Groups, tribes, nations, and other such social aggregates are not and cannot be moral actors. Morality pertains exclusively to individual actions. I am convinced that a very large part of the immoral convictions people hold and the immoral actions they take in a political context spring from implicit or explicit collectivism. Until people learn that only an individual can take a good or an evil action, proper responsibility for good or evil actions will be misplaced, and people will remain vulnerable to bogus arguments about collective responsibility for various crimes. For example, we ought not to say America was wrong to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but rather Harry Truman was wrong to order this action, and his advisers who urged this action and the military personnel who carried it out shared in the responsibility, though not to the extent that Truman was responsible.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 04:07:39 +0000
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