Ethics Of Care

LESSON 9: ETHICS OF CARE Today, we will discuss about the ethics of care. Points to be covered in this lesson:

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Concept of ethics of care Male and female ethical perspectives

Do Women and Men Think Differently about Ethics?

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Traditional assumption about male female difference

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Stereotypes

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Men are rational Women are emotional

A cause — or justification — or imposition

Compassionate

Can obey reason: suited to be followers

Responsibility

But can’t formulate original reasons: not suited to be leaders

Relationship

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Kant

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A woman’s place, rather, is in the home

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Nevertheless the differences

Rights

Make men most suited to take part in public affairs

Individual

And suit women more to private and domestic concerns

Autonomy

Women “lack civil personality” They’re biologically mentally unsuited to take part in public life Rousseau Said men and women are different, but neither is superior

More recent tendency: They acknowledge that there are differences But they insist nevertheless that women are by no means inferior and men superior Women are perfectly well suited to take part in public affairs

• They know how to exercise command and authority What Could Account for Such a Difference Between the Sexes? Difference is socialization of boys and girls Women are socialized for more for home and hearth

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Female Ethical Perspectives Personal Partial Private Natural Feeling

Women are inferior Aristotle

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Psychologists Carol Gilligan and Lawrence Kohlberg (and Freud, much earlier) discovered some evidence that males and females reason differently when confronted with moral problems. Their results are as follows:

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Initial feminist reaction: They deny such differences altogether

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Resulting psychological difference: “women are more attracted than men to the values of the nuclear family.”

Men are socialized more for impersonal cooperation and competition in the public arena

Concrete

Solidarity Male Ethical Perspectives Impersonal Impartial Public Contractual Reason Fair Universal

In essence, the female (ethics of care) is concerned most of all with the concrete individuals who are affected as well as the importance of negotiation, dialogue, compassion, and maintaining relationships. In contrast, the male (ethics of justice) is most concerned with abstracting from the particular circumstances to universal moral laws, duties, or “rights” and much less interested in compromising and thinking in terms of the individuals affected. The approaches to ethics that we have seen, all assume that ethics should be impartial and that, consequently, any special relationships that one may have with particular individuals – such as relatives, friends, or one’s employee should be set aside when determining what one ought to do. Some utilitarian, have claimed that a stranger and your parent both are drowning and you could save only one of them, and if saving the stranger would produce more utility than saving your parent, then you would have a moral obligation to save the stranger and let your parent drown. Such a conclusion, many people have argued, is

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perverse and mistaken. In such a situation, the special relationship of love and caring that you have with your parents gives you a special obligation to care for them in a way that overrides obligations that you may have towards the strangers. This view, that we have an obligation to exercise special care toward those particular persons with whom we have valuable close relationships, particularly relationship of dependency, is a key concept in an “ethic of care”, an approach to ethics that many feminist ethicists have recently advanced. Carol Gilligan, a psychologist says that a morality of care “rests on an understanding of relationships as response to another in their terms. According to this “care” view of ethics, the moral task is not to follow universal and impartial moral principles, but, instead, to attend to and respond to the good of particular concrete person with whom we are in a valuable and close relationship. Thus an ethic of care emphasizes two moral demands: 1. We each exist in a web of relationships and should preserve and nurture those concrete and valuable relationships we have with specific persons. 2. We each should exercise special care for those with whom we are concretely related by attending to their particular needs, values, desires, and concrete well being as seen from their own personal perspective, and by responding positively to these needs, values, desires, and concrete well being, particularly of those who are vulnerable and dependent on our care. It is important not to restrict the notion of concrete relationships between two individuals or to relationships between an individual and a specific group. Many advocates of an ethic of care have noted that an ethic of care should also encompass the larger systems of relationships that make up concrete communities. An ethic of care, therefore can be seen as encompassing the kinds of obligations that a socalled “communitarian ethic” advocates. A communitarian ethic is an ethic that sees concrete communities and communal relationships as having a fundamental value that should be preserved and maintained. What is important in a communitarian ethic is not the isolated individual, but the community within which individual discover who they by seeing themselves as integral parts of a larger community with its traditions, culture, practices and history. The concrete relationships that make up a particular community, then, should be preserved and nurtures just as much as the more interpersonal relationships that sprung up between people. An ethic of care can be based on the claim that the identity of the self – who I am – is based on the relationships the self has with other selves. It is also important in this context to distinguish three different forms of “caring”: “caring after someone,” and “caring for someone.” The kind of caring demanded by an ethic of care is the kind expressed by the phrase “caring for someone.” Two additional issues are important to note: 1. Not all relationships have value and so not all would generate the duties of care. Relationships in which one person attempts to dominate, oppress, or harm another, relationships that are characterized by hatred, violence_ 11.292

