What Can We Do? Collective Obligation, Collective Capacities and Co-Agential Attunement

I argue that in certain circumstances where individuals are harmed or wrongful omissions occur, and those harms or wrongs could have been avoided by collective action, it can be appropriate for individuals who were in a position to contribute to avoiding those wrongs to feel a kind of collective regret. This can be true even in situations where there was no agent, individual or collective who was in a position to prevent the harm or wrong, provided that a suitable collective agent could have been formed. I also argue the existence and appropriateness of this form of collective moral regret suggests that collective obligations can fall on groups which do not constitute collective agents. This conclusion runs counter to an assumption which plays a fundamental role in much existing work on collective obligation: namely that only agents can be obligation bearers.