Abstract

The issue of moral complicity, the censuring of one agent for offense committed and harm caused by another agent, is complicated by the wide range of cases to which it applies, by conflicting intuitions about who is the perpetrator and who the accomplice, and by the difficulty of differentiating between how the perpetrator causes harm, and how the accomplice contributes toward it. The issue is further obscured by different contexts: rational moral theory uses one set of criteria to identify the accomplice, common usage applies another. I seek to remedy these difficulties with a comprehensive theory, one providing a definition containing the conditions necessary and jointly sufficient to identify the offense, and an account of the justification of censure that accommodates both versions of complicity. This theory analyzes three sources of complicity: Common Law's accessory liability doctrine, Catholic moral theology's cooperation-with-evil doctrine and public discourse--the common beliefs and sayings that Martha Nussbaum claims form the basis of Aristotle's philosophical method. The analysis yields two widely contrasting, but irreducible, versions of complicity: positive collaboration and toleration of evil. ;Positive collaboration stems from the standard, i.e., legal and moral doctrines, which share a similar objective and fact-centered rationale for blame, depending on a minimal moral criteria. However, positive collaboration, alone, ignores a significant range of cases. The contrasting account, toleration of evil, also satisfies the defining conditions. When confronted with systemic evils, such as racism and sexism, the tolerator fails to act according to the moral ideal of responsibility. His case resembles the forbearance to prevent harm found in the standard doctrines. While the standard doctrines, for reasons of self-interest, excuse the tolerator from intervening, public discourse censures him for failing to assume responsibility for his community. Viewing censure as a concept wider than mere blame, he too is censurable, even though his failure pertains to the morally ideal. ;Public discourse appropriately censures the tolerator of evil as well as the positive collaborator because, if ideals are seen teleologically as moral responsibility, the agent falls short of common expectations about moral maturity. I conclude that a comprehensive theory of complicity includes both versions of complicity.