The Ethics of Care: The State of the Art 9789042940635, 9789042940642, 9042940638

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The Ethics of Care: the State of the Art Frans Vosman, Andries Baart, Jaco Hoffman (Eds.)

VOLUME 8

The Ethics of Care: the State of the Art

Ethics of Care Editorial Board Prof. dr. Helen Kohlen, Vallendar Prof. dr. Sandra Laugier, Paris I – Sorbonne Prof. dr. Frans Vosman, Utrecht, chief editor Advisory board Prof. dr. Andries Baart, Utrecht Prof. dr. Guillaume le Blanc, Paris Prof. dr. Sophie Bourgault, Ottawa Prof. dr. Fabienne Brugère, Paris Prof. dr. Elisabeth Conradi, Stuttgart Prof. dr. Chris Gastmans, Leuven Prof. dr. Per Nortvedt, Oslo Prof. dr. Annelies van Heijst, Tilburg Prof. dr. Linus Vanlaere, Leuven Prof. dr. Marian Verkerk, Groningen

Cover from a painting by the German Jewish painter Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944). Site of the Museum of his work: http://www.osnabrueck.de/fnh/10508.asp. Nussbaum has – while firmly rooted in the European tradition of modern art – given the atrocities of Nazism a face. We honor his life and work by pointing at his artwork on the covers of this series Ethics of Care. Felix Nussbaum Stilleben mit Wäschekorb, 1927, WV nr. 44 Oil on canvas, 65 × 75 cm Private collection Foto © Felix-Nussbaum-Haus Osnabrück Permanent loan from the Niedersächsischen Sparkassenstiftung

Ethics of Care Volume 8

The Ethics of Care: the State of the Art Frans Vosman, Andries Baart, Jaco Hoffman (Eds.)

PEETERS Leuven – Paris – Bristol, CT 2020

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN 978-90-429-4063-5 eISBN 978-90-429-4064-2 D/2020/0602/20 © 2020 – Peeters, Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000 Leuven

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS After Forty Years: Toward a Recasting of Care Ethics Frans Vosman, Andries Baart, Jaco Hoffman The Disenchantment of Care Ethics. A Critical Cartography Frans Vosman

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PART I – KEY INSIGHTS IN CARE ETHICS The Role of Emotions in the Ethics and Politics of Care Fabienne Brugère Vulnerability and Trust. A Phenomenological Perspective on the Practice of Care Christina Schües

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Ordinary Realism in Ethics Sandra Laugier

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Care Ethics and the Social Contract Virginia Held

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Care and Justice Daniel Engster

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PART II – PRACTICES OF CARE Applying or Reinventing? The Ethics of Care and Social Work Elisabeth Conradi

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Care and the New Patterns of Precarity Flávia Biroli

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“Time Matters a Lot in Care Practices.” Palliative Care Meets Care Ethics 233 Helen Kohlen Empirically Grounded Ethics of Care. An Argument Andries Baart

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INFORMATION ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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INDEX OF NAMES

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INDEX OF SUBJECTS

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Acknowledgements

The idea for this book came up as two members of the research network Critical Ethics of Care, CEC (the Netherlands), Andries Baart and Frans Vosman, met with Jaco Hoffman in Oxford. The Oxford Institute of Population Aging and the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, hosted the John Fell series of lectures and debates on the state of the art of care ethics, in fall 2014. Access is still to be retrieved at www.ethicsofcare.org under “learning events” and at the site of Martin School, Oxford University, see: www.oxfordmartin. ox.ac.uk/videos/view/417 We thank both the Oxford Institute of Population Aging and the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, for their encouragement and for the fact that they hosted the series. Subsequently we wanted to give the ideas on the ethics of care an even larger audience and we have composed this book. We apologize for the delay due to health issues. We thank the foundation Critical Ethics of Care (the Netherlands) and the University of Humanistic Studies (Utrecht, the Netherlands) for their financial support for the edition of this book. We thank Mrs. Brecht Molenaar (MA) for her invaluable editing work. We thank our authors wholeheartedly for their contributions and the anonymous reviewers for their critical remarks. Frans Vosman, Andries Baart, Jaco Hoffman

After Forty Years: Toward a Recasting of Care Ethics Frans Vosman, Andries Baart, Jaco Hoffman

In the fall of 2014, the Oxford Institute of Population Aging and the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford hosted the John Fell series of lectures and debates on the state of the art in care ethics.1 Jaco Hoffman, Andries Baart, and Frans Vosman conceptualized and convened this series, inviting scholars from across Europe and the United States of America. After almost 35 years of the development of care ethical theory it seemed a worthwhile challenge to present the state of the art. In 1987, only a few years after the publication of the first book that explicitly mentioned care ethics (Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice, 1982), Annette Baier (1987) spoke about care as a “new buzzword.” Scholars from across a range of perspectives and disciplines, as well as from different generations of care ethicists, accepted the invitation to come to Oxford and provide an update on the insights of care ethics as it has developed. In our presentation of this volume, we reflect on how to undertake an overview of the state of the art in an entire field. How to approach care ethics, and the feminist background of care ethics, which is as important as ever? We will also summarize the ten contributions to this book. (An elementary introduction to care ethics appears in the next chapter.) In many ways the Oxford series was profoundly provocative: it took place over an eight-week period in the former Indian Institute building, now home to the Oxford Martin School, which has a

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weathervane on its roof in the shape of an elephant with a howdah, recalling colonial power structures of the past – in itself already a setting charged with political tension. With scholars and students from all over the world in attendance, including researchers from different domains, like political science, the social sciences, and theology, as well as experienced scholars from medicine and bioethics, challenging questions were asked and explored (if not always answered). “I am from a working class family. My mum was at home and took care of us, children. My dad was a laborer who toiled many hours to get the income that kept our family alive. Why would my dad’s labor dad not qualify him as a caring person?” (A young British, male, assistant professor in ethnography). “I am from Mexico where one of the major problems – day in and day out – is to survive; to keep body and soul together. The state and the societal institutions are deeply flawed and dysfunctional. There is no such thing as security that you can count on, as you would expect security to be provided by the police. Care ethics seems to be too much of a sympathetic way of reasoning, taking the importance of functioning institutions and justice for granted. What about caring responsibilities if institutions are virtually absent?” (A young Mexican woman who is pursuing a PhD in political theory). “I am rather surprised about the appreciation of care labor as being done mainly by women without much formal education. I am a general practitioner, just retired, and as I see it colleagues of my generation and I have worked ourselves into a sweat and this without much remuneration. Why should formal training be seen as decisive?” (An older male physician from London). Presuppositions as well as concepts that were not necessarily welldeveloped in the lectures were explored during these presentations and subsequent discussions. The strengths as well as some of the lacunae of care ethics became apparent. The very core of care ethics – to begin ethical reflection with practices of care themselves – was uncovered and appreciated as novel and as different from the kind of ethics the participants were used to.

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In this sense, the core series of lectures and discussions underlying this collection of essays was a hologram of what care ethics is about: the attempt to clarify the multidimensional character of care ethics; the challenges of fresh and radically different views that are still in their developing stages; the blind spots and undertheorized issues… The editors subsequently invited two scholars who were not originally part of the Oxford series to contribute to this volume to address some additional issues in relation to care ethics and in addition to a series of podcasts2: Flávia Biroli (Brasilia, Brazil) and Daniel Engster (Texas, USA). The aim of this edited volume is therefore to offer a collection of contributions that bring the reader up to date with the latest insights into emblematic topics in care ethics.

State of the Art This edited volume on the state of the art of care ethics explores three cross-cutting perspectives: a cross-contextual one, a feminist one, and a questioning one. Cross-contextual The editors explicitly wished to bring together scholars from different languages and schools of thought, although this goal has admittedly been only partially realized. After almost forty years of care ethics, it is high time that care ethicists converse and explain to each other what aspects in their own societal and intellectual backgrounds could help to renew the common enterprise of the ethics of care. This does not mean a mere parochial presentation of typical features from everyone’s own context. This ongoing cross-national conversation, which was also facilitated by the Oxford seminars and subsequently by this edited volume, is a hopeful sign of the much needed extension of care ethics. The current collection is part of an ongoing effort to contribute to the internationalization of care ethics, an endeavor that started in the Dutch-Flemish research group on Care and Contested Coherence (CEC – 2007-2014). In this same vein of internationalization, scholars from Sweden, France, Germany, Canada, and the Netherlands were brought together, thanks to the efforts of Elisabeth

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Conradi.3 In fact, internationalization has become the specific mission of the peer-reviewed Series Ethics of Care, of which this volume is part. It is evident from the current volume that scholars from different traditions design their arguments in different ways, and that contributions are structured very distinctively. Characteristics of a feminist ethics Care ethics is feminist by design, but constant modifications are in evidence. Twenty years ago Elizabeth Porter (1999) listed three requirements that any ethical theory must meet in order to be called feminist. First, it must deal with the variations in women’s lives. Second, it must address traditional ethics: it needs to confront a male ethical and epistemological bias, both on account of its implications for women and of its exclusion of women. Third, a feminist theory has to propose alternatives, as people cannot refrain from acting and are in need of direction (pp. ix-x). Care ethics, multifaceted as it has become, essentially complies with these conditions. However, two decades later, feminism itself is now being questioned by scholars from within feminism, such as Françoise Vergès (2018). While she clearly shares the same concern about care labor, for instance in relation to migrants and marginalized groups that are confined to lowwage jobs, she is also critical about feminism that has lost its deep contact with struggles against racism and women’s rights. The nexus between a contemporary care ethics immersed within academia and more autonomous activist movements to redirect societies offers scope for transitions. The political context in which care ethics operates has changed drastically. (These issues are explored to some extent in Vosman’s introductory chapter; they are pertinent, but are not yet satisfactorily addressed in this volume.) In more general terms it is necessary to ask: what care ethics, what feminism is at issue? Care ethics departs from actual existing relationships and from how people respond to others within these relationships. The actual context of their considerations, related to what people do, what they refrain from, and what they undergo, is thought to be ethically crucial. These are considerations by people who take part in a practice

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of care. The actual context is accepted and explored in care ethics as the place where it is possible to discover what is good in the moral sense of the word. Care ethics uncovers the fact that caring and being cared for are practices that are crucially political in nature. Caring makes it possible for people to live together, and that is the very substance of the political. The feminist roots of care ethics are visible in each of these three insights. Fabienne Brugère (2011) has expressed the view that care ethics is in fact a renewal, a new phase of feminist thought (pp. 34-35). Care ethics questioned Care ethics has been subject to criticism almost from the beginning. Care ethicists have meticulously responded to “alleged weaknesses” (Kittay, 2011, p.  53, to give just one example of such a rebuttal; cfr. Held, 2006, pp. 9-28). Nevertheless, care ethics has its weaknesses and these should not be neglected. Furthermore, after forty years, new insights in care have been presented. Care is not only about responding to people while being in relation. Care is about responding to all that lives, as present-day authors emphasize. Anthropocentrism has been questioned (e.g. by Puig de la Bellacasa (2017), who has amended Joan Tronto’s description of care). Moreover, there is increasing awareness in care ethics nowadays that actual care relations are marked by “profound ambivalence” (Bourgault & Pulcini, 2018, p. 13). Although the editors trust that a care ethical perspective on societies is opportune, we keep an open mind to both the strengths and shortcomings of care ethics when it comes to renewing insights. Whatever the shifts and queries that have emerged within gendered perspectives, gender awareness within care ethics is as important as ever. Re-reading Gilligan’s In a Different Voice shows that her thoughts have remained fresh and inspiring and that they are revisited time and time again for very good reasons.

In Brief In this collection, ten authors bring readers up to date on these three pivotal insights, and many more, as they have been developed over

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the years in care ethics. After an introduction by Frans Vosman and Andries Baart, Vosman presents what he has termed a “critical cartography” (using an expression by Rosi Braidotti) of care ethics. He outlines the main critical insights of care ethics and points to some issues that are as yet undeveloped and ignored. In the first part of this volume, “Key Insights in Care Ethics,” a number of these vital insights of care ethics are then explored: vulnerability as a basic feature of humanness (Christina Schües) and emotions as intelligent and giving orientation to human movements (Fabienne Brugère). Sandra Laugier emphasizes the need to reflect on caring practices, starting from ordinary life and the importance of care that can be uncovered from within the ordinary. Both Virginia Held and Daniel Engster delve into the political character of care ethics. From a care ethical perspective, Held explores a classical idea in political (and social) ethics, i.e. the social contract. Engster explains how a root issue in care ethics, namely the tense relationship between care and justice, is in fact a confrontation between a care ethical relational take on justice and a neo-Kantian one. McCormick characterizes the latter view as steered by rationality and impartiality (McCormick, 2010). He shows how care ethicists have reflected on the tension and how he thinks care ethics can move forward with this issue. In a second part, “Practices of Care,” two authors give perspectives on practices of care and on how care ethical insights can illuminate these practices, i.e. the practices of social work (Elisabeth Conradi) and of palliative care (Helen Kohlen). The second part also explains how deeply political care ethical reflections are: Flávia Biroli explores the precariousness of care labor and the delegation of care responsibilities that we all have; not just groups that are burdened with so-called “dirty” care like women, people of color, migrants etc. The implication of this is that actual practices of care are politically charged. As care ethicists generally assert, care ethics is a reflection on care based on actual practices of care. Andries Baart therefore advocates qualitative empirical research into and from within practices of care, and he stresses the need to propose realistic answers with regard to ever more pressing issues. This is one of the rarer

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conversations in care ethics: the lack of joined-up reflection on what political ethical theory and the groundedness of a theory encompass.

In Detail In his introductory piece, Frans Vosman (Chapter 2: “The Disenchantment of Care Ethics. A Critical Cartography”) provides an outline of care ethics, first and foremost of its basis and critical insights. This charting also takes the form of a – very brief – comparison of care ethics with other types of ethics and of a discussion of care ethicists’ various programs and anti-programs. He considers yet another way of charting care ethics by asking what kind of overviews of care ethics already exist: this is an exercise in the history of ideas, Ideengeschichte. It appears that certain types of overviews are lacking: thus there is no materialistic analysis of care ethics (St. Pierre, Jackson, & Mazzei, 2016). In the third part of his contribution, headed “Uneasy Conversations,” Vosman elaborates on examples of a frozen discussion in care ethics, of an aporia, and of a lacuna. The frozen discussion is about an issue raised by the care ethicist Olena Hankivsky and concerns the research strategy of intersectionality within care ethics. An example of an aporia in care ethics is the problematic ontological “we,” including the “we” that appears in Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto’s often cited definition of caring (1990): “. . . everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible” (Tronto, 2013, p. 19). According to Vosman, this “we,” which is undergirded by a “relational ontology,” is an essentialized “we,” and it is exactly the opposite of what care ethics strives for, the specific, corporeal “we,” if and in so far as it emerges. He proposes constant inquiry into “the actual we” as a remedy for this “ontological turn” in care ethics. Lastly, he addresses a lacuna, i.e. the absence of a conceptualization of community within care ethics. He suggests that precisely care ethics, with its insistence on relations, should be in a position to “conjugate” caring in the mode of community: to relate while creating community. Fabienne Brugère, who opens Part I with her contribution “The Role of Emotions in the Ethics and Politics of Care,” states that an ethics

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of care restores the notion of emotion as a motive for action. This, in a nutshell, is a challenging claim of care ethics, compared to the emphasis that neo-Kantian ethics places on rationality and generalization and the claim that utilitarianism places on disengaged calculation of the pros and cons of actions and on balancing them. Brugère makes this claim knowing perfectly well that emotions are both the backbone of relations between people and groups, the very basis of paying attention to others and the basis of attachment, and that these emotions are ambivalent. In the first step of her argument, she posits an anthropology of vulnerability as the sphere where emotions should be located. Emotions are not only always fluid and ambivalent, but are also the object of manipulation in politics (and commerce). Only by properly conceptualizing vulnerability will it be possible to address abuse in care relations. Surely, the vulnerability of those who give care and of those who receive care at a particular time have their own characteristics. Vulnerability and, at its heart, dependency are humanizing. Taking on vulnerability and the dimensions of dependency makes it possible to see and treat people as exactly what they are: people in need of others. In a second step, she investigates the nature of emotions more deeply, while drawing on “that other part of Enlightenment,” the so-called Scottish Enlightenment. She writes: the irregularity of sentiments is not a danger for human beings; it is integral to the happiness of the species. In a third and last step, Brugère calls for political acknowledgement of vulnerability and feelings. She believes it is possible to come to a democratic use of emotions. In her chapter “Vulnerability and Trust. A Phenomenological Perspective on the Practice of Care,” the philosopher Christina Schües touches on a crucial insight of feminist ethics and of care ethics in particular: the vulnerability of all living beings, and of human beings, in body, language, and sense. This insight is opposed to the idea of humankind as characterized by rationality and accountability through reason. Vulnerability is an attribute of all people as they live their daily, ordinary lives; not just special so-called “vulnerable groups” or people in specific periods of life. Schües relates vulnerability to trust

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and mistrust. Before exploring trust, she states that vulnerability is linked to the capacity of being harmed and injured and the capacity to suffer. Drawing on the Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero, she develops the idea that wounding and caring are the two poles of vulnerability. Trust, then, is the courageous response to vulnerability – to accept that others have power over us. Mistrust stands for the reaction to a “broken world.” Schües then addresses pain and violence that intrude, that modify being in relation. She ends with a positive appreciation of trust: letting oneself be vulnerable to the other enhances a particular strength. It responds to the vulnerability that is inherent, contingent, and central to human relations. Sandra Laugier in “Ordinary Realism in Ethics” connects the work of ordinary language philosophy (OLP) to care ethics. She sees decisive parallels between the two. She has written extensively on this in French, drawing on Wittgenstein, Austin, Diamond, and Cavell. The ordinary is undervalued; ordinary life is held in contempt. This relates immediately to female domestic work. Care above all is an activity of ordinary life. Care in its political implication should be the object of reflection that starts with the realities of ordinary life. Only then will the experiences of women be valued. Thus, in the version of care ethics that Laugier has developed over the years, the ordinary, the things that are right before our eyes but are overlooked, is a central topos. OLP can help to develop a kind of realism in care ethics: realism not in an abstract philosophical sense but taken as attention to the practices of ordinary life and attention to everyday language. Attention to the everyday is an important definition of caring. And: language is the adequacy of human adjustment to everyday situations. Language relates to a central care ethical insight – the issue of voicing, obtaining the voices of women and of other groups that are disregarded. This, of course, refers to the idea in OLP that language is not a separate domain, but is part of ordinary life. Laugier proposes to redefine ethics on the basis of what is important, in other words, by paying “attention to particulars.” Virginia Held, in her contribution “Care Ethics and the Social Contract,” argues that it is time to drastically rethink the very

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concept of the social contract, which has been so important in Western ethics from Hobbes to late modernity. After recapitulating what she sees as major advancements in ethics brought about by care ethics, she argues that care ethics is a comprehensive moral theory. Its perspective and normative claims should be prioritized over other moral theories. The idea of molding relations on a contractual basis runs counter to a care ethical view on relationships. Should, as a consequence, the idea of the social contract be deemphasized or downgraded? Instead of thinking of the social contract as the foundation of the whole of society and of our relations with others and other states, we can see it as a restricted basis for limited institutions. And instead of having it dominate our moral and normative social theorizing, we should understand it as providing only a partial perspective’. Held addresses several different arguments on how the social contract could be replaced by care ethical approaches as a model for society and for relations between states. Goals can be “reimagined” and that is where care ethics can contribute. In his contribution “Care and Justice,” Daniel Engster explains how the debate about care versus justice has developed. First he explores how care ethics was conceived as, and how it developed into a political theory, starting with Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice. According to him, care ethical propositions about the relationship between care and justice are complementary to ideas about justice in justice theories: offering diverse and potentially complementary perspectives on the overall organization of society. He compares one of the most notable theories of justice, that of John Rawls, with a care ethical view on justice. Rawls premises his justice theory on selfinterest, individuality, and equality, whereas care ethics places relationality and responsibility center stage. In a following section Engster inquires into Virginia Held’s and Michael Slote’s accounts of justice, both of which he then critically assesses. His own position is that care ethics should return to Gilligan and bring her position on justice up to date. He makes this case by exploring three telling examples, on abortion, on bureaucracy and public administration, and on sexual harassment policy. Both care ethical and justice

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perspectives are needed to obtain clarity in these issues. Engster advocates a two-sided approach: which theory makes the most sense with regard to a particular issue: the care ethical theory or the liberal justice theory? Care ethics would be well-advised to adopt “practical reason and moral artistry.” Elisabeth Conradi opens Part II of this volume, “Practices of Care,” with a chapter entitled “Applying or Reinventing? The Ethics of Care and Social Work”. She focuses on social work, the core business of which for approximately a century has been caring for the most vulnerable. In addition to vulnerability and care, keywords are dependency, solidarity, citizenship and concepts like help and assistance – by professionals and non-professionals alike, in small, but also in more generalized settings. Nevertheless, the ethics of care does not play any role in the theory and, above all, the moral reasoning of social work. She shows that Kantian ethics with its emphasis on autonomy is not fit to handle the moral issues that arise in social workers’ everyday practice. In this context, and in a critique of the Weberian vocational approach to ethical issues, Conradi stresses some of the typical characteristics of social work (its setting), but she refuses to argue for a separate ethic, although an ethics of social work must accommodate a wide spectrum of topics in the tension that exists between the individual and society. It must not only deal with the conflicts that individual social workers and volunteers face; it should also address institutions, public and semi-public activities, and civic engagement. And it must extend to larger social endeavors such as peacebuilding, reconciliation, and moral repair. The relational way the founding mothers of ethics of care reasoned, transcending the boundaries between private and public, and the moral conceptualizations that they and their successors have developed seem to be much more promising for dealing appropriately with dilemmas in social work. Step by step, Conradi explores the requirements and possibilities, and provides the building blocks of a care ethically designed ethics of social work. Helen Kohlen starts her contribution, entitled ““Time Matters a Lot in Care Practices.” Palliative Care meets Care Ethics,” with the

