MARGARET GILBERT COLLECTIVE GUILT AND COLLECTIVE GUILT FEELINGS (Received 9 November 2001; accepted in revised form 13 February 2002) ABSTRACT.Can collectives feel guilt with respect to what they have done? It has been claimed that they cannot. Yet in everyday discourse collectives are often held to feel guilt, criticized because they do not, and so on. Among other things, this paper considers what such so-called collective guilt feelings amount to. If collective guilt feelings are sometimes appropriate, it must be the case that collectives can indeed be guilty. The paper begins with an account of what it is for a collective to intend to do something and to act in light of that intention. According to this account, and in senses that are explained, there is a collective that intends to do something if and only if the members of a given population are jointly committed to intend as a body to do that thing. A related account of collective belief is also presented. It is then argued that, depending on the circumstances, a group’s action can be free as opposed to coerced, and that the idea that a collective as such can be guilty of performing a wrongful act makes sense. The idea that a group might feel guilt may be rejected because it is assumed that to feel guilt is to experience a “pang” or “twinge” of guilt – nothing more and nothing less. Presumably, though, there must be cognitions and perhaps behavior involved. In addition, the primacy, even the necessity, of “feeling-sensations” to feeling guilt in the individual case has been questioned. Without the presumption that it is already clear what feeling guilt amounts to, three proposals as to the nature of collective guilt feelings are considered. A “feeling of personal guilt” is defined as a feeling of guilt over one’s own action. It is argued that it is implausible to construe collective guilt feelings in terms of members’ feelings of personal guilt.“Membership guilt feelings” involve a group member’s feeling of guilt over what his or her group has done. It is argued that such feelings are intelligible if the member is party to the joint commitment that lies at the base of the relevant collective intention and action. However, an account of collective guilt in terms of membership guilt feelings is found wanting. Finally, a “plural subject” account of collective guilt feelings is articulated, such that they involve a joint commitment to feel guilt as a body. The parties to a joint commitment of the kind in question may as a result find themselves experiencing “pangs” of the kind associated with personal and membership guilt feelings. Since these pangs, by hypothesis, arise as a result of the joint commitment to feel guilt as a body, they might be thought of as providing a kind of phenomenology for collective guilt. Be that as it may, it is argued the plural subject account has much to be said for it. KEY WORDS:accountability, collective action, collective guilt, collective intention, emotion, groups, guiltfeelings, holism,jointcommitment, moralresponsibility, social phenomena The Journal of Ethics 6: 115–143, 2002. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.