Solving the Dual Puzzles of Collective Harm

Suppose some uncoordinated group of agents causes tremendous harm, but none of the individuals could have meaningfully changed this result by acting differently. These “collective harm” cases have been the subject of extended philosophical discussion, but this paper argues that there are really two different, if connected, puzzles presented by such cases: (1) a puzzle about how to characterize the moral injury to those who suffer this harm (the “wrongness puzzle”) and (2) a puzzle about why agents may do something wrong in participating in producing this harm (the “participation puzzle”). This paper elaborates these puzzles, defends the idea that they are different from each other, and offers solutions to them both. The core idea is that an application of the distinction between ideal and nonideal theory can shed light on both puzzles; the injury experienced by the victims of collective harm is to be understood in terms of the shortfall they suffer from how they would fare if ideal circumstances obtained, and participation in collective harm is wrong when it involves reasoning that fails to appropriately apply ideal moral rules to nonideal situations.