2.9 Care ethics and the critiques of the ethics of justice and meritocracy Flashcards
(13 cards)
Why should we care about care?
TM is an activity amongst humans beings with distinctive relationships, needs, vulnerabilities and responsibilities
TM shapes human relationships: influences whether and how we recognize and respond to these needs, vulnerabilities and responsibilities
Offers a framework for TM practice assessment (in terms of caring values, e.g., attentiveness, empathy, relationality or recognition)
How can care be perceived?
Care as practice:
Attending to and meeting other’s needs
Examples: nurturing, supporting, listening, mentoring, teaching, cleaning, removing waste et.
Often invisible and undervalued (economically) forms of labor in both private and economic sphere.
Central to human development and flourishing, organizational, social and political life.
Care as a value:
Core value we share as human beings.
Moral standards implicit in these practices that guide assessment of whether they are done well or badly.
Including values such as attentiveness, empathy and responsiveness.
Can be explicated in a moral theory: the ethics of care.
What are the three conceptions of care?
Care as a motive or virtue (Michael Slote, Nel Noddings): morally good actions are determined by motive (exhibit caring on the parts of its agent). Morally bad actions are done with a lack of care or even malice.
Care as practice (Joan Tronto): deontological reasonings
Care as outcome (Diemut Bubeck): consequentialism reasonings. Care is responding to the needs of another person who they cannot meet by themselves.
Explain Care as a motive or virtue
There are actions that are not good not bad but morally void (e.g., scratching one’s head) => care not only in action but also motivation
Highlights emotional and motivational aspects of care.
Twofold functions of moral emotions:
Emotions as a source of moral knowledge: knowing what to do
Emotions as moral motivation: acting out of empathetic concern for the concrete other rather than, e.g., out of moral duty and respect for moral law (deontological ethics)
Competence:
Emotions need to be educated and trained.
Idea of care: habituative emotions (automatically care for others or act with care as a motive and virtue)
Explain care as practice. What are the types of caring relaitonships? What are they scope?
Highlights labor and effort involved in care
Caring: activities that include everything we do to maintain, continue and repair our world (including our bodies, ourselves, our environments)
Types of caring relationships:
Informal (e.g., friendships, parenthood, caring for sick or elderly)
Professional: education, healthcare, environmental care, politics, etc.
Scope of caring relationship:
People (including oneself)
Living beings (animals and plants)
Environment at large
What are the phases of caring (according to care as practice)
Caring about: recognizing unmet needs (need some form of attentiveness)
Taking care of: assuming responsibility and determining how to respond
Care-giving: meeting needs for care (trying to meet other needs => actual practice)
Care-receiving: recognizing responses to care (did I see their needs correctly?)
Caring with: sharing social responsibility for care (Web of caring relationships + Something we engage in together)
What are the values of care (elements) according to care as practice?
Attentiveness: proclivity to become aware of need
Responsibility: a willingness to respond and take care of need
Competence: the skill of providing: good and successful care
Responsiveness: consideration of the position of others as they see it and recognition of the potential abuse in care (especially in professional caring relationships)
Solidarity: caring needs and the ways in which they are met need to be consistent with democratic commitments of justice, equality and freedom for all.
Explain care as outcome
Highlights care’s goal directed and need-oriented nature
Not just actions and motivation but also outcome matters
Aims: meeting people’s needs
Meeting people needs rather than just trying to
Responding to needs rather than desires
Avoiding paternalism: responding to real needs rather than projected needs
Requires: empathy, knowledge, skills and competences.
Give a summarized version of care
Practice of responding to needs with correct motivation and achieving the wanted outcomes.
Multidimensional concept:
Both practice and value
Action or activity
What is the ethics of care presented as?
Response and alternative to other moral theories (e.g., deontological ethics, consequentialism and utilitarianism and virtue ethics)
But also: deontological, consequentialism and virtue ethical versions and dimensions of care-ethics.
Some resistance towards being built into and presented as a moral theory due to methodological commitments.
What are the core values of deontological ethics vs ethics of care?
Deontological ethics (Kantian): focus on idea of moral duty (primary value) and moral responsibility (from shared rational nature, abstracting from difference)
Shared core of humanity (ignoring other differences) => should treat each other with respect
Ethics of care: care as the primary value
Compare the traditional with the care-ethical view of moral subject
Traditional: disembodiment (abstraction to human beings, and from human relations), self-constitution, self-interest.
Care-ethical: embodiment, affectivity and vulnerability, relationality and dependency, concrete, historical and situated, interwoven in historically grown relationships that are not necessarily chosen and not necessarily equal, identities are shaped and constituted by relationships, we always already care
What is the ideal of human existence? Compare traditional and care-ethical views of it
Relationality: ideas if human well-being and flourishing
Traditional (liberal and libertarian) ideas of human well-being and flourishing
Independence and self-sufficiency
Autonomy as freedom from responsibility for others.
Well-being and flourishing tied to individual achievement, self-realization and ability to act without external constraint.
Care-ethical ideas of human well-being and flourishing
Intrinsic value of (caring) relationships
Relational autonomy
Well-being and flourishing are not primarily dependent on individual growth and success but on flourishing relationships and the well-being of who and what we care about.
