Abstract (may include machine translation)
Avia Pasternak’s admirably clearly and tightly argued book defends four broad theses. First, it argues that contemporary states are appropriately regarded as corporate moral agents, entities that can act, consistently over time, on the basis of reasons of their own that can be distinct from the reasons of their constituent members, and at least some of which are moral reasons. This is the corporate moral agency of states thesis. Second, it argues that under certain circumstances that are frequently satisfied by contemporary states, including most democracies but also some non-democratic states, ‘members’ (roughly, citizens and long-term residents) are appropriately regarded as ‘inclusive authors’ of their state’s actions even when they are not aware of them or when they strenuously disagree with them. The conditions include, crucially, that members actually understand and accept themselves, in a manner not coerced against their will, to be members, and some of their actions as contributing to the maintenance of the state. Call this the inclusive authorship thesis. Third, it argues that inclusive authorship makes members morally liable to bear the burdens of remedial duties for the wrongful actions of the state, provided that a distribution of remedial duties that tracks the level of blameworthiness of different members is not feasible or would be prohibitively costly. Call this the moral liability thesis (recall that inclusive membership does not imply direct involvement in, support for, or even agreement with, the actions of the state that incur the remedial obligations, and therefore it does not entail blameworthiness). And finally, it argues that when the conditions stated in the second and third theses obtain, it is morally justified not only to distribute the burdens of remedial obligations to all inclusive authors of the state’s wrongful actions, but to distribute them in a nonproportional manner that does not track members’ level of ‘intentional citizenship’, the latter referring to the necessary conditions of inclusive authorship. Call this the nonproportionality thesis.
The corporate moral agency thesis adopts and applies Christian List and Philip Pettit’s influential theory of group agency (List and Pettit 2011). The inclusive authorship thesis refines Christopher Kutz’s theory of the morality of collective action (Kutz 2002 and other works) and applies it to the problem of state action and citizenship, with special focus on the morality of collective action in democracies and non-democratic states. Arguably, the book’s main contribution lies in its elaborate defense of the nonproportional distribution of remedial obligations among all inclusive authors of state actions (or among all intentional citizens), which my comments focus on in parts III–IV. But I begin by raising some concerns about Pasternak’s discussion of blame-tracking and inclusive authorship-tracking distribution (part I) and about her broadly subjectivist account of intentional citizenship and inclusive authorship (part II).
The corporate moral agency thesis adopts and applies Christian List and Philip Pettit’s influential theory of group agency (List and Pettit 2011). The inclusive authorship thesis refines Christopher Kutz’s theory of the morality of collective action (Kutz 2002 and other works) and applies it to the problem of state action and citizenship, with special focus on the morality of collective action in democracies and non-democratic states. Arguably, the book’s main contribution lies in its elaborate defense of the nonproportional distribution of remedial obligations among all inclusive authors of state actions (or among all intentional citizens), which my comments focus on in parts III–IV. But I begin by raising some concerns about Pasternak’s discussion of blame-tracking and inclusive authorship-tracking distribution (part I) and about her broadly subjectivist account of intentional citizenship and inclusive authorship (part II).
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 122-131 |
Journal | Analysis |
Volume | 84 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Jan 2024 |