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observation that time is the most important and precious prerequisite in palliative care, which is embedded in an accelerated modern era and accelerated healthcare institutions. Time seems to be a scarce but indispensable commodity. She explores the meaning of time for good care from a care ethical point of view. The first step is to determine the character of (professional and institutionalized) palliative caring according to the ethics of care. Her view is that it is a kind of relational practice which is quite different from a collection of successfully executed acts or from the strictly regulated application of evidence-based knowledge. In a second step, she draws substantially on the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s acceleration theory. Concepts derived from this theory can help to investigate, describe, and better understand the meaning of acceleration and deceleration in the field (and practices of) of palliative care. Palliative care is a practice in the mode of deceleration. Kohlen turns again to Rosa for her third step, but now to his socalled resonance theory. According to this theory, people are able to form a responsive system in which they mutually encourage each other by addressing one another in their own voice. The situation may offer good opportunities for this exchange (or for silencing participants) but if such “resonance experiences” occur, they constitute the conditions for a good and “free” social life. Kohlen demonstrates that relations, as understood in the ethics of care, should be “resonance relations,” and by consequence they need open attentiveness and time to grow and to allow the people involved to become attuned to one another. In her contribution “Care and the New Patterns of Precarity,” Flávia Biroli aims to contribute to the diagnosis that caring and democratic deficits are two sides of the same coin. She focuses on care as a main issue to understand the connections between (a) inequality, (b) precariousness and the (c) weakening of democracies. According to Biroli, anyone who wishes to understand the devaluing of care should be aware of the sexual and racial division of labor. This skewed labor distribution leads to unequal access to social resources, such as money, time, and political influence, and

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has a decisive impact on a person’s position as carer. Biroli points to the effects of the privatization of responsibilities. Class, gender, and race inequalities are strongly reinforced when families and individuals are made responsible for the care of children, the elderly and others. Many will not be in a position to hire services and this means that, however difficult their circumstances may be, they have to care themselves. This burden of care undermines the social position of the carers in question (women, colored and other marginalized or precarious people). Although “personal responsibility” is often considered to be the result of free personal motives, it seldom is. Instead, irresponsibility as a political issue is fundamental to understanding insecurity and the “precarization” of those carers. In addition, Biroli discusses neoliberalism as a logic that organizes boundaries and frontiers between public and private life, democratic concerns, and corporate interests. As she reflects on its impact on individual lives and collective perspectives, she also presents some final considerations on the potential of a political care ethics in order to face the crisis of care and the crisis of democracy. An ethics of care could be an alternative to competitive rationality. Andries Baart, in his contribution “Empirically Grounded Ethics of Care. A Plea,” concludes this book with an appeal: an ethics of care should draw on thorough empirical research, and its normative ideas should be more often corrected, rejected, or amended on the basis of these empirical findings. Empirical research ensures that the ethics of care remains “down to earth.” This plea starts with the author determining his position in the classical fact-value discussion and finding a way out of that narrowly defined dichotomy. Instead of a bipolar model, Baart proposes a triangle with the following three angles: empirical research, ethical reflection, and theory development. The relationship between these three aspects is explored and its logic is explained. In an intermezzo, Baart briefly describes the kind of empirical research that has been conducted over the last twenty years. All the projects he mentions were executed within the framework of the ethics of care and they have specified and updated (some parts of) the ethics of care. These empirically researched

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projects have substantially contributed to developing the ethics of care and have often made critical corrections and unmasked ideological stances. In the rest of his contribution, Baart illustrates and underpins these claims: he shows how care ethics has increasingly become enmeshed in the “swamps” of every-day complexity, and in doing so, has gradually transcended theory-driven irrelevance. He presents the empirical findings which specify and substantially elaborate the meaning of relationality and emotions – two key concepts in the ethics of care. He then offers the validated Care Ethical Quality System as a comprehensive model for reflective inquiries into the quality of relational care. He confesses that to realize the empirically turn toward ordinary life means losing one’s innocence, certainty and arrogance.

Conclusion The ten chapters of this book not only give an account of what care ethics is about and of the discussions that have developed. As we see it, they also raise important questions for care ethicists. Engaging with the arguments made during the last forty years in care ethics (and thus with the actual development of care ethics), and with the rather urgent questions that are raised in this book could open up a way to recasting care ethics. As we see it, it is imperative that care ethics should be internationalized. This is not necessarily attained by adhering exclusively to the tools of academia (international conferences, articles etc.), as academia has been shown to have preoccupations of its own. Internationalization implies making space for the concerns that propel care ethicists in their region and making room for diverse intellectual traditions. The typicality of present-day care ethics might then become clearer: how it reflects – or fails to reflect – on class, on racialization, on its rootedness in liberal ideas of democracy, in sum, how it reflects on the complexity of caring practices. At the origin of care ethics stands a deep societal concern that is expressed in reflection on practices of care. Are practices of care still the source for developing conceptual tools of care ethics?4

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Reference List Baier, A. C. (1987). The need for more than justice. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 17, sup1, 41-56. doi: 10.1080/00455091.1987.10715928 Bourgault, S., & Pulcini, E. (2018). Emotions and care: Interdisciplinary perspectives. Louvain: Peeters. Brugère, F. (2011). Éloge de la sollicitude: le nouvel âge du féminisme. In P. Guinchard & J.-F.  Petit (Eds.), Une société de soins: Santé, travail, philosophie, politique (pp. 27-36). Paris: Les Éditions de l’Atelier. Conradi, E., & Vosman, F. (Eds.). (2016). Praxis der Achtsamkeit: Schlüsselbegriffe der Care-Ethik [Practice of attentiveness: Key concepts in care ethics]. Frankfurt a/ Main: Campus. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Kittay, E. F. (2011). The ethics of care, dependence, and disability. Ratio Juris: An International Journal of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law, 24, 49-58. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9337.2010.00473.x Held, V. (2006). The ethics of care: Personal, political, and global. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McCormick, P. T. (2010). Whose justice? An examination of nine models of justice. Social Thought, 22(2-3), 17-25. doi: 10.1080/15426432.2003.9960338 Porter, E. (1999). Feminist perspectives on ethics. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education. Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017). Matters of care: Speculative ethics in more than human worlds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. St. Pierre, E. A., Jackson, A. Y., & Mazzei, L. A. (2016). New empiricisms and new materialisms: Conditions for new inquiry. Cultural Studies C Critical Methodologies, 16(2), 99-110. Tronto, J. C. (2013). Caring democracy: Markets, equality, and justice. New York: New York University Press. Vergès, F. (2018). On women and their wombs: Capitalism, racialization, feminism. Critical Times, 1(1), 263-267.

Notes The expressions “ethics of care,” “care ethics,” and “an ethic of care” are used interchangeably in this collection. We are aware of debates on this terminology and of the various stances defended on persuasive grounds, yet we have decided not to highlight these varieties 2 To be retrieved at www.ethicsofcare.org under “learning events” and at the site of Martin School, Oxford University: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/videos/ view/417. 3 Reflected in: Conradi & Vosman, F., 2016. 4 Some authors have made English versions of titles that were originally written in another language. In this respect we have left their reference list as it was delivered to us. 1

The Disenchantment of Care Ethics A Critical Cartography Frans Vosman

Introduction: a Different Kind of Ethics The ethics of care is a relatively young discipline in ethics and political theory. It emerged within feminism in the early 1980s and is therefore approximately 40 years old. Care ethics has active feminist roots, but is not coterminous with “care feminism” (Cantillon & Lynch, 2017; Marsico, 2007, p. 100; Wolf, 1996, p. 9). There are several commonalities that span the increasingly wide field of care ethics. Fabienne Brugère (2019) in her introduction to the ethics of care has identified one characteristic: compared with other types of ethics care ethics “is a theoretical and practical revolution” (p.  7). “This ethics is anchored simultaneously in receptivity, relatedness, and responsiveness” (p. 12). The approach is called interdisciplinary, but also multidisciplinary, i.e. having a lower degree of aggregation than interdisciplinarity (Elst, Klaver, & Baart, 2014; Leget, Van Nistelrooij, & Visse, 2019, p. 5). This epithet of multidisciplinarity is intended first and foremost as a statement of fact. It turns out that scholars come to care ethics from a variety of backgrounds: psychology, sociology, political science, various philosophical disciplines (anthropology, phenomenology, ethics), moral theology, qualitative-empirical researchers, themselves hailing from several backgrounds (public administration, nursing). Some care ethicists, it must be said, pay little to no attention to how the various disciplines of origin (psychology, philosophy, political theory, sociology etc.) could work together meaningfully.

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Care ethics is polyphonic (Engster, 2015, pp. 18-19), there are several different views within care ethics. In fact it is possible to speak of care ethics in the plural (Vosman, 2016), to such an extent that the Wittgensteinian metaphor of family resemblances is perhaps no longer adequate. This blurring has been problematized in very different ways (Klaver et al., 2014; Collins, 2015; Leget et al., 2019; Vosman, Timmerman, & Baart, 2018). The polyphonic character of care ethics is evident for instance in the rejection, or, on the contrary, the fostering of connections with religious and cultural sources. Held (2006b) has rejected religion as a source of knowing what care is and what good care is, because people who do not adhere to the religion in question will find such an approach “non persuasive” (p. 22). Essentially that is an emic notion deriving from Religious Studies, and in many ways it is counterfactual: the perspective of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo will be very different, because the only form of sound health care and social care there is provided by churches (which, incidentally, are also the only force for democracy there); people in India have no difficulties availing of church-facilitated health care that is open to all if they have to, and are pleased with the results, even though India is being riven by disastrous religionization. Practices of care of their own weight. By contrast, other scholars purposefully seek to establish connections between care ethics and religions or philosophies of life, such as Confucianism (Sander-Staudt, 2015), Buddhism and Hinduism (McWeeny & Butnor, 2014), the Jewish faith (Conradi, 2018), and Christianity (Van Heijst, 2011). Elements from care ethics are being developed in many different directions, from care at home to international relations, from birth care to the “care” provided by NGOs. Michael Slote has called this expansion a “wildfire” (Slote, 2013, p. 6). The “burgeoning” literature on the proliferation of topics is such as to defy attempts at synthesis, according to Hamington (2018, p. 312). The approach of care ethics, which not only arose in the USA but is also strongly colored by American debates, has since its emergence been adopted across the globe: “care ethics has matured into an international and multidisciplinary intellectual phenomenon” (Hamington,

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2018, p. 309). At the same time it must be observed that care ethics is to a large degree a “white” affair (cf. Bilge, 2015, p. 24). A standpoint approach, which rigorously takes the scholar’s own position (i.e.  the often strained intersections between “identities” such as white (a color as well), colored, female, male, gay, lesbian, straight, trans, working-class or middle-class, ethnicity etc.) as the point of departure for reflection on care, as it is used in sections of feminism, is rare in care ethics. From its inception, the ethics of care has been a different form of ethics than the usual ethical schools: it is not concerned with principles, nor does it focus on generalizing rules of action or calculating consequences of action, or indeed on individual virtuousness. At the same time, care ethics has from the start been an intensification of the epistemological question: whose experience-based knowledge of, or insight into what is good counts? Which groups’ knowledge is being elided? To put it differently: epistemology and power are subjects that most in care ethics regard as important. Another characteristic feature of the approach is that – in my words – providing care and being cared for are considered to be constitutive of society. “Care sustains and repairs society” (Williams, 2018, p. 557). Care itself is a political reality, a practice that institutes the possibility of living together in an ordered way. We have the work of the care ethicist Joan Tronto to thank, not only for drawing attention to the political character of care ethics, but also for ensuring that this has become the received view (Tronto, 1993/2009a). Parallel developments A number of complicated issues with regard to care and practices of care are currently more clearly seen than they were in the early 1980s. Care ethics has been joined in the field of inquiry by other approaches; I restrict myself to five of these parallel approaches. Other, partially related approaches are cutting across the debates initiated by care ethics, fueled by the recognition of how important care is politically: the commoning movement is establishing connections between commoning, economic theory, and care (for instance

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Bauhardt & Harcourt, 2018). The transhumanistic ecological movement is establishing connections between care and a sense of solidarity between all living beings (including for instance the caring activity of plants; De la Bellacasa, 2017). The postcolonial movement is establishing connections between care labor and categories of thought “occupied” by colonial thought, such as the controversial “we, women” (Montanaro 2018; Raghuram, 2016) movement. Finally, the  precarity movement (including the EuroMayDay movement) is establishing connections between precarization, social insecurity, solidarity, and care labor (Brunner, Casalini, Kubaczek, Mulvaney, & Raunig, 2017; Sahraoui, 2018; Zechner, 2015). In the meantime, an awareness has grown that care itself is much more problematic than was realized before (De la Bellacasa, 2017; Dorlin, 2017; Raghuram, 2016: “trouble care”). Care ethics has been slow to respond to these recent approaches. Given that care ethics arose from women’s movements, and that it regards itself as political ethics and places itself within a democratic model, it should interest itself in these approaches like the commoning and precarization approaches, as they are closely connected to movements. If afflicted democracy is to survive, autonomous movements are required that can offer resistance to managerial practices, and corresponding inquiry is needed. Could care ethics be this inquiry? Could it come to view its work as the accompaniment of people, groups, and organizations that know what it is to struggle with “wicked problems”? Structure of this article In this three-part article I will firstly briefly address the substantive features of care ethics, and single out one feature in particular, responsibility. Then, in part two, I will give the disciplinary outlines: what kind of approach is the ethics of care? In the last, third part, I  will discuss three points of concern somewhat more extensively. I believe that care ethics may well continue to expand, but that this does not necessarily mean that it will retain its force. I believe it is losing the critical force that has been its distinctive attribute from the start.

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I will describe examples of a frozen conversation, a lacuna, i.e. a blind spot, and an aporia in care ethics. I will discuss the strategy of intersectionality as an example of a frozen conversation about complexity of treatment issues. Then I will examine “community” as a lacuna in care ethical thought. Finally, I will address an aporia, the problematic use of “we,” involving the use of ontology, in the ethics of care. I will conclude the article by returning to the question whether care ethics is tied to social movements. Raising the problem I believe forces will have to stand up in care ethics that are willing to engage in uncomfortable conversations. These conversations will have to involve people who regard themselves as part of care ethics, as well as fellow travelers, those scholars who also reflect critically on ethics, epistemology, and care, like critical sociologists. Why is it important to look at the weak points of care ethics? The number of complex issues to which care ethics is being “applied” continues to grow. The ethics of care is also undergoing a process of professionalization, with its own journal and conferences, as is usual for scholarly approaches that are seeking to become established and are seeking legitimacy. At the same time, however, there are theoretical weaknesses that are partially being identified from within care ethics and are subsequently being addressed according to the usual academic customs. An existing insight is then amended, and a sharper or much sharper definition of vulnerability or relationality is proposed. But the weaknesses also consist in part of lacunas: theoretical blind spots that are not perceived as such, instances of “not knowing what you don’t know.” One example of such a lacuna is the – ambivalent – need for community. There are also aporias. I use the word aporia to mean a certain cognitive embarrassment that is related to the nature of the enterprise itself; a cognitive embarrassment that blocks further critical expansion of care ethics. Stacy Simplican (2015) has pointed to such an aporia in Eva Feder Kittay’s – extremely important – insight into shared vulnerability as the foundation for providing and receiving

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care. Simplican has demonstrated the ambiguity of vulnerability, as a result of which it also becomes something that conceals. In the context of care for people with a severe disability: what if such people are not only vulnerable but also aggressive, where does that leave vulnerability? Can the violence of those who rely on care be immediately incorporated in the reflection? In contrast to idealizing-asabstraction, care ethics is liable to idealize by romanticizing. To romanticize is “to make (something) seem better or more appealing than it really is” (Cooper, 2007, quoted in Simplican, 2015, p. 220). Simplican (2015) quotes Davina Cooper1, who, arguing against a normative reading of care, concluded a decade ago that care theorists harbor a similar “gravitational pull of an ideal conception of care” (Simplican, 2015, p.  220, see also Petherbridge (2016) and Gilson (2013)). The strong tendency to perform analyses in normative terms (instead of an analytical or – preferably – heuristic use of terms) creates this kind of aporetic thought. To the extent that the ethics of care consists of saying out loud what care as a society-constituting practice implies, i.e. including the hidden realities, and to the extent that care ethics is a form of thinking that unveils practice, it is the task of care ethics to address these aporias that it has created itself. A third problem is that care ethical discourse is losing its edge. The idiom of care ethics is now being used widely, but in an entirely different sense: relational care has become the language of the market. This means that the ethics of care is being dulled down. I think a parallel can be drawn with the way critical theory has been used. Edward Said (2000) observed that the theory on reification which his mentor György Lukács propounded lost much of its critical meaning in the frequent use that was made of it (pp.  436-452, p.  181). It became a “travelling theory: popularized, tamed and domesticated” (p. 438). He describes that the first time human experience is recorded and then given a theoretical formulation, its force comes into being directly connected to and organically provoked by real historical circumstances. Later versions of the theory cannot replicate its original power, because the situation has quieted down and changed, the theory is degraded and subdued, made into a relatively tame academic

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substitute for the real thing, whose purpose in the work he analyzed was political change (Said, 2000, p. 436). Has something similar not happened to care ethics, which in its inception was a critical enterprise? The situation with regard to exploited care labor has not quieted down, but it has changed: what is being exploited is not just the labor of specific groups, but all human experiences. What is being smothered are not just the voices of women, but the voices of all who are neglected go off course. This is not only true for reification, but also for the concepts of inclusion and groups. At the same time care ethics is becoming increasingly popular. Does this not mean that its critical character is evaporating? Even once critical concepts can go off course. This is not only true for reification, but also for the concepts of inclusion and empowerment that have been incorporated and transesterified in government thinking (Maynard, Gilson,  & Mathieu, 2012; McLaughlin, 2016; Slee, 2009, pp.  177-189). Elements of care ethics, like the insistence on listening and the importance of the voice of those who care and are cared for have become travelling elements, to be found in other approaches to care, for instance in commercial or managerial care formulas. The result is that care ethical concepts such as relationality and vulnerability have gone off course. I believe care ethics partly bears responsibility for this, to the extent that it weakens itself and loses its perspicacity by continuing to base its two-tier approach on a pre-political, “universal,” “existential” relationality and vulnerability on the one hand, and a “political” version built upon this on the other. A clear and positive exception to this double-decker approach is Sandra Laugier’s (2009), who with her version of the concept of life form (indebted to Veena Das, Stanley Cavell and Wittgenstein) emphasizes ordinary life and its deeply political nature. A doubledecker approach leaves the so-called existential layer of relationality up for grabs. Care ethical concepts are defenseless, easy victims for use in “care formulas” in health care (Fred Lee’s Disney approach to care, Blue Ocean, Value-Based Health Care, etc.). If the ethics of care conceptually permits relationality to be interpreted as a value – instead of a pre-normative actuality that is resistant against desired

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normativity and instead of an ever-shifting relationship between physical, material beings – then we  should not be surprised that the value of relationality is eagerly adopted elsewhere; but its meaning is substantially changed in the process. Thus care ethical thoughts can be integrated into governmental care policies, and thus go off course. Brugère (2019) has pointed to the adoption of care ethical discourse by the French government under Hollande, and Marian Barnes to the same process in the United Kingdom under Blair (Barnes, 2007). Cecilia Güemes (2019) is currently researching similar developments in Latin America. This casts doubt on the position of care ethics as a political theory and as a form of ethics. Is the ethics of care truly suited to be a theory for political change, or is it squandering this opportunity by insisting on being highly normative (Cooper, 2007; Vosman, 2018)? As far as care ethics as ethics is concerned, Fiona Robinson (2016) has categorized the ethics of care as part of the ethical turn (pp. 636-637). Does this not mean that there is an urgent need to determine once again whether the ethics of care is a kind of ethics, and if so, to what extent, and what kind of ethics it is?

