Collective Evildoing

Abstract

Actors preparing to commit large-scale evils typically portray their victims as a mass, as being all alike. “Your group is your destiny”: this is the message perpetrators of collective evildoing convey to their targeted victims. This focus on group identities can be designated as the ontological thesis of this chapter and has become characteristic of ideology-driven aggression against groups of individuals, such as the Jews during the Holocaust. The central logic emanating from this ontological thesis is “One for all, all for one” as it claims to capture an essence in each part of the whole (species). There is nothing the concrete individual (exemplar) can do, drawing on his or her powers of intentionality, of forming thoughts and initiating action, that may alter this essence and its ascribed primacy. The primacy of ontologically conceived essence over individuality-based variation is a metaphysical claim, immune to any attempt to refute it.