Philosophical Arguments for Individuals, Memberships, and Collectives in States of Guilt or Shame

While there is ample evidence that people experience collective guilt and shame, many philosophers and laypeople reject such experiences as unjustified either because they reject emotions as significant realms of experience or because they dismiss the possibility of collective agency and therefore find guilt or shame feelings about collective acts, like those leading to climate change, absurd. Chapter 4 addresses these concerns, building an account of collective agency, responsibility, and identity that demonstrates the importance of moral emotions including those of collectives. This argument draws on but extends the work of multiple philosophers and theologians including Karl Jaspers, Larry May, and Tracy Lynn Isaacs to argue that individuals, memberships, and collectives can be guilty and shameful and that collective and individual guilt and/or shame do not reduce to each other. Collectives have identity, agency, and a form of intent that is more than the sum of their constituent agents. Collectives include both well-defined collectives, such as corporations or nations, and diffuse collectives such as people living resource-intensive capitalist lives and/or supercollectives––those which are larger than but not reducible to collectives. They may contribute to climate change alongside individuals, membership groups, and well-defined collectives. The chapter also argues why in some cases it is not only possible but also appropriate to experience environmental guilt and shame about climate change as an individual or collective.