Cooperation and Complicity

Suppose that it is wrong for A to act in a certain way, e.g. to defraud a business, or to kill an innocent person. Is it wrong for B to enable or assist A to do that? Here there are really two issues: 1) specifying what exactly enabling or assisting mean, and 2) given that specification, determining the nature and extent of B’s culpability. Assume that conspiring with A to do the thing in question makes one equally culpable, what about cooperating with A, does that make one complicit in the wrongdoing? In thinking about such issues (partly for the purpose of hearing confessions, judging culpability and assigning penances) Catholic moral theologians, following St Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) have drawn a distinction between formal and material cooperation with evil. B formally cooperates with A’s action, if B willingly participates in it, either directly by co-acting, or indirectly by assisting it with the intention that the action succeeds. On the other hand, B merely materially cooperates with A’s action if though B does not co-act or indirectly assist, but enables it to occur by, for example, providing A with equipment used in the fraud or killing, or by transporting A to a place where the actions are performed. Here B may not share in A’s intention but nonetheless B has enabled the action. Many further issues remain, for example whether B knew or suspected what A intended to do, or if, though B did not know or suspect this it was negligent of B not to have considered the likelihood or possibility of this. Although this may seem abstract it is very important in determining whether and to what extent an agent may be morally guilty.