective’s capacity for “self-assessment.” Although these emotions are “felt” by (or in phi losophy of mind terminology, realized by) individuals, they are distinctively col lective in nature and they result in assessment of group action, group culture, and group morality. I shall also argue that the capacity for collective emotions, specifi cally collective guilt, further justifies our practice of holding groups morally responsible.
If groups are subject to guilt feelings (via their members) then they are capable of engaging in the “self-assessment” that is characteristic of the beings whose actions give rise to the reactive attitudes.
I will focus my discussion on the phenomenon of collective guilt—which I define as the guilty feelings one has in response to the actions of one’s group.This is for two reasons. First, that we can feel shame over what our group has done and pride for what it has done is relatively noncontroversial (it should be at least as noncontroversial as feeling pride and shame over the actions of another individual—one’s children, for instance). It is the emotion of guilt, which is often tied to personal culpability (indeed, many think it is constitutively tied to personal culpability), which causes the most difficulty for the phenomenon of collective guilt. On a standard understanding of guilt,collective guilt appears to be irrational.
1. SUBJECTIVE GUILT
Along with resentment, and indignation, guilt is what P. F. Strawson (1968) called a reactive attitude. Reactive attitudes are those emotions we have in reaction to the actions of ourselves and others.Unlike anger and joy,the reactive attitudes are thought (by most moral psychologists) to have a propositional content.
Phenomenologically, guilt may feel similar to shame but it functions quite differently from shame. Shame is usually directed at one’s self rather than one’s actions. When one feels guilt they feel guilty for doing such and such.When one is ashamed or feels ashamed, they are ashamed of who they are, rather than what they do. Shame causes one to hide, to avoid others, to avoid interaction with those in whose eyes we have been shamed. Guilt, on the other hand, often results in an opening up to others. One who feels guilt seeks forgiveness and offers apology.
On one side of this debate are those that wish to analyze emotions in terms of the moral beliefs that give rise to them,whatAlan Gibbard has called judgmentalism (1990,129–32).Joseph Butler3, for instance,suggested that resentment is produced by the belief that a moral harm was done.More recently,John Rawls has argued that the moral sentiments require for their explanation the invocation of a moral concept (1971, sec. 73). This approach has been heavily criticized for its tendency to overmoralize the emotions.
It is commonly supposed that emotions, envy included, involve a way of taking the circumstances—a thought, construal, appraisal, or perception of the circumstances—which can then be assessed for fittingness or appropriateness (objective rationality) and/or warrant (subjective rationality). Fear, for instance, can be directed at something that isn’t really dangerous (a garden snake) and so the fear in this instance would be unfitting or inappropriate. However, the agent could have good reasons for believing that she ought to fear the garden snake (someone told her it was poisonous) and so her fear in this case is warranted. In this way all emotions can be assessed for their fittingness and warrant or for their objective or subjective rationality. The notion of appropriateness in discussions of the emotions is one of rational acceptability rather than morally obligatory or compulsory.
There is an additional wrinkle we need to add to Wallace’s story. Irrational guilt would also seem to be present when a person believes they have violated a demand that they accept but, in fact, there has been no such violation or the demand is not a legitimate one to which to hold oneself. Consider the working mother who feels guilty for putting her infant in full-time daycare, call her Betty. Suppose Betty does indeed accept the view that woman ought to stay at home with their children. On Wallace’s account Betty’s belief about the role of mothers rationalizes her guilt.Her guilt feelings are not in conflict with her beliefs about the role of mothers, nor, we can imagine, are they in conflict with any other attitudes Betty has.Her emotionis rational given that it coheres with other attitudes that she has. Given the distinction introduced above we can say that Betty is warranted in feeling guilty. She is subjectively rational.
But isn’t Betty still confused?There are good reasons for thinking that Betty is mistaken about her views concerning the role of mothers.She has a coherent set of beliefs and emotions but she doesn’t seem to be hooking up to reality.We are likely to say to Betty: “I know you feel guilty, but you shouldn’t. You haven’t violated any demand or if you have its not a demand to which one ought to hold oneself.” Although Betty may be subjectively rational she is working with a mis taken assumption and thus,she is objectively irrational.The emotion of guilt is not f itting in this case. The emotion of guilt will be either subjectively (warranted) or objectively rational (fitting) depending on whether or not one accepts the demand they hold themselves to and whether the demand has indeed been violated (or whether it’s a legitimate demand).
