Abstract
Collective obligations are not merely obligations to contribute to collective actions. Rather, an obligation that jointly attaches to two or more individuals is distinct from (but gives rise to) their individual contributory obligations. When agents are subject to such obligations, they may be responsible for the success of the collective action, such as coordinating the joint activity and generating the kind of group knowledge required for the group members to be able to fulfil their contributory actions. Further, they may have to pick up the slack left by others. The proposed view is not in violation of the agency principle, according to which only agents can hold moral duties, because collective obligations are ultimately held by individual moral agents, albeit jointly (the ‘ought’ itself is a joint ought).