Responsibility for Historic and Structural Injustice

Abstract

In this thesis, I draw attention to the collective consequences of structural and historic injustice, and I ask how we ought to understand and assume responsibility for these injustices. I make three interrelated arguments. First, I contend that rather than seeking to directly rectify historic wrongs or their lingering effects, we should instead pursue an ahistorical ideal of distributive justice, which will mitigate the legacies of historic injustices as a secondary effect. Second, I maintain that we should not blame most people for their participation in structural injustices, but we may blame them for their failure to join others in transforming those structural injustices. And third, I suggest that involuntarily benefiting from structural injustice is not itself the basis for any kind of obligation toward the injustice or its victims, nor is it necessary to appeal to this principle when justifying our responsibility toward structural injustice.