The Responsibility of Individuals

Teresa Marques (Universitat de Barcelona)

The Collective Ethics Seminar: Online Presentation – 11 May 2026 – 15.15 – 16.45 CEST / 09.15 – 10.45 EST

Teresa Marques - The Responsibility of Individuals

On Monday 11 May 2026, Teresa Marques (University of Barcelona) will give a presentation in the Collective Ethics Seminar entitled ‘The Responsibility of Individuals’.


Abstract: Should we displace the moral responsibility from the individual to the social in accounts of oppression, discrimination, and injustice? Here, I consider anti-individualist challenges to the explanation of social phenomena and of social injustice. First, I argue that those challenges are consistent with social phenomena that are constituted by people’s attitudes and actions, and I provide evidence from research in the social sciences to this effect. Second, I argue that putative paradigm cases of structural injustice are cases where individuals, or collectives of individuals, have moral responsibility, or are cases with no individual or collective culprits, and where it is questionable that they are unjust.

The online seminar is open for all to attend. The session starts at 15.15 CEST / 09.15 EST. You can join the session via the following link: https://univienna.zoom.us/j/62736288881?pwd=SndEdTNoNlZtSzJqcmpabm5NaWIyUT09

For more information about the seminar, please see https://social.univie.ac.at/events/collective-ethics-seminar/. We hope to see you at the seminar!

Kind regards,

Gunnar Björnsson (Stockholm University), Kenneth Silver (Trinity College Dublin), and Niels de Haan (University of Vienna)