Making Sense of Complicity

ABSTRACT Philosophers increasingly invoke the concept of moral complicity across a wide range of domains in moral philosophy, political theory and applied ethics. Yet the literature remains deeply fragmented and difficult to make sense of. This article identifies three central axes of disagreement—over which cases count as complicity, what its normative upshot is and what grounds it. I argue that, although disputes about cases are relatively tractable, disagreements about upshot and ground remain deeply entrenched. I conclude by proposing that progress requires a framework of limited pluralism that integrates and refines insights from selected accounts of complicity. This framework helps make sense of the phenomenon that is complicity and provides a coherent structure within which the field can advance.