The Contrabassist and the CEO: Moral Judgment and Collective Identity

Abstract

How much is a moral judgment on a single act influenced by circumstances which have little to do with the nature of the act itself? How much have certain moral judgments to do with the common history and shared experience of a certain group of individuals? Using two cases taken from life (a German musician and a German CEO behaving both in a morally wrong way but with very different consequences from the point of view of moral judgement and with very different reactions from the German public), the article tries to give an answer to these questions, touching issues like: guilt, moral responsibility, collective responsibility, and collective identity.