In the next two chapters, I will address the value of groups and try to explain what the harm is when a group is destroyed. In the previous chapters, groups were shown to have no clear reality of their own. If this is true, then it seems that the value of groups would not be based on anything of their own either. But perhaps there are other ways to think of the harm to a group. I will examine three strategies. In the current chapter I will try to explain the harm of a group's destruction in terms of the loss to the group itself and also consider another strategy that the harm to a protected group entails harm to another group, humanity. Ultimately, both of these strategies will prove problematic. In the next chapter, I will try to explain the harm of a group's destruction in terms of a loss to the group's members. This strategy is less problematic, but still not completely satisfying, calling into question at very least the “supreme” value of loss of a group, and perhaps also rendering problematic the idea that genocide, as the intent to destroy a group, is the worst of all acts.

In the first section of this chapter, I will explain why groups have played such an important role in international law and how this could be true even though the destruction of a group does not necessarily mean that any person is killed.