COLLECTIVELY PERPETRATED EVILS

Many atrocities, including genocide and slavery, are collectively perpetrated. Many are collectively suffered. Many (including genocide and slavery) are both. Accordingly, two sets of questions present themselves, corresponding to the agency and the harm components of an evil. Agency questions include the following: What are the wrongs in collectively perpetrated atrocities? Who or what are the agents? How are they related to the harm? What does it mean to say of a collectively perpetrated deed that it was inexcusable? Where, if anywhere, is culpability located? Harm questions include the following: Who or what can suffer intolerable harm? What kinds of harms can be suffered collectively? Is harm to the group always and only harm to individuals considered as group members? What does it mean to say of harm to a group that it is intolerable? Agency questions are this chapter's main subject. Chapter 4 takes up harm to non-sentient beings, including some groups. Yet, both sets of questions are sufficiently interconnected that at certain points issues regarding harm to groups make an appearance in this chapter as well. This chapter and the next raise more questions than either is able to answer.

A social collectivity can be transformed from a mere aggregate into unified group in two fundamentally different ways, one internal and the other external.