1. Care Ethics and Its Critical Insights What can a first exploration reveal? Whether – as many believe – it was Carol Gilligan’s book In a Different Voice (1982) or – as the prominent care ethicist Virginia Held (2006a) has contended – Sara Ruddick’s book Maternal Thinking (1980) that should be seen as the birth of care ethics, in both cases the impetus was recent. Now approximately forty years old, the ethics of care is currently the scene of important developments. According to the Canadian scholar Olena Hankivsky (2005, pp.  11-40; 2014), a third generation of care ethicists is currently active: after a first generation including Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings, Virginia Held, Eva Feder Kittay, and Margaret Urban Walker (all of them American), there was a second generation to which Joan Tronto (US), Selma Sevenhuijsen (Dutch), and Marian Barnes (British) belong. There is now also a third generation, which includes Hankivsky herself, as well as Fiona Robinson (Canadian), but also Daniel Engster and Maurice Hamington (US). Other scholars,

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including some from Europe, can also be counted among this third generation, for instance Elisabeth Conradi, who introduced care ethics to the German-speaking world, and Fabienne Brugère and Sandra Laugier, whose work has had great significance for the French-speaking world. I would suggest there is also a fourth generation, which includes such scholars as Marie Garrau, Alice Le Goff, Sophie Bourgault, Jorma Heier, Brunella Casalini and Flavia Biroli (cfr. Sander-Staudt, 2007; Vosman, 2016). The first generation worked on the premise that women present a different moral approach than men (Gilligan, 1982/2003): an approach that is relational, and contextual in its orientation, which takes seriously the practitioner’s own emotions and those of others; emotions are intelligent and telling. A characteristic feature of this first phase of care ethics is “the recognition that humans are concrete beings, who exist in mutually interconnected, interdependent, and often unequal relations with each other” (Hankivsky, 2014, p.  253). “Care ethicists begin with the premise that humans are fundamentally social beings enmeshed in a web of relationships” (Hamington & Miller, 2006, p. xii). Noddings (1984) and Ruddick (1980) based their approach on the nurturing way in which mothers care, presenting mothering as a model for care. “The significance of nascent articulations of care is that they made visible an alternative from of moral reasoning and its potential to affect the public realm” (Hankivsky, 2015, p. 13). At the same time this represents a form of substantialization of femininity, and this in turn disadvantages women, fixing them in a nurturing role. Hankivsky, quoting Monique Deveaux, calls this the “reification of femininity” (Hankivsky, 2005, p. 13). There is also a debate here about the relationship between care and justice, in which Gilligan (1982/2003) places care over and against justice: care is an alternative moral approach that stands in opposition to the wish to view and solve moral questions through the lens of distributive justice. Noddings (1984) placed care above justice, thus creating a hierarchy. The first generation, for instance Held and Kittay, primarily attempted to devise a new relationship

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between care and justice and to carve out a space for care as ethically relevant rather than as an ethical non-issue. This has turned out to be a lengthy and still-ongoing debate in which various proposals have been made, including a proposal to think justice from care (Kittay, 2015) or to see care as the wider context, part of a “revolutionary programme,” to think through a transformation of society; justice can be situated only within this wider framework (Held, 2006b, p. 66). Responsiveness to the needs of others is the most important alternative orientation, i.e. observing and attuning oneself to the needs of others (conceived in relational terms) instead of distribution from a position “above,” outside the relationship. In in any case, this clashes with theories on justice, more specifically on distributive justice, like those of Robert Nozick, John Rawls, and Wil Kymlicka.2 The second generation of care ethicists, with Joan Tronto at the forefront, resisted the confining of care to femininity, and placed the fundamentally political aspect of care centre stage. In addition to Tronto, Selma Sevenhuijsen must be mentioned in this context, as well as for instance Annelies van Heijst, Elisabeth Conradi, and Sandra Laugier. I will limit myself here to the first two scholars. “An  ethic of care remains incomplete without a political theory of care” (Tronto, 1993/2009a, p.  155). Tronto has demonstrated in Moral Boundaries that binary distinctions, including that of private vs. public, are deleterious. When care is not relegated to the private sphere, but is – in my words – constitutive of social life, then this is the beginnings of a care ethical political theory. Tronto is an important voice in care ethics in large part because she has proven adept at ethical code cracking: refuting concepts fixed in codes such as private-public. To put it differently, Tronto has broken through the “containment” of care in the private sphere. Among the second generation, it was Selma Sevenhuijsen (1998) who demonstrated that care as such is not good but multivocal (p. 20) and that “good mothering” is not simply the model for good care. Care as constitutive of the public sphere refers to the position that caregivers and care recipients occupy there: they are citizens. It is from the basis of citizenship

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that the perception of needs should take place, but also “judging with care,” because that is part of citizenship: introducing insights about care to political debates by and about citizens (p. 15). What is “care” about? What is care (e.g. Pettersen, 2012; Lynch, 2016)? Is it “to nurture” (Noddings), “to repair” (Tronto), or is it the survival of individuals (Engster)? At least nominally there is a great deal of consensus in care ethics about what care is, in the sense that practices of care are regarded as the point of departure, and in the sense that Joan Tronto’s and Berenice Fisher’s descriptions of care are frequently quoted, but at the same time there is in fact a variety of opinions on what care is. Likewise there are differences of opinion on whether the needs, preferences, or concerns of people who demand care should be the central issue. There are authors who have attempted to give an emphatic description of care (Tronto 1993/2009a, p.  103; Baart & Vosman, 2011; Baart & Timmerman, 2016). Tronto has offered a broad definition: ”a species activity . . . everything we do . . .” (Tronto 1993/2009a, p.  103). Engster (2015) has limited care to an activity focused on “vital needs” (p. 19). Is the reflection on care oriented also on values as well as on practices of care? Held sees care as “a cluster of practices” and “a cluster of values” (Held 2006b, p. 29-30). Slote (2013) has emphatically opted for a different approach by contending that “caring is clearly a feeling or an emotion of some kind . . . a certain kind of benign motivation . . . a kind of benevolence” (p. 5). Pascale Molinier (2013) has pointed out yet another approach: care is not simply a disposition or an ethic, it is mainly about labor (p.  340). Diemut Bubeck (discussed by Sander-Staudt, 2018, pp. 194-196) has unequivocally distinguished care from personal service; it is characteristic of service that another provides a service that the person could herself also perform. I think it may be questioned whether this last attribute is indeed sufficient to distinguish care. However, there are authors who, partly on the basis of the principle that practices of

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care are the source of reflection, have rejected any all too restrictive description, let alone definition (Held, 2006a; Mol, Moser, & Pols (2010) strongly reject definitions). This last standpoint could be characterized as: practices will show what care is. Parvati Raghuram (2019, p. 14) has described this position in a, to my mind, precise manner: If care is theorized as a practice, then we should also recognize that practices are indelibly inflected by . . . complex geohistories of existing practices of care. The definition of care does not precede its practice but arises from geographically variegated practices of care.

According to her the “instability of care” refers to care as “open ended and therefore risky because its quality can’t be known in advance” (pp. 15-16). Is care ethics ethics? There are various clear markers with regard to other, mainstream forms of ethics. The ethics of care is indeed a different voice, but it is certainly not unison. Reflection on care starts with practices of care (Tronto 1993/2009a, p.  108, pp.  118-1193), and not therefore with attitudes (cf. Noddings, 1984) or virtues. Attempts have been made to establish such connections (McLaren, 2001; Halwani, 2009; Vanlaere & Burggraeve, 2015; Slote, 2007; Mocellin, 2007; Steyl, 2019), but the connection with virtues has also been criticized (Held 2006b, pp.  19-20, pp.  34-35; Sander-Staudt, 2006). From the perspective of one specific version of virtue ethics, the argument has been made that care ethics is superfluous: both virtue ethics and care ethics are “internally diverse”; “ethics of care as a view with no distinctive ethical content of its own” (Thomas, 2011, p. 144). Nor does reflection on care begin with rights and duties (Nordhaug, 2011; see however Engster (2005) and Sander-Staudt (2006)), although Engster (2015) has called the care ethical position with regard to the more common ethical concepts of virtue and duty a “hybrid of these different moral traditions” (p.  24). Edwards (2009, 2011) and Paley (2011), who are critical about care ethics, think it is incoherent and superfluous.

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There are forms of care ethics that orient themselves on a classical idea from ethics, the telos of human life, for instance “the good life” (Leget, 2013, p.  949). But the care ethicist Engster (2015) has embraced a more modest telos, namely “basic wellbeing”: “living and functioning as well as reasonably possible without significant blights (pain, suffering, unmet basic needs, underdeveloped capabilities)” (pp. 19-20, cfr. Engster, 2005, p. 53). I have criticized the bourgeois variant of the classical philosophical final goal, “the good life” – precisely as an implication of care ethics – and have instead pointed to surviving as a form of life (Vosman, 2018). The ethics of care is characterized by the distance at which it stands to existing ethical categories, such as habit and virtue, as I have outlined above. But it also keeps its distance from reasoning through fictitious dilemmas and decision making. In the type of ethics that regards game theory as important, and also in popularizations of ethics, dilemmas as thought experiments play a prominent role. Gilligan (1982/2003) has characterized the emphasis on dilemmas as follows: “Hypothetical dilemmas, in the abstraction of their presentation, divest moral actors from the history and psychology of their individual lives and separate the moral problem from the social contingencies of its possible occurrence” (p.  100). The Heinz dilemma that is often used to illustrate Gilligan’s ethics is essentially such a hypothetical dilemma (p. 24 ff.). The focus that care ethics attempts to foster is on actual issues that arise in practices of care. Sander-Staudt (2018) has formulated this as follows: care ethics “shows a preference for exploring ethics through actual rather than hypothetical examples because of the detailed relational richness that is lost when situations are imagined and individuals are construed as abstract characters” (p. 193). Gilligan (1982/2003) has expressed this situational aspect very pointedly: “It depends . . . Well, it really depends on the situation” (p. 35). A new terminology is replacing the usual ethical categories. Hamington (2014) has used the term “liminality” to describe this. Care ethics is “operating between ethical categories” and the reason for developing such a radically different “betwixt and between” approach was and continues to be that there is in fact an approach which seeks

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ways of taking account of others with their needs and concerns on the basis of relationships, and in a situational way (Hamington, pp. 198199). Engster (2015) has approvingly called this “fairly commonsensical” (p.  4), “meeting needs and not harming others” (p.  19). Daryl Koehn (2001) has convincingly shown how actual relationships are at least fluid (better perhaps is: always multivocal) and are at the same time the place where normativity emerges: “These relations are quite fluid and often both presuppose and require a trust and imaginative engagement for which there are no rules” (p. 1). Molinier (2013), who empirically studies care practices from a care ethical perspective, has described the relationship of care as follows: the relationship is not a combination of marketable tricks and by definition it is unique, unpredictable, high-risk, exhilarating, nauseating (p. 177). This contrasts with an ethical approach which privileges, first, (a certain type of) rationality, and, second, the following of a generalizable rule of action, and which, third, regards easily communicable and codifiable communication about considerations and decisions as necessary for the validity of an ethical perspective (cf. for instance the emphasis on rational argument in Jürgen Habermas). Finally, there is an insistence on clearly defined and exhaustively refined ethical categories: what is or is not an “act,” what can and cannot be ascribed to an “actor,” etc. The psychologist Carol Gilligan, in her still gripping book In a Different Voice (1982), described the factually existing alternative approach as that representing the voice of women: women in fact think differently. She regards having voice as a relational thing: speaking is inextricably linked to listening. At the same time, Gilligan regards voice as something that is present unless it is smothered or killed due to self-control. “By voice I mean voice . . . Listen . . . and then I will remember how it felt to speak when there was no resonance . . . Speaking depends on listening and being heard; it is an intensely relational act” (Gilligan, 1982/2003, p. xvi). She herself already broadened this concept: this relational and contextual way of thinking is a women’s voice that is being suppressed and that women suppress within themselves, thus alienating themselves from them-

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selves: “the hand over the mouth and at the throat, the suffocation of voice” (p. xix). The alternative that Gilligan began to outline in “Letter to Readers, 1993” in one of the many new printings of In a Different Voice consists of the voice of women who seek resonance (p. ixxxvii) and who focus on “repairing ruptures” (Gilligan & Snyder, 2018, p.  119 ff.). But this approach can also be seen in men. Much later, Gilligan would identify paternalism as the root question (Gilligan, 2008, 2011; Gilligan & Snyder (2018) in reference to Trumpism). A decisive conceptual step was taken by the second-generation care ethicist Joan Tronto in her book Moral Boundaries (1993). She demonstrated that care ethics should become conscious of the boundaries that are imposed upon the alternative voice in ethics. The muffling of this voice sometimes happens unwittingly, by using ostensibly self-evident distinctions, and sometimes by employing rhetorical violence. In much existing ethical thinking, divisions are made between personal and political ethics, between the necessarily objectivizing and generalizing approach and the subjective approach, and between public and private life. These distinctions function as separations, and care can thus be safely relegated to the private sphere. The voice of women and of racialized groups who perform heavy care labor is excluded from the public limelight. This remains a highly relevant topic even after forty years of care ethical analyses (see for instance Biroli (2019), in this book, on Brazil). Laugier (2015) has pointed out that it is not simply a matter of voicing, of seeking out the voices of women and of other groups and of making them heard, but that it is always also about the equality of voices (Laugier, 2015) in the public forum. It is another matter whether this means that contemporary care ethics actually pays due regard to systemic injustice, to the way in which voices are dubbed in and through systems, up to and including the issue of women speaking for other women, black people speaking for other black people, and gays speaking for other gays (West, 1993/2001). What goals does care ethics have now, after 40 years, in relation to voicing? Does it aim to provide policy support? But if so, what about the voices of people engaged in a social struggle, like the self-advocacy

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of people with a disability? Simplican (2019) has pointed out that these people are not necessarily focused on influencing policy: self-advocacy that turns away from influencing policy-makers and instead focuses on creating “self-authored” spaces. These groups have the experience that their voice, whenever it is heard, is often “seized” by others. The idea of “all the voices at the table” (Tronto, 2013) is unrealistic, because the idea of domination-free communication is a chimera in a democracy. And what about the voices of groups who are in fact unheard, but who do not wish to participate in the parliament of voices, as the French feminist philosopher Elsa Dorlin (2017) has courteously but firmly reminded care ethics. A dark part should be added to care ethics, an ethics of powerlessness, for there are groups that are experts in caring for others just to ensure their own bare survival (pp.  176-177). Those who provide care to avoid becoming the victims of violence do so according to “a totally different ethic than that of affective nearness, love, compassionate attention” (p.  175); instead, such groups seek “a refuge to defend themselves” (p.  175). The last thing they want is for their voice to be heard, because that involves even less safety. Of course this engages the very idea of democracy, with its assumption, its premise, that all are equal, and its programme of representing all people as equals, with the same right to speak according to the customs of democracy. Zooming in on one particular concept: responsibility Generally speaking, responsibility is regarded as a core concept in the ethics of care. In this section I will address in greater detail the way care ethicists have interpreted this prominent concept. I will also describe the problems that arise when responsibility is emphasized. For Tronto (2013), responsibility is a key concept in her variant of care ethics (for the substance, see pp. 17-64). The concept has been adopted and modulated by many care ethicists (e.g. Van Nistelrooij & Visse, 2018). The underlying idea (why responsibility?) does differ, however. One underlying thought is: anyone who has the capacity to care must care – responsibility is a duty incumbent upon the position of a person who has the capacity, responsibility arises from “consistent

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dependency” (Engster, 2007, pp.  46-54, 2015, pp.  21-22). Kittay (2009) sees care as a moral duty in relations of dependency, if the needs are basic, the vulnerability is major, and the previous relationship justifies the responsibility, even if the burden is high (pp. 49-73). Or: responsibility is self-evident when and in so far a relationship has value to us (Collins, 2015, p. 40). Walker (2007) also affords a central place to responsibility (pp. 83-106), on the basis of the idea that to care is a moral practice and that responsibilities are characteristic of moral practices. “I propose that it is fruitful to locate morality in practices of responsibility that implement commonly shared understandings about who gets to do what to whom and who is supposed to do what for whom” (p. 16). Ultimately she regards care ethics as a “narrative ethics of responsibility, even though these narratives are very modest and insignificant” (p. 155). She has also spoken of a geography of responsibilities. Another notion, however, is that responsibility must be thought as responsiveness, i.e. subjects respond to needs on the basis of some commitment that happens to exist. According to Kittay (1999), people simply exist in the context of a web of linked and nested social relations (pp. 66-70), or, as Engster (2007) puts it, “in our empirically verifiable dependency upon others and other’s dependency upon us” (p. 51). This is sometimes represented as natural care, “a primitive good” (referring to Noddings). Responsibility has also been analyzed from the perspective of forms of phenomenology: through a primary connection, subjects increasingly learn, so to speak, what responsibility in this connection evokes or which reaction grows into responsibility (Visse (2016), drawing on Urban Walker and Van Heijst). Elena Pulcini (2013), largely following Hans Jonas, has proposed another foundation for responsibility, which closely resembles the theme of responsiveness: The ethics of responsibility is deemed to originate in the imperative to preserve humankind and life (“that there be a mankind”), which in turn derives from a meta-principle that states the intrinsic value of being over not being. Therefore the ought-to-be is deduced from being, ethics from ontology, responsibility from the superiority of what is good (being) compared to what is evil (nothingness). (p. 167)4

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Tronto (2013) has confronted responsibility with societal power relations, and thus uses “privileged irresponsibility” as a distinction: there are groups that are able to abnegate their responsibilities very comfortably, thus also concealing care as a practice that is constitutive of society (p.  68 ff., but, much earlier, also in Moral Boundaries (1993/2009a, pp.  120-122, pp.  146-147). They have the power to ignore a part of the experience that becomes evident in the process of making a society livable (Casalini, 2018, p. 184). Contested responsibility Responsibility is not just a core theme for authors from care ethics. The Italian care ethicist Casalini (2018) has explicitly confronted the neoliberal emphasis on individual responsibility, on self-care and care for those who are dependent on you with caring responsibility arising from responsiveness. The idealistic and constructive care ethical idea of responsibility, responding to another person’s vulnerability, is being contested by other, actually existing and very influential discourses on responsibility (Trnka &Trundle, 2014, p.  141: “coexist . . . intersect . . . contest”). Responsibility is a thoroughly Modern concept, welded to Modernity (Hochmann & Pfriem, 2018, p. 127: “erstaunlich Modern” [astonishingly Modern]; cfr. Trnka & Trundle, 2014, p. 138). Hochmann and Pfriem (2018) have pointed out how important it is to have regard to the pre-moral character of responsibility, i.e. to responsibility as responding. They have also shown how the pre-moral is subsequently politically and morally “charged.” This charging happens both by the ethics of care and by other approaches, including the neoliberal approach (p.  31). This indicates that caregivers and care recipients are twice given a normative instruction in the public sphere, a care ethical and a neoliberal one. On the basis of postcolonial theory, Pat Noxolo, Parvati Raghuram and Clare Madge (2012), whose thinking is close to care ethics, have drawn attention to the unsettled nature of responsibility. They have identified the various discourses about responsibility that are current in (political) ethics, and how problematic it is to

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reason with responsibility (pp.  419-420). “It is difficult for wellmeaning western academics to talk about responsibility, even reformulated as intersubjectivity, whilst the conditions that allow us to do so are so very complicit in . . . exploitative relationships.” What is important is that anyone who makes an argument for responsibility, even for caring responsibility, should account for the position from which they speak: “to fully face up to and accept their ‘contaminated’ position” (p. 422). The ethics of care should be much more critical and political in its reflection on the intersection between discourses of responsibility and the protagonists’ own position, something which, to my knowledge, has not yet happened in a sufficiently radical way. In fact, the opposite is happening: there has been a shift away from the political. Care, responsiveness and responsibility are being ontologized or presented as apolitical phenomena (Van Nistelrooij & Visse, 2018, p. 10: “a call grounded in the being of the situation”). This idea of grounding clashes with the idea that “care ethics favors concrete considerations over abstract ones” (Hamington & Miller, 2006, p. xii). Moreover, the feminist philosopher Dorlin (2017), who has engaged in a dialogue with care ethics, has demonstrated that care practices are characterized by forced responsibility. She has shifted the perspective: it is not about power (in the sense of oppression, obvious or subtle domination) but it can also be about – barely concealed – pure violence (p.  7). Enforced care is care, it is even very attentive care. But it differs from care through mere affective proximity, love, compassionate attention, affective concern, or selfsacrifice while giving very demanding care (p.  175). There is certainly a relationship at play, but this relationship is one between the “huntsman” and the caregivers who are the prey (p. 163: “phenomenology of prey”). The caregivers are constantly engaged in thinking about what others want from them, and they give care to prevent further violence. According to Dorlin, the shift from power to violence can only be effected if care ethics is refashioned into “an ethics of powerlessness” (p.  177). What is at stake is whether care is viewed primarily as a moral activity that must be perceived

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ethically and that is liable to receive normative instructions, or as a mixed practice, marked from the start not only by moral aspects and the directly physical, technical, material, and institutional aspects, but also by violence, which cannot simply be controlled through “high morality” or “relational ontology” or non-politically located phenomenology. Given the enormous emphasis on responsibility in the ethics of care, it is perhaps a good idea to think again about responsiveness, with, as a subsequent step, not morally charged responsibility, but schooling in more refined observation and in how to begin and maintain relationships, amid friction, violence, and multivocal meanings, and this always on the basis of practices. This context can also be designated as “the political.” The step from the pre-moral to the moral requires renewed attention. Similarly, collective but also institutional and practice-generated responsibility require separate attention. Contextuality is not the problem, but the high moral connotation of the concept of responsibility within care ethics is, and the lack of true reflection on the context: the context of practices, collectives, and institutions. Summarizing the core ideas Relationality (1), contextuality (2) in observation and appreciation (up to and including the particularity of what is good; Sander-Staudt, 2018, p.  193), the normative importance of emotions (3), and the political nature of giving and receiving care (4), those are the four insights that care ethics has initially offered (Held, 2006a, pp. 538541; Engster & Hamington, 2015, pp. 3-4). Responsibility (5), portrayed above, is a fifth key concept. Two further insights should also be mentioned: bodilyness in all relations (6), and vulnerability (7) as the common denominator through which people can recognize each other (instead of rationality). Kittay (1999) has observed that this vulnerability belongs to those who receive care, but equally to those who provide care. To her vulnerability is not a negative reality, not a weakness that should be phased out or diminished; recognizing it has a humanizing effect.