disrespect and viciousness, and relationships that are characterized by injustice, exploitation, and harm to others lack the value that an ethic of care requires. An ethic of care does not oblig-ate us to maintain and nurture such relationships. On the other hand, relationships that exhibit the virtues of compassion, concern, love, friendship, and loyalty do have the kind of value that an ethic of care requires and an ethic” of care implies that such relationships should be maintained and nurtured. 2. Second, it is important to recognize that the demands of caring are some-times in conflict with the demands of justice. Consider two examples. Sup-pose, first, that one of the employees whom a female manager supervises is a - friend of hers. Suppose that one day she catches her friend stealing from the company. Should she turn in her friend as company policy requires or should she say nothing in order to protect her friend? Or suppose, second, that a fe-male manager is supervising several people, one of whom is a close friend of hers. Suppose that she must recommend one of these subordinates for promo-tion to a particularly desirable position. Should she recommend her friend sim- ply because she is her friend, or should she be impartial and follow company policy by recommending the subordinate who is most qualified even if this means passing over her friend? Clearly, in each of these cases, justice would require that the manager not favor her friend. The demands of an ethic of care would seem to require that the manager favor her friend for the sake of their friendship. How should conflict of this sort be resolved? There is no fixed rule that can resolve all such conflicts. One can imagine situations in which the manager’s obligations of justice toward her company would clearly override the obligations she has toward her friend. One can imagine situations in which the manager’s obligations toward her friend override her obligation towards the company but although no fixed rule can resolve all conflicts between the demands of caring and the requirements of justice, nevertheless, some guidelines can helpful in resolving such conflicts. Consider that when the manager was hired, she voluntarily agreed to accept the position of manager along with the duties and privileges that would define her role as a manager. Among the duties she promised to carry out is the duty to protect the resources of the company and to abide by the company policy. The manager, therefore, betrays her relationships with the people to whom she made these promises if she now shows favoritism toward her friend in violation of the company policies she voluntarily agreed to uphold. Critical Evaluation of Care Ethics • It can degenerate into unjust favoritism.

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Excess of care can result in self-neglect or “burnout”. Demands of Ethic of care can lead to “burn-out”. In demanding that people exercise caring for children, parents, siblings, spouses, lovers, friends, and other members of the community, an ethic of care seems to demand that people sacrifice their own needs and desires to care for the well-being of others. However, proponents of caring can respond that

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an adequate view of caring will balance caring for the caregiver with caring for others.

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Case for care is more compelling at the level of individual than of institutional morality

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Possible conflicts with other values

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Possible conflicts with utility • Hire the most qualified applicant

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Hire your useless brother-in-law

Constructive Evaluation of Care Ethics The advantage of an ethic of care is that it forces us to focus on the moral value of being partial toward those concrete persons with whom we have special and valuable relationships, and the moral importance of responding to such persons as particular individuals with characteristics that demand a response to them we do not extend to others. In these respects, an ethic of care provides an important corrective to the other approaches to ethics that emphasize impartiality and universality. An ethic of care, with its focus on partiality and particularity, is an important reminder of an aspect of morality that cannot be ignored.

Overview

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A key concept in ethics of care is to exercise special care towards people with whom we have valuable relationship.

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Females are more concerned about relationships (ethics of care), while males are more concerned about moral laws (ethics of justice).

Activity What do you understand by ethics of care? What are the moral demands of ethics of care?

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