Injustice and Structural Wrong: Reply to Sankaran and Monaghan and to Collins

2026/03/23 by David Estlund · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Neuroscience · Social Sciences · #Free Will and Agency #Philosophical Ethics and Theory #Political Philosophy and Ethics

paper · doi:10.1086/739646

openalex publication_date 2026/03/23 · openalex created_date 2026/03/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

This article defends my challenge to the influential idea that social structures can be wrong independently of individual wrongdoing. Responding to criticisms from Kirun Sankaran and Jake Monaghan and from Stephanie Collins, I maintain my position against their charges of presupposing or concluding with the “deontic view” that only agents can commit wrongs. I then explain why I think Collins’s positive account of how there might be structurally targeted grievance attitudes such as resentment is not successful.

Citations

• What’s Unjust about Structural Injustice?
• Putting the “Structural” Back in “Structural Injustice”
• Rage against the Machine

Discussions

• An ETHICS Discussion, with David Estlund defending his ETHICS article “What’s Unjust About Structural Injustice?” from recent Ethics replies to it in “Injustice and Structural Wrong: Reply to Sankaran [bsky, 8 points, 2 comments]

Related

• Putting the “Structural” Back in “Structural Injustice”
• What’s Unjust about Structural Injustice?
• Rage against the Machine
• Moral Criticism and Structural Injustice
• Rank Offence: The Ecological Theory of Resentment