The implications of being implicated

The implications of being implicated. Individual responsibility, structural injustice and global institutional reform

Presentatie Ronald Tinnevelt, VWR Wintervergadering 2015

Do individual actors have personal responsibilities regarding issues of justice? To what extent can these responsibilities be seen as overwhelming or overdemanding? Although these questions look fairly straightforward when our view of responsibility is supported by ‘a conception of human social relations as consisting primarily in small-scale interactions’ (Scheffler 2001: 38) things look rather different if we argue – as many participants in the global justice debate do – that our current age is characterized by massive injustices and rights violations that are caused and maintained by ‘our current global institutional arrangements as codified in international law’ (Pogge 2010: 30).

Most participants in the global justice debate (very broadly construed), however, neither reflect on the moral responsibility of individual agents for creating just global institutional structures nor on the question of over-demandingness. Individual responsibility is mainly discussed in the context of the demands of beneficence and the over-demandingness objection is primarily aimed at utilitarian theorists who defend a version of the ‘optimizing principle of beneficence’ to deal with the problem of global poverty. Most participants, moreover, implicitly or explicitly assume that states and international organizations – and to a lesser extent private nongovernmental organizations and transnational corporations – are the principle (and sometimes only) agents responsible for global injustices and for discharging responsibilities of global justice.

On further consideration, however, it is not so clear that institutional theorists can avoid questions related to the nature and range of responsibilities individual moral agents might have regarding global institutions. Three important questions, therefore need to be raised, that don’t gain enough attention in the global justice debate: (1) to what extent is it necessary to develop a conception of individual responsibility regarding both interactional and institutional theories of global justice?; (2) what is the range of demands implied by an institutional conception of individual responsibility?; and (3) to what extent are these demands over-whelming or maybe even unfairly overwhelming in relation to the many unjust structural processes that we participate in as consumers and citizens? In short, what are the (political) implications of being implicated? Although answering these questions demands a broad analysis of ideas like justice, responsibility and overdemandingness, I will focus my presentation on Iris Marion Young’s social connection theory of responsibility. At a later stage, however, I will broaden my research.