II. COLLECTIVE GUILT
Is there such a thing as collective guilt? Social psychological literature suggests that the phenomenon is quite widespread. A recent volume entitled Collective Guilt (Branscombe and Doosje 2004) contains the results of experiments aimed at detecting and measuring the level of collective guilt in a person.4 These experi ments identified and tracked the emotion in people from North America to the Middle East and from Europe to Australia. People claim to feel guilt for current harms committed by their group and for past atrocities.
Although many people claim to feel guilty for the harms committed by one’s group,there are those who would argue that these people are not feeling guilt at all but some other emotion—shame, remorse, regret. The suggestion is that there is widespread misidentification of emotional states (not just by individuals but by the social psychologists studying them as well).5 I think we should be very skeptical about any claim of widespread misuse of terms for emotional states.Although we are sometimes mistaken about what we are feeling, this view would have a great many people conceptually confused a great amount of the time. I think we ought to take first person reports of emotional states at face value, at least to begin with
But even if we grant that collective guilt is genuine guilt, there is still the question of whether or not this form of guilt is appropriate (either objectively or subjectively rational).
A standard way to understand the appropriateness of guilt feelings is to link subjective guilt with personal objective guilt (or personal culpability). One’s subjective guilt is appropriate only if one is themselves objectively guilty or when one believes themselves to be objectively guilty. The link between subjective guilt and personal culpability is obvious in our discussion of Wallace above. Guilt is a result of holding oneself to a demand.
Indeed, Wallace specifically says that guilt is not something we could appropriately feel for others or for groups. Gabrielle Taylor expresses the same view.She writes,“. . . the deed of another (my child, my compatriot) may make me feel shame but not guilt.Guilt itself cannot be vicarious, and feelings of guilt similarly cannot arise from the deeds or omissions of others” (1985, 91).
As I have defined it collective guilt is the guilt one feels in response to the harms committed by one’s group.This emotion is often in response to harms one had no part in, or to harms committed in the past.Further, if one feels guilty for a collective action in which they took part (a robbery, for instance) they often feel guilty not just for their part in it (holding the door for their fellow robber to escape) but for the joint action which caused harm (the robbery itself). But in many cases the individual is not responsible for the collective harm and knows that they are not responsible. Yet they still feel guilty.
According to Taylor and Wallace and the orthodox view in much of moral psychology, collective guilt is either irrational or conceptually impossible. It is not just philosophers, however, who hold this view. The link between subjective guilt and personal culpability is deeply entrenched in our culture.
III. MARGARET GILBERTAND LARRY MAY: JUSTIFYING OUR GUILT FEELINGS
Although the issue of collective objective guilt (or collective responsibility) has received a great deal of discussion in the philosophical literature, the emotion of collective guilt has not.8 Margaret Gilbert and Larry May are an exception to this. In Sharing Responsibility, Larry May (1992) develops a Jasperian account of col lective guilt,focusing on the notion of metaphysical guilt.Like Jaspers,May focuses a great deal on our feelings of guilt and attempts to provide a justification for such feelings.
Margaret Gilbert attempts to justify collective guilt feelings by appeal to her plural subject theory. One way to understand Gilbert’s account of the appropri ateness of collective guilt is to see her as offering a deeper understanding of the notion of group membership and how group membership could justify collective guilt feelings.To be a member of a group is to participate in plural subjecthood.A necessary and a sufficient condition for a group of people to constitute a plural subject is for them to be jointly committed to doing something as a body.“Doing something” should be interpreted very broadly.They could jointly commit to act, believe, intend, and so on. The notion of a joint commitment is nonreductive. It does not reduce to the sum of individual commitments to do something.As Gilbert puts it:
Ajoint commitment is not a “sum” or aggregate of commitments—it is not my commitment plus your commitment. Rather, it is the commitment “of” you and me. It is the commitment of “us.” (1997, 67)
Joint commitments arise when each member expresses their willingness to be so committed with the others. This expression of willingness does not need to be overt. It appears that simply remaining silent or not openly protesting can be an expression of willingness.When a joint commitment is created,individual commit ments ensue, but they “flow from” the joint commitment. My individual commit ments are in place as long the joint commitment is in place.Thus,there can only be a joint rescinding of a joint commitment.
