Abstract
I argue that there are liberal reasons to reject what I call “Global Individualism”, which is the conjunction of two views strongly associated with liberalism: moral individualism and social individualism. According to the first view, all moral properties are reducible to individual moral properties. The second holds that the social world is composed only of individual agents. My argument has the following structure: after suggesting that Global Individualism does not misrepresent liberalism, I draw on some recent insights in social ontology to show that it is inconsistent with the satisfaction of an important liberal principle related to the protection of individual rights over time. As I hold, to solve this problem we need to accept group agents acting as moral agents, which in turn commits us to the weaker notion of normative individualism (a view that is consistent with the existence of some group moral properties). I conclude with the suggestion that even this solution is costly for liberalism, for the conjunction of group moral agency and normative individualism makes the latter unstable and compels liberals to a much less individualistic stance than expected.
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Notes
Here I Follow Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2014) in not defining explicitly what a moral property is. Plausible examples of moral properties include rights, obligations, liberties, and entitlements. Also, for the sake of precision, individual actions can instantiate moral properties too. An action can be right or wrong, for example. Global Individualism only requires that these actions be performed by individuals.
Methodological individualism asserts that social phenomena should be explained only in terms of individuals and their actions (see Heath 2020 for details). A thesis about how we should explain what happens in the social world is not identical to a thesis about what there is in the social world. But it is easy to see that both are natural allies. If social individualism is true, its methodological counterpart has the advantage of explaining the social world resorting to no more or less than what there really is. Incidentally, Epstein (2015) notices that people sometimes defined one in terms of the other. Watkins (1957), for example, holds that methodological individualism is the thesis that the ultimate constituents of social reality are individual people. Since he formulates the thesis in terms of constitution, what he presents is an ontological view.
Popper (2013) asserts this forcefully by warning that we must not be content with collectivist explanations. Also a champion of liberalism, Hayek (1955) expresses the concern that methodological holism leads to political collectivism. His remarks would be much more plausible if he substituted “social holism” for “methodological holism”.
It is worth emphasizing that Rawls does not deny that, unlike the individuals in the original position, real individuals have all sorts of social commitments and attachments. An overall individualistic approach does not need to deny meaningful interactions between individuals. See, for example, his comments on the morality of association (1999, pp. 409–13).
Even Rawls’ reference to the least favored group of society is not literal. The idea of group here can be interpreted as a set or collection of individuals who happen to share some relevant disadvantages (1999, p. 83).
“There are several characteristic features of obligations which distinguish them from other moral requirements. For one thing, they arise as a result of our voluntary acts; these acts may be the giving of express or tacit undertakings, such as promises and agreements, but they need not be, as in the case of accepting benefits. Further, the content of obligations is always defined by an institution or practice the rules of which specify what it is that one is required to do.” (Rawls 1999, p. 97)
Their stance on aggregation is an application of the famous Condorcet’s Jury Theorem.
This is the key for Adam Smith’s famous explanation of social prosperity: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interests” (1986, 169). Hayek (1973) later formulated the idea in terms of spontaneous order.
Gaus holds that the final, normative step from the ultra-minimal state to the minimal state is not so easily captured by an invisible hand explanation. See Miller (2002) for a defense that this final step is included in such explanation.
Naturally, this formulation is compatible with the fact that group agents, like individuals, are amenable to eventual misrepresentations.
Coming from anthropology, a definition of social class which captures these characteristics is Hoebel and Frost’s (1976).
For a classical articulation of the problem, see Olson (1965).
There may be a tension between that solution’s framework and traditional Marxian approaches, for collective action problems are generally formulated in individualistic terms.
For simplicity, let us suppose that indebtedness is not an option here.
Since the option between satisfying or violating the principle is a momentous normative choice, I assume that the first clause is satisfied in all the following examples.
This procedure is individualist because it just adds individual votes. In French’s parlance, the majoritarian procedure turns the court into a contrivance for purposes of summary reference.
Here is a quick, normative argument against this proposal: suppose that one individual is the consistency maker. Since keeping consistency requires overturning previous majority decisions or enforcing things that the majority rejects, it seems that she has a power that should belong to the court itself and not to one of its members.
An alternative individualist solution would be a one-person court. I think that this would be a desperate solution. Since GI champions the moral worth of individuals, it would be silly to propose a kind of judicial dictator. The U. S. Supreme Court’s “Rule of Four” is a testimony of the importance of fostering a plurality of voices within the Court. See Yingling (2015) for a discussion on that rule.
An alternative solution to the CAP is the suggestion that corporate agents “cannot be autonomous in a sense strong enough to entitle them to non-derivative normative powers, and that they only have corporate rights that are derivative from individual concerns” (p. 1580). The problem with this proposal, as Hindriks remarks, is that it is hard to determine in advance what the limits of corporate autonomy are. The solution “leaves open the possibility that collective agents acquire the requisite degree of autonomy, which would make them entitled to the problematic normative statuses after all” (p. 1581).
It is worth emphasizing that Hindriks’ arguments are not meant to be a refutation of List and Pettit’s stance on corporate agents. Much to the contrary, he sees their general approach as plausible. His focus, as my discussion makes clear, is on the normative consequences not anticipated by the normative individualist.
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Hélio Carneiro, Luiz Helvécio, Claiton Costa, Nayara Tozei, Carlos André, Brener Alexandre, and Marcelo Freitas for their support. I am also grateful to an anonymous referee for Philosophia for the generous reading of earlier drafts of this paper and the invaluable comments that enabled me to improve it. I dedicate this paper to the memory of my friend and poet Adriano Menezes.
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Couto, A. Global Individualism and Group Agency. Philosophia 51, 69–88 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00352-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00352-4