What is Care Ethics?
Care ethics puts relationships at the center of ethical decision making. And relationships are built on care: relationships with distant strangers might consist of a general concern, whereas relationships with your family and friends might involve much more direct care-giving and care-receiving.
According to supporters of care ethics, care is universal: no matter what culture or community you belong to, you experience care. This fact makes care a great foundation for ethics.
The ultimate test of ethical behavior, then, is how that behavior expresses care. We can be selfish, only caring for ourselves. We can be selfless, only caring for others. According to care theory, ethical behavior strikes a balance between selfishness and selflessness. This is “moral maturity, wherein the needs of both self and other are understood.”
https://matthewstrom.com/ethics/care-ethics/
Care ethicists believe their approach can, indeed should, guide all of us in moral decision-making, regardless of our gender and the particular dilemmas we face. Through reflection on the lived reality of ethical decision-making, care ethicists are led to the following ideas:
- Responsibilities derive from relationships between particular people, rather than from abstract rules and principles;
- Decision-making should be sympathy-based rather than duty- or principle-based;
- Personal relationships have a value that is often overlooked by other theories;
- At least some responsibilities aim at fulfilling the needs of vulnerable persons (including their need for empowerment), rather than the universal rights of rational agents;
- Morality demands not just one-off acts, but also ongoing patterns of actions and attitudes.
Most importantly, care ethicists believe morality demands ongoing actions and attitudes of care, in addition to (or even in priority to) those of respect, non-interference and tit-for-tat reciprocity — which care ethicists see as over-emphasised in other ethical theories. Importantly, however, care ethicists do not claim that other theories get nothing right: care ethics is not a theory of the whole of ethics or morality, but of important parts of it that have been inadequately appreciated by other theories.
So let me lay out what I deem to be the four distinguishing claims of care ethics, and why we need the resources and insights of care ethics now, more than ever:
- Scepticism about moral principles: Deliberation should include sympathy and direct attendance to concrete particulars.
- The importance of personal relationships: To the extent that they have value to individuals in the relationship, relationships ought to be treated as moral paradigms, valued, preserved or promoted, and acknowledged as giving rise to weighty duties.
- The need for caring attitudes: Agents should have caring attitudes — that is, attitudes that: (i) have as their object something that has interests, or something that might affect something that has interests; and that (ii) are a positive response to those interests; and that (iii) lead the agent’s affects, desires, decisions, attention or so on to be influenced by how the agent believes things are going with the interest-bearer.
- The centrality of caring actions: Agents should perform actions that are performed under the intention of fulfilling (or going some way to fulfilling) interest(s) that the agent perceives some moral person (the recipient) to have; the strength of this “should” is determined by the moral value of action, which is a function of the strength of the intention, the likelihood that the action will fulfil the interest, and the extent to which the interest is appropriately described as a “need.”
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/why-we-should-care-about-care-ethics/12087656
The Ethics of Care — Central Assumptions
Proponents of the ethics of care perspective are concerned that the predominant ethical theories—especially deontology and teleology—are too reliant on universal standards that do not take into consideration the critically important role of human relationships and interdependency.
According to philosophers Richard Burnor, PhD, and Yvonne Raley, PhD, in their work Ethical Choices: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy with Cases, there is evidence of two moral perspectives; men tend to employ the justice perspective, while women more often employ the care perspective. Recent attention to the care perspective has given rise to the ethics of care. In presenting and defending this new approach to ethics, care theorists have rejected the universalism, rationalism, and individualism of traditional theories. Instead of focusing upon the universal rights and obligations of individuals, care theorists have built their theory around relationships. They claim that special responsibilities can arise within particular relationships (particularism) that do not hold universally; they also see certain relation-building emotions as being no less important than reason. Finally, they suggest that even our personal autonomy is partly produced by our relationships.
Key themes in the ethics of care include the following: the centrality of caring relationships;
- The various shared ties of mutuality;
- The view that caring both establishes and transforms who we are as people;
- The requirement that genuine caring gives rise to actions that address actual needs; and the fact that
- As a normative theory, care ethics has important implications for people's relationships, for people as individuals, and for how we might nurture caring values in others.
https://www.socialworktoday.com/news/eoe_0916.shtml
The Relational Ontology
One characteristic feature of the ethics of care, and also a reason for its swift growth and applicability, is its relational ontology. The ethics of care depicts the moral agent not primarily in terms of independence, equality of power and influence, enjoying almost unrestricted freedom to enter and dissolve contracts. Rather, it conceives agents as mutually interconnected, vulnerable and dependent, often in asymmetric ways. This approach lets us visualize the moral agent as a “mother–child-dyad”, for example, instead of the “autonomous-man-model”, coined by among others Sarah Ruddich and Virginia Held. The conception’s transformation took place within the sub-discipline of meta-ethics, but its implications have spread much further afield. What makes this particular model of the moral agent useful as a wider behavioral metaphor for ethicists is its capacity to capture significant features of man’s interaction in general, such as reciprocity, dependency, connectedness and asymmetry. These features are present, to various degrees, in all types of relationships and interaction, not only in what we call intimate relationships. And while this conceptualization does indeed have room for important features of intimate and private relationships, easily overlooked by the “autonomous-man-model”, it extends to moral agents outside the private domain—at work, and in the social and global arena as demonstrated by among others Joan Tronto and Virginia Held. For instance, instead of depicting nations as sovereign, self-sufficient and equal in strength, one can envisaging them as relational, mutually dependent, but often unequal in power and resources.
The relational model allows also for a wider understanding of who the moral agents are: they are not only individuals but also groups, institutions and nations. Consequently, it manages to capture interaction between groups, as well as interaction between groups, institutions and individuals. Relationships transcend boundaries separating the private from the public, the individual from the collective. These “inter-category” relations differ, sometimes quite significantly, from relations within categories, such as between friends, independent citizens or equally powerful states. These mixed relations are embedded in everyday life, and are frequently weighted in favor of one side. Involvement is often involuntary and sometimes coerced; access to power and resources is uneven, as is vulnerability to abuse. In asymmetric relationships, the dominant figure may have almost total power over the other’s life and prospects.
People’s relationships extend in all directions. Some will engender care, others will stifle its growth and give way to conflict, abuse and violence. Care ethicists should therefore study all kinds of relationships, not only private and professional. As the ethics of care accentuates different features than other theories, e.g., harm caused by lack of care, the agents’ vulnerability and dependency, and how they are situated in particular power- and resource situations, it also identifies certain ethical challenges other theories tend to neglect. For instance, the ethics of care is as a result of its focus on interactions, alert to structural violence, i.e. to injuries caused by the way society is organized. Structural violence infects relationships between institutions and individuals, and is characterized precisely by lack of care between unequal parties, such as the global corporation vis-à-vis the individual. Such harm can be inflicted slowly and might not be immediately apparent. It can take place even if rights are not violated, and the overall good is maximized. When the dominant party (which might be a global corporation or a health authority) forces the less empowered party (who might be a child or health worker) to acquiesce to or subject themselves (or others) to harmful schemes, the relationship counts as abusive. Disempowerment can cause conflict—at the level of the individual and family as well as of the state.
The political scientist and care ethicist Fiona Robinson’s discussion on corporate social responsibility is an example of how to understand care and responsibility in such asymmetric “intercategory” relations. Corporate social responsibility is the transnational corporate partnerships’ responsibility to assume accountability for the social and natural environment they operate in, and for their economic and social impact. Robinson demonstrates how the ethics of care, with its contextualized focus, can capture certain types of harm more easily than other theories, and how moral arguments springing from the ethics of care can be used against structural violence. Hence, a different normative approach, could pave the way for a more caring environment.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3037474/
Ethics Explainer: Ethics of Care
Ethics of care is a feminist approach to ethics. It challenges traditional moral theories as male centric and problematic to the extent they omit or downplay values and virtues usually culturally associated with women or with roles that are often cast as ‘feminine’.
The best example of this may be seen in how ethics of care differs from two dominant normative moral theories of the 18th and 19th century. The first is deontology, best associated with Immanuel Kant. And the second utilitarianism, attributed to Jeremy Bentham and improved upon by John Stuart Mill.
They each require the moral agent to be unemotional. Moral decision making is thus expected to be rational and logical, with a focus on universal, objective rules. In contrast, ethics of care defends some emotions, such as care or compassion, as moral.
On this view, there is not a dichotomy between reason and the emotions – as some emotions may be reasonable and morally appropriate in guiding good decisions or actions. Feminist ethics also recognises that rules must be applied in a context, and real life moral decision making is influenced by the relationships we have with those around us.
Instead of asking the moral decision maker to be unbiased, the caring moral agent will consider that one’s duty may be greater to those they have particular bonds with, or to others who are powerless rather than powerful.
In a Different Voice
Traditional proponents of feminist care ethics include 20th century theorists Carol Gilligan (b. 1936) and Nel Noddings (b. 1929). Gilligan’s influential 1982 book, In a Different Voice, claimed that Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis and Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development were biased and male oriented.
On these dominant psychological accounts of human development, male development is taken as standard, and female development is often judged as inferior in various ways.
Gilligan argued if women are ‘more emotional’ than men, and pay more attention to relationships rather than rules, this is not a sign of their being less ethical, but, rather, of different values, that are equally valuable. While Gilligan may have deemed these differences to be ‘natural’ and associated with sex rather than gender, these differences may well have been socially constructed and therefore the result of ‘nurture’.
