Abstract

Normative discourse on genocide frequently refers to group injuries, but this can be problematic for those for whom normative justification ought, in principle, to be reducible to individual terms. Such ethical individualists may hold that an ultimately individualizable description of injury is always theoretically superior (in lacking either superfluous or ontologically suspect entities). Accepting the strictures of individualistic justification, this paper presumes that attributing injury to group subjects will be unsatisfying if this attribution does not include a normatively significant group character. Taking up these challenges, this essay analyzes the conceptual possibility of normatively significant group injury, describing its necessary and sufficient conditions.