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One observation that must be made is that each of these seven insights clearly testify of its feminist roots, both substantively-ethically and epistemologically. It was from feminism that the idea was developed to move from actual relations to the functioning of those relations, from related to responsiveness (Visse, 2016; Van Nistelrooij & Visse, 2018). Patricia Paperman (2015) has articulated this very clearly: What counts and what is important cannot be understood as the result of preferences, values, or sentimental attachments, but as the result of engagement in the social world, engagements that are certainly assigned, but that allow for a different version of “reality” or a world that is social in a different way. (p. 63)

“Different” here means different from traditional ethics. Another typically feminist feature is the question (in many different formats) whose knowledge of problems of action that people face, counts. Often, very often, the knowledge of women and other marginalized groups is regarded as unimportant or non-existent within existing (powerful, often violently upheld) power structures. Insights or principles In this overview, I have spoken of critical insights that care ethics has developed. I would like to add a few words on this expression “critical insights” and their groundedness. This is not just a matter of words, but the form of care ethics as such is at stake. In 2012, I purposefully began to speak in terms of “critical insights” instead of “principles” or “concepts” to characterize the insights care ethics has brought (Vosman & Niemeijer, 2017; Vosman & Baart, 2018). What are critical insights in this sense? I have just indicated that the insights in question relate to relationality, the functioning of contextuality, the vulnerability of all participants – although this does not apply to all participants in the same way – and that vulnerability is always linked to physicality; and this is not an exhaustive list. These insights were acquired by care ethics through analyses of specific issues in care practices. They are not metaphysical or ontological “conclusions” on

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who “man” is, but on how practices of care work and how participants in those practices fare. Handling critical insights also means that it is necessary to continue working on them, insofar as the issues and care practices continue to give rise to reflection or renewed reflection. It is the opposite of critical insights to turn care ethical ideas into principles. Codification into principles that are subsequently applied in fact takes place, and some scholars advocate this process (Collins, 2015). To me, this is not the right way. It is understandable that people should seek something to hold onto, especially as care ethical principles are regarded as too vague and too little directive. Vanlaere and Gastmans (2005) have asked: “What precisely does care represent as a normative-ethical principle? The vagueness of the moral presuppositions underlying care ethics has sometimes led to this approach not being taken very seriously in the literature” (p.  200). And yet codification of principles which are then applied in practice is misguided. The remedy against presumed vagueness is to maintain the openness of the insights (for instance in respect of vulnerability) and to use them heuristically instead of as material for definitions. In view of the accusation of vagueness, it seems right to me to expect that care ethics should ensure the traceability of general statements about the normative significance of particularity: to what extent can statements on the basis of relationality and context be reproduced? The critical insights were acquired through induction and abduction and are not a matter of applying principles. This stance with regard to critical insights is linked to radically attuning inquiry to care practices. This is not to say that the objection of vagueness is nonsense. After almost forty years of the ethics of care, I believe care ethicists are ready to “work through” the past of care ethics. Do its insights fit or do they lack focus, as Simplican (2018) has argued? But it is also time to bind care ethics more radically to inquiries of practices and to the questions participants in those practices ask. To the extent that care ethics is ethics, this can make it more robust and more self-critical.

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2. Contours of Care Ethics In this section I will address the contours of the ethics of care, as an element of a critical cartography. I will use two approaches to do this. What is the aim of care ethics, and what is this approach trying to leave behind (programme and anti-programme)? There are various overviews of care ethics; does it help to know what kind of overviews these are and what kinds of overview are still lacking (types of overviews)? Programme and anti-programme What approaches (in ethics, in political theory) is care ethics attempting to get away from? Where is it going, and what is it attempting to leave behind? I am addressing these questions, because researchers always have issues that they are preoccupied about, they have proper concerns. The process of forming ideas that they undergo revolves around this concern. When the psychologist Carol Gilligan (1982/2003) invented the name “ethics of care” for an approach that would fully respect the voice of women, this means she also had an anti-programme: combating the neo-Kantianism of her fellow researcher Laurence Kohlberg with his requirement of general validity for any valid, mature moral statement. As an alternative to “self-defined through separation” she posited “self-defined through connection” (p. 35). For many care ethicists, one burning issue that is connected to (although it is not coterminous with) the suppressed voice of women, was and is care labor: the caring labor that is often heavy and unpleasant, that is performed by specific groups without public recognition or appropriate remuneration: women of color, immigrants, women without much formal education. Much later, Gilligan (2008; Gilligan & Snyder, 2018) even more explicitly identified paternalism and patriarchal political culture as that which had to be combated. Tronto (1993/2009a, p. 11) has stated explicitly that the anti-programme of her own version of care ethics is: to end sexism, to face up to racism, to liberate sexuality, to end domestic violence, to conceptualize domestic and medical services appropriately, to confirm the right of women and men to physical integrity, and to promote peace rather than war.

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Another example of programme and anti-programme is the emphasis on vulnerability or on the interdependency of all human beings, as a form of realism, but also as an alternative for and critique of autonomy and the claim of rationality. Slote (2013) has – fairly succinctly – positioned care ethics in opposition to the Enlightenment; a view in which Romanticism is not seen as a second Enlightenment (Slote 2013, p. 7). To put it briefly, people are all equal because they are all vulnerable and interdependent; it is not their rationality and their autarky or autonomy that makes them human. Care ethics’ elementary anti-programme is directed against obscuring caring activities as activities that are constitutive of the polis (see Paperman, 2013, p. 51: “invisibilisation et méconnaissance” [making invisible and lack of understanding]). The distinction between programme and anti-programme can help to recognize the vector of care ethics, but also to keep it on course and to question the precision of the critique it offers. Types of overviews There are a number of overviews of care ethics that address the concepts, including the development of the arguments offered (e.g. Sander-Staudt, 2011; Garrau & Le Goff, 2011; Kohlen & Kumbruck, (2008), interwoven with nursing; Vosman, 2016; Keller & Kittay, 2017). These are mainly concerned with concepts and the history of ideas. In addition, there are several often short historical overviews in articles (for instance Hankisvky (2014), who distinguishes three generations of care ethicists) and in books (Held, 2006b), sometimes also when the background of one specific concept is being investigated (for instance care in Lynch (2016); or vulnerability in Bernardini, Casalini, Giolo, & Re, 2018). There are also surveys of the reception of care ethics, mainly of American care ethics, in other political or cultural fields: care ethics as received by French-speaking political culture (for instance Brugère, 2019), and Spanish (Lopez de la Vieja, 2006), Italian (Brotto, 2013; an overview in Casalini, 2018, pp.  148-149), Japanese (Okano, 20125; Sugimoto, 2018), Canadian political culture (Bourgault & Perreault, 2015). The reverse, i.e. the reception of foreign work in the USA, is rare and I am not aware of

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any overview; Bourgault and Perreault have courteously but no less clearly spoken of “isolation” and “loneliness twice over” (Bourgault & Perreault, 2015, p. 16). There are also overviews that offer new arguments and their own distinct systematizations, for instance by Collins and Brugère. Collins’ (2015) interest is in the codification of care ethics, turning emerging insights into principles which can then be applied, but the book can also be read as an overview. Fabienne Brugère’s (2019) aim was to highlight the political nature of care ethics, but in doing so she has also provided an outline of the major developments. What is lacking – and this is important in view of the burning issues that have been identified – is an overview that situates care ethics historically, socially and economically. It is abundantly clear that care ethicists are responding to social conditions. Barnes and Tronto, for instance, responded to what were observed to be the effects of neoliberal policies. At the same time the involvement with complex social problems is not always appositely expressed. Hankivsky (2014) has pointed to the debate about the great feminist concerns (color, gender, class, as well as sexism and ageism) with which the ethics of care is engaging in a methodically very limited way: “Care theorists tend to mask the historically rooted ties and mutually constituting processes and patterns of a broader range of oppressions, thus obscuring the full range of possible forces of power that shape difference” (Hankivsky, 2014, p. 253). As far as I am aware, there is no overview of care ethics that is conceptually sociological, that is: an overview of the ethics of care conceived from the perspective of the various social problems, and of how and to what extent care ethics is responding to these through theory formation. Such an overview would be fully suited to care ethics and would at the same time be part of a social condition and of major shifts in the social and cultural situation in which care ethics operates. Nor is there – to mention yet another possibility – any materialistic overview, which could demonstrate how the private sphere is continually inflated and how social problems are relegated to this sphere in a very different way (Casalini, 2017, p. 501)6.

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Such overviews would also be able to show how a critical insight, for instance the value of attentiveness within relationships (Brugère, 2019) and the demolition of the boundaries between public and private (one of Tronto’s “moral boundaries”), is itself a historical phenomenon that can also be overtaken by social development and by political change. As Andreas Reckwitz (2017) has demonstrated, the cultural emphasis on attentiveness, on the personal and the relational (“singularity”) in Late Modernity has in the meantime become a general social programme and is no longer an “alternative” approach. I  think the critical insights that care ethics provides are not at risk of losing their value, but they should be rethought and placed in a new framework.

3. The Future of Care Ethics: Uncomfortable Conversations In this last part, I will address the necessity of having a rigorous conversation within the ethics of care about unresolved issues that are frustrating the development of care ethics. I will look at one particular such issue, intersectionality, to explain that care ethics has not yet found an answer on how to inquire into the complexity of social issues (Vosman & Niemeijer (2017) on complexity and complexity theory). Furthermore, as I announced in the introduction, I will briefly discuss a lacuna and an aporia in care ethics. It is time for care ethics to engage in a rigorous conversation about its future and about the design of care ethical research. My take on this design is that care ethics should study what has proven to be possible in practices when it comes to developing good care, with care interpreted in a very broad sense. It is important to achieve a greater degree of consensus on which issues remain undertheorized and why. These conversations are surely uncomfortable, but if these debates are not held, my suspicion is that care ethics will stagnate. These uncomfortable conversations are not about hostility. Tronto has pointed to the danger of “horizontal hostility” (Tronto 1993/2009a, p. 16). This is a risk that must be acknowledged and faced. Nor am I arguing for permanent “dissensus” (Bröckling, 2013, p.  319). But the growth of care ethics must not lull us into ignoring its considerable theoretical weaknesses.

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It is inevitable that uncomfortable questions will be asked during the type of conversation I am advocating, such as why conversations with black women themselves and with black feminism are not a fixed feature of care ethical research. To formulate it more broadly: with which kinds of feminism is care ethics, itself rooted so strongly in feminism, engaging in dialogue (Casalini, 2018; Robinson, 2015)? How can it be that care ethics is multidisciplinary, possibly even interdisciplinary, but has no fixed strategy on bringing the various disciplines into dialogue with each other? I will first ask a number of wide-ranging questions, and will subsequently discuss the various points more specifically. Is it possible to have philosophy without sociology, or without an explicit political theory; and are there valid forms of care ethics that have no empirical reference? Is it possible to critique neoliberalism without thoroughly studying the many faces of neoliberalism? Kangas and Salmenniemi (2016) have observed a “multiplicity, complexity, and variegation of neoliberalism, that is, its hybridity” (p. 215). Is it possible to have an ethics of care without incorporating findings from critical economic theory? Interdisciplinarity is a worthwhile but laborious programme. In addition to the issues of who one’s interlocutors are and of interdisciplinarity, what is at stake is also research of and conversations about foundational categories. Why, for instance, are presuppositions concerning what the political and politics are, what democracy is, not developed further, while many within care ethics at the same time profess to believe that care ethics is political in nature? Can care ethics neglect the task of finding out what methods can be used to study complexity while the complexity of action questions is such a pressing issue? One final example of an uncomfortable question is what the “Mappa Mundi” of care ethics would look like if voices from South Africa, Brazil, Korea, and Japan were equal, or, for that matter, voices from France, Canada, or Germany. A frozen conversation: intersectionality I will now focus the argument outlined above by describing the example of a frozen conversation that is necessary, a conversation about

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an issue that causes friction, and that involves the possibility and the requirement of speaking with fellow travelers. There are three relevant issues. Firstly, it is a conversation that directly involves that which care ethics stands for, making the voice of those who are suppressed heard. Secondly, it is also an example of the kind of epistemology and ethics that are relevant to care ethics. What is assumed and what is left out within the conceptual framings of care ethics? Thirdly, the issue at stake is whether care ethics has a differentiated sensorium for intersections of multiple nature, amidst of growing societal complexity. A sensorium means receptivity for complexity. These would be the topics for such a conversation, which is likely to be uncomfortable, but also fruitful. On the basis of the feminist roots of care ethics, the connections between gender, color used to racialize, and economic, social, and cultural class is an important issue. Intersectionality, a term introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 (cfr. Crenshaw, 2017), has since been used within sections of feminism as the method par excellence to investigate these connections. Sirma Bilge (2015) has characterized intersectionality as a form of power analysis: of the mixing, structuring, and organization of power, of the interaction between vectors of power and of the domains in which power is exercised (p.  15). It has also become increasingly clear how complex it is to work with intersectionality (Lutz, Vivar, & Supik, 2016; McCall, 2005): the aim of intersectionality is that it should be applied to complexity, but it is itself also a complex strategy (Hankivsky & Grace, 2015). “The paradoxes, promises, and perils of deployments of intersectionality” have become clearer (Thomson & Finley, 2019, p.  155). Among its protagonists, various distinct views on intersectionality have arisen, ranging from relatively open – a method to ask critical research questions (Davis, 2014), to very detailed – 12 categories must be investigated (Lutz, 2015). The fact that intersectionality-based research has gone off course has been strongly criticized (Bilge (2014): “depoliticized”, Bilge (2015, p.  20): intersectionality at the same time has been applauded and neutralized; Wekker: “interrupted and displaced,” as cited in Colpani & Isenia, 2018, p. 225). At the same time, a strong

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plea has been made to use intersectionality within care ethics “as a robust method for understanding the significance of difference and their relationship to power” (Hankivsky, 2014, p. 252). Intersectionality is in fact used within care ethics, for instance by Nicky Ward (2015) and by Fiona Williams (2018), who has applied it to the sociological conceptuality of micro-meso-macro levels (cfr. Raghuram, 2019, p. 3). There are also good theoretical grounds for intersectionality, because color and class always lose out against gender in care ethics; according to Hankivsky (2014), care ethics ultimately always prioritizes gender (p. 252). Hankivsky (2006) was initially optimistic about care ethics and its ability to integrate differences, but she has become much more critical. Care ethics should – according to Hankivsky (2014) – learn from the theory of intersectionality not to use any category of difference a priori (p. 256) and not to think in terms of an addition whenever another difference is included in the equation, “additively” (gender + color, for instance), or “multiplicatively” (gender x class). Intersection means looking at the actual interactions that occur: “focus on the meaning and consequences of interactive and interlocking sites” (p. 262). According to her, analytic prioritization as well as essentialist tendencies weaken care ethics (p. 262). Intersectionality challenged The intersectionality approach itself has also been challenged in several rather important ways. The French sociologist Didier Eribon (2016) has engaged in something similar to care ethics in the sense that he is interested in the how and the why of the silencing of voices; “voices that are made inaudible” (p. 132). Like Annie Ernaux (2008) and Édouard Louis (2015), Eribon links autobiography to analysis, and all three scholars refer to Bourdieu and wish to speak with a voice from within. From the perspective of a working-class, white, homosexual man who has acceded to the intellectual class, Eribon recounts how the “different cut-outs of the social world” (p.  151) continue to chafe. In his book Retour à Reims (2009), he recounts that and how the various dimensions of his life are always

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indissolubly linked with each other and intersect each other, and cannot therefore be represented as various layers existing on top of each other. Intersecting also means that guilt and shame are never far off. In a reference to Bourdieu, Eribon (2016) speaks of a “hontobiographie,” a biography driven by shame (p. 144). Being a laborer’s son, white, gay, and an intellectual (but this can be equally true for a woman, a person of color, or a member of the middle classes), means also participating in the lives of working-class people, of white people, etc. No one is only subject to or part of one particular cut-out. There is no way of renouncing this form of participation. Hankivsky (2014) has contended that “care ethics and intersectionality are both social constructivist approaches,” and this is a reason why interplay is possible (p.  252). Eribon (2016), however, does not subscribe to any constructivist epistemology: the social world is all representation, and the principles on the basis of which cut-outs (class, gender, etc.) take place are epistemically and morally charged. What exists is “only” a struggle between representations. His key term for this struggle is inferiorization. At the same time, however, there is a distance between the representations and what they refer to and what they “grasp.” The social agents themselves have knowledge on the basis of their life’s practices, and it is dangerous to attempt to reach “below or above their knowledge” (pp.  153-154). They themselves in turn are historically and socially determined. The task is to study and respect the categories of self-perception, not to seize them, as Eribon (2009) has argued in the Epilogue of Retour à Reims. What is at stake here are the researchers and the objects of research, but also those things that do not depend on constructions of meaning. This last aspect ensures that we are still in the political realm (rather than in the “existential” or “metaphysical” realm). When it comes to voicing, there is silencing and self-restraint in speaking (because not speaking can be protective, avoiding the risk of being seized by third parties), but there is also radical inexpressibility. This, it seems to me, is of great epistemological importance for care ethics, and it is one of several arguments to ask whether the ethics of care should in fact be regarded as a constructivist theory at all.

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Eribon regards his initial shame at his background and his enduring shame at transitioning to another class, as the most powerful source of reflection.7 The emotion of shame is ultimately the intelligence of the political: it is not easy or comfortable, but it is necessary for a “political project” (Rehberg 2017, p.  25). His shame, according to Eribon, is a historically and socially grown mindset that is the very key to reflection and to keeping the critique on track. In other words, it is not a simple feeling of being victimized, but is a state of mind that he wants to account for and use as a key for research. Shame must not therefore be interpreted psychologically, nor should it become ground for therapy. Instead, it is about reflecting on breaking and on rupture, in Eribon’s life his distancing from a homophobic working-class culture, but equally from the bourgeois disciplining that is part of life as an intellectual. Eribon’s voice is not a voice that speaks about others, divided into groups, groups “aggregate . . . in bounded categories” as Hankivsky (2014) has critically observed in relation to care ethics (p. 256). More than the theory of intersectionality Eribon’s approach reflects on being uprooted, on struggle and rupture, and on actual practices. In view of this interpretation of politics, Glassmann (2018) has, I believe rightly, characterized Eribon’s book Retour à Reims as a “political book” (as he did with regard to Annie Ernaux’s Les Années (2008) [The Years, 2017] and Édouard Louis’ En finir avec Eddy Bellegeule (2015) [The End of Eddy, 2017]). Eribon is skeptical vis-à-vis the theory of intersectionality, even though he explicitly expresses his solidarity with the feminist movement and with Crenshaw and the burning issue she placed on the agenda, of violence against women of color (Eribon in an interview: Rehberg, 2017, p. 23). Intersectionality makes it possible to see the intertwining of class, gender, and sexual orientation. But intersectionality cannot be used as a solution, as a liberation strategy, as a strategy to simply split the cards and show that one layer is full of guilt and others are not (Eribon, 2016, pp. 49-53). For Eribon, the intersection is never given once and for all; it is constantly constructed and invented, and it should be stressed that it is constructed against pre-existing political representations which will not, however, disappear (p. 52).

