Historic Injustices and the Moral Case for Cultural Repatriation

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (3):461-474 (2015)
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Abstract

It is commonly argued that cultural objects ought to be returned to their place of origin in order to remedy injustices committed in the past. In this paper, it is shown that significant challenges attach to this way of arguing. Although there is considerable intuitive appeal in the idea that if somebody wrongs another person then she ought to compensate for that injustice, the principle is difficult to apply to wrongdoings committed many decades or centuries ago. It is not clear that historic injustices can meaningfully be corrected, or compensated for, and there are several arguments why, even in cases where there is a prima facie moral case for compensation, repatriation might not be a legitimate means of remedy. In order to bring analytical clarity to the issue, this paper discusses the various steps of the argument that must be addressed in order to ground a valid repatriation claim based on historic injustices

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Author's Profile

Karin Edvardsson Björnberg
Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm

Citations of this work

Repatriation and the Radical Redistribution of Art.Erich Hatala Matthes - 2017 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 4:931-953.
The Ethics of Cultural Heritage.Erich Hatala Matthes - 2018 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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