How might the ethics of care theorist resolve the classical ‘Heinz’ dilemma: should a moral agent steal the required medicine he cannot afford to buy to give to his very sick wife, or stick to the rule ‘do not steal’, regardless of the circumstances? A tricky dilemma to be sure as there are competing duties here (namely, a positive duty to help those in need as well as a negative duty to avoid stealing).
Arguably, the caring person would place the relationship with one’s spouse above any relationship they may or may not have with the pharmacist, and care or compassion or love would outweigh a rule (or a law) in this case, leading to the conclusion that the right thing to do is to steal the medicine.
Note: the utilitarian may also claim a moral agent should steal the medicine because saving the wife’s life is a better outcome than whatever negative consequences may result from stealing. However, the reasoning that leads to this conclusion is based on unemotional weighing of costs and benefits, rather than a consideration of the relationships involved and asking what love might demand.
Writing at the same time as Gilligan, Noddings also defended care as a particular form of moral relationship. She sees children as naturally caring (with the exception of sociopaths and psychopaths) and claims this is a prerequisite for ethical caring. While Noddings does not rule men out from being caring, it is usually women who feature in her examples of caregivers. Noddings, like Gilligan, prioritises relationships that are between specific individuals in a particular context as the basis for ethical behaviour. This stands in contrast to the idea that morality involves following a universal, abstract moral rule.
Who cares?
Ethics of care has been influential in areas such as education, counselling, nursing and medicine. Yet there have also been feminist criticisms. Some worry that linking women to the trait of caring maintains a sexist stereotype and encourages women to continue to nurture others, to their own detriment, and even while society fails to value carers as they ought. While Noddings claims moral agents also need to care for themselves, this is so they are better able to continue caring for others.
Obviously, it is not only women who care or who take on caregiving roles (paid or unpaid). Yet empathetic professions such as nursing, teaching, childcare, and counselling are female dominated, and women still do the majority of unpaid caring roles including childrearing and domestic duties in the home.
So let’s hear it for the carers, and support policies that seek fair remuneration, equal respect and value for those in caregiving roles.
BY
Dr Laura D’Olimpio is senior lecturer in philosophy of education at the University of Birmingham, UK, and co-edits the Journal of Philosophy in Schools.
https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-ethics-of-care/
The ethics of care is a normative ethical theory often considered a type of virtue ethics. Dominant traditional ethical theories such as utilitarianism and Kantian deontological ethics developed ethical theories based on an understanding of society as the aggregate of autonomous, rational individuals with an emphasis on rules, duties, justice, rights, impartiality, universality, utility and preference satisfaction; care ethics, on the other hand, developed based on the understanding of the individual as an interdependent, relational being and emphasized the importance of human relationships and emotion based virtues such as benevolence, mercy, care, friendship, reconciliation, and sensitivity. In care ethics, the family is the primary sphere of morality where a person can cultivate his or her character.
Care ethics was initially developed by psychologist Carol Gilligan during the 1960s from a feminist perspective. Since then, it has been widely applied in various professional fields such as nursing, health care, education, international relations, law, and politics. While both care ethics and Confucian ethics consider the family as the foundation of ethics, care ethics is critical of the Confucian patriarchal perspective, or at least a patriarchal interpretation of Confucian ethics.
Characteristics
Ethics of care is sometimes called "ethics of love" or "relational ethics," which has several notable characteristics in contrast to two traditional normative ethical theories: Utilitarianism and Kantian deontological ethics. While ethics of care is considered a virtue ethics, it is also different from traditional Aristotelian virtue ethics. Although some care ethics theorists reject generalization, ethics of care has some notable common characteristics.
Dependency and interdependency of human existence
Traditional ethical theories presuppose that a moral agent is an autonomous, independent individual. Care ethics, however, points out the fact that a human being is essentially dependent on others. Children are dependent upon parents, the elderly is dependent on their children or other care takers, and handicapped persons have to rely on others. Each human being goes through a process of dependency according to his or her age or physical or mental conditions.
Human life presupposes and is possible only by the care and support humans offer each other. Parents have a moral responsibility to care for their children and children have moral responsibility to care for the elderly. Thus, human beings exist in interdependent relationships that entail ethical responsibilities.
Emotion as the essential human nature
Traditional ethics are built upon the primacy of reason. They value reason as a stable faculty of mind over emotion, which they viewed as unstable, changeable, ephemeral, and less important. While care ethics recognizes the value of reason, it recognizes the importance of feeling or emotion and related virtues such as benevolence, compassion, sensitivity, responsiveness, and sympathy. The emotions that traditional ethics have rejected are egoistic, impartial emotional attachments which brings about favoritism, resentment, hatred, and other negative or destructive feelings.
Prioritization of human relations
Traditional theories focus on establishing abstract, universal rules and principles in consideration of impartiality. Yet, in human life, not all human relationships are equal. For example, while caring for all children on the earth is noble and important, caring for one's own child is an immediate and direct responsibility the parent.
Care ethics recognizes the importance of limited impartiality and prioritization of human relationships.
Family as the unit of society
Traditional ethics operate within a framework constituted by the relationship between individuals and society. Primary ethical concepts such as justice, universality, impartiality, and duty are all discussed within this framework. The family does not play any specific role in this framework; in fact, the family is a "private" realm in which the public or sphere (government) does not and should not interfere.
On the other hand, the ethics of care considers the family as the primary sphere in which to understand ethical behavior. It considers the family as an ontologically, epistemologically, and morally important sphere where virtues are cultivated and inherited.
This family-based perspective can be compared with the role of the family in Confucian ethics. There are, however, some differences. First, because care ethics developed within a Western tradition, it contains more critical, analytical elements. Second, while the concept of family in care ethics is usually limited to immediate family members, it is extended to one's ancestors in Confucian ethics. Third, care ethics question the patriarchal aspect of Confucian ethics.
Interdependency of a person
The concept of person in traditional ethical theories tends to view the individual as independent, isolated, rational, and self-interested. Care ethics, however, views a person as interdependent, integral (emotion, reason, and will), and relational. It argues that the concept of self can be properly defined only when the person is understood as interdependent and relational being. The concept of the liberal individual is an abstract, illusory concept.
Historical background
The ethics of care was initially inspired by the work of psychologist Carol Gilligan. Early in her career, Carol Gilligan worked with psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg while he was researching his theory of moral development. Gilligan's work on women's moral development arose in response to the seemingly male-based results that arose from Kohlberg's studies.
Gilligan and others have suggested that the history of ethics in Western culture has emphasized the justice view of morality because it is the outlook that has traditionally been cultivated and shared by men. By contrast, women have traditionally been taught a different kind of moral outlook that emphasizes solidarity, community, and caring about one's special relationships. This "care view" of morality has been ignored or trivialized because women were traditionally in positions of limited power and influence.
The justice view of morality focuses on doing the right thing even if it requires personal cost or sacrificing the interest of those to whom one is close. The care view would instead say that we can and should put the interests of those who are close to us above the interests of complete strangers, and that we should cultivate our natural capacity to care for others and ourselves.
Nel Noddings' Relational ethics
Following Carol Gilligan’s seminal work in the ethics of care In a Different Voice (1982), Nel Noddings developed "relational ethics" in her Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (1984).
Like Carol Gilligan, Noddings accepts that justice based approaches, which are supposed to be more masculine, are genuine alternatives to ethics of care. However, unlike Gilligan, Noddings believes that caring, 'rooted in receptivity, relatedness, and responsiveness' is a more basic and preferable approach to ethics.
The key to understanding Noddings' ethics of care is to understand her notion of caring and ethical caring in particular.
Engrossment
Noddings believes that it would be a mistake to try to provide a systematic examination of the requirements for caring, nevertheless, she does suggest three requirements for caring (Caring 1984, 11-12). She argues that the carer (one-caring) must exhibit engrossment and motivational displacement, and the person who is cared for (cared-for) must respond in some way to the caring. Noddings' term engrossment refers to thinking about someone in order to gain a greater understanding of him or her. Engrossment is necessary for caring because an individual's personal and physical situation must be understood before the one-caring can determine the appropriateness of any action. 'Engrossment' need not entail, as the term seems to suggest, a deep fixation on the other. It requires only the attention needed to some to understand the position of the other. Engrossment could not on its own constitute caring; someone could have a deep understanding of another person, yet act against that person's interests. Motivational displacement prevents this from occurring. Motivational displacement occurs when the one-caring's behavior is largely determined by the needs of the person for whom she is caring. On its own, motivational displacement would also be insufficient for ethical caring. For example, someone who acted primarily from a desire to accomplish something for another person, but failed to think carefully enough about that other person's needs (failed to be correctly engrossed in the other), would fail to care. Finally, Noddings believes that caring requires some form of recognition from the cared-for that the one-caring is, in fact, caring. When there is a recognition of and response to the caring by the person cared for, Noddings describes the caring as "completed in the other."
Natural caring and ethical caring
Nel Noddings draws an important distinction between natural caring and ethical caring. Noddings distinguishes between acting because "I want" and acting because "I must." When I care for someone because "I want" to care, say I hug a friend who needs hugging in an act of love, Noddings claims that I am engaged in natural caring. When I care for someone because "I must" care, say I hug an acquaintance who needs hugging in spite of my desire to escape that person's pain, according to Noddings, I am engaged in ethical caring. Ethical caring occurs when a person acts caringly out of a belief that caring is the appropriate way of relating to people. When someone acts in a caring way because that person naturally cares for another, the caring is not ethical caring.
Noddings' claims that ethical caring is based on, and so dependent on, natural caring. It is through experiencing others caring for them and naturally caring for others that people build what is called an "ethical ideal," an image of the kind of person they want to be.