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Hankivsky’s (2004, 2006) poignant programmatic proposal addressed to the ethics of care, which has still not been widely adopted so many years later, as well as Eribon’s criticism of intersectionality – which focuses in part on the same issues that care ethics addresses – should be subjects of conversation in care ethics. Other strategies of complexity should also be discussed, like SKAD (the sociology of knowledge approach, which focuses on the clash between different descriptions of the same event (Keller, 2019).8 Another more radical research strategy should also be considered: materialistic feminism (Galerand, 2015). It is still not a fixed part of the programme of care ethics to systematically and critically face up to the complexity of issues in which participants in a practice of care find themselves. It appears that care ethics remains undertheorized precisely in a field in which it should be profoundly interested. An aporia: the problematic ontological “we” Berenice Fisher’s and Joan Tronto’s description of what care is has been quoted and embraced by many in the ethics of care. “Caring can be viewed as a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible” (Tronto, 2013, p. 19, a description that dates originally from 1990). María Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) has tried to “rephrase” the “we” in a “nonhumanist” way: “We need to disrupt the subjective-collective behind the ‘we’: care is everything that is done .  .  . so that all (rather than ‘we’) can live .  .  . as well as possible” (p. 161). She has thus decentered the actorship of care. In addition to this “we” at the core of what care is, “we” is often used in care ethics to indicate the subject of speech and to create inclusion with the readers. Let me give a number of examples. “We can acknowledge the way much caring work expresses how persons care about, and are not indifferent to, others” (Held 2006b, p.  109). In this case, “we” refers to the philosophical “we”. The philosophical “we” presumes the existence of mutual connection and understanding between writers and readers for each other’s thought processes. Possibly this can be expanded to mean “we, people engaging in argument.” The danger of

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using the philosophical “we” is that the capacity to investigate an entirely different position is diminished or even destroyed. It is tempting to say “we, human beings.” In addition to the philosophical we, there is the rhetorical “we.”9 The danger of using the rhetorical “we” is that it can include groups on false grounds, as feminism, the queer movement, and the movement of racialized people has made abundantly clear. At the very least, circumspection is required to avoid that care ethics should itself engage in false inclusion and, for that matter, exclusion (Engster, 2018, p. 10). Let me return to Fisher’s and Tronto’s description of care. Does this presuppose an already existing community of people: “humans,” “humankind,” “the human species”? Tronto (2017) later devised an ontological basis upon which her description can be fixed. The “we” is founded first of all on interdependency of all with all, and secondly on the fact that all people are vulnerable (p. 32). “Humans are essentially, in the plural, homines curans” (p. 28, referring to an expression by Albertus Magnus).10 In this way she has deployed an “ontology” to combat neoliberalism and its views on what it is to be human, and on care. It is an ontology that Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) in turn has attempted to replace by a different, wider ontology. Both believe it is possible to understand and prioritize a political issue through ontology. This “ontological turn” (Joronen & Häkli, 2017, p. 561, p. 564) had been in evidence in thinking about care much earlier. It was visible for instance in a book by Leonardo Boff, inspired by Heidegger, and tellingly entitled Essential care. An Ethics of Human Nature: “We do not have care, we are care. This means that care possesses an ontological dimension that is part of the human constitution” (Boff 2008, p. 56, italics by Boff). This essentialized “we” is far removed from the critical insight that reflection on care should depart from actual practices of care. The objection is that the ontological turn in care ethics disregards the fact that it can, epistemologically, only be historically, socially, and culturally determined discourse about who and what people are. A patient look at the history of anthropological discourse will show that generalization is a recurring feature (today’s generalization being that people

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are caring animals; see Tronto 2017). Time and again, characterizations arise that have the pretension of being valid across cultures and eras, only to be replaced very quickly by new characterizations (Marmion, 2018): the rational human being (Aristoteles’ animal rationale et sociale), the speaking human being (Dante Alighieri), the laughing human being (François Rabelais), the playing human being (Johan Huizinga), or the human being as a being characterized by cruelty (Nietzsche). In a debate with care ethics on giving a greater role to narrativity, Chen has argued: “We are homo significans or meaning-makers” (Chen, 2015, p. 780). “Human beings,” “people”… all these terms are rhetorical of nature. Adorno pointed out that deciphering human actions (which is not the same thing as trying to determine the essence of human beings) in order to construct the denominator of “human being” is to circumvent the political (Hammer, 2006, p.  108). For a political theory that places practices of care center stage, it is a perplexing strategy to attempt to settle the debate with “neoliberal anthropology” through ontology. This is akin to circumventing the political: it is no use trumping one theoretical generality (described by Wacquant, 2012, pp. 69-70) with another one, even if it is a more sympathetic one. It is a recursive move, an inscribing of a moral solution in being, in human nature as such, an ontography – what cannot be gained politically is supposedly gained at a more fundamental layer, that of anthropology – that is not helpful. Struggling against the image of self-sufficient entrepreneurial human beings by pointing at vulnerability is a different matter, at least if vulnerabilities are shown as they actually exist and as they appear in actions, omissions, and things endured. I would argue that the source of reflection for care ethics must be radically situated within practices. Relying on a generalized “existential,” metaphysical or ontological (putatively more fundamental) vulnerability or ontology of “the caring creature,” in my view, is to dodge the laborious analysis of the actual phenomena of vulnerability, of the paradoxical compulsory autonomous resilience, and of the killing of community.  The epistemology of care ethics makes it possible to point at

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phenomena that cannot be grasped. I cannot see, however, why it should facilitate the abandonment of ethics and a descent into ontology: this is incapable of providing the foundation that is sought. The ontologically constituted “we” has created an aporia in the ethics of care. An unnecessary one, but it is nonetheless real. The actual “we” My misgivings vis-à-vis the ontologized “we” of the homines curantes described above are clear; instead I believe we should look for the actual “we.” This is a way of breaking through the aporia. What I mean is the “we” that can be actually created through encounter, friction, self-confrontation, and by actually sharing concerns: • the “we” of grandparents – otherwise inclined to be apolitical and conservative – who become engaged in the climate movement for the sake of their grandchildren who are involved in protests and create a new “we”; • the “we” of homosexuals who reject the word “gay” and call themselves “faggots,” thus together appropriating the slur as a badge of honor; • the “we” of people of color who begin to refer to themselves as “niggers” and form a “we”; • the “we” of patients in the oncologist’s waiting room who see each other’s fears and engage in conversation with each other; • the “we” of women in Munich who have been committed for years to activism for women in Congo who were raped as a strategy of war: they do not know these women in person and simply continue to build political pressure. The use of the word “we” without actuality, without awareness of friction, and without the knowledge that a “we” can also be lost, is dangerous. Perhaps this is the most serious message of the postcolonial critique of Western feminism, of which care ethics forms part and on which it draws: the critique of the “proofs” of universality and transcultural validity (Montanaro, 2018, p.  45). It is precisely the

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actual “we” that refers to complex community formation and to possible friction between different positions. Lacune: inflecting community My explicit reluctance with regard to using a “we” that is not sufficiently defined is linked to my amazement that there is a lot of theory in the ethics of care on relationality and connection, but very little on community and community of destiny, and also on, and by actual groups of women who are characterized by care labor, “dirty care” (cf. Dorlin, 2017, p. 177; see, however, Biroli in this volume). Care ethics has pointed to lacunas in other types of ethics and political theory (Hamington 2018), but it is not free of lacunas itself. Engster and Hamington (2015) have averred “significant disagreements and gaps” (p. 7). I think there is such a gap in respect of the place of community. There is little or nothing on establishing community and on the desire for community, in all its ambiguity and also in its deep cultural diversity. In relation to the ambiguity and the problematic nature of longing for community, the feminist historian Jill Casid (2012) has spoken of “the barbed wire of connectivity”: it is problematic to want to be connected, and yet it is a deep desire (p. 131). Pulcini (2009) has thoroughly explored the problem of community, but has not made any connections with the ethics of care (see also Laugier, 2014, pp. 179-207). I call this a lacuna for two reasons. First, because community, the form of life that goes beyond I-you relationships, follows on from political care ethics. A second reason is that since the rise of care ethics, political developments have increasingly come to light that cut across the giving and receiving of care. I say “have increasingly come to light,” because they already existed before. I am referring to the desire to belong, the longing for community, for belonging, that is evident in so-called populism: the expectation that there are institutions that care for you, the political experience of not being seen despite a clear voice, and of thus not belonging to the body politic (Eatwell & Goodwin, 2018). The lack of care, the failure to recognize

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voices that are being heard, is, I assume, an important concern of the ethics of care. This political experience of groups of people and this sentiment are deemed to be “populism.” Populism is making its presence felt in care ethics (Shaw, 2018; White, 2017), but care ethics does not have its own conceptual apparatus to process it: there is no fully fledged institutional theory. Feminist care ethical theories “fall short of enumerating an institutional theory . . . when measured against existing institutional theories, their recommendations appear partial or incomplete” (Engster, 2004, p. 121). Nor are there any concepts for a loss of trust that is translated into politics. This political development contains another element that is important to care ethics: the protest – a very present voice – also contains anger that self-care is being frustrated: the decline of work, and therefore of the possibility to support oneself. “Work had been a passport out of fear, poverty, and humiliation” (Hochschild, 2016/2018, p. 157). The attention that care ethics is giving to precarity is a positive and very necessary recent development. But the connection with longing for community (including all the ambiguity and political danger which that entails, as well as the hidden appeal to the second Enlightenment – High Romanticism – that sometimes accompanies it) and with the concern for one’s own capacity to sustain oneself, has not, as far as I am aware, been further developed. Without becoming communitarianism, the ethics of care should inflect the giving and receiving of care in the mode of the community: making community, founding community, seeking community, losing community, destroying community. Despite its affinity with a core critical insight of care ethics – “relationing” (a verb that does not exist yet, but does make sense) – this inflection is not yet taking place.

Conclusion: Care Ethics, a Movement and an Inquiry? When I use the word “approach,” I refer to a movement of groups and people who approach care as a politicum which is connected with interdisciplinary scholarship, in the sense of inquiry. Care ethics is both a political movement and a scholarly discipline. Tronto begins

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the preface to the French translation of her groundbreaking book Moral Boundaries (Un monde vulnerable) as follows: “Moral Boundaries is the fruit of my experience in women’s movements since the 1970s” (Tronto, 2009b, p.  11). However, what is at stake is not only the background of care ethics, but also the connection with social and political movements, a connection that sets the agenda for scholarship. Tronto also places pressure on the connection between movements on the one hand and the task of the discipline of care ethics to reflect on the other by contending that in the political battle, it is not only about groups whose voices are already beginning to be heard, but also about neglected, forgotten, and suppressed groups that must be brought to the fore: “How to include as political actors women and others who have been traditionally excluded?” (p.  175). She has hopefully concluded: “Care provides us with a strategy for such change” (p. 175). The question can be asked whether the academic discipline of care ethics can be clearly identified as part of the movements, and what movements these in fact are, forty years after the emergence of care ethics. Does the discipline itself operate in a care ethical way within the academy, i.e. with “active attention,” “presence or being there for the other, seeing or discernment, active, careful listening, thoughtful speaking, honoring our intuition, reliability, and the recognition of plurality” (Bozalek & Winberg, 2018, p. 3)? And does it accompany the movements with research, is it deriving its issues, problems, and questions from them? Or is this not the way it perceives itself, and has it become, perhaps even only partially, disengaged from the movements, imposing its own agenda upon them? In that case, the discipline has become absorbed by a different practice than that of care: the practice of the academy. In a time in which Trump supporters have been called a “basket of deplorables” (by Hillary Clinton) and pro-Brexit voters “simpletons” (by Richard Dawkins) and “fruitcakes” (by David Cameron), the question what it means to associate with excluded political actors has only become more urgent. The American care ethicist Daniel Engster has pointed out that political and politically explosive movements could arise from deep fear for

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the future, “care-based anxieties” and an equally deep “political yearning” for a policy that cares about them Engster (2016), cfr. Engster (2018)). The issue of voicing the unheard, and of binding care ethics to movements and burning issues has thus been firmly placed on the agenda. For the moment, it is important to retain awareness that the ethics of care is both a movement and a discipline.

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Vosman, F. (2016). Kartographie einer Ethik der Achtsamkeit – Rezeption und Entwicklung in Europa. In E.  Conradi & F.  Vosman (Eds.), Praxis der Achtsamkeit: Schlüsselbegriffe der Care-Ethik (pp. 33–51). Frankfurt a/Main: Campus. Vosman, F. (2018). Overleven als levensvorm: Zorgethiek als kritiek op het ideaal van het “geslaagde” leven [Survival as form of life: Care ethics as a critique on the ideal of “successful” life, Valedictory Lecture]. Utrecht: Net aan Zet. Vosman, F., & Niemeijer, A. (2017). Rethinking critical reflection on care: late modern uncertainty and the implications for care ethics. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 20, 465-476. doi: 10.1007/s11019-017-9766-1 Vosman, F., Timmerman, G., & Baart, A. (2018). Digging into care practices: The confrontation of care ethics with qualitative empirical and theoretical developments in the low countries (2007-2017). International Journal of Care and Caring, 2, 405-423. doi: 10.1332/239788218X15321005652967 Wacquant, L. (2012). Three steps to a historical anthropology of actually existing neoliberalism. Social Anthropology, 20(1), 66-79. Walker, M. U. (2007). Moral understandings: A feminist study in ethics (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ward, N. (2015). Care ethics, intersectionality and poststructuralism. In M. Barnes, T.  Brannelly, L.  Ward, & N.  Ward (Eds), Ethics of care: Critical advances in international perspective (pp. 57-67). Bristol: Policy Press. West, A. (2001). Race matters. Boston: Beacon Press.(Original work published 1993) White, R.J. (2017, December 20). Community-based activism: for ethics of care, expressions of solidarity and a spirit of revolt. In Anarchist Geographers, A Collective of (authors), Beyond electoralism: Reflections on anarchy, populism, and the crisis of electoral politics (pp. 626-628). ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 16(4), 607-642. Retrieved from White Rose Research Online: https://www.acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1571 Williams, F. (2018). Care: Intersections of scales, inequalities and crises. Current Sociology, 66, 547-561. Wolf, S. M. (Ed.). (1996). Feminism & bioethics. New York: Oxford University Press. Zechner, M. (2015). The world we desire is one we can create and care for together (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from Queen Mary University of London Theses: https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/x`mlui/handle/123456789/9115

Notes At this place Cooper (2007, p. 254) is criticizing Tronto. Reasons of space prevent me from pursuing this issue further here. For the relation between care and justice in care ethics, see Daniel Engster’s chapter in this volume. 3 Tronto (1993/2009a, pp. 118-119 ) is drawing on Ruddick (1989). 4 Pulcini ultimately follows Levinas (Pulcini, 2013, p. 179). 5 This publication is referred to as a pivotal publication. It is published only in Japanese; I was therefore not able to consult it. 1 2

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6 Casalini, 2017, p. 511, my translation: “While for Federici, the reinstatement of care is part and parcel of the search for new spontaneous ways of common living outside of the privatization and marketization of care, for Fraser, on the other hand – and I agree with her – this may just be a ‘romantic escape’ (a similar position seems to be taken by McRobbie (2016) in her discussion of Isabell Lorey’s (2015) book, State of Insecurity).” 7 See also one of Annie Ernaux’s novels on the metamorphosis into the bourgeoisie: La Honte (1997), translated (1998) as Shame, New York: Seven Stories Press. 8 Karan Barad’s entanglement idea, and, on another level of aggregation, Tronto’s idea of nested practices (Tronto, 2013, p. 21: “to understand . . . complex interrelationships”) should also be discussed here. 9 I will not discuss other kinds of “we” here, like the imperativus majestatis. 10 Incidentally, it seems to me that it is mistaken to read “homines curans” as “people who care”: Albertus Magnus is commenting on Christ who cures people, clarifying how the pericope in the Gospel (John 9,6), where Christ heals a blind person with mud mingled with His spittle, can be understood. (In: Albertus Magnus (1651), Opera Omnia, XI, Commentarium in Ioannem. Lyon (Lugdunum), p.  178.) The “curans” (nominativus, participium praesentis activi of the verb curare) homines (accusativus), the one who cures (not: cares for), is Christ. In the meantime the expression “homines curans” has been taken up by other authors (Shaw, 2018).

PART I Key Insights in Care Ethics

The Role of Emotions in the Ethics and Politics of Care Fabienne Brugère

The project of an ethics of care has not only to do with the constitution of a rational point of view, but with emotional factors as well. Its focus on moral relations leads it to emphasize moral sentiments over abstract reason. As an epistemological process aiming to grasp the very meaning of morality, the ethics of care values emotions over reason and questions the rationalist nature of the ethics of justice. More precisely, certain kinds of emotions are valued in contrast with dominant rationalist approaches derived from Kantian philosophy. From a care point of view, moral inquiries rooted in reason and rationalistic deductions are considered deficient and unjustly dominant, for decisions are not only made on the basis of universal principles and rules. Emotions are important (Bourgault & Pulcini, 2018; Pulcini & Bourgault, 2018). Of course, this focus on the emotional sphere is integral to the very concept of “ethics.” For instance, the reflection initiated by Carol Gilligan calls into question any moral dogmatism infused with universalism and favoring exclusion over inclusion. Such an approach is a turning point in American human sciences which has some roots in pragmatism: it departs from abstract formalism – informed by the predominance of the language sciences – and exposes the ideology which underlies the notion of the individual (wrongly) viewed as abstract, bodiless, and cut off from everything that makes up ordinary human beings (personal attachments and feelings, gender, personal projects, being rooted in a collective history, country, or area of the world, etc.).

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Using the theoretical arsenal of care hence means putting moral reasoning aside in favor of that which particularizes behaviors, and which is to be found both in the needs of others and the social bearing of situations. The ethics of care also calls attention to the strategic use of universality and autonomy to patriarchal ends. The universal is not necessarily dismissed, but it is deconstructed or criticized whenever it fails to be contextualized. The emotional sphere conducts to an evaluative judgment. Moral sentiments like compassion, pity, sympathy or empathy participate in the experience of the other, follow the other’s perspective and are capable to sustain an ethical response. However, some emotions are not activated in an ethical way. The distinctive feature of democracies today is the manipulation of emotions by populist actors. More precisely, they make use of an emotional, dramatized and colloquial language. They try to demonstrate that they are normal citizens and do not belong to the political establishment. The communication style of these politicians is appealing to emotions and sentiments of their audience and is able to spread anger and hope alike. The populistic policy in the USA, Italy, France or Eastern Europe paints the world in black and white; people are either friends or foes. The centrality of emotions and the role of particular feelings interest politicians for being persuasive and determining enemies like migrants or other groups (Demertzis, 2006). It is very different from an ethical point of view. The ethics of care has to distinguish between different types of emotions and determine how each of them relates to care and caring. The finality is against the electoral exploitation of vulnerable people. Is the role of emotions really essential for the accomplishment of an ethics of care? What sorts of emotions are constitutive and able to imply a value judgment of the other’s emotion and experience? In Gilligan’s view, the voice of women restores a language of emotions in favor of other people. This voice and the question of care particularly apply when precepts are no longer self-evident, when rules fail to operate, when individuals are deprived of their certainties, and when they are faced with nothing but difficulties, problems, or crises. This dissenting morality bears another name: it is called an

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ethics, a term which, following Gilligan, went on to characterize a school of thought related to solicitude and care. Why is it fundamental to resort to ethics in order to name these dispositions, behaviors, and practices? Why does this “other” morality foregrounded by Gilligan definitively qualify as an ethics? An ethics of care restores the notion of emotion as a motive for action. Typically, rationalistic moral theories reject egoistic feelings and private interests insofar as they involve favoritism and prevent universality. What are the emotions valued in an ethics of care? These are emotions which express constructive capabilities, involved in interpersonal and institutional contexts (such as relations between a parent and a child, a patient and a nurse, a disabled person and a dependency worker, etc.). They imply an extension of ourselves, an altruistic point of view or an attention to other people. Thus one can discern emotions in diverse categories. The ethics of care considers that it is important to develop relations of caring that respond to the perception of needs and express peoples’ concern. Or course, emotions also help to imagine what is meant or desired. However, caring as a construction of emotions produces relations that also deal with the inequality of vulnerability and with the instability of the affective sphere. How can emotions be useful in an ethics of care? In contexts of highly asymmetrical relations, such as in the protection of people we may describe as “outsiders” in the social world (poor people, migrants, women stripped of their rights), emotions must be disciplined. It means that they have to be connected to a purpose. It is indeed crucial to focus on the notion of a “good distance” in caring relationships; emotions have to be approached with distance. Care does not only refer to the model of motherhood or love, compassion, pity and empathy, but also involves focusing on a caring society and analyzing the role of institutions or the state in the defense of a politics of care. We will explore this theme through the description of an anthropology of vulnerability, the diagnosis of the invisibility of care activities, and an inquiry into the importance of voices in an ethical and political perspective.

