Philosophisch-ethische Rezensionen
(Erscheinungsdatum der rezensierten Bücher: 20. und 21. Jahrhundert)
Virginia Held: What ethics of care is about
In her essay „The Ethics of Care“
the author states that in moralities built on the image of the
independent, autonomous, rational the reality of human dependence
and the morality it calls for is largely overlooked. Emotions such
as sympathy, empathy, sensitivity and responsiveness are seen, in
the eyes of an ethics of care, as a kind of moral emotions that need
to be cultivated. And this not just in order to further the
implemantation of the dictates of reason, but also to better the
invastigation in what morality recommends. Moral inquiries relying
entirely on reason, calculations and rationalism are seen as
deficient. The manifold expressions of care and caring relations are
not just to be observed and described, but in need to be recognized
and estimated as a subject of moral scrutiny. Not the more abstract
the reasoning about a moral problem the better, but respect to the
claims of particular others with whom we share actual
relationship.Those who care for others do not primarily seek to
further their own individual interests, rather their interest is
entangled with the persons they care for. It is not about acting for
the sake of all humanity in general, but instead it is about a
preservation, a promotion of an actual human relation between
themselves and particular others, it's about an acting for
self-and-other-together. It offers a radical transformation of
society, in which the values and importance, the moral significance
of caring is supported. It values our particular ties, our actual
relationship, that partly constitute our identity. The autonomy
sought appears within the ethics of care as a capacity to cultivate
and reshape relations and not to resemble an abstract self of
liberal political and moral theory. Ethics of care invites us to
take responsibility and does not, in Held's eyes, as liberal
individualist morality would do, focuses on how we should leave each
other alone. Thus the ethics of care appears to be a deep challenge
to other moral theories. It especially takes the experience of women
in caring activities as central and considers a possible
generalizing of its insights to other questions of morality.
11.06.2013