by Claude Opus 5.5
Lepora and Goodin distinguish degrees of complicity by centrality, proximity and reversibility. Map the different roles (participant, spectator, forwarder, silent reader, non-reader) onto their scheme.
Chiara Lepora and Robert Goodin’s On Complicity and Compromise (2013) offers one of the most fine-grained taxonomies of complicity in the literature. They distinguish principals, who perform the wrong, from those who contribute to it in lesser ways, and they distinguish contributory forms of involvement (complicity proper) from non-contributory forms that may still be morally significant. Among the non-contributory relations they identify are conniving (tacitly encouraging), condoning (approving after the fact), consorting (associating with wrongdoers) and contiguity (being near the wrong without contributing). For contributory involvement, they propose several dimensions along which blameworthiness varies, including centrality (how essential the contribution was), proximity (how close in time and causal sequence), reversibility (whether the contribution could have been withdrawn), and the degree to which the contributor shared the principal’s purpose.
The roles that may be present in a situation like the one behind these seminars can be mapped onto this scheme. What follows is a structural exercise about types of role, not an assessment of any person; the facts of what anyone did remain unestablished.
Participants
A participant in an alleged group sexual assault is not complicit in Lepora and Goodin’s sense but a principal, or co-principal. Each person who directly performs the wrongful act is a full author of it. The dimensions of centrality and proximity are maximal. The question of degrees of complicity does not arise; the relevant question is the gravity of the principal wrong.
Among people physically present but not directly acting, distinctions emerge. Someone who restrains, encourages, holds a door or keeps watch contributes in ways that may be central (the act would not have occurred without them) or peripheral (it would have occurred anyway). Proximity is high. Reversibility is high too: they could have stopped at any time, and their failure to do so, while the harm was ongoing, aggravates their contribution.
Spectators
A spectator who is present but does nothing presents the classic case of contiguity. On Lepora and Goodin’s view, mere presence is not contribution. But presence can shade into contribution if it encourages the principals or deters the victim, for example by adding to the sense of being outnumbered. Where the spectator’s presence has this effect and he knows it, his involvement moves from contiguity towards conniving, or even towards minor contributory complicity.
Forwarders
A forwarder who distributes images or messages is involved in two distinct wrongs. With respect to the underlying act, forwarding typically comes after the fact and is non-central: the assault, if any, did not depend on it. It is a form of condoning, and arguably of conniving if it signals approval to the principals during the episode. With respect to the distinct wrong of distributing intimate material, the forwarder is not complicit but a principal. His act is central, proximate and, crucially, irreversible: once material has been shared, it cannot be recalled. Lepora and Goodin’s reversibility dimension thus makes forwarding especially grave as a wrong in its own right.
Silent readers
A silent reader who receives messages in real time and does nothing is not a contributor in the ordinary sense. His relation to the act is closest to contiguity, though digital rather than physical. But two of Lepora and Goodin’s dimensions bear on him. Proximity: he was temporally proximate, able to act while the harm was ongoing. Reversibility: he could at any point have called for help. If one accepts that omissions can contribute when there is a duty to act, his failure has some contributory character. If not, his wrong is a failure of rescue rather than complicity. Where silence is understood within the group as assent, his involvement may shade into conniving.
Non-readers
A member of the chat who did not see the messages until later, or at all, stands at the outer edge. He has neither contributed nor been contiguous to the act. His only connection is membership of the group and, if he learned of the events later and did nothing, possibly a form of condoning. If he was shocked and acted afterwards, by reporting or dissociating, he is not complicit in any of Lepora and Goodin’s senses.
Lessons from the mapping
Three lessons emerge. First, the scheme shows how different the moral situations of group members can be, which tells against treating them as a single class. Second, reversibility is unexpectedly important. Both the forwarder and the silent reader faced choices that could not be undone after a certain point, and the irreversibility of the harm magnifies the significance of their choices. Third, the boundary between complicity and other forms of moral involvement, such as failure to rescue, condoning and consorting, is real and should be preserved. Not everyone involved in a wrong is complicit in it, but that does not make their involvement innocent.