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An Anthropology of Vulnerability The contextual dimension of the ethics of care challenges the philosophical acceptance of a universalistic morality. For example, it is fairly easy to acknowledge the obligation for all parents to care for their children. But it does not mean that all actual relations between parents and children are satisfactory, or that all children live in a familial context fostering their personal development. Obligations must be combined with relations of care and attitudes which strive to meet the needs of dependent or vulnerable human beings. In other words, borrowing from Carol Gilligan, two moral perspectives must be recognized: that of justice, which is dominant, and that of care, widely forgotten by the intellectual tradition and offering an alternative perspective. This latter orientation is based on an emotional and empirical approach. As Carol Gilligan (as cited in Baier, 1995b) writes: Theoretically, the distinction between justice and care cuts across the familiar division between thinking and feeling, egoism and altruism, theoretical and practical reasoning. It calls attention to the fact that all human relationships, public and private, can be characterized both in terms of equality and in terms of attachment, and that both inequality and detachment constitute grounds for moral concern. Since everyone is vulnerable both to oppression and to abandonment, two moral visions – one of justice and one of care – recur in human experience. (p. 32)

This distinction between justice and care is a distinction between a rationalistic thinking and an emotional intelligence. Caring relationships, from Gilligan’s point of view, are constituted “in terms of attachment”: this means that the sort of emotional relationship developed between a parent and a child is a model of care. Attachments provide connections to others and are usually rooted in the parent figure, which provides physical and emotional security. For example, the figure of the “good enough mother” (Winnicott, 1953) points to a physical and emotional attachment, the early attachment to the mother before the attachment to a transitional object; it suggests a love between two imperfect beings, since the mother is capable of adjusting to her baby. The good enough mother

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provides physical care and meets her baby’s needs in terms of emotional warmth and love. She also protects her baby against those moments when bad emotions may arise, for example when her baby screams and cries continuously. By containing her own hateful feelings towards her baby in these difficult moments, the good enough mother facilitates her baby’s feelings and expressions of omnipotence. This is possible because the mother is able to adjust her care to the baby’s needs until the latter gradually begins to feel safe enough to relinquish these feelings. At this stage, the process of integration can start and the baby begins to develop a sense of “me” and “not me.” An emotionally unavailable caregiver endangers this formative process. What is important is the concept of “dependence”: the baby evolves from a relationship of total dependency to one of relative dependency by a gradual process of security by which it learns to tolerate the frustrations of the world beyond itself and the mother. The example of the “good enough mother” gives substance to a need-based dependency. Babies are not self-sufficient; they are closely connected or dependent on those who are instrumental in sustaining their lives. They are vulnerable to abandonment. The issue of vulnerability (including the concept of dependency) is crucial in an ethics of care which strives to take into account the importance of feelings; children’s ties to their caregivers imply the conception of an ego-relatedness in which vulnerability and the sphere of emotions are essential. On the one hand, vulnerability postulates a conception of human beings that reinstates feelings or emotional relations as a motive for action – a conception infusing ethics as a whole. On the other hand, the insistence on viewing attachment as a model of care is not without consequences and must be discussed. Adding up love, emotion, and the relationship between a mother and her baby often implies equating moral theory with women and moral theory with the family. But, the example of the “good enough mother” is not sufficient for describing emotions engaged in an ethics of care. The danger would be to understand attachment only from a private or family point of view. Attachments are experimented with people outside private or

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family relations. What is important is the conception of a relational identity. Blanca Rodríguez-Ruiz (2005) writes that the view of the self as embedded in relationships shaped by moral duty contrasts with accounts of individuals as isolated, rational holders of equal rights. Relations are reinforced by ethic of care’s concern for specific persons and for concrete real-life situations. Individuals are fundamentally embedded in relationships. Various kinds and degrees of proximity are important for the constitution of identity. Individuals are constituted in a social context that contributes to shaping their identity. The theme of care has to do with relatedness, social embeddedness and critical ability to reflect on it, as Rodríguez-Ruiz explains. Noteworthy is the crucial role played in the history of philosophy by the sphere of emotions and its connection with moral theory, or what we now call ethics. The views of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers such as Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith imply an account of moral life which problematizes the construction of emotions by moral sentiments through the use of concepts of “moral sense” and “sympathy.” For instance, sympathy is like emotions for care ethics: the importance of relationship, the necessity of a good distance between “I” and others and an inventive affectivity. These insights call into question the abstract rules of the dominant theories, which support the notion that moral maturity is rational, expressing the will or autonomy of human beings. People have an emotional need to be attached to something or someone, calling for a moral perspective. Morality is essential when it comes to forms of interaction between people, and to the notion of interdependence as based in the model of a decent society at odds with the liberal ideal enrooted in individual autonomy and the figure of a subject of rights. Annette Baier (1995b), discussing Gilligan’s In a Different Voice, argues that we are faced with two visions of morality which involve two visions of emotions: “the emphasis in Kantian theories on rational control of emotions, rather than on cultivating desirable forms of emotion, is challenged by Gilligan, along with the challenge to the assumption of the centrality of autonomy, or relations between equals, and of freely chosen relations” (p. 57). What does this emphasis on cultivating desirable forms of emotion

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mean? Baier’s explanation is based on the role of parents. Parents need to love their children, and not just control their anger or whims. The infant does not choose its place within its family (or nation). To assume one’s parental responsibilities involves something else than power and control. It is important to care for children with a sort of attention and protection that does not exclude the importance of emotions. This account of ethical and social bonds combines the emotional sphere with the preservation of life and the guarantee to meet the needs of everyone, because all human beings are – more or less – vulnerable. I wish to insist on the concept of “vulnerability,” which suggests a subversion of modern individualism and a new place for the sphere of emotions. One cannot reflect on the ethics of care without subscribing to an anthropology of vulnerability, one that focuses both on the vulnerability of the recipients and of the providers of care (in the relational and the physical sense of the word) resulting from their lack of legitimacy in society. This conception of humanity challenges individualism and shows the negativity of its premises. It serves as a reminder that while the individual entrepreneur, always searching for more in a self-regulated market, is acclaimed, the victorious crusades of some are only possible because others – women and people in need of a livelihood, or migrants – carry out the burden of care (for children, old people, and entrepreneurial individuals, etc.). It is also a reminder of the need to reform the welfare state as it is faced with new kinds of vulnerability (related to issues as diverse as social insecurity, long-term illnesses, or nuclear accidents). New social groups, new forms of exploitation of individuals, and new forms of harm done to these individuals can be examined according to a care-based analysis. Ethics are essential to the concern for the most vulnerable, the difficult question being to know just when vulnerable beings are affected by the actions of others and how they may respond, favorably or unfavorably (Kittay, 1999, pp. 54-56). It is in an ethical perspective that Joan Tronto insists on what constitutes our duty towards the “protection of the vulnerable” (p. 181). At the same time, she argues that following this ethical path implies a critique of the way in which

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care for the most vulnerable is provided, insofar as those who protect them may represent themselves as their “defenders”; the risk lies in an abuse of power on the part of care providers, “who arrogate to themselves the power of defining the needs (of the vulnerable)” (p. 181). This restricted conceptualization of vulnerability makes this abuse possible because the ability to respond does not lie in a relationship between equals; the care provider believes that he or she has a knowledge that places him or her above the care receiver. Establishing a moral relationship with the most vulnerable is a matter of considering the situation of others as they describe it, and not assuming them to be identical to oneself. Otherness arises on that moment when vulnerability calls for our protection, when someone needs to be taking in charge, or when we carry out some other kind of care; it is not a reciprocal situation and it requires an appropriate response. This argument may be taken one step further. Vulnerability posits a conception of human beings which rehabilitates feeling as a motive for action. More precisely, it gives priority to delicate relationships, part of which may be beyond our control. Vulnerability prompts us to reflect on dependence, and what it may reveal. The moments in which we are formed by our relationships to others escape our consciousness. These relations of dependency, which reveal the vulnerability of an infant, for instance, inform the subject in an opaque way. Following Judith Butler (2005), we may argue that: the opacity of the subject may be a consequence of its being conceived as a relational being, one whose early and primary relations are not always available to conscious knowledge . . . If we are formed in the context of relations that become partially irrecoverable to us, then that opacity seems built into our formation and follows from our status as beings who are formed in relations of dependency. (p. 20)

These relations of dependency indicate a primary opacity of the self. There is a history of this primary opacity of the self and of the vulnerability it implies. Philosophically, this modern history of vulnerability could begin with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile (book  4). Rousseau (1762/1979, p.  236) makes a distinction between two kinds of

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dependency: the dependency to other human beings and the dependency to objects. The first is social, whereas the second natural. The dependency to objects is not very important as it does not undermine our freedom. It is fundamentally different from the dependency to human beings. While a natural human being does not refer to anything else outside of his own needs, a social human being is very dependent. In Discourse on Inequality, the contract must be understood as a voluntary association, or a hidden servitude.1 Is dependency only a servitude? Perhaps not. There is another dependency in Emile (book  4) which is more complicated and may be accounted for through the opacity of the self in formation. This dependency points to a kind of dignity which cannot be likened to servitude or submission. The example of the child gives substance to a form of dependency focused on our needs. Children are not self-sufficient; they are closely connected (or bound) to those who are useful in sustaining their lives. Children do not know their social rank or place. The opacity of the self resides in the incapacity to occupy a certain place as a result of the child’s weakness. The opacity is the mark of a primary vulnerability. Rousseau writes about Emile as a child. First, children must feel their weakness but must not suffer from it. Second, they are only subordinated to others as a result of their needs and because others are more apt than children to see what is useful to them. Third, children must depend on others but must not obey.

Homo Sentimentalis. Emotions and Sentiments The topic of needs symbolizes the dependency of children and, far from their submission, their interdependence; this means that dependency is structured by its aim: the child’s development. This account is a good introduction to the ethics of care: caring (“taking care” of a child) has a limit – that which is good for the child. But, dependency is complex and always bound to a certain context in an interdependent social world. We may define the world of care based on this interdependence. Yet, what does interdependence mean? It  points to an irregular or unstable world which has to do with

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emotions, with the elaboration of an affectivity based on contingency. The definition of “homo sentimentalis” must be stressed (for Rousseau, this is the kind of interplay that may develop between self-love – amour propre – and the love of others). Moreover, can the definition of “homo sentimentalis” be of use in an ethics of care, given that the world of sentiments is first and foremost informed by the social world? As usual care theorists give a generic meaning to the affective dimension. As Elena Pulcini (2017) writes, there is a cognitive function of emotions; the definition by Martha Nussbaum of emotions as “upheavals of thought” with their own peculiar intelligence is interesting for an ethics of care. Emotions are forms of evaluative judgment and ascribe to certain things, people and actions the qualification of “good” or “bad.” The possibility of caring is associated with an attitude, a sort of discipline of passions by which we are able to make judgments about what is good and act accordingly. If the affective sphere is always contextual and emphasizes dependencies and relations, it implies a role of intelligence in a social context. But this intelligence is difficult to establish; emotions, sentiments or feelings are considered as irregular, private, vulnerable and unstable. They belong to contingency. The attention to others is then consolidated by other factors: a common culture, a concern for humanity, a conception of good. Caring can be considered as love’s labor (to borrow from the title of Eva Feder Kittay’s book, Love’s Labor) if love means emotions with an ability to reflect on these emotions. Love, and more generally the sphere of passions, must be combined with an ethics of care as an art of contingency. But, love, caring, and the construction of emotions all produce relationships which deal with the inequality of vulnerability. This inequality also involves irregularity and instability. The reason behind all these figures of uncertainty is that the affective sphere is always set in a certain context or situation: sentiments or emotions have to do with accidents. Adam Smith exposes what is difficult with affectivity. Normally, sentiments are considered to be intimate, unchosen, and to occur between unequal beings. They are a cause of contradiction and conflict. In Theory of Moral Sentiments,

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Smith describes “the irregularity of sentiments” as a truth but not a flaw. On the contrary, it induces action: Nature, however, when she implanted the seeds of this irregularity in the human breast, seems, as upon all other occasions, to have intended the happiness and perfection of the species. (p. 105)

Nor is that irregularity of sentiments altogether without its utility, by which the merit of an unsuccessful attempt to serve, and much more that of mere good inclinations and kind wishes, appears to be imperfect. Man was made for action, and to promote by the exertion of his faculties such changes in the external circumstances both of himself and others, as may seem most favorable to the happiness of all (pp. 105-106). The irregularity of sentiments is not a danger for human beings; it is integral to the happiness of the species. More precisely, it is useful for individuals to engage in all kinds of actions. Actions spur changes in external circumstances. If the sphere of sentiments is irregular, it also implies that this sphere is plastic (that is to say, capable of changing to achieve an aim). Sentiments for Scottish philosophers and emotions for care ethics constitute an affective sphere which is to be understood as the possibility of imperfect or unpredictable relationships, far from any logical rationality. To think about a world of care is hence to consider the affective sphere as philosophically important, following not only Rousseau in Emile and Smith in Theory of Moral Sentiments, but Hume as well. We know that David Hume’s account of morality in Treatise of Human Nature is firmly rooted in a philosophical defense of sentiments. First of all, a human heart, as well as human reason, is needed for the understanding of morality (which is very different from Kant’s point of view). More fundamentally still, the ultimate ends of human actions can never, in any way, be accounted for by reason, but recommend themselves entirely to the sentiments of mankind (Hume 1748/1995, as cited in Baier, 1995a, p. 56). In Hume’s account of our capacity for action, he remains convinced that various interpersonal relationships involving sentiments play a crucial role and have been

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largely underestimated by philosophers. Hume’s attack on reason’s pretenses can be read as an attempt to transgress the philosophical boundary between reason and sentiments. For Annette Baier, it is an attack on patriarchal and theological tradition as a whole and on its claims as to the relative authority of human voices. Baier (1995a) speaks of a “debunking enterprise” (p. 80). The same kind of enterprise is at the heart of the ethics of care in its ambition to cross the philosophical boundary between reason and emotions, to break the association between reason and the masculine voice, between emotions and the feminine voice. The ethical project consists in a critical analysis of Kantian moral philosophies (such as John Rawls’s Theory of Justice). Such philosophies tend to forget that it is impossible to reduce emotions to irrationality. Sentiments for Scottish Enlightenment and emotions for care ethics are subject to a complex elaboration which takes place in a certain context and imply an understanding of the changes in external circumstances. They guarantee action. They cannot be reduced to the private sphere. They are not meant to be provided in the household. But, do they guarantee caring? We may here draw a comparison. Just as the argument of moral sentiments put forth by the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers represents the “losing” side of moral thinking in the eighteenth century (with the triumph of a Kantian universalistic morality), caring can also be said to represent a minority morality (one that is not rooted in the impartiality of reason and in an abstract theory of justice). We may add that caring is little valued in societies structured by capitalism and liberalism. Tronto (1993) analyses what she calls “marginalizing care” or “care as a weakness.” Her point of view does not principally engage with the notion of homo sentimentalis (reduced to a construct to separate men and women, the public space and the space of privacy). Her analysis rather focuses on care as work. While care work is in fact depreciated, care is also depreciated conceptually through its connection with privacy, emotion, and the needy. Since our society treats public accomplishment, rationality, and autonomy as worthy qualities, care is depreciated as an embodiment of their

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opposites (p. 117). Whether we consider care as work or as a disposition, it is always depreciated. Thus, care may be portrayed as a marginal aspect of our society. If care is invisible, it is because it is misunderstood for several reasons. Care is misunderstood because of its connection with emotions; care work is invisible not only because it is dirty work but because it is not rational enough. On the one hand, many of the thinkers who have written about care describe it only as an attitude or a disposition. For example, Nel Noddings (1995) formulates an ethics of caring which combines two feelings: the sentiment of natural care and a response to the remembrance of the first (p.  9). But the universality she mentions is puzzling: “The caring attitude that lies at the heart of all ethical behavior is universal. As a mother . . .” (p. 9). For her, there is no criticism of naturalism. She would certainly not agree with the idea of motherhood as a socially constructed institution regularly used to legitimize women’s oppression. On the other hand, in addition to care being associated with the emotional as opposed to the rational, care is also devalued in its very meaning because of its association with the private sphere. In our culture care is usually and ideally conceived of as a private concern which has to do with women as mothers. Women are expected to care for those who live under their roof. Emotions, sentiments, feelings, passions are words which characterize a female affectivity. They are suspected to be dangerous for the public sphere because they are not sufficiently distant of a self, dependent upon others and things. It is because care has been elaborated in a private sphere based on the power of affectivity that it cannot be recognized. The allocation of care helps maintain the privilege of people who have the possibility of ignoring certain forms of care: this ignorance serves to prevent the relatively privileged from noticing the needs of others. We may hence speak of an ideological context of care. “Caring about” and “taking care of ” are the duties of the powerful. Care-giving and care-receiving are left to the less powerful: women, poor people, migrant workers or ethnic minorities. There are realms, of course, in which men of relatively

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high prestige do “care.” It is symptomatic to notice that every time a doctor takes care of a patient, the nurses, orderlies, and lab technicians are the actual providers of hands-on care (Tronto, 1993, p. 115). When care has to do with the body or involves private or local concerns, it is given up by the powerful. Tronto (1993) hence writes: Out of this association of “taking care of” with masculinity, “caring about” also becomes gendered, raced, and classed: men and people of greater privilege take care of; they care about public and broader issues. (p. 115)

A Politics of Care: Female Voices and Other Voices More specifically, for Gilligan (1982), relational identity is gendered and in that respect more feminine than masculine. This view of the self is incarnated by the different and muted voice of women, representing an individuation based in empathy, the capacity to experience another’s needs or feelings, and the ability to take vulnerability into account. By contrast, signs of detachment or lack of concern qualify, according to her, as more masculine than feminine. It is important to discuss this gendered orientation and the connection between women and emotions. How can the realm of care be recognized if it encompasses such a wide variety of unrecognized activities? According to Gilligan’s book, In a Different Voice, moral questioning is rooted in the observation of gender inequality: women do not approach moral problems the same way men do, and their voices are made vulnerable in the name of a rational morality that considers itself free from divisions – when it in fact excludes from the domain of moral action everything resembling empathy for others, or worse, responsibility with respect to the vulnerability or needs of others. Women’s voices are not different from men’s, but male dominance has rendered them inaudible by creating a correlation between moral feelings, the private or family realm, and a purported feminine nature (particularly in the 18th century, when the conception of the public sphere was tied to the notion of a contract and excluded all dependent beings – primarily women, but also slaves, domestic servants, and poor workers (Pateman, 1988)). Gilligan

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argues once again that women’s voices must be valued in order to establish an equality between two moralities: one which implies “subjects of rights” capable of distancing themselves from their activities, which Gilligan calls the ethics of justice, based on the ideal of a neutral public sphere; and one implying “subjects of need” who must be “taken care of,” requiring subjects to act to the benefit of others, and involving an ethics of responsibility. Of course, this ethics – of responsibility, or “care” – must vindicate the forgotten experiences of women, which have been poorly evaluated in male-dominated moral psychologies (such as those of Kohlberg, addressed by Gilligan). Most of all, it must transform gender relationships and eliminate the inequalities which have led to a social positioning men and women to the detriment of activities involving concern for others, predominantly performed by women. In short, a feminist ethics is needed in order to democratize society and promote an equality of voices, thereby shifting the barriers (too hastily erected in the name of a normalizing rational identity of individuals) between reason and feeling, the public and the private spheres, and finally, the moral and the political realms. Such an ethics must make women become aware of the need to relinquish the imposed, conventional goodness of “care” as self-sacrifice in favor of a relational morality that combines concern for the self and concern for others, while always remaining aware of the specificity of situations and their chains of vulnerability (between caregivers and care recipients, women, the poor, migrants, etc.). Restoring equality in the realm of care thus means considering vulnerability within the framework of an ethics which , instead of expressing the moral weakness of women, expresses a relational maturity, a sense of collective responsibility (with regards to all forms of need); an ethics which, having deconstructed gender inequalities, could apply to mankind and enable us to relate to others in a way that reflects a concrete, rather than a generalized, other (Benhabib, 1986). This involves accepting a particularistic morality, as opposed to a universalistic morality, or calling for an “interactive” universality that acknowledges the plurality of human lifestyles.

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This relational maturity is a way for women to experience a new sort of caring attitude. Women must abandon a typical feminine attitude: a self-sacrifice which implies concern for others and no concern for the self. The deconstruction of gender inequalities demands that women (going against the history of women) establish a distance with others, a sort of limitation or control of their empathy, in distancing themselves from their activities of care. In fact, “caring” for the vulnerable is a form of interpersonal support and should be developed by way of social policies addressing non-autonomous individuals. However, this cannot be properly achieved without respecting the capacity to act, be or speak. Dealing with vulnerability asks that we not lose sight of care recipients’ ability to be productive: assistance must not be confused with charity. Moreover, in the area of gender inequality, the issue of care clearly marks the shift from industrial to post-industrial capitalism, from classical liberalism to neo-liberalism. It could be said that the naturalization movement, which linked the future of women to feelings and solicitude within the sphere of the family, was replaced with the need for a certain number of women to consider care as work and accept poorly paid, invisible jobs that turn their dependence into a form of exploitation in precarious jobs. How do the vulnerable relate to the more vulnerable when inequalities are intensified, far from the centers of power? It is important to elaborate a politics of care based on this kind of ethics. Furthering the struggle against inequalities (with gender inequalities as a model) means accepting that caring relations are not only interpersonal relations. It hence becomes necessary to think about “vulnerability” and “feelings” in a political perspective: feelings have to be used (and contained) when caring relations mean work, or when focusing on the role of institutions in interpersonal relations. The justified place and inevitable relevance of emotions are constitutive of an ethics of care. However, when considering care activities, ethics must be connected with politics and the possibility for caring activities to become visible and recognized. The most important is to consider the  discipline of emotions, the constitution of “de-sentimentalized

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emotions” as a collective orientation of care. This is a political orientation which focuses on recognizing the voice of care and establishing plurality as a value. We may define this elaboration of a collective and institutional use of emotions as a democratic experience. A caring society populated by the concrete existences of vulnerable beings must be characterized by the necessity of inclusion. This world of “inclusion” calls for cooperation between all the actors of society (men and women, the state, citizens, international organizations, etc.). In this political strategy, a caring democracy may be identified as such when all the actors are involved: state and nonstate actors as well as citizens. They are mobilized and play a role (in situations of crisis) based on a caring attitude. This caring attitude cannot be achieved without an account of daily life and emotions. For instance, a politics which opposes exclusion is not only a politics rooted in institutions, social rights, and norms; it is also a politics rooted in human relations, giving a voice to extremely vulnerable beings. Voices do not exist outside of specific and emotional relationships. These relationships have to be elaborated in a democratic or pluralist model. It means that emotions are a welcome and meaningful contribution when they serve for a pluralist democracy which perceives different sorts of needs. Today, the current European migrant crisis emphasized by populist discourses against migrants or refugees implies a political renunciation to caring relations in favor of the most vulnerable people. Currently, Western states show unwillingness to welcome refugees and migrants alike, in line with what they perceive as the general public opinion. In more and more countries, refugees and migrants receive little help and support whether it is from the political parties or the national and local authorities. One can only note that ordinary people, sometimes grouped together in a non-profit organization, and a few elected local officials are involved in caring activities where the state failed, in the hope of helping the most vulnerable. These activities are often sustained by an ethics of care and mostly in the spirit of such an ethics. When the institutions forget vulnerable people because they are foreigners, ordinary people often try to accomplish

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caring relations when they live in a state governed by the rule of law. When the governors forget the possibility of a politics of hospitality, compassion, generosity and empathy are some of the emotions which permit this accomplishment of democracy by gestures of hospitality (Brugère, 2017; Brugère & Le Blanc, 2017). When individuals leave their country because of war, extreme poverty or climate disaster, other individuals take care of them, consider them as guests and not as enemies. But the risk is that such ethical activities become too personal. The most democratic would be to develop public policies for hospitality. It implies to create permanent places of welcome in which it is possible to take care of people and undertake a politics of the individual. Such impersonal structures organize not only the urgency but also the welcoming. They offer to the most vulnerable people a voice, a possibility of being considered by a country when they are displaced persons. It is a democratic responsibility to guarantee the “rights of others” (Benhabib, 2004, Introduction) – immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers – in a contemporary world engaged in the interdependence of peoples, nations and states. Today care relations have to be considered in a globalizing world where competition, deepening hierarchies and patterns of exclusion are very present, increasing the importance of nationalistic emotions and of sovereignty against the perception of an interdependence constructed on the necessity of ethical and political responses in situations where real people are suffering (Robinson, 1999, pp. 99-104).

