From a Boston reader:
I read your post titled, On Black Reparations after having spent a fair amount of time recently at one of my favorite places, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In the museum, there are signs next to some pieces indicating that their provenance may include Nazi-era acquisitions in World War II Germany. If it's determined that any piece was acquired as a result of theft, illegal sales, etc. then every attempt is made to return it to the rightful owner or to the owner's heir, and this is judged to be a moral obligation. This made me think about how your argument against reparations would apply to such cases. But to make the case analogous in terms of the time that has elapsed between the crime and the proposed method of restitution, suppose the following argument is being made in 2091:
1. All of the perpetrators of the crimes associated with Nazi-era thefts of art in World War II Germany (and areas occupied by Germany at the time) are dead.
2. All of the victims of the crimes associated with Nazi-era thefts of art in World War II Germany are dead.
3. Only those who are victims of a crime are entitled to reparations for the crime, and only those who are the perpetrators of a crime are obliged to pay reparations for it.
Therefore
4. No one now living is entitled to receive reparations for the crimes associated with Nazi-era thefts of art in World War ii Germany, and no one now living is obliged to pay reparations. (Assume anyone owning such a piece was not aware, when he purchased it, of its Nazi-era provenance).
I wonder if such an argument could be run to refute the notion that such works should be returned to any living heirs, or to museums from which they might have been looted. It seems to me that counter this possibility, we might point out that one relevant disanalogy may be the fact that here we're dealing with concrete items — with property — and not with difficult (impossible?) to calculate contemporary harms caused by past wrongs. After all, it's easier to argue that Jones has been harmed by not owning a painting he would have plausibly (probably?) inherited were it not stolen than it is to argue that Smith has been harmed by the fact that his great-great-great grandfather was enslaved. But I'm not sure if this works, for the force of your argument doesn't come from pragmatic concerns like that, but from the moral issues involved, and they seem to apply with similar force to cases concerning whether one is obligated to return art of Nazi-era provenance to identifiable heirs. Do you think that the argument you've formulated would imply that, at least in 2091, Museums would not be obligated to return items acquired by Nazis and Nazi collaborators during World War II to identifiable heirs, and would you agree that if this is so, the conclusion minimally conflicts with our moral intuitions? Sorry for the length of the post, and thanks for taking the time to read it.
An interesting response.
I think the cases are disanalogous for reasons different from the one the reader mentions. Suppose a piece was stolen by the Nazis from the Louvre in Paris and it ends up in the MFA in Boston. Said piece is the property of the Louvre and ought to be returned there despite the fact that the Nazi thieves and the Louvre curators are all dead. The wrong was committed against the Louvre which continues to exist. And therein lies one point of disanalogy. The blacks who were enslaved and maltreated no longer exist. A second point of disanalogy is that when restitution is made nothing is taken from the MFA that it has a right to possess. But when a present-day non-black is forced to pay reparations to blacks he is having something taken from him that he has a right to possess.