Diminishment of ethical ideal and evil
Noddings describes wrong actions in terms of "a diminishment of the ethical ideal" and "evil." A person's ethical ideal is diminished when she either chooses or is forced to act in a way that rejects her internal call to care. In effect, her image of the best person it is possible for her to be is altered in a way that lowers her ideal. According to Noddings, people and organizations can deliberately or carelessly contribute to the diminishment of other's ethical ideals. They may do this by teaching people not to care, or by placing them in conditions that prevent them from being able to care.. A person is evil if, in spite of her ability to do otherwise, she either fails to personally care for someone, or prevents others from caring. Noddings writes, "[when] one intentionally rejects the impulse to care and deliberately turns her back on the ethical, she is evil, and this evil cannot be redeemed."
Criticisms
Although the ethics of care was developed as part of a feminist movement, some feminists have criticized care-based ethics for reinforcing traditional stereotypes of a 'good woman'.
Those who accept more traditional approaches to ethics argue that care ethics can promote favoritism which violates fairness and impartiality.
Care ethics is still at an early stage of development and must address various issues, including how it can integrate traditional ethical values such as justice, impartiality, and others.
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Ethics_of_care
Care Ethics
The ethics of care (alternatively care ethics or EoC) is a normative ethical theory that holds that moral action centers on interpersonal relationships and care or benevolence as a virtue. EoC is one of a cluster of normative ethical theories that were developed by feminists in the second half of the twentieth century. While consequentialist and deontological ethical theories emphasize generalizable standards and impartiality, ethics of care emphasize the importance of response to the individual. The distinction between the general and the individual is reflected in their different moral questions: "what is just?" versus "how to respond?". Carol Gilligan, who is considered the originator of the ethics of care, criticized the application of generalized standards as "morally problematic, since it breeds moral blindness or indifference".
Some assumptions of the theory are basic:
1 - Persons are understood to have varying degrees of dependence and interdependence on one another.
2 - Other individuals affected by the consequences of one's choices deserve consideration in proportion to their vulnerability.
3 - Situational details determine how to safeguard and promote the interests of those involved.
While some feminists have criticized care-based ethics for reinforcing traditional stereotypes of a "good woman" others have embraced parts of this paradigm under the theoretical concept of care-focused feminism.
Care-focused feminism, alternatively called gender feminism, is a branch of feminist thought informed primarily by ethics of care as developed by Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings . This body of theory is critical of how caring is socially engendered, being assigned to women and consequently devalued. "Care-focused feminists regard women's capacity for care as a human strength" which can and should be taught to and expected of men as well as women. Noddings proposes that ethical caring has the potential to be a more concrete evaluative model of moral dilemma, than an ethic of justice. Noddings' care-focused feminism requires practical application of relational ethics , predicated on an ethic of care.
Ethics of care is also a basis for care-focused feminist theorizing on maternal ethics. These theories recognize caring as an ethically relevant issue. Critical of how society engenders caring labor, theorists Sara Ruddick , Virginia Held , and Eva Feder Kittay suggest caring should be performed and care givers valued in both public and private spheres. This proposed paradigm shift in ethics encourages the view that an ethic of caring be the social responsibility of both men and women.
Joan Tronto argues that the definition of the term "ethic of care" is ambiguous due in part to the lack of a central role it plays in moral theory. She argues that considering moral philosophy is engaged with human goodness, then care would appear to assume a significant role in this type of philosophy. However, this is not the case and Tronto further stresses the association between care and "naturalness". The latter term refers to the socially and culturally constructed gender roles where care is mainly assumed to be the role of the woman. As such, care loses the power to take a central role in moral theory.
Tronto states there are four ethical qualities of care:
Attentiveness - Attentiveness is crucial to the ethics of care because care requires a recognition of others' needs in order to respond to them. The question which arises is the distinction between ignorance and inattentiveness. Tronto poses this question as such, "But when is ignorance simply ignorance, and when is it inattentiveness"?
Responsibility - In order to care, we must take it upon ourselves, thus responsibility. The problem associated with this second ethical element of responsibility is the question of obligation. Obligation is often, if not already, tied to pre-established societal and cultural norms and roles. Tronto makes the effort to differentiate the terms "responsibility" and "obligation" with regards to the ethic of care. Responsibility is ambiguous, whereas obligation refers to situations where action or reaction is due, such as the case of a legal contract. This ambiguity allows for ebb and flow in and between class structures and gender roles, and to other socially constructed roles that would bind responsibility to those only befitting of those roles.
Competence - To provide care also means competency. One cannot simply acknowledge the need to care, accept the responsibility, but not follow through with enough adequacy - as such action would result in the need of care not being met.
Responsiveness - This refers to the "responsiveness of the care receiver to the care". Tronto states, "Responsiveness signals an important moral problem within care: by its nature, care is concerned with conditions of vulnerability and inequality". She further argues responsiveness does not equal reciprocity. Rather, it is another method to understand vulnerability and inequality by understanding what has been expressed by those in the vulnerable position, as opposed to re-imagining oneself in a similar situation.
In 2013, Tronto added a fifth ethical quality:
Plurality, communication, trust and respect; solidarity — caring with
Together, these are the qualities necessary for people to come together in order to take collective responsibility, to understand their citizenship as always imbricated in relations of care, and to take seriously the nature of caring needs in society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_care
The Range of Caring; Kin Altruism, Reciprocal Altruism and Tribalism - Ethics of Care and Evolution.
Domains of Caring
Fraternal Domain
The Fair Deal Emotional Domain
Us/Them - ingroup care, outgroup anti-care
Care & Anti-Care Domains
3 to 4 domains of caring
http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1692-88572011000100006
9. What are important issues for the ethics of care in the
future?
To address the question of why the ethics of care is still embattled (especially in the U.S.) but also now in Europe), to consider the ethics of care in light of new evidence in the human sciences that as humans we are by nature empathic and responsive beings, hard-wired for cooperation. Rather than asking how do we gain the capacity to care, the questions become how do we come not to care; how do we lose the capacity for empathy and mutual understanding? It is also crucial to clarify that within a patriarchal framework, the ethics of care is a “feminine” ethic, whereas within a democratic framework it is a human ethic, grounded in core democratic values: the importance of everyone having a voice and being listened to carefully and heard with respect. The premise of equal voice then allows conflicts to be addressed in relationships. Different voices then become integral to the vitality of a democratic society.
A feminist ethic of care is an ethic of resistance to the injustices inherent in patriarchy (the association of care and caring with women rather than with humans, the feminization of care work, the rendering of care as subsidiary to justice—a matter of special obligations or interpersonal relationships). A feminist ethic of care guides the historic struggle to free democracy from patriarchy; it is the ethic of a democratic society, it transcends the gender binaries and hierarchies that structure patriarchal institutions and cultures. An ethics of care is key to human survival and also to the realization of a global society.
https://ethicsofcare.org/carol-gilligan/
1. History and Major Authors
a. Carol Gilligan
While early strains of care ethics can be detected in the writings of feminist philosophers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Catherine and Harriet Beecher, and Charlotte Perkins, it was first most explicitly articulated by Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings in the early 1980s. While a graduate student at Harvard, Gilligan wrote her dissertation outlining a different path of moral development than the one described by Lawrence Kohlberg, her mentor. Kohlberg had posited that moral development progressively moves toward more universalized and principled thinking and had also found that girls, when later included in his studies, scored significantly lower than boys. Gilligan faulted Kohlberg’s model of moral development for being gender biased, and reported hearing a “different voice” than the voice of justice presumed in Kohlberg’s model. She found that both men and women articulated the voice of care at different times, but noted that the voice of care, without women, would nearly fall out of their studies. Refuting the charge that the moral reasoning of girls and women is immature because of its preoccupation with immediate relations, Gilligan asserted that the “care perspective” was an alternative, but equally legitimate form of moral reasoning obscured by masculine liberal justice traditions focused on autonomy and independence. She characterized this difference as one of theme, however, rather than of gender.
Gilligan articulated these thematic perspectives through the moral reasoning of “Jake” and “Amy”, two children in Kohlberg’s studies responding to the “Heinz dilemma”. In this dilemma, the children are asked whether a man, “Heinz”, should have stolen an overpriced drug to save the life of his ill wife. Jake sees the Heinz dilemma as a math problem with people wherein the right to life trumps the right to property, such that all people would reasonably judge that Heinz ought to steal the drug. Amy, on the other hand, disagrees that Heinz should steal the drug, lest he should go to prison and leave his wife in another predicament. She sees the dilemma as a narrative of relations over time, involving fractured relationships that must be mended through communication. Understanding the world as populated with networks of relationships rather than people standing alone, Amy is confident that the druggist would be willing to work with Heinz once the situation was explained. Gilligan posited that men and women often speak different languages that they think are the same, and she sought to correct the tendency to take the male perspective as the prototype for humanity in moral reasoning.
Later, Gilligan vigorously resisted readings of her work that posit care ethics as relating to gender more than theme, and even established the harmony of care and justice ethics (1986), but she never fully abandoned her thesis of an association between women and relational ethics. She further developed the idea of two distinct moral “voices”, and their relationship to gender in Mapping the Moral Domain: A Contribution of Women’s Thinking to Psychological Theory and Education (Gilligan, Ward, and Taylor, 1988), a collection of essays that traced the predominance of the “justice perspective” within the fields of psychology and education, and the implications of the excluded “care perspective”. In Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School, Gilligan and her co-editors argued that the time between the ages of eleven and sixteen is crucial to girls’ formation of identity, being the time when girls learn to silence their inner moral intuitions in favor of more rule bound interpretations of moral reasoning (Gilligan, Lyons, and Hamner, 1990, 3). Gilligan found that in adulthood women are encouraged to resolve the crises of adolescence by excluding themselves or others, that is, by being good/responsive, or by being selfish/independent. As a result, women’s adolescent voices of resistance become silent, and they experience a dislocation of self, mind, and body, which may be reflected in eating disorders, low leadership aspiration, and self-effacing sexual choices. Gilligan also expanded her ideas in a number of articles and reports (Gilligan, 1979; 1980; 1982; 1987).
b. Nel Noddings
In 1984 Noddings published Caring, in which she developed the idea of care as a feminine ethic, and applied it to the practice of moral education. Starting from the presumption that women “enter the practical domain of moral action…through a different door”, she ascribed to feminine ethics a preference for face-to face moral deliberation that occurs in real time, and appreciation of the uniqueness of each caring relationship. Drawing conceptually from a maternal perspective, Noddings understood caring relationships to be basic to human existence and consciousness. She identified two parties in a caring relationship—“one-caring” and the “cared-for”—and affirmed that both parties have some form of obligation to care reciprocally and meet the other morally, although not in the same manner. She characterized caring as an act of “engrossment” whereby the one-caring receives the cared-for on their own terms, resisting projection of the self onto the cared-for, and displacing selfish motives in order to act on the behalf of the cared-for. Noddings located the origin of ethical action in two motives, the human affective response that is a natural caring sentiment, and the memory of being cared-for that gives rise to an ideal self. Noddings rejected universal principles for prescribed action and judgment, arguing that care must always be contextually applied.
Noddings identified two stages of caring, “caring-for” and “caring-about”. The former stage refers to actual hands-on application of caring services, and the latter to a state of being whereby one nurtures caring ideas or intentions. She further argued that the scope of caring obligation is limited. This scope of caring is strongest towards others who are capable of reciprocal relationship. The caring obligation is conceived of as moving outward in concentric circles so enlarged care is increasingly characterized by a diminished ability for particularity and contextual judgment, which prompted Noddings to speculate that it is impossible to care-for everyone. She maintained that while the one-caring has an obligation to care-for proximate humans and animals to the extent that they are needy and able to respond to offerings of care, there is a lesser obligation to care for distant others if there is no hope that care will be completed. These claims proved to be highly controversial, and Noddings later revised them somewhat. In her more recent book Starting From Home, Noddings endorsed a stronger obligation to care about distant humans, and affirms caring-about as an important motivational stage for inspiring local and global justice, but continued to hold that it is impossible to care-for all, especially distant others. (See 3a.iv below)
c. Other Influential authors
Although many philosophers have developed care ethics, five authors are especially notable.
i. Annette Baier
Annette Baier observes certain affinities between care ethics and the moral theory of David Hume, whom she dubs the “women’s moral theorist.” Baier suggests both deny that morality consists in obedience to a universal law, emphasizing rather the importance of cultivating virtuous sentimental character traits, including gentleness, agreeability, compassion, sympathy, and good temperedness (1987, 42). Baier specially underscores trust, a basic relation between particular persons, as the fundamental concept of morality, and notes its obfuscation within theories premised on abstract and autonomous agents. She recommends carving out room for the development of moral emotions and harmonizing the ideals of care and justice.
ii. Virginia Held
Virginia Held is the editor and author of many books pertaining to care ethics. In much of her work she seeks to move beyond ideals of liberal justice, arguing that they are not as much flawed as limited, and examines how social relations might be different when modeled after mothering persons and children. Premised on a fundamental non-contractual human need for care, Held construes care as the most basic moral value. In Feminist Morality (1993), Held explores the transformative power of creating new kinds of social persons, and the potentially distinct culture and politics of a society that sees as “its most important task the flourishing of children and the creation of human relationships”. She describes feminist ethics as committed to actual experience, with an emphasis on reason and emotion, literal rather than hypothetical persons, embodiment, actual dialogue, and contextual, lived methodologies. In The Ethics of Care (2006), Held demonstrates the relevance of care ethics to political, social and global questions. Conceptualizing care as a cluster of practices and values, she describes a caring person as one who has appropriate motivations to care for others and who participates adeptly in effective caring practices. She argues for limiting both market provisions for care and the need for legalistic thinking in ethics, asserting that care ethics has superior resources for dealing with the power and violence that imbues all relations, including those on the global level. Specifically, she recommends a view of a globally interdependent civil society increasingly dependent upon an array of caring NGOs for solving problems. She notes: “The small societies of family and friendship embedded in larger societies are formed by caring relations… A globalization of caring relations would help enable people of different states and cultures to live in peace, to respect each others’ rights, to care together for their environments, and to improve the lives of their children”(168). Ultimately, she argues that rights based moral theories presume a background of social connection, and that when fore-grounded, care ethics can help to create communities that promote healthy social relations, rather than the near boundless pursuit of self-interest.
iii. Eva Feder Kittay
Eva Feder Kittay is another prominent care ethicist. Her book, Women and Moral Theory (1987), co-edited with Diana T. Meyers, is one the most significant anthologies in care ethics to date. In this work they map conceptual territory inspired by Gilligan’s work, both critically and supportively, by exploring major philosophical themes such as self and autonomy, ethical principles and universality, feminist moral theory, and women and politics. In Love’s Labor (1999), Kittay develops a dependency based account of equality rooted in the activity of caring for the seriously disabled. Kittay holds that the principles in egalitarian theories of justice, such as those of John Rawls, depend upon more fundamental principles and practices of care, and that without supplementation such theories undermine themselves (108). Kittay observes that in practice some women have been able to leave behind traditional care-giving roles only because other women have filled them, but she resists the essentialist association between women and care by speaking of “dependency workers” and “dependency relations”. She argues that equality for dependency workers and the unavoidably dependent will only be achieved through conceptual and institutional reform. Employing expanded ideals of fairness and reciprocity that take interdependence as basic, Kittay poses a third principle for Rawls’ theory of justice: “To each according to his or her need, from each to his or her capacity for care, and such support from social institutions as to make available resources and opportunities to those providing care” (113). She more precisely calls for the public provision of Doulas, paid professional care-workers who care for care-givers, and uses the principle of Doula to justify welfare for all care-givers, akin to worker’s compensation or unemployment benefits.
iv. Sara Ruddick
Held identifies Sara Ruddick as the original pioneer of the theory of care ethics, citing Ruddick’s 1980 article “Maternal Thinking” as the first articulation of a distinctly feminine approach to ethics. In this article, and in her later book of the same title (1989), Ruddick uses care ethical methodology to theorize from the lived experience of mothering, rendering a unique approach to moral reasoning and a ground for a feminist politics of peace. Ruddick explains how the practices of “maternal persons” (who may be men or women), exhibit cognitive capacities or conceptions of virtue with larger moral relevance. Ruddick’s analysis, which forges strong associations between care ethics and motherhood, has been both well-received and controversial (see Section 6, below).
v. Joan Tronto
Joan Tronto is most known for exploring the intersections of care ethics, feminist theory, and political science. She sanctions a feminist care ethic designed to thwart the accretion of power to the existing powerful, and to increase value for activities that legitimize shared power. She identifies moral boundaries that have served to privatize the implications of care ethics, and highlights the political dynamics of care relations which describe, for example, the tendency of women and other minorities to perform care work in ways that benefit the social elite. She expands the phases of care to include “caring about”, “taking care of” (assuming responsibility for care), “care-giving” (the direct meeting of need), and “care-receiving”. She coins the phrase “privileged irresponsibility” to describe the phenomenon that allows the most advantaged in society to purchase caring services, delegate the work of care-giving, and avoid responsibility for the adequacy of hands-on care. (See Sections 2 and 8 below).
https://iep.utm.edu/care-eth/
From ethics of care to psychology of care: reconnecting ethics of care to contemporary moral psychology…
Replacing Ethics of Care With Psychology of Care
If we were to strip the psychology of care ethics (elsewhere I have called it an attachment approach to moral judgment, Govrin, 2014), of all the components that have been refuted by empirical research, we would be left with just one main psychological element of the theory: the idea that care giving and the primary relations between mother and child are of central importance to moral judgment. This idea constitutes a breakthrough in moral psychology that is yet to be properly understood. Though originally ethics of care emphasized this link, it did not dwell on its universal importance to the development of moral thinking for both men and women.
As opposed to ethics of care, psychology of care should base its development on our common universal experience of caring and being cared for as a child. Human survival is dependent on the existence of caring relationships, a fact that clearly applies to both genders. Infants would not survive were it not for the presence of a caregiver. Moreover, the practice of care is also of importance when it meets more than just the bare requirements of survival. Having survived infancy, children are unlikely to develop well in the next stages of life unless they are loved and valued for who they are. By stressing the extent to which humans are dependent and in need of significant levels of care from others, care psychology can make a hugely important contribution to moral psychology. Any moral psychology that does not take dependency into account is necessarily inadequate (Held, 2006).
The idea that the care given at the beginning of life is central to the development of moral mechanisms, is consistent with moral psychology’s search in recent years for the “universal factor” underlying moral judgment. For example, an important theory in moral psychology known as Universal Moral Grammar (UMG), is ultimately predicated on a belief that every human being possesses a faculty of moral judgment, the normal development of which is largely unaffected by racial, cultural, or even educational differences (Mikhail, 2007). A view commonly expressed today is that we are born with certain abstract rules or principles which set the parameters and guide us toward the acquisition of particular moral systems. Researchers who adopt this view often compare moral acquisition to language acquisition (e.g., Hauser, 2006; Roedder and Harman, 2010).
If, indeed, such a comparison is valid, it follows that, similarly to what happens with language acquisition, there has to be a stimulus that triggers the acquisition of morality. Care is the appropriate stimulus that is likely to lead to the learning of the proper processes which guide us in the making of moral judgments.
As we shall see, infant research shows that meaningful social learning takes place through the interaction between the infant and the caregiver. If psychology of care was able to demonstrate the way in which such learning are linked to morality, it would have the potential to show the following: that the universal foundation of our moral faculties is linked to the fact that all humans are born into a state of absolute dependence on the mothers who raise them. And, secondly, that the learning which grows out of this context enables us to distinguish between right and wrong.
In order to substantiate the logic of this thesis I will attempt to establish the idea that the learning that occurs in the first year of life creates the infrastructure and the basis for learning at a later stage. In addition I will argue that this is linked to the initial interactions between the infant and the caregiver and can lead to the development of moral faculties (For a detailed model see Govrin, 2014).
John Bowlby and the Origins of Morality
More than 60 years ago, the British psychoanalyst John Bowlby developed a highly innovative view of the process by which infants acquire moral sense through their attachment to their caregivers. Much like the originators of ethics of care, Bowlby believed that the key role in this process is the intra-psychic structure and affective experience that are developed in the infant–caregiver bond.
Most people are familiar with attachment theory’s division of attachment into four styles. However, a more fundamental subject of research is how the initial attachment shapes the organization of our thinking and determines our emotional syntax (Fonagy and Target, 2007). Bowlby linked delinquency to a breach in the relationship between the child and his mother. In his study of 44 juvenile thieves (Bowlby, 1944), he explored the link between the nature and extent of the child’s disorder and resultant delinquent behavior, as well as the question of when, and in what way, the breach between mother and child first occurred (Bowlby, 1958, 1969).
In Bowlby’s view, when it comes to attachment issues, the critical period in the infant’s life is between the ages of 6 months and 3 years. He believed that deprivation at any time after the first 6 months of life was likely to seriously affect the child’s ability to try and become emotionally involved with other people; to love, to trust, or to feel safe in having and giving expression to conflicting emotions. This was due to the fact that experiencing separation at that particular stage of life would, in all probability, interfere with the still emerging realization of his dependence on others. Today we know that the etiology of delinquency is far more complex than Bowlby thought, and is influenced by many factors. However, Bowlby paved the way for the establishment of attachment as the foundation of moral development.
Ethics of care and attachment theory have essentially the same view about attachment as a key factor in moral behavior. Both share the idea that the objective quality of parental care is central not only to the child’s survival but to his experience of himself and of the world. Thus, the two theories complement each other. Attachment theory after Bowlby paid little attention to moral development and when it did so it was in general terms. Ethics of care included an expansive reference to moral psychology but paid little attention to the care given during the first year of life in which the processes of gender identification have still not begun. Combining the two theories would help to establish a theoretical psychological infrastructure for psychology of care that will provide us with a more comprehensive explanation of contemporary findings.
The Forgotten Mother- the Caregiver Role in the Development of Moral Judgment
Bowlby’s attachment theory was the first psychological proposition to place maternal care at the center of human psychological development. But even 60 years later, when researches are exceedingly aware of the fact that moral and social faculties already begin to develop in the first year of life, they do not make room for, or place any importance on, the maternal role in this development. In most of the studies, infants are still being perceived apart from their surroundings as if they possessed an isolated mind that was developing separately from the environment in which they were growing up. For example, Hamlin et al. (2010), argue that the capacity of infants to evaluate individuals on the basis of their social interactions is unlearned. Likewise, Hoffman (2001), one of the most prolific writers in the field, thinks that the empathic and social faculties of infants develop “naturally” without prior experience.
Even though infants’ social and empathic abilities are a salient feature of any contemporary book on moral development, the role of the caregiver in moral development was not directly theorized nor studied. This lacuna has a long history in moral psychology that stretches from Piaget and Kohlberg until the emergence of care ethics and now within contemporary moral psychology.
Why is the centrality of the infant–caregiver bond so easy to dismiss? As Mitchell (2000) points out, this tendency to ignore and dismiss must surely have something to do with confusion about the way in which the development of the mind differs from that of the body. Our body’s sequence of development seems to be more or less pre-programmed. This manifests itself in the way in which, with the passage of time, people mature in an ordered way. From immobility, the infant progresses to being able to turn over, then to pull himself up, then to crawl and finally to walk. Aside from those who suffer from a severe physical handicap of some sort, we all ultimately gain control over our bodies and become physically functional almost entirely through our own efforts. It is tempting to believe that our minds develop in a similar way. This temptation leads us to take for granted our independent mental existence in much the same way as we presume our independent physical existence.
The next segment will summarize some of the important research accumulated on infant development during the first year of life. This will aim to show that the probable centrality of the caregiver during that early period of life has a great influence on the moral representations the infant acquires.
The Importance of the First Year to the Development of Social and Moral Judgment
Over the past 20 years, as infant research has become increasingly more sophisticated and complex, we have learned that infants possess a much more intricate and far richer knowledge of the world than had previously been supposed (Mandler and McDonough, 1998). This knowledge precedes the development of gender consciousness.
Infants learn a great deal about their physical world (e.g., Gelman, 1990; Spelke et al., 1992; Baillargeon, 1993), and the knowledge they accumulate during the first year of life forms the foundation on which later learning, including language acquisition, counting, object categorization, social relations, and other complex cognitive skills, rest (e.g., Wynn, 1990; Mandler and McDonough, 1998).
As far as morality goes, we now know that at 7 or 8 months infants have specific capacities related to moral judgment (e.g., Meltzoff and Moore, 1995; Gergely, 2011), which enable them to judge a person’s character by his behavior toward others. For example, at 8 months infants show a preference for a character that is actively helpful to others as opposed to someone who is indifferent to those around him. They have even less of a preference for a character that actively hampers the progress of others. This faculty may be the basis of moral thought and action in later life (Hamlin et al., 2010).
Similarly, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that expectations of social relations emerge in the first months of life through infant–caregiver interactions (for reviews see Beebe, 2005). For example, the infant develops an awareness of a principle known as “ongoing regulations” (Beebe and Lachmann, 2002, p. 60), which enables him to form and organize basic representations of mother-infant interactions which will later in life help him to predict certain behaviors and their consequences. If his expectations are violated, he will invest a great deal of effort in resolving these breeches, a principle known as “disruption and repair.” Consistently, infants were found to be affectively reactive to violations and confirmations of anticipation (DeCasper and Carstens, 1980). It is from these primary interactions that the infant develops expectations of relational patterns, remembers them, and categorizes them (Hauser, 2006).
Thus, the research showed that infants learn the basic principles of relations between two people. They develop a whole array of expectations by observing their caregiver. There are reasonable grounds for assuming that later on in life moral judgments are made on the basis of these expectations. Infants respond with unease to any violation of an expectation.
Therefore, a psychology of care that supersedes ethics of care can show how the initial interactions of infants with their caregiver prepare them for the acquisition of knowledge that later on will be relevant in conceptualizing moral situations and the creation of the in-depth structures of moral knowledge.
Moral Judgments in Terms of Expectancies and Transgressions
One can regard moral failure as a violation of our expectations. When an individual acts contrary to our expectations of him we usually consider their action wrong. When individuals act in a way that is consistent with expectations, we assume their action to be right, even if we do not openly classify it as such (Hauser, 2006).
As said, the array of an infant’s expectations develops out of the initial contact with the caregiver. If care represents the expectations the infant has of the caregiver – the feelings, actions, thoughts that are intended to protect the infant and raise him – then moral failure represents the very opposite. The infant can develop expectations of the caregiver – an adult who is powerful and independent, will meet his needs, and offer protection. From this comes the idea that the strong and the big have to take care of the dependent and the weak. It may be that this becomes part of intuitive knowledge acquired outside of consciousness and the means by which we get to know how to analyze a conflict between two sides. On the basis of the infant’s first experiences, an ability develops to identify in every conflict which of the two sides is strong, responsible, mature, and in command of resources, and which side is dependent and helpless. Thus, in an intuitive way, defined and clear expectations of the strong side develop that relate to what he should and should not do to the weak and vulnerable side. When we decide that someone is guilty of a moral transgression, we can see it as a violation of the expectation of the way the strong and independent should behave toward the weak and dependent. In this view, judging moral situations means finding the asymmetry between two parties. This might be the deep structure of all moral harm, the similar common characteristic. It may be that breaking a conflict down to its constituent parts and finding the “strong” “adult” and the “vulnerable dependent” is part of an innately set faculty. The child is somehow prepared, ready, and able to acquire this capacity by using experience from his first interactions with the caregiver. This experience is used to acquire the “core” syntax of moral judgment.
This thesis can be enhanced by a series of studies by Gray et al. (2012). Gray showed that moral judgments do not depend merely on the superficial properties of moral events, but also on how those events are mentally represented.
One of Gray’s most important findings is that moral judgment is rooted in a cognitive template of two perceived minds—a moral dyad of an intentional agent and a suffering moral patient. Intentional agents are capable of intent and action due to capacities for judgment or self-control, whereas moral patients are ones who are capable of experiencing physical and emotional sensations.
Adult humans usually possess both characteristics of patients and agents and can therefore be both blamed for evil and suffer from it. A puppy, according to Gray, is a mere moral patient: we seek to protect him from harm but do not blame him for injustice.
Gray posits that despite the variety of moral transgressions, the moral dyad not only integrates across various moral transgressions but also serves as a working model for understanding the moral world. Through the dyadic template of morality we typecast people into two categories – moral agents or moral patients—a phenomenon Gray called moral typecasting. Typecasting determines our perception of the target person’s mind. A person who does something evil will be immediately categorized as a moral agent. This means that simply doing something good or evil can bring with it corresponding attributions of intention, especially evil intentions. Likewise, when someone is categorized as a moral patient, people automatically infer the capacity for experience and greater sensitivity to pain (Gray and Wegner, 2009).
Psychology of care can therefore show that the moral dyad is formed in our mind as a result of our inner schemas of children (moral patients) and adults (moral agents) that we acquired in the first year of life. Thus, the rapid intuitive conceptualization between moral patient and moral agent has its origins in the period of care in which there were asymmetrical relations between the two sides and in which the caregiver had to tend to the infant’s needs. These interactions developed the infant’s expectations about relations.
Gray thinks that agency is the factor that can distinguish between the two sides of the dyad. If so, it makes dependency the central feature of the dyad. Adult-like or child-like dimensions are not necessarily related to specific age but to the quality of a person or interaction. To put it more accurately, when we make a moral judgment we are looking for cues of dependency and independency. For example, people unconsciously associate disability with child-like features (Robey et al., 2006). In another study, college students addressed people they believed to be adults with disabilities much as they were in the habit of addressing a 12-year old child (Liesener and Mills, 1999). The “detection” of child-like and adult-like characteristics is not entirely rational and not always relevant. For example, a number of experiments (e.g., Berry and Zebrowitz-McArthur, 1985) indicate that baby-faced people are less likely to lose their case than people considered to have an “adult face” (Berry and Zebrowitz-McArthur, 1988; Zebrowitz and McDonald, 1991). If found guilty, a baby-faced defendant will be considered less likely to have committed an offense intentionally, and more likely to have offended by being negligent than would a defendant with a mature face.
What might be further added to Gray’s account is the element of expectations from the caregiver. Even if we match each party to moral patient and moral agent schemas as Gray suggests, the judgment remains incomplete. We do not simply compare the two parties individually and decide which one is more helpless, needier, or more powerful. Our judgment depends on something much more profound. It is linked to the nature of the dyadic relations. Just as we have different schemas for adults and children, so we have a schema for the dyadic relations between them.
This representation consists of our expectations of what adults should and should not do to children. Adults have obligations toward children and we seem to know these obligations by heart. Moral transgression might be perceived as violating our expectations of moral agents to act in certain ways toward moral patients. Exploring mother-infant interaction in the first year of life teaches us how the infant’s expectations of the patterns of behavior of moral agents toward moral patients is formed and how the infant develops pre-symbolic representations of moral dyads. Psychology of care can lift the collaboration between moral psychology and infant research to an exciting and creative new level.
Moral Judgment and the Human Visual System
If humans treated every new right–wrong situation as a novel and unique experience we would quickly drown, our minds baffled and confused. Conceivably, to make the judgment more efficient, the cognitive system groups moral situations into the meaningful category of the Adult – Child format. Various aspects of moral situations are perceived holistically rather than separately or independently.
Gray et al. (2012), suggest that if our template of morality were dyadic – perceived intentional moral agent and a suffering moral patient – we would be compelled to complete the moral dyad if it appeared to be incomplete. For example, when we see someone blameworthy—an apparent moral agent—we would complete the dyad by inferring the presence of another suffering mind —a moral patient. Gray suggests the phenomenon of dyadic completion occurs at an intuitive level—like the Gestalt completion.
We do not know what neurobiological framework accounts for the completion of the dyad. Most cognitive psychological moral theories are formal and detached from neuroscience. I suggest that much can be gained by taking advantage of the large amount of information available on the neurophysiology of visual recognition. Although moral judgments and visual recognition are separate, unrelated domains, what might be of interest to us is the ability of the brain to fill in missing elements so that visual recognition remains largely unaffected by the absence of such components. Basically the thought is that visual images constructed by the brain are holistic- i.e., are more complete than one would expect from the linear sum of their individual parts. Human brain imaging research has strongly supported such thinking by showing that one cannot explain the neuronal activity measured in high order visual areas in response to a picture as representing the sum of the responses to the picture’s elements.
Although visual recognition is a perceptual phenomenon, it can also be regarded as an ubiquitous property of various types of neural network models (Williams and Jacobs, 1997; Ullman, 1998). Such networks, upon being presented with a partial input pattern, can settle quite rapidly into an attractor state matching the complete stored pattern (Lerner et al., 2002).
Studies point to the lateral occipital complex (LOC) as a central site in which object completion effects are manifested. Other studies show that infants only a few months old complete representations of objects even behind occluders (Kellman and Spelke, 1983). Psychophysical experiments on adults suggest that such completed representations determine the allocation of visual attention (He and Nakayama, 1992).
One could argue that in the same way that areas in the brain play a critical role in object completion other areas are dominant in the completion of the dyadic Gestalt.
“Heinz’s Dilemma” as Seen from the Perspective of a Psychology of Care
Gilligan attempted to refute the claim that the moral reasoning of women is immature because of its concern with immediate relations. The “care perspective,” Gilligan asserted, was an alternative and equally valid form of moral reasoning unnoticed by masculine liberal justice traditions which, she argued, are driven by notions of autonomy and independence.
Gilligan expressed these thematic perspectives through the moral reasoning of “Jake” and “Amy,” two children in Kohlberg’s studies responding to the “Heinz dilemma.” In this dilemma, the children are asked whether “Heinz” was justified in stealing an expensive drug to save the life of his sick wife. Jake perceives the Heinz dilemma as a mathematical problem. Seen from this viewpoint the right to life wins over the right to property, so that all “reasonable people” should conclude that Heinz was justified in stealing the medicine. Amy, on the other hand, disagrees with the idea that Heinz’s theft was justified. Her concern is that he might be sent to prison and that his sick wife would consequently be left on her own. For Amy, the dilemma is a narrative of relations over time involving ruptured links which have to be repaired through interaction. Amy’s understanding of the world is that its inhabitants are not isolated from each other but rather belong to networks of relationships. She is confident that once the pharmacist realizes why Heinz stole the medicine he would be willing to cooperate with Heinz.
Gilligan posited that men and women often speak different languages which they think are the same. She used this idea to try and moderate moral psychologists’ tendency to adopt the “male perspective” as the model of good moral reasoning.
From the perspective of contemporary moral psychology, Gilligan erred in attributing a great deal of importance to the arguments underlying moral judgment. First of all, such arguments are retrospective and are voiced only after the judgment has already been made (Haidt, 2000). They therefore play a negligible role in the decision making process. Secondly, as said, research has revealed that, contrary to Gilligan’s view, arguments based on “justice” and “compassion” are used by men and women equally. It is important to point out that though their reasoning differed, Amy and Jake came to an identical conclusion regarding the importance of saving Heinz’s wife. From the viewpoint of a psychology of care, the most important factor is that all those who were surveyed, other than children less than four, regarded Heinz’s wife as a severely ill woman who had to be saved, even if that meant undermining another individual’s property rights. Even though they used different arguments they gave the “right” answer. From this perspective, Heinz’s dilemma can perhaps be seen as constituting a challenge to the capacity of moral reasoning, but does not represent a serious moral dilemma. According to the psychology of care, in order for Heinz’s dilemma to become a real moral issue in which the participant has to decide between different moral choices (as opposed to various arguments related to the same choice) the “attachment” between the participant and Heinz’s wife or Heinz himself has to be challenged. This can be done in one of two ways: by reducing the elements of dependence/neediness attributed to the wife, or by stressing the “dependency” – in this case the child-like features of the chemist (or his family) from whom Heinz stole the medicine. If, for example, Heinz’s wife is revealed as a woman who committed a series of brutal murders in her past, there are reasonable grounds to assume that that the participants would hesitate before deciding whether the theft of the medicine was justified. Similarly, they would be highly tentative about reaching a conclusion if they were to discover that as a result of the theft the chemist had lost an important source of income intended for a heart transplant operation urgently required by his infant son. This restructuring of the experiment turns the Heinz conundrum into a real moral dilemma. In that they weaken the understanding of Heinz’s wife or re-enforce the concern about the chemist they are liable to make it difficult for the brain to think quickly and intuitively in Heinz’s favor and reach a clear cut decision. And indeed what is common to all serious moral dilemmas (such as aggressive methods of questioning terrorists or the morality of the Allied bombing of Dresden during World War II) is the difficulty of reaching an unequivocal decision as to the extent of the neediness/dependency/weakness of the victim and the aggressor.
Philosophical Implications and the Importance of Moral Laws
The philosophical implications of the psychology of care are significant and cannot be detailed here. I will, however, dwell briefly on one issue.
Ever since the days of Aristotle and Plato there have been disagreements in moral philosophy between “ rationalists” and “intuitionists” about the true nature of moral judgment (Beauchamp, 2001). The rationalists posit that people reach a moral decision by thinking about the rights and wrongs of each case and then making a deliberate and conscious moral judgment (e.g., Kant, 1785). Intuitionists and sentimentalists on the other hand, claim that people reach moral judgments instinctively and can make such judgments non-consciously (e.g., Hume, 1739).
To a large extent the drive behind care ethics is the belief that the theories of the rationalist mainstream – and in particular Kantian ethics, utilitarianism and liberalism – provide an insufficient basis for the making of moral judgments. All three approaches, it is argued, overlook the part played by people’s emotional responses – especially empathy, sensitivity, and their reaction to particular “others” – in reaching moral decisions. Ethics of care further argues that utilitarianism and Kantian ethics reduce moral understanding to the presentation of a single principle and consider “abstract rules” to be the foundation of moral guidance.
Psychology of care can be a link between these two approaches. Whilst the protection of the young is very common among mammals, humans, by virtue of their developed abilities (symbolic, linguistic, and logo- mathematical skills), are able to forge out of what are essentially biologically driven patterns of behavior a set of general and abstract principles. For example, the features associated with an infant such as neediness, dependency, and helplessness, are part of virtually every culture. They have also been extended to additional populations such as the elderly and the handicapped because the neediness and injury of these communities can be likened to the dependence and injury of infants/children. Feelings we have toward children are directed at a number of populations identified by their particular characteristics. Moral feelings are a combination of cognitive and emotional abilities. The cognitive achievement is the ability to equate those who belong to the moral community with dependents. It includes the generalization of feelings to one’s own child and to other individuals on the basis of similarity (i.e., Handicapped = child). The emotional capacity directs the array of feelings such as concern, compassion, and sympathy – originally focused on the person’s own progeny – toward other unrelated needy individuals. Secondly, humans have the ability to enact abstract laws related to moral situations. They can, for example, imagine moral situations prior to them happening or think about various values behind moral situations (“the sanctity of life” “the right to freedom”). Humans have the capacity to enact laws ordering the relations between people which determine norms of behavior. They do not need specific dyads in order to understand dyadic laws and in order to formulate them. Basic laws and moral principles play a very important role in society.
Without laws to guide him, the individual psychological mechanism which is part of every person’s make-up cannot be a good basis for a moral judgment to be made. Though the mechanism of breaking down the moral situation into its constituent parts of caregiver/infant is universal, the substantive decision is culture dependent and subjective. The vastly different ways in which people react to moral issues stems from the fact that the judgment concerning which dyads “activate” the moral mechanism and which dyads do not, is an entirely subjective decision. Not every asymmetrical moral situation, or set of circumstances in which the weak party is hurt, is perceived as a moral violation. There are many situations in which ostensibly the “strong party” has hurt the “weak party”. However, the situation in its entirety does not activate the affective and cognitive mechanism required in order to reach a moral judgment. The psychic system, especially its affective parts, simply does not interpret the situation as “strong hurts weak.” This may be due to a number of reasons. For example, it may be that the “weak” party has been “dehumanized” to the extent that the empathic response to its injury is muted. There may be an identification with the “strong party,” or an understanding of the reasons which have led it to harm the weak. Alternatively, it may be that the “weak party” is thought to be to blame for what has happened or is perceived as dangerous. The personal values which each one of us believes in also enter into this mix. The instability and caprice of the subjective moral system is not a mechanism one can rely on in maintaining a moral and lawful society.
General moral principles such as those suggested by Rawls and Kant, enable us to rise above the subjective dyad. Turning the moral mechanism into a universal law enables us to protect the weak and prevent moral injustices, independently of the emotional mechanism that links an individual to a particular dyad. In the absence of this human ability to establish abstract laws there would likely be an anarchic situation in which the moral mechanism as described would be activated arbitrarily in line with the individual interests and needs of every single person.
The ability to enact a moral law is a human achievement of the utmost importance. It enables society to dictate to people who should be protected – in other words who is within the moral community and is therefore worthy of protection – instead of leaving this judgment in the hands of anyone and everyone. Laws such as Kant’s categorical imperative or Rawls’s veil of ignorance are aimed at conceptualizing the psychological mechanism to such a degree that the moral decision is distanced from the concrete dyad and subjective feelings and is determined solely by noble values of justice and morality.
It is important to understand that Kant and Rawls moral principles are consistent with the psychological mechanism presented here. They merely introduce additional cognitions which had not previously been taken into account. Whereas the “natural” psychological mechanism identifies people as child-like on the basis of resemblance and membership of that same group, the moral principles compel us to ignore this component and relate to all suffering people as child-like. In other words, the moral principles employ the same parameters to moral judgment; a dyadic structure drawing a dividing line between child-like and adult-like, “computing” the relative strengths between the two parties, and assessing the extent to which expectations have been violated. However, in the course of this assessment the moral principles require us to entirely ignore our affinity to one or other of the two parties in the dyad on the basis of resemblance, shared interests, or any other kind of subjective factors besides the parameters of the general dyadic rules.
Let us assume that an individual experiences a sense of identity with and empathy for members of his own national group but that he has no such feelings for other nationalities. However, the moral principle dictates that every person is entitled to a set of basic human rights irrespective of which national grouping he or she belongs to. This cognition makes moral judgment far more complex. From then on, when making a moral judgment the system has another constraint: it will hesitate before allowing itself to offer any form of discriminatory preferential treatment to people belonging to that particular national group. It will direct itself to recognize the suffering of anyone who is not a member of that nationality. Though the affective mechanism can detach itself from the new constraint, as indeed often happens, it is nonetheless capable of including this cognition in reaching its judgment. Moral principles such as those of Kant and Rawls have an interest in extending the mechanism of the psychological system to apply to all peoples on the basis of equality. They teach us to curb personal considerations and subjective associations and be guided by our natural system to reach a moral judgment by relying solely on one consideration: to what extent did the adult-like party (any human being) violate our expectations by the way in which he behaved toward the child-like party (any human being) in any given moral dyad.
Conclusion
Ethics of care was the first theory to challenge the Kohlbergian – Kantian view that moral judgment is determined by rational psychological processes. In moral psychology it was the first theory to present a model of moral judgment based on emotions. The empirically based research findings in moral psychology consistently indicate that ethic of care’s intuition in the matter was correct: emotions do indeed play a decisive role in moral judgments. However, the theory itself has become marginalized and irrelevant. Worse still, although contemporary infant research has demonstrated that infants possess basic moral faculties, the caregiver’s role in the development of these faculties and the influence of parental care on the newborn has been entirely abandoned. Only in feminist or psychoanalytic theories are interactions with the infant regarded as central to moral development.
Ethics of care uncovered an important and universal axiom of human ethics. Throughout the history of western thought language, morality, and the sharp division between reason and emotion, have been employed to exclude women (and other groups outside the white male dominated mainstream) from being acknowledged as rightful contributors to knowledge.
In this matter, care ethics have played a significant role by focusing on the importance of affect and emotion to reassessments of rationalism and the assumed role of impartiality in the accumulation of knowledge. As Greeno and Maccoby (1986, p. 310) have noted: “Gilligan’s book was intended to right a wrong.”
But today, empirical studies show that infant–parent interaction seems to be an adequate moral imperative for all men and all women and the association of parental care with women’s morality alone is less relevant.
If psychology of care is to succeed in the long run as a moral psychology, it must be bolder and more revolutionary, reshaping the core of moral psychology. If psychology of care is to flourish in the 21st century, the prevailing theoretical frameworks must be discarded and replaced with a single integrative model that seamlessly connects with cutting-edge research in mainstream psychology. A new paradigm for psychology of care, an attachment approach to moral judgment, must emerge or the theory will perish as a moral psychology. I suggest that an advance in our understanding of the way care in the first year of life organizes the mind, is an opportunity to create closer ties between the previously separate domains of moral psychology, ethics of care, infant research, and attachment theory.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01135/full
Slote locates his brand of care ethics in the "moral sentimentalist" tradition, originating in the work of Hutcheson, Shaftesbury, Smith, and Hume. Fundamental moral distinctions arise from sentiment rather than from reason (though Slote provides a careful discussion of appropriate roles for reason in ethics, in Chapter 7: "Caring and Rationality"). In line with locating his view within a distinctive tradition within philosophy, Slote argues that his view supplies a theory of right action based on the motive of that action -- a motive of care or its components (especially empathy). "Care ethics treat acts as right or wrong, depending on whether they exhibit a caring or uncaring attitude/motivation on the part of the agent" (21). In an earlier work, Morality from Motives, Slote defended that general approach to right action, and there he identified it with virtue ethics. That is, on a virtue approach, what makes an act right is that it flows from motives attached to an appropriate virtue -- courage, compassion, and so on. In the book under review, the virtue framework is still present, but the emphasis is on care as a motive. Slote is right to note that his view is in a sense more "philosophical" than those of the early care ethicists in providing a criterion for evaluation of actions. Neither Noddings nor Gilligan directly or fully engaged with that issue. Their view of care was analogous to a virtue ethicist who sees the task of morality as the development of virtues but does not translate that view into a theory of right action. (And some virtue theories have eschewed a focus on right action as contrary to the distinctive contribution of virtue theory, and a care ethicist might take this view as well.)
Slote emphasizes the role of empathy in caring, and looks at the important work of the psychologist Martin Hoffman concerning the development of empathy in children (and its relation to cognitive development). He argues that "differences in the strength of normally or fully developed empathy correspond pretty well, I think, to differences in intuitive moral evaluation" (16). In Chapter 2, "Our Obligations to Help Others," he illustrates this view in a discussion of the issue made famous by Peter Singer, whether we have an equal obligation to help needy persons distant to and unknown to us compared to those in our immediate vicinity, when we are equally able to do both. Slote accepts the non-impartialist or non-consequentialist view that we have a stronger obligation to those nearby, and he considers and rejects other attempts (e.g. Kamm) to account for this moral relevance of distance. He claims that a person of normally developed empathic capacity would care more about the immediate than the distant needy person and offers this as an explanation of why we have more of an obligation to the former than the latter. He does not, however, deny some obligations toward the distant needy, a view suggested in Noddings' early work but later repudiated by her. Slote rightly argues that it is possible to care about the well-being of the distant needy -- although that caring might have a different overall psychic character than caring about one's friends -- and it is thus possible for his care-based ethic to explain the obligation to help them.
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-ethics-of-care-and-empathy/
Care Ethics and Animal Welfare
Care theorists have outlined an approach to animal welfare issues that appears to avoid many of the most contentious claims of other animal welfare positions.1 The reason to oppose animal suffering from the perspective of care ethics is not because we wish to maximize utility or consistently apply our rights theory across species, but because we have relations with animals and care about them. By grounding human beings’ moral duties to animals in our relationships with them, care theorists sidestep debates about whether or not animals possess the necessary cognitive capacities to qualify for rights possession. They likewise evade disputes about whether or not social utility actually supports abolishing factory farming, eliminating animal testing and the like.2 In care ethics, our duties to animals arise out of the concrete, empirically verifiable relationships we have with them…
…There is as yet no settled definition among care theorists about what it means to care for others, but most care theorists agree that caring at least entails helping others to meet their basic needs, develop their basic capabilities, and avoid unwanted suffering and pain. Building upon this minimalist approach, caring may be defined as everything we do directly to help others
(1) to satisfy their basic needs for food, sanitary water, clothing, shelter, rest, a clean environment, basic medical care, and protection from harm;
(2) to develop and maintain their basic capabilities for sensation, emotion, mobility, speech, reason, imagination, affilia- tion, and literacy and numeracy;
(3) to avoid harm or alleviate unwanted suffering and pain.
The most general goal of caring is to help others to survive and function so that they take care of themselves and others and pursue some concep- tion of the good life. Examples of caring include feeding the hungry, providing medication to the sick, teaching a child to walk or talk, sheltering or clothing someone, and helping a person to regain basic functioning after an accident.
Because we all depend upon the care of others at various times during our lives, capable human beings can be said to have a duty to care for other human beings in need. The argument for this duty to care can be demonstrated by drawing upon Alan Gewirth’s “dialectically necessary method.” Gewirth’s dialectically necessary method does not rely upon the actual beliefs, thoughts, or statements of individuals, but rather draws out the moral claims and principles necessarily implied by people’s actions. While my argument draws upon Gewirth’s method- ology, it should be emphasized that I depart from the substance of his argument. Gewirth’s argument rests at root upon human autonomy; my own is based upon human dependency.
The first step of the argument is as follows:
1) All human beings can be assumed to value their survival, the development and functioning of their basic capabilities, and the avoidance or alleviation of unwanted pain and suffering—unless they explicitly indicate otherwise.
If individuals did not value these goods, they presumably would not act to satisfy their needs, practice their capabilities, and attempt to avoid pain and suffering as we all do every day. Even infants exhibit a variety of activities including clinging, suckling, crying, and fussing that point to an implicit desire to survive and develop the capabilities necessary for survival. The desire for survival, development, and basic well-being (meaning here basic functioning in the absence of pain) can further be inferred among sleeping, unconscious, or incapacitated individuals (unless they have previously indicated otherwise) based upon their prior conscious activities and what we generally know about human behavior.
The second step of the argument highlights the necessary role of caring in helping human beings to survive, develop, and achieve or maintain basic well-being:
2) Given the necessary facts of human existence, all human beings depend upon others to help them meet their biological and developmental needs and maintain basic well-being.
This claim is most obviously true during infancy and childhood. Infants and small children would not survive for very long or develop the basic capabilities necessary for their survival and functioning without the care of parents or some parenting figures. Our dependency upon others does not, however, abruptly end with childhood. Most human beings experience periods of illness, disability, frail old age, or particular hardship during their lives when they depend upon the care of others for their survival and basic well-being. We all more generally depend upon the care of others to reproduce society and make civil life possible. If no one cared for others, society would cease to exist within a generation, and our own ability to survive and function would be seriously compromised. “Without aggregate caretaking there could be no society, so we might say that it is caretak- ing labor that produces and reproduces society.” Even the most anti-social people depend (and certainly have depended) on the care of others to survive, develop, and function.
The third step of the argument follows directly from these considerations:
3) Insofar as we value our survival, development and basic well-being, we all necessarily make claims on others for care when in need, meaning that we at least implicitly assert that others should help us to meet our basic needs, develop and maintain our basic capabilities, and avoid or alleviate pain when we cannot reasonably achieve these goods on our own.
The normative content of this claim is supplied by the person in need of care, and need not (at least at this point in the argument) be recognized as normatively binding by the persons toward whom it is directed. The claim is, to borrow the language of Joel Feinberg, aspirational rather than a valid rights claim. The person in need asserts that others should help him or her to achieve a set of goods that he or she values and cannot achieve without their help. A person who is being assaulted by another or drowning will call out for help and at least implicitly assert the moral duty of others to help him or her, regardless of how others may view his or her claims. The same may be said of a person who is desperately in need of food or water. Even the demands of infants for care have something of this quality. Since their survival and development depend upon the care of others, they implic- itly (or not so implicitly) make strong demands on others to care for them that extend beyond mere pleas for beneficence.
The fourth step of the argument identifies the general moral principle that all individuals may be said implicitly to appeal to in attempting to justify their claims for caring:
4) In claiming care from others, we imply that capable human beings ought to help individuals in need when they are able to do so consistent with their other caring obligations.
In actual practice, individuals may make use of more particular principles to justify their caring claims, drawing upon familial ties or group loyalties. Individuals are nevertheless necessarily committed to the more general justifying principle outlined above—at least insofar as they value their survival, development, and basic well-being—for two reasons. First, our needs might be met by any capable human being and we cannot know in advance who might care for us. In calling upon others for care, we effectively say: anyone capable of helping me (and others like me with similar needs, if we are to be consistent) ought to care for me. Thus, capable human beings ought to care for human beings in need. If our parents, friends, or compatriots happen to be available, we may contingently attempt to justify our claims for care by appealing to more particular, conventional, or emotive principles. But insofar as we value our survival, development, and basic well-being, the more general justification always lingers just behind these more particular justifications. The second reason we are necessarily committed to this general justification in claiming care from others is because our claims on particular others for care necessarily involve others besides them. Potential caregivers often need the care of still others in order to be able to care for us. The particular care we seek exists within a web of linked and nested social relations. In making claims on others for care in any particular situation, we therefore often have to make claims on many others beyond our immediate potential caregivers. Our own particular claims thus necessarily require claiming and justifying care for anyone in need, including our potential caregivers. Indeed, at the most general level, our particular claims on others for care involve the broad social claim that all capable human beings ought to help all individuals in need, since otherwise society would not exist and there would be no one available to care for us.
There are nonetheless moral limits to the response we might legitimately expect from others. Because our claim for care relies upon a general moral principle, we should be able to understand if individuals forgo caring for us when it would involve extreme danger to themselves, seriously compromise their long-term well-being, or undermine their ability to care for other individuals who depend upon them. Morally speaking, our own care does not outweigh the care of other individuals, including their care for themselves.
Up to this point in the argument, the moral claims we make upon others for care remain unjustified. We may think it would be a very good thing if others were to come to our aid in times of need and assert that they should do so. Yet, there would seem to be no necessary reason why others should satisfy our claims for caring upon them. The validation of our claims for care appears in the final step of the argument. When individuals all needing care from others and making claims upon others are placed in a social context of relationships and dependency, then each can validate his or her claims for care on others by appealing to the general moral principle that capable individuals ought to care for individuals in need. Because all individuals have sought care from others, all individuals have made use of this general moral principle in attempting to justify our claims before others. All capable individuals should therefore logically recognize and honor this moral principle when others make use of it to validate their claims for caring on them.
Loosely following Gewirth, we may dub this final step in the argument the principle of consistent dependency:
5) Since all human beings depend upon the care of others for our survival and basic functioning and at least implicitly claim that capable individuals should care for individuals in need when they can do so, we must logically recognize as morally valid the claims that others make upon us for care when they need it, and should endeavor to provide care to them when we are capable of doing so without significant danger to ourselves, seriously compromising our long-term well-being or undermining our ability to care for other individuals who depend upon us.
Capable individuals who refuse to honor this principle violate the principle of noncontradiction and behave hypocritically. They fail to follow the moral principle that they themselves have made use of (and likely will make use of again one day) to justify their own care. More seriously, they implicitly renounce the web of caring upon which their own lives, society, and human life generally depend.
The principle of consistent dependency brings about the transition from a prudential to a moral rights claim for care. An individual in need can rationally justify his or her right to receive care from others by pointing out that they have likewise called upon others to care for them and justified their right to care on the very grounds now being invoked—that capable human beings ought to care for others in need insofar as they are able to do so. There is a circular quality to this argument for our duty to care for others, and intentionally so. Care theory derives our moral obligations not from some abstract quality such as autonomy or self-consciousness but rather from our relations with others as dependent social creatures. We have duties to care for others because we have appealed to others for care, and other individuals have duties to us because they have appealed to still others. There might be some point in the recesses of evolution- ary history when the first claim for care was made upon another and satisfied out of sheer benevolence. But here and now, every living human being has made claims on others for care and consequently has obligated himself or herself to help others to meet their biological and developmental needs when and if he or she is able to do so. Our duty to care for others ultimately derives from our nature as dependent creatures who need the care of others to survive, develop, and achieve basic well-being...
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