Our participation in this sort of joint commitment makes us group members. Gilbert extends this analysis to large groups including nations.Members of a nation may express their willingness to be party to a joint commitment that forms a plural subject. Some expressions may be explicit. Others will involve merely allowing an authority such as the “president” to govern “us.”
Gilbert’s account of the appropriateness of collective guilt has the result that there is no clear distinction between appropriate and inappropriate collective guilt. As a member of the United States I am party to a joint commitment and in virtue of this I share responsibility for every harm my government commits.This will be the case even if I have strongly objected to their actions. Although I do think many of us have a personal share of responsibility for many of the government’s actions, pre-theoretically it seems odd to say that it would be appropriate for an anti-war protestor to feel guilt in response to the Iraqi war or for an African-American to feel guilt for slavery.
I have a more general concern here, however; both Gilbert and May attempt to justify our collective guilt feelings by appeal to shared responsibility. I share some responsibility in May’s case because I did nothing to prevent the harm when I could (and should) have. On Gilbert’s account I share in responsibility merely because I am a member of a group that acts badly, where membership is cashed out in terms of being party to a joint commitment. Collective responsibility according to these accounts is divided up like a pie and members each get a slice or share of it. Clearly May and Gilbert are working within the standard view that the appro priateness of guilt feelings is linked to personal culpability. On their view, my guilt feelings for the actions of my group will only be justified if I share a piece of the responsibility pie.
IV. COLLECTIVE GUILT RECONSIDERED
Although there are,no doubt,natural emotions that are part of our nature as human beings, guilt is not one of them. Guilt is clearly socially constructed. Some cultures do not even have the concept of guilt and we know, for instance, that the concept of guilt in Greek culture often was applied in cases where the agent had no control over the events for which he or she felt guilt (e.g.,Oedipus).Given cultural variation, it is difficult to see how one could give a conceptual analysis of guilt. What one needs is an empirical investigation into how the notion of guilt is used within a culture. Given the prevalence of collective guilt, I don’t think we can rule out the possibility of its rationality a priori.
We resent corporations, we love sports teams, we feel moral indignation in response to the actions of the military, shame over the actions of our government. Collective guilt is embedded within a complex structure of other emotions that are directed at collectives and arise in response to group actions.
Collective guilt is functionally similar to individual guilt and thus is a genuine form of guilt. It acts as an attitude of self-assessment—but the self here is not one’s self but the collective or group of which one is apart. When one feels collective guilt they are often led to reflection about the nature of the group of which they are apart.
They may attempt to understand its motives,its values and so on.In this way, collective guilt is the group’s emotion. It is possessed by the group in the sense that it functions to assess the group’s character. This process of reflection may lead to self-reflection as well and individual guilt for one’s own actions or omissions. But it need not.The realization of collective guilt in group members provides the group itself with the capacity for“self-reflection.”In this way groups too can be subject to reactive attitudes such as guilt.
Collective guilt results in behavioral responses similar to those of individual guilt. It will lead groups to offer apologies, forge reconciliations, and make repa rations.These things can be carried out by members ofthegrouporcanbedonevia declarations of apologies. So, contra May, collective guilt is not collective shame with a different name. Unlike collective shame, collective guilt will focus on col lective actions rather than the character of the group, but the self-reflection characteristic of guilt may also give rise to collective shame.
The Strawson approach to responsibility says there is no distinction between being morally responsible and being held morally responsible. To be morally responsible is to be the appropriate target of and subject of reactive attitudes. We can’t look outside our practice of praising and blaming for some independent metaphysical fact that will determine who is morally respon sible and whois not. The criterion of moral responsibility will fall out of a reflection on the appropriateness of our reactive attitudes.
Our capacity as group members to feel collective guilt reinforces this conclusion by suggesting that groups have the capacity to engage in the reflective processes that are characteristic of the sorts of agents we hold responsible.