Conclusion To stress the extreme vulnerability of some lives and the widespread interdependence at hand suggests a conception of living together rooted in a truly democratic bond, careful not to exclude those who are confronted with vulnerability. This means promoting not only the acknowledgment of care for others, but also public support policies aimed at developing and restoring powers of agency and existence for all. A politics of care can reform democratic practices, endowing it with the essence of a real democracy and not just the form of the

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democratic régime. It is rooted in what Gilligan (2010) adequately calls an “equality of voices” – an equality of all voices, masculine and feminine, rich and poor, calling out from the margins of power or from its very center. The ethics of care requires a capacity for social criticism and a resistance to policies that privilege status and discriminatory identity labeling. According to Gilligan “the alternative voice is a voice of resistance” (p.  20) to dualities and hierarchies, particularly those grounded in gender or attached to a social class or an ethnic origin. This equality of voices cannot be championed without challenging the social and political frameworks defining inequalities of identity: classifications leading to exclusion, limited and authoritarian perspectives on life’s opportunities. Promoting an equality of voices cannot be achieved without paying heed to the most fragile voices, those which are least described and most discriminated against by general normative categories. “Taking care” of fragile voices can only be achieved by targeting the democratic hypothesis of an equality of voices. To act on behalf of another for an equalization of opportunities is a way of practicing a real unconditional democracy defying any theoretical risks that would make it ungraspable. Putting the equality of voices into practice means asking to whom and to what this equality applies, to what extent it is to be applied, and according to which variables and priorities (Brugère, 2019, pp. 56-57). Promoting equality does not just consist in reiterating utterances about equality as a positive value. It is a matter of being more empiricist and less idealistic: equality works by intervening in practical affairs to remove their unjustly divisive classifying character, and by pushing aside established positions. It means going back to the truly crucial question raised by Amartya Sen (1992): equality, sure, but equality of what? If we respect human diversity, we cannot preach an egalitarianism grounded in the notion that we are all identical, which would end up reintroducing unity into politics, a homogeneity forgetful of the fact that lives can be led in many different ways. We need to agree on which spheres equality should operate in (Sen, 1992).

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Transforming the idea of equality in a political program means overturning certain points of view. It is not sufficient to consider others as equals, a position particularly embodied in the equality of rights. Practicing equality means aiming for it in particular situations and determining priorities: equality of income, of opportunities, of gender, etc. If every subject must be able to take part in political life in a different way, this participation implies a common space built out of the individual expressions of subjects. Equality can only function within a space devoid of any presuppositions which define certain subjects as being a priori outside that space. It is truly a matter of rejecting the markers established by a sovereign power tirelessly repeating them, so as to promote an equality based on notions of relations and coalitions. If the ethics of care is feminist, then it reclaims its anchorage in equality, which involves fighting for concrete forms of equality within education, the family, at work, or in rural or urban areas. There are no neutral or objective spaces. These are always teeming with the power and control allocated by different markers of social identity. The issue for a politics of equality is to exert a radical critique of these markers and of the injustices they produce at the heart of the social world. However, this real equality involves relationships between concrete individuals. The place of emotions is fundamental because it is a way of stressing individual needs, of considering the particularities of specific persons or circumstances, and of constituting a voice. The welfare state cannot be achieved without taking into account emotions and recognizing the necessity of a discipline of emotions or feelings in social policies. The institutions function alongside with human relations. They guarantee rights and missions but have to be incarnated by individuals practicing a good distance in relationships and using emotions in a democratic way.

Reference List Baier, A. (1995a). Moral prejudices. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Baier, A. (1995b). The need for more than justice. In V. Held (Ed.), Justice and care: Essential readings in feminist ethics. Oxford: Westview Press.

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Benhabib, S. (1986). The generalized and the concrete other. In S.  Benhabib & D. Cornell (Eds.), Feminism as Critique (pp. 77-95). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Benhabib, S. (2004). The rights of others. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Brugère, F. (2017). Against barbarism, it is urgent to make hospitality intelligible.  In G. G.  David (Ed.), Nous sommes ici (pp.  122-124). Palermo: Glifo Edizioni. Brugère, F., & G. Le Blanc (2017). La fin de l’hospitalité. Paris: Flammarion. Brugère, F. (2019). Care ethics: The introduction of care as a political category. Louvain: Peeters. Butler, J. (2005). Giving an account of oneself. New York: Fordham University Press. Bourgault, S., & Pulcini, E. (Eds.). (2018). Emotions and care: Interdisciplinary perspectives. Louvain: Peeters. Demertzis, N. (2006). Emotions and populism. In S. Clarke, P. Hoggett, & S. Thompson (Eds.), Emotions, politics and society (pp. 103-122). London: Palgrave & Macmillan. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Gilligan, C. (2010). Une voix différente: Un regard prospectif à partir du passé. In V. Nurock (Ed.), Carol Gilligan et l’éthique du care. Paris: PUF. Kittay, E. F. (1999). Love’s labor: Essays on women, equality and dependency. New York: Routledge. Noddings, N. (1995). Caring. In V. Held (Ed.), Justice and care: Essential readings in feminist ethics (pp. 7-30). Oxford: Westview Press. Pateman, C. (1988). The sexual contract. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Pulcini, E. (January 2017). What emotions motivate care? Emotion Review 9(1), 64-71. Pulcini, E., & Bourgault, S. (Eds.). (2018). Cura ed emozioni: Un’alleanza complessa. Bologna: Il Mulino. Robinson, F. (1999). Globalizing care. Colorado: Westview Press. Rodríguez-Ruiz, B. (2005). Caring discourse: The care/justice debate revisited. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 31, 775-779. Rousseau, J.-J. (1979). Emile, or on education [Emile, ou de l’education] (A. Bloom, Trans.). New York: Basic Books. (Original work published 1762) Rousseau, J.-J. (1985). Discourse on inequality [Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité parmi les hommes] (M.  Cranston, Trans.). London: Penguin Group. (Original work published 1755). Sen, A. (1992). Inequality reexamined. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Smith, A. (1984). The theory of moral sentiments. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Tronto, J. (1993). Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. New York: Routledge. Winnicott, D. W. (1953). Transitional objects and transitional phenomena: A study of the first not-me possession. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 34, 89-97.

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Note 1 See Emile IV, GF: “Il y a dans l’état de nature une égalité de fait réelle et indestructible, parce qu’il est impossible dans cet état que la seule différence d’homme à homme soit assez grande pour rendre l’un dépendant de l’autre. Il y a dans l’état civil une égalité de droit chimérique et vaine, parce que les moyens destinés à la maintenir servent eux-mêmes à la détruire, et que la force publique ajoutée au plus fort pour opprimer le faible rompt l’espèce d’équilibre que la nature avait mis entre eux” (Rousseau, 1762/1966, p.  307). Or see Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité parmi les hommes: “Tous coururent au devant de leurs fers croyant assurer leur liberté” (Rousseau, 1755/1964, p. 177).

Vulnerability and Trust. A Phenomenological Perspective on the Practice of Care Christina Schües

Which is worse: to be betrayed by a friend or by a stranger? Most people will answer this question with: “Oh, it is worse to be betrayed by a friend, of course!” Why do they say this? Why is it worse to be betrayed by a friend than by a stranger? Domestic violence takes place within a relationship of (seeming) intimacy and trust. One report describes the following scene: “After Rick and Janet had been married a week, Janet commented that they made a very nice-looking couple. Rick’s jaw tightened, and without saying anything, he turned and began hitting her in the jaw with his fists, working down her body. Janet was trapped in a corner. She eventually fell to the floor. Rick kicked her until she lost consciousness” (Browne, 1987, as cited and reported in Selden, 2001).1 Domestic violence is also an experience of ordinary life. Friendship and domestic violence are both parts of our daily world. We all know of close relationships that are happy and supportive, and others that are violent and destructive. The friend, the loved one, the close relation is the one we trust and who is entrusted to us. Most of us experience a good relationship with trust, confidence, good communications, and caring for one another. The experience of care for and from the close and loved one is one element of a good relationship. Letting oneself be vulnerable to the other can enhance the strength of the relationship by manifesting trust. Some relationships turn into the horrible scenario of violence and loss of trust in the other, and even loss of the relationship to the world. How are vulnerability and trust intertwined in human relationships?

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Close relationships concern the issue of vulnerability, trust and care; yet the meanings and kinds of vulnerability can be very different: someone can be more or less vulnerable, a relationship might be characterized by trust, broken trust or mistrust. Both vulnerability and trust are intertwined dimensions that concern interpersonal relationships. The specific intertwinement of vulnerability and trust is not to be understood in terms of a dyadic relation but rather as an inseparable dynamic entanglement. Every analysis that ‘disentangles renders unintelligible’; this entanglement (of what belongs inherently together) will have to pose the question of how to disentangle the parts. And the response to this question is bound to an indicative. The indicative stands for expressing how something really is. However, disentangling abstract parts, i.e. vulnerability and trust or mistrust in separation, makes no sense if they were treated as they could stand on their own like real entities. The claim of entanglement calls for a language that allows for ambiguities and ambivalences (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p. 268).2 In daily life and in living together we experience different modes of care. I understand the concept of care ethics to concern our daily life together. Care is a practice that is essential and guides the kind of relations and relationships in which we live and which shape (order) our daily life and the world around us. Experiences of all kinds, whether happy or unhappy, of deep trust or mistrust, take place in relationships (Worms, 2013, p. 221).3 Being vulnerable or feeling vulnerability are not simply particular categories of so-called “vulnerable” groups (e.g. children, elderly or disabled people), but a condition of every human being. Like many care ethicists, I take vulnerability to be relational because one is vulnerable within particular relationships, “with respect to particular sorts of threats to one’s own interests” (Schües, 2016, p.  260) and personal existence.4 Even though vulnerability has this broadly acknowledged ontological side to it, it contains also a normative side: people are more or less vulnerable according to their specific relationships of care and the social contexts in which they live; these features ground very concretely the experiences persons can have in terms of the care they receive and

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give. Hannah Arendt (1958/1998) acknowledges that because human beings are plural, any care practice shapes and structures the human condition in its openness and contingency. “The human condition comprehends more than the conditions under which life has been given to man. Men are conditioned beings because everything they come in contact with turns immediately into a condition of their existence” (p. 9). If we take Arendt’s observation about the contingency of the condition of our existence into the experience of care that shapes the social tie between humans and that makes them more or less vulnerable, then the focus of this essay should be on ordinary life experiences. It is Sandra Laugier’s impression that this “ordinary realism” is lacking in most ethical theories that emphasize values and duties but reduce care to the hands of selfless women (Laugier, 2015, p. 219). In my essay, I focus on the experience of ordinary life with regard to different, yet entangled dimensions of bodily, linguistic, and social vulnerability. Thus, morally speaking, care concerns different dimensions of relationships and human conduct with regard to attentiveness, responsibility, competence and responsiveness, as Joan Tronto would argue (1993, p. 127). For ordinary life, I would also add support from others, and relationships of trust and intimacy. Thus, care consists of “everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible” (Tronto & Fisher, 1990, p.  41; Tronto, 1993, p.  101). I will however concentrate on trust, although it is only one aspect of a caring relationship, because (as I will argue below) it seems to be a primary aspect of human existence. In brief, taking the perspective of care ethics in order to understand the intertwinement of vulnerability and trust, or vulnerability and mistrust or broken trust, I focus on scenes of their appearance in ordinary reality, on how they are experienced, and on different social and normative dimensions of human conduct with regard to the body, language, and social relationships. So, this paper will explore the intertwinement of vulnerability and trust, mistrust or broken trust in terms of relations of care in daily life. The basic questions are: How to understand that, in a relationship of

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trust and care, we let ourselves to be more vulnerable? However, in a relation of violence and broken trust we are we more vulnerable. What does it mean to be more vulnerable because of trust as distinct from being more vulnerable because of broken trust? And where does mistrust stand? How are trust and vulnerability related? Why is it worse to be betrayed or attacked by a person who is close? With such exemplary questions in the background, I will, first, reveal different facets of vulnerability in order to bring out its ontological and normative dimension and its relational character; second, I will narrow the discussion down to the intrinsically relational phenomena of trust, mistrust and broken trust. After delineating the very different basis of the three different notions, I shall show how trust is connected with letting oneself to be vulnerable to the other, how trust transforms into mistrust or broken trust, and what this transformation has to do with vulnerability. Vulnerability concerns different, yet intimately intertwined dimensions of language and embodiment, which can be “hit” by the experience of insult, harm and injury. Finally, I shall draw upon the aspect of relationality that is involved in vulnerability, which amounts to a longing for the other in light of world-making and world-destroying forces. By thematizing the seemingly paradoxical relation of letting oneself be more vulnerable in relations of trust and being more vulnerable in relations of harm and injury, I hope to examine some basic notions of the broad concept of care as it can be lived in ordinary reality.

Dimensions of Vulnerability A discussion of vulnerability needs to thematize a person as a relational being who lives in a concrete context and relationships and who can be injured and hurt in different ways; certainly, the living body cannot be separated from the person. Vulnerability therefore belongs to life, body and person. Vulnerability is the condition of the possibility of being injured, although the vulnerable person might not yet have sustained injury or harm. In an initial approach to the understanding of vulnerability, I want to emphasize three aspects of social ontology which, however, involve normative requirements.

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First, most care ethicists agree that vulnerability is an essential characteristic of the human condition. Hannah Arendt (1958/1998, chap. 1) proposes natality, mortality, worldliness, life, the earth, and plurality as elements of the human condition; to this I would like to add being a lived and gendered body, relationality, having language, being temporal and vulnerable. All of these are prerequisites that must lie factually in the background of any consideration of vulnerability. Second, to say that someone is vulnerable means that this person can be injured and harmed but not necessarily that they are already harmed or injured. During their lifetime everybody is more or less vulnerable (World Health Organization, 2011). However, we are vulnerable in very different ways: there is a difference between being harmed and being injured. For instance, rights cannot be injured, but they can be harmed or violated. And if a right or a rule is violated, it is possible that a person whose rights have been violated is actually injured with regard, for example, to just and social relations. Physical things can be damaged but they cannot be hurt. Yet, by damaging them, people can be severely injured; for example, when a house is destroyed or vandalized by violent attacks. Furthermore, the self can be hurt by insult, abuse or rudeness; and hence, the person might suffer from a psychic wound (a trauma) for even longer than from a wound of the body. Third, relationships between human beings can be harmed and injured. Hence, in the context of listing some senses of harm and injury, it is important to recognize that human relations can be more or less vulnerable in the sense of being more or less precarious. Following Judith Butler (2010), the concept of precarity means a social positioning relevant to protection and security and to the question of whether a particular life is cared for or counts as valuable. Precarity can be allocated in very different and also unjust ways. The result is a “differential distribution of precarity” (p. XXV) within society. Thus, life and bodies are not vulnerable because they are mortal, but because they are social and exposed to particular relations. Overall, only living beings are vulnerable because they can be hurt, can be harmed or can be injured in different ways.

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Fourth, discussing vulnerability means to thematize the possibility of harm and injury and the experience of and suffering due to it. Actual injuries and harms are suffered as experience; but some entail suffering that goes beyond any experience that can be narrated or talked about. In any case, the suffering of harm or injury always takes place in a particular constellation of human relations. Therefore, it always has something to do with other people and it should concern other people. Because an injury and harm, being felt bodily, emotional, linguistic and considered as violence against the person, is also a moral injury which should not take place (Delhom, 2010, p. 130). Thus, vulnerability must always have a normative dimension to it.5 These four aspects of vulnerability call for the requirements of an ethics of care. How people care for each other or how the relationships and social structures between them are ordered, is the basis for how concrete and ordinary reality is construed in terms of lived vulnerability. From the perspective of suffering, an injury or harm should not happen. Hence, the injury or harm is not just experienced, but rather suffered. We are exposed to an injury and subjected (Latin: sub-jecti) to it, we are struck and affected by it (Delhom, 2011, p. 97; Waldenfels, 2002, p. 58ff.). An injury is beyond our control. Likewise, some feelings of vulnerability are experienced, yet not necessarily in a negative way, as I argue in line with Adriana Cavarero (2009), who has considered the double nature of vulnerability. “What is revealed are the two poles of the essential alternative inscribed in the condition of vulnerability: wounding and caring” (p. 20). One pole of vulnerability is being in a situation of or having a disposition towards possible injury or harm, and this form of vulnerability is counterbalanced by security measures, support or care. The other pole refers to the mode of opening oneself up to possible injury and harm, and yet thereby becoming strong and secure, and thus developing more composure, which is also important for a good care relationship. The introduction of two poles of vulnerability can also be found, yet in a different way, in the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics of alterity. Levinas (1970/1987) argues that “in vulnerability there then lies a relationship with the other which causality does not exhaust,

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a relationship antecedent to being affected by a stimulus” (p.  146). Inherent to this relationship is an openness to the vulnerability of the other which is a “silent call” to and ethical demand (une demande, Gebot) of “infinite responsibility” (Levinas, 1961/1969, p. 245).6 This kind of responsibility is not meant as the actual exhaustion or exploitation of anyone who hears the call or cares for someone. Levinas writes: “The infinity of responsibility denotes not its actual immensity, but a responsibility increasing in the measure that it is assumed; duties become greater in the measure that they are accomplished [italic in the original]” (Levinas, 1961/1969, p. 244). The demand becomes the source of the subjectivation of the subject as being responsible for the other. The  responsibility is formed by way of one’s own subjection to the other. The I, from head to toe, up to the bone marrow, is vulnerability (Levinas, 1972, p. 104). The embodiment, as vulnerability, is the junction between ontological and ethical approaches, and is thereby the locus where the Other and I are intertwined. The body – whether healthy or ill, old or young – experienced as vulnerability is the pivot of my exposure to the others, and as such it is a call for responsibility. It is not a responsibility that is assumed by conscious decision or a free choice; it is an inescapable call and demand that becomes the ethical condition of my own self. For Levinas, this responsibility is revealed by the other’s face. “The vulnerability is – which every being in its natural pride would be ashamed to confess – the capability to be beaten, to get a slap round the face” (Levinas, 1972, p.  104). These lines of description can be interpreted in terms of the lived bodily dimension. It is the condition of an ethics of vulnerability which is experienced, on the one hand, as a sensitivity, which allows for opening up in the sense of responding to the other person and her sensitivity; and, on the other hand, vulnerability means to be in danger of being harmed or injured, exploited or oppressed, of feeling pain or hurt. Of course, we are inclined to call this last direction negative and the previous one positive. But this would result in an odd dualism. If a situation leads to harm, then it is on the basis of such an outcome that the vulnerability is retrospectively judged as bad. Conversely, if

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a close friend betrays us and consequently the relation of trust turns to mistrust, then one might also argue that the vulnerability previously shown was actually wrong. Thus, as long as a certain vulnerability is accompanied by a feeling of a strong relationship of trust and care, we are inclined to call it positive. Often, however, vulnerability itself is already felt as negative, as not being cared for and living in a precarious situation. Yet it shows that vulnerability can be withdrawn from the experience of a person because she is not aware of it. Even suffering or being subjected to injury and harm is not always acknowledged by the person herself; besides, the person who is vulnerable or even injured might not always be heard by someone else, as is shown in different approaches to epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007). Thus, structurally speaking, because the embodiment as vulnerability already means an entwinement with the other, it always throws the I out of its position and forces a human away from an egocentric perspective. Both the vulnerability of the other, that I experience from the other, and also my own vulnerability, take me beyond an egocentric perspective. I am already with the other, I am called by the other. However, this is not a relation of trust, and in fact Levinas has dismissed the dimension of trust; the primary relation for him is brought about through the call for responsiveness by the other’s face. In contrast to Levinas, however, I want to argue that the intertwinement between vulnerability and trust is crucial for understanding the modes of vulnerability within a relationship.

