Herlinde Pauer-Studer, Dr. phil.

Project

Why Groups Matter to You

The standard conception of agency assumes that we determine the normative contours of our self. As autonomous agents, we intend, plan, and decide what to do and how to live. Our values, commitments, and ways of acting constitute who we are in normative terms. As mindful agents, we critically reflect on our actions and the underlying commitments and principles – asking ourselves whether they withstand scrutiny from the rational and the moral point of view. Why Groups Matter to You focuses on a neglected aspect in this account of agency. The central assumption is that one’s normative identity is also constituted by the groups to which one belongs (groups being understood in a broad sense to include both small-scale informal groups and structured group agents such as organizations). Qua their role and role-performance within the group, agents share the principles and commitments of the group. Although an agent might, on critical reflection, not endorse all the aims and practices of the group, they remain tied to it as long as they do not definitively leave the group. This opens up a new way of assessing agents morally. An agent’s claim to moral integrity might be challenged, even undermined, by the aims and principles of the group with which they are affiliated. This approach broadens our perspective on agents’ moral responsibility. Agents may fail morally by not recognizing the moral demands created by their group affiliations, but they also are accountable if they ignore a potential incoherence between their self-understanding and their group involvements. The project aims to develop these ideas within a relational conception of morality, i.e., an account that anchors morality in the normative significance of our social commitments and relations both to others and to our individual selves.

Recommended Reading

Pauer-Studer, Herlinde. “‘A Community of Rational Beings’. Kant’s Realm of Ends and the Distinction between Internal and External Freedom.” Kant-Studien 107, no. 1 (2016): 125–159. https://doi.org/10.1515/kant-2016-0007.
–. “Complicity and Conditions of Agency.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 35, no. 4 (2018): 643–660. https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12320.
–. Justifying Injustice: Legal Theory in Nazi Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Colloquium, 11.03.2025

Role-bound Complicity and the Case of SS Judge Konrad Morgen

Complicity is usually explained as an intentional attitude. This also applies to complicity with groups and organizations. Christopher Kutz, for instance, introduces the notion of “participatory intentions” (individual intentions whose content is collective) in his ground-breaking study "Complicity" to explain an agent’s complicity with groups or organizations.

The intention-based account of complicity faces, however, two crucial problems: First, complex or-ganizational structures may well facilitate agents in minimizing their role in contributing to collective goals. Second, the worse things get, the more inclined agents are to deny their intentional involve-ment. So, how to dispute an agent’s claim to detachment from an organization’s collective goal?

In my talk, I will offer an alternative account of complicity. My central thesis is that an agent’s complicity might be due to the dependence of his or her professional role on the normative principles that make up the organization or institution in whose practices he or she partakes. In other words, there might arise a constitutive failure and an incoherence in an agent’s attempt to ascribe to himself or herself a non-complicit professional identity.

I will then discuss the case of SS Judge Konrad Morgen to illustrate this understanding of complicity.

Publications from the Fellows' Library

Pauer-Studer, Herlinde (Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2020)

Justifying injustice : legal theory in Nazi Germany

Pauer-Studer, Herlinde (Wien, 2020)

Einführung in die Ethik utb ; 2350

Pauer-Studer, Herlinde (Oxford, 2018)

Complicity and conditions of agency

Pauer-Studer, Herlinde (Berlin, 2017)

»Weil ich nun mal ein Gerechtigkeitsfanatiker bin« : der Fall des SS-Richters Konrad Morgen Konrad Morgan

Pauer-Studer, Herlinde (Berlin, 2016)

"A community of rational beings" : Kant's realm of ends and the distinction between internal and external freedom