Kant and Group Agency

Kant’s interpreters often assume that his conception of freedom rules out collective responsibility for human badness. Yet in Part 3 of the 1793 Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone, he claims that human beings “mutually corrupt each other’s moral disposition and make one another evil” (6:94.5-6). On the going assumption, this corrupting act would be something that individuals do to individuals; however, Kant takes it to be something “we” do together, as some kind of group agent. He also supposes that our common corruption is to be overcome through the establishment of the “ethical commonwealth”, which he deems a “duty of its own kind” because it does not hold of individuals to other individuals but of the species to itself, ostensibly acting as a group agent (6:97.17-19). While many commentators acknowledge that Kant calls for a social solution to a social problem, almost no serious attention has been directed to his appeal to group agency and responsibility in this context. This chapter puts contemporary work on group agency — namely, that of Margaret Gilbert, Stephanie Collins, and Thomas Crowther — into dialogue with Kant to advance our understanding of a curious and drastically understudied aspect of his later ethical thought.