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

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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.