The Courage to Let Oneself Be Vulnerable – Trust Engaging in society or in relationships, giving birth to a child, trusting a friend or perhaps even a stranger, helping people in need, standing up against injustice or bad situations, fighting politically for justice or to oppose dictatorship – all these actions might increase one’s own vulnerability. They are more or less dangerous or risky. Yet at the same time, engaging in this sort of activity can also make one stronger, more secure, even better off. Each of these actions requires some courage. It is the courage of realizing that there is risk or danger but nevertheless becoming engaged, and often for only a few so-called

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good reasons. I call it the courage for vulnerability: letting oneself be vulnerable by way of reaching out in and for relations with other people and within the world. Referring to a Husserlian appraisal of the unpredictability and incalculability of the other and the corresponding complexity of the world, Niklas Luhmann (1973, pp. 6-7) observed that trust can be a mechanism to reduce this complexity and at the same time give more possibility of experiencing and acting with more complexity.7 The additional aspect of trust, which is even more central to the discussion of this essay, concerns the “risk” of personal trust (Luhmann, 1973, p. 35).8 Luhmann discusses the issue in terms of another person in whom one places one’s trust. Being open, that is being vulnerable towards this person, means that the normativity of one’s own vulnerability is at stake because the trust given may be broken. Trust becomes a norm because of the phenomenon of making oneself vulnerable. Trust and mistrust are relational phenomena and they are central to social relationships. Moral philosopher Annette Baier (1991) insightfully suggests that “trust is accepted vulnerability to another’s power” (p. 113). Someone is more vulnerable to a particular person in a situation of trust. But at the same time – and here I refer back to my question about the relationship to a friend at the beginning of this paper – to make oneself vulnerable to the other means to strengthen the relationship and thereby also oneself. However, this “making” is not achieved by will and directed emotional effort. Rather, it happens – if things go well – during the care within and for the relation with the entrusted person. Almost everybody displays trust of some sort but mostly without noticing it, and this holds for both adults and children. It seems selfevident, and only the loss of trust will highlight that which had been. As Baier (1991) says, we live in an atmosphere of trust. We perceive it like air, and do not notice it until the supply is lacking or contaminated. The comparison is appropriate because trust is 1) indispensable, 2) subtle, 3) transcendent, and 4) primary. I want to briefly explore these four aspects in order to demonstrate trust’s relation to vulnerability.9

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1) Trust is indispensable in order to feel well and secure. It is also indispensable for present and future activities. Trust compensates for potential insecurity and vulnerability. And trust is central to care relations. 2) Trust is subtle insofar as normally it is not even noticed or discussed. The person who trusts just feels secure and confident. Usually, we have trust, more or less, in the people we know, and often even, at least in some respect, in those we don’t know. This form of trust is not grounded in proof, but rather in the lack of proof, as the sociologist Diego Gambetta (2001, pp. 204-237) says. In other words, mistrust is based on proof and good reasons. By contrast, trust happens involuntarily. It is not possible simply to decide: now I will go and trust. 3) Trust is transcendent because (a) it is directed and (b) it contains a belief surplus. a) Even though one cannot trust someone simply because one wants to, trust is not involuntary. Trust is transcendent because it means more than the concrete belief or feeling of one person. It transcends the individual because it is relationally directed towards other people and the future. This feature of transcendence also makes trust something like a world-encompassing trust (Weltvertrauen). Often trust results from the individual dimension of giving trust to someone without necessarily receiving trust, but by taking someone as trustworthy. Entering a group or joining an institution, one can sometimes sense an “atmosphere of trust” or a “climate of trust” (Baier, 1991; O’Neill, 2002). Such an atmosphere or climate depends upon an ethos of trust that is part of how people care about each other in daily life. b) Trust is more than that which can be spoken about or rationally expressed; therefore, one can say that it has a belief surplus. Trust is about more than having good reasons or rational criteria. Usually, we locate trust in between blind trust and the trust that develops through being familiar with something. The belief surplus means that trust is more than the belief that one can rely on someone. Trusting someone goes beyond merely relying on someone or a system. When we are let down by someone or something we rely on,

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we are disappointed, but when we are let down by someone we trust, we are and usually feel betrayed and injured. Mistrust is not just mere lack of trust. Mistrust is a phenomenon on its own. Mistrusting is based on reasons (regardless of whether they are proven to be true or false), and is specific and selective. To mistrust, also to distrust, means to feel more vulnerable and insecure about the surrounding world and other people in it. To trust, to rely on or believe in someone are different concepts, yet the experiences of them cannot be sharply distinguished. 4) Trust is primary insofar as it is installed in the first relation of a human being in the world: their birth. Birth is the relation in which basic trust is already embedded because it comes with birth into the world (Arendt, 1958/1998, p. 242; Schües, 2016, pp. 465-468). The primary child’s dependence manifests itself in boundless trust to which the parents might answer with a promise to care.10 Thus, along with Hannah Arendt, I argue that with the birth of a child not only does new trust come into the world, but also that trust is primary and mistrust secondary. And thus, according to Burkhard Liebsch (1996), the promise to care is induced by a trust granted, which uses the one to whom the child is entrusted as the one who will justify this trust. Every child gives birth to a new trust, which others can prove worthy of without having earned it beforehand (p. 339). Therefore, the only way to answer to this trust lies in the promise to care. This promise, the correlate of which is this trust, has a binding force that does not imply reciprocity (for otherwise the child would not be free) and which cannot (or should not) be expressed in the language of rights, planning or administration, means or ends. In this promise, however, which is in no way lesser to the excessive trust of the child, the threat of betrayal of the child is always present. Thus, because of the primacy of trust, mistrust is, as argued above, secondary, selective, and for reasons (whether right or wrong). There is a normative connection between the feeling of “I trust you” and “don’t hurt me and don’t betray my trust.” Trust includes the implicit invocation of “trust me!”11 But if the implicit normativity and vocation are consciously expressed, the first glimpse of mistrust

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enters the relationship. Relations of trust usually make a person stronger, but in the case of betrayal or fraud, i.e. misplaced trust, she can be hurt even more deeply because she suffers a personal injury, experiences moral harm, and the relation itself is damaged and weakened. Thus, in cases of betrayal or violence by someone close the injury (or harm) is threefold. However, there are phenomena of violence, such as domestic or state violence, that cannot be described using the vocabulary of having trust and mistrust. A human being can be placed in a situation in which their existence is of only vulnerability, nothing else but vulnerable and wounded. “I don’t know if the person who is beaten by the police loses human dignity. Yet I am certain that with the very first blow that descends on him he loses something we will perhaps temporarily call ‘trust in the world’” (Améry, 1980, pp. 27-28). Jean Améry takes the notion of trust in the world or world trust (Weltvertrauen) to include a variety of things, such as thinking inferences, causality, social contracts, and the idea that the other person will respect the “boundaries of my body and myself” (Améry, 1980, pp. 27-28). Thus, he describes how trust in the world is shattered at the moment I realize that the unspoken social contract, that the other will protect, spare, or at least not injure me, does not hold true. Instead the other’s physical forces against me present a bodily violence that seems absolute. This is when trust in the world (Weltvertrauen) shatters. Broken trust in the world is different from mistrust; yet a scattered version of trust in the world may accompany mistrust. Mistrust has reason and is (more or less) directed towards someone or a group of people in particular; but broken trust in the world is something different, beyond sense or reason. Améry is discussing state violence. It is, however, arguable whether state violence is comparable to domestic violence. This dispute I will not attempt to solve in either direction. In cases of domestic violence it is the beloved in whom the woman has placed her trust who turns out to be violent. Thus, she not only suffers the physical pain, together with the broken trust in this particular person, but also – particularly in severe cases – broken trust in her self-confidence and in the world. Broken trust

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in such cases also disrupts the relationship to fellow human beings in the world. Since mistrust is based on reason and criteria, it can actually help to protect a person from further harm. Broken world trust and the loss of reason, sense, and language that is inflicted by violence and the suffering caused by its injuries, on the other hand, leads to an increase in linguistic and bodily vulnerability.

Linguistic and Bodily Vulnerability One of the most important reference points for understanding the lived body as it is entangled in language and social practices is the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He has pointed out the difference between the physical body and the lived body, as well as the interconnectedness between the I, the body, and the world; an interconnectedness that means the I is always worldly, embodied, and historical. I feel because “I am my body” and I am living bodily (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/2012, p. 151). One could say that I live through my body in the world. I am anchored by my body in the world. Therefore, from the inner lived experience, it would make no sense to treat the body like a purely physical thing. Even thinking about or remembering an embarrassing story, for example, increases the heart rate and generates a blush.12 Human beings are vulnerable in the dimensions of body, language and sense because they are bodily and linguistic beings. We are embodied and we require language in order to be. The mode in which humans are vulnerable to language is a consequence of how they are constituted within language. Judith Butler, who is herself influenced by Merleau-Ponty, Austin and Althusser, explains in her book Excitable Speech (1997) that we can harm other people because we have language, but even more so, we become vulnerable because we are constituted in language. We are “linguistic beings,” who require language in order to be. “Is our vulnerability to language a consequence of our being constituted within its terms?” asks Butler rhetorically (p. 2). We need to meet particular conditions in order to insult someone in a deep and manifest way. Judith Butler uses the example of racist speech to explain this phenomenon. To call a black person

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“nigger” comes with deeply engraved resonances. To point out that someone is black is a way of speaking that is differential and hierarchical; hence, insults that accord with this tradition “hit” the people who live and feel within this particular tradition and social context. It means they have (necessarily) developed a sensitivity to this sort of speech. If someone calls a white American scholar a “nigger” then presumably this would simply be shrugged off. It is the injurious speech, such as a racist expression, that hits “like a slap in the face” and hurts immediately, but only if it hits (Butler, 1997, p. 4).13 Thus, the linguistic dimension appears to be closely intertwined with the body. Language may or may not reach it or not, but when it does then you feel it emotionally as well as bodily. An insult burns in the face, the person feels that she is turning red, her heart beats faster, anger might tighten her throat. If it hits, an insult is certainly not absorbed like information about some general matter. However, Butler (1997) criticizes the idea that linguistic injuries are, therefore, just like physical ones. There appears to be a “metaphorical connection between physical and linguistic vulnerability,” but such connection is only “essential to the description of linguistic vulnerability itself” (p.  4). Even though the bodily injury has consequences for language, and even though the linguistic injury has consequences for the body, categorically speaking they are very different and their essential structure of vulnerability can only be properly addressed if they are assumed to be different in kind. Thus, my argument is that bodily and linguistic injury are not the same, even though we are both bodily and linguistic beings and also feel an insult bodily; a human being’s vulnerability is embedded in the lived body and lived language. The self is embedded in the body and in language. We feel, think and act by way of the body and language. As Merleau-Ponty (1945/2012) would say: “I understand the other person through my body, just as I perceive ‘things’ through my body. The sense of the gesture thus ‘understood’ is not behind the gesture, it merges with the structure of the world that the gesture sketches out and that I take up for myself” (pp. 191-192). From the perspective of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, language is a

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phenomenon neither of intelligence nor of motoric function; it is embedded in but yet not in unity with the body. This specificity of different linguistic and bodily levels becomes apparent when observing linguistic problems that concern different capabilities and, likewise, different relations with the world. What is it about language, that we can be hurt by it and made to feel vulnerable? John Austin’s observation about the function of language is important from the perspective of bodily and social vulnerability. The structure and use of language is doubly socially saturated. Thus, for instance, if someone says to someone else “You are ugly!”, then the speaker performs a perlocutionary act of insulting the person who is addressed.14 This sentence, which structurally speaking seems just a description, is certainly not a harmless one. Or if we consider the question “When did you last shower?”, then in some contexts the implication is that someone definitely needs a shower because she smells; in another possible context the question might simply refer, for example, to a technical problem with the shower head and, hence, has nothing to do with the cleanliness of the person who is asked. Depending on the form, use and context, language can be used to support or to attack someone. And vice versa: from the perspective of the person who is subjected to a phrase, it can be heard and experienced in different ways, depending on the constituted sensitivities, the social context and relationships. She might associate a very different thought with this question because she worries about her body and about social interaction with other people. Thus, she might understand that she should wash herself more often. In other words, the person who is already embedded in a certain social and institutional practice, that is the person who hears the question, may be involved in a different practice or has perhaps a different perspective on the same practice. And, as Butler (1997) points out, it is not just the individual who invents a certain line of insult or harm; rather, it is a whole language practice that is repeated, re-manifested, transformed by doing and enacting it. Transformation takes place as practice over time and by re-iterating phrases and contexts, and this practice transcends the

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subject. If we focus on daily practices that involve friendship, specific care relations among relatives, or domestic violence, all these scenes involve the engagement and performance of social and even political practices. The way that someone responds shows how an address, a phrase or a question is perceived. We perceive something as something; this is related to the way we respond and act in response to what we have perceived. Phenomenology in the tradition of Husserlian intentionality (1913/1983), Merleau-Ponty’s embodiment (1945/2012), and Waldenfels’ responsiveness (2015, p. 22) is focused on how someone is experienced as an addressing, approaching person that leads to a particular feeling and concrete response.15 Describing someone as particularly vulnerable implicitly leads to the question of protection, but even more so to the question of care. “How I am encountered, and how I am sustained, depends fundamentally on the social and political networks in which this body lives, how I am regarded and treated, and how that regard and treatment facilitates this life or fails to make it livable” (Butler, 2010, p.  53).  Thus, the idea expressed by Butler in this quote is that all human beings are more or less dependent on the care of others and relationships with other people. The idea of protection would only amount to the idea of not being hurt or injured. But if care is also the condition for being sensitive and letting  oneself to be vulnerable within close relationships, then the shaping of relationships and the world depends concretely on being cared for and, more generally, on the kind of care practices that are established in society. Care is needed for the possibility of trusting relations and trust in the world. Thus, this practice and concept of care must go beyond mere protection against injury.

The Longing for the Other Because we are subjected to others as bodies and as linguistic social beings, vulnerability is relational. We are vulnerable because of and by the body, language, and social relations. In all these respects, vulnerability is both a condition of the possibility of openness to the other, of desire and sensitivity, and also a condition of the possibility

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for cruelty, subjection and repression. The former enhances a human relation, the latter destroys it. Friendship and violence are examples of the two sides; in either case, as social, linguistic and bodily beings we are not only relational, but such relationality also involves a longing for the other. It is a longing for the other because the one who speaks needs another who is listening. By speaking, saying something, telling a story, we long for a listener, the one who can hear us. If  someone is not heard, if your language is not heard, and if the words and meaning are not listened to, then speaking amounts to noise from the hearer’s perspective. The French philosopher Jacques Rancière (1995/1999) observes: it “is merely perceived as a noise signaling pleasure or pain . . .” (p. 23). His focus is primarily directed to speaking and (mis)understanding in the political realm, by pointing out the fact that the same words might not always be understood in the same way. If one person says something and the other perceives only a noise that is interpreted as pain or pleasure, then the first one is perceived as a being with only sensation, like an insect, like nobody. Thus, being linguistically vulnerable also means a longing for a relationship of understanding – for being understood and being able to understand. Likewise we can argue for the dimension of the body: being vulnerable as a bodily being means to be more or less open to the other, means a longing for touch, sex, love, and empathy. Being vulnerable to the other in this sense is no guarantee. The embedded trust can be harmed, the relation can be transformed into a violent one, and one person can suffer injury and harm from the violent practice of the other. Yet, the normative aspect of trust and of making oneself be vulnerable to the other is the essential basis for close relationships. Since we are vulnerable to others, we can be exposed and are exposed to sensations, to the feelings of the other, to her longing and love; yet we are also exposed to cruelty, to subjection, to repression, to violence and so on. These two sides of vulnerability are vividly expressed in a poem written by one of the prisoners in Guantánamo, Abdulla Majik al-Noaimi. His poem (2007, pp.  59-60) expresses in

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a  most impressive way what this longing grounded in vulnerability means: My rib is broken, And I can find no one to heal me. My body is frail, And I can see no relief ahead. [. . .] The tears of someone else’s longing are affecting me; My chest cannot take the vastness of emotion. (5-8, 15-16)

Whose longing? The tears seem not to be his own, at least not exclusively his own. The emotions are everywhere and nowhere. Words were passed around on cups or little pieces of papers in Guantánamo. Words were smuggled out of the camp into the world. The poem might not change the politics but the words leave traces. These are traces that hand over to the reader the body’s longing for the other and the body being repressed by the other. Elaine Scarry (1985) emphasizes that physical and psychic injury and violence come together, and violence can destroy language. “Physical pain does not simply resist language but actively destroys it, bringing about an immediate reversion to a state anterior to language, to the sounds and cries a human being makes before language is learned” (p. 4). Pain is actually a physical experience of negation, conflating the private and public, a self-exposure without sharing, and it is absolute solitude: it is world destroying. Torture destroys world and language because it “consists of a primary physical act, the infliction of pain, and a primary verbal act, the interrogation” (p.  28). Physical pain (also emotional pain) and language are intertwined and result in the painful mix of a world and “language-destroying” force (p. 35). In this sense torture and domestic violence can be quite similar in structure and content, as Shannon Seldon (2001) describes in her report. Persons who have experienced extreme violence, molestation, or physical or linguistic violations often cannot report their pain because the world as well as their language has been destroyed. Thus, “even if the physical wounds are healed, its signs and injuries can remain”

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(Schües, 2013, p.  211). To discuss the condition of vulnerability therefore also means to address the history of how the condition emerged. As we have seen, everybody is more or less vulnerable, depending on their bodily constitution, life circumstances, and the situation and environment in which they live. However, vulnerability can be dramatically increased by inflicting violence and suffering, which by destroying world and language can destroy the very basis of human relations: body, language, and world. A re-constitution of the body, language and the world cannot be achieved simply by talking or by narration. This insight has consequences for the practice of care: the person who has had traumatic experiences and, under posttraumatic conditions, has lost the basis for flourishing human relations and therefore she has lost (or severely compromised) the body, language and social relations that may give love or comfort, as well as strength or protection. Her longing for the other and for human understanding is silenced and lost – perhaps forever. By focusing on different appearances of vulnerability and trust as well as vulnerability and mistrust or broken trust, I have delineated dimensions of vulnerability from the perspective of being affected – whether being injured and harmed, or being responsive and sensitive. Because of this twofold meaning, vulnerability is a normative basis for human relationships in which people care for each other closely. However, it is also the basis for the disposition to be hurt, injured or harmed, and even more so when a relationship of trust had been established. Trust means letting oneself to be open towards the other; trust has been described as being transcendent beyond myself and also towards other people and the world; and therefore in cases of betrayal, harm or injury by a person close and trusted, the relation to the world and the world itself seem to shatter. Suffering injury and harm inflicted by the violence of someone who had been trusted means to lose one’s relation with the world as well. This loss of world trust can also occur because of the suffering of extreme pain or acts of dehumanization. And my friend? Now I return to the question of friendship with which I began these reflections. I love her, I need her and because she feels my vulnerability, she will not hurt me. But if she were to

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betray me, my relation may turn into one of mistrust, my world may even be shattered: perhaps she was never really a friend in the first place. By losing a friend one also loses a bit of one’s world. Yet letting oneself be vulnerable to the other enhances a particular strength. It responds to the vulnerability that is inherent, contingent, and central to human relations.16

Reference List Améry, J. Torture. In At the Minds Limits (S. Rosenfeld, & S. P. Rosenfeld, Transl., pp. 21-41). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Arendt, H. (1998). The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago. (Original work published 1958) Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words: The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Baier, A. C. (1991, March 6-8). Trust: The Tanner Lectures on human values: Delivered at Princeton University March 6-8 1991 (pp.  107-174). Retrieved from Tanner Lecture Library: https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/b/baier92.pdf Butler, J.(1997). Excitable speech: A politics of the performative. New York: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780203948682 Butler, J. (2010). Frames of war: When is life grievable? London: Verso Books. Cavarero, A. (2009). Horrorism: Naming contemporary violence. New York: Columbia University Press. Delhom, P. (2000). Der Dritte: Lévinas’ Philosophie zwischen Verantwortung und Gerechtigkeit. Munich: Fink. Delhom, P. (2010). Verletzte Integrität. In S. Krämer & E. Koch (Eds.), Gewalt in der Sprache: Rhetoriken verletzenden Sprechens (pp. 127-141). Munich: Fink. Delhom, P. (2011). Das Erleiden von Verletzung als leibliche Quelle von Normativität. In A. Reichold & P. Delhom (Eds.), Normativität des Körpers (pp. 96–115). Freiburg: Alber. De Waelhens, A. (1978). Une philosophie de l’ambiguïté: L’exentialisme de Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Louvain: Nauwelaerts. Dodds, S. (2014). Dependence, care, and vulnerability. In C. Mackenszie, W. Rogers, & S.  Dodds (Eds.), Vulnerability: New essays in ethics and feminist philosophy (pp. 181-203). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gambetta, D. (2001). Kann man dem Vertrauen vertrauen? In M.  Hartmann & C.  Offe (Eds.), Vertrauen: Die Grundlagen des sozialen Zusammenhalts (pp.  204237). Frankfurt a/Main: Campus. Husserl, E. (1983). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy: First book: General introduction to a pure phenomenology (F.  Kersten, Transl.). The Hague: Nijhoff. (Original work published 1913)

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Laugier, S. (2015).The ethics of care as a politics of the ordinary. New Literary History 46, 217–240. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/nlh.2015.0016 Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority (A.  Lingis, Trans.). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. (Original work published 1961) Levinas, E. (1972). Humanisme de l’autre homme. Paris: Fata Morgana. Levinas, E. (1987). No identity (A.  Lingis, Trans.). In Collected philosophical papers: Phaenomenologