Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A Presentation of the Northeast Ethics Education Partnership and Ethical Awareness for International Collaboration, Brown University, 2012
Introduction
Care ethics [The ethics of care] originated among feminists who maintained, on the basis of Carol Gilligans work, A Different Voice , that women and girls approach moral issues with a strong concern for empathy and caring in interpersonal relationships.
Like communitarian ethics, care ethics stresses the interdependence of persons and the importance of particular relationships, especially within the family and other communities
Care Ethics
Care ethics encourages altruism, which entails concern for others, their feelings and needs, but does not neglect care for oneself. Care ethics requires the moral agent to balance care of the self with care for others.
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Ethics of Care
(2) Goodness as Self-Sacrifice concern for others, their feelings and the need to not inflict harm are major concerns.
(3) From Goodness to Truth the morality of care must include a care of the self as well as others, to be honest and real with oneself, an increased responsibility to ones responsibility to the self, as well as others. Gilligan defines this as mature care.
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Ethics of Care
(4) The Morality of Nonviolence a moral equality between the self and others is achieved by applying an injunction against hurting; care becomes a universal obligation[1].
Harvard Educational Review: 481-517 Repr. 1986 as A Different Voice, In Pearsall, Women and Values: 309-339
Care ethics is based on [or justified by ] lived experience, especially that of women with intimate relations, trust and commitment. Lived experience is the accumulated subjective experience of individuals (2).
Care Ethics
Care Ethics
Care ethics appears most appropriate to intimate relations, but its advocates seek to extend it to communities, institutions and nation states
Care ethics is intended to guide conduct and to provide an aspirational ideal of the virtuous life
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Caring originates from the experience of caring for others. In caring for particular individuals, we learn to recognize the needs and vulnerabilities of human others everywhere; and to avoid harming them.
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Co-feeling is one ability in mature care; how one should act and what actions constitute care.
Caring involves participating in anothers feelings on his/her terms with an attitude of engagement, not of disinterested observation or judgment. It is an act of affective imagination.
Gilligan promotes a more nuanced and complex concept of moral autonomy with space for holding self-determination with consideration, reason with emotion, and independency with connectedness.
Care ethics replaces the detached respect for the autonomous decisions of others that is the legacy of principle-based ethics with attentiveness to the plight, special needs, and vulnerabilities of individuals, who might need help is deciding what to do Tensions continue to exist within care ethics between contextual sensitivity in moral decisionmaking and respect for principles that direct us to treat people equally, with justice and respect for autonomous choices.
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Steps to Convergence on Ethics of Care and Principle-based Ethics What actions are right or wrong according to some relevant norms or principles, fairness in particular. What is the effect of these principles on those involved will they hurt individuals? Care ethics questions the over-reliance on principles and rules in ethics.
Are we choosing to be detached and numb to feeling the impacts of the principle of justice on individuals and our relationship to them?
A THIRD WAY
Care ethics encourages the moral agent to balance respect for individual autonomy with caring for individuals in relationships. A balance between relations and autonomy, between connection and integrity would create convergence of principles with care. An intermediate position between too much and too little would be needed.
A THIRD WAY
Care ethics requires morally mature agents to weight and balance principles with caring for individuals. In these moral conflicts, listening to others, is essential to decision-making. Interdependent leadership and communication may open up new possibilities a third way. .
References
Beauchamp T. and J. Childress. 2009. Principles of Biomedical Ethics, New York: Oxford University Press, 6th ed Gilligan, Carol 1977, Concepts of the Self and of Morality Harvard Educational Review: 481-517 Repr. 1986 as A Different Voice, In Pearsall, Women and Values: 309-339 Munson, R. 2004. Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics, 8th Ed Australia ; Belmont, CA : Thomson/Wadsworth,