Realism about Collective Agents: The Current Debate about the Nature of Collective Action and its Relation to Medieval Political Philosophy

许多哲学家认为，不只是个人，团体也可以是有意的行动者：他们的行为是有原因的，这意味着一种作者身份，在此基础上，他们可以对自己的行为负责。这对于一群不协调的个体来说可能不是真的，在这种情况下，对他们行为的某些描述仅仅是对一些偶然做同样事情的个体的隐喻（“股票市场对远东的发展作出反应”）。但是，对于以某种方式建立起来的群体来说，这是正确的，因此，这些群体构成了集体行动者，可以完全独立于其个人成员，有意地做某件事，并为此负责。说英国离开欧盟显然不是一个隐喻，指的是一些个人意外地做了同样的事情，而是对集体行为的一个相当字面的描述。我们与中世纪政治哲学分享这种关于集体代理人的“现实主义”（List/Pettit 2011）；这与通常认为中世纪政治哲学仅仅是基督教亚里士多德美德伦理学的延伸的假设相反。在伦敦政治经济学院做访问学者期间，我将研究当前关于集体行动的辩论与托马斯·阿奎那、帕多瓦的马西利乌斯和奥卡姆的威廉等作家的政治哲学之间的关系。对这些作者来说，政治是解决集体行动问题的答案；集体行动是社会群体的政治组织问题。该项目提供了对中世纪政治哲学的新理解，扩大了集体行动概念的思想史，并为当前关于集体行动本质的辩论中的核心问题提供了新的视角。

Many philosophers believe that not just individuals, but also groups can be intentional agents: They act for reasons, and this implies a kind of authorship on the basis of which they can be held responsible for their actions. This may not be true of collections of uncoordinated individuals, in the case of which certain descriptions of their actions are mere metaphors for a number of individuals accidentally doing the same thing ("The stock market reacts to the developments in the Far East."). But it is true of groups which set themselves up in a certain manner and which therefore constitute collective agents that can, quite independently of their individual members, do something intentionally and be held responsible for it. To say that Great Britain leaves the EU is clearly not a metaphor for a number of individuals accidentally doing the same thing, but a quite literal description of an action of a collective agent. We share this "realism" about collective agents (List/Pettit 2011) with medieval political philosophy; contrary to the common assumption that medieval political philosophy is merely an extension of Christian-Aristotelian virtue ethics. During my visiting fellowship at the LSE, I will investigate how the current debate about collective action relates to the political philosophy of authors like Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padua, and William of Ockham. For these authors, politics is the answer to problems of collective action; and collective action is a matter of the political organization of social groups. This project offers at a new understanding of medieval political philosophy, a broadening of the history of ideas of the concept of collective action, and a new perspective on central issues in the current debate about the nature of collective action.