Collective Responsibility, Universalizability, and Social Practices.

The article explores the possibility that moral responsibility of individuals can be used to explain one form of collective responsibility: responsibility of collective effects. Here, the author argues that the responsibility for collective effects naturally suggests an analysis in terms of universalizability. Moreover, she explains the distinction between justification of a practice and justification a particular act falling under a practice, which is drawn from a paper by John Rawls. She concludes that under Kantian view, it is not believable to see individual agents as morally responsible for collective effect when the actions they contributed are based on maxims defined by patterns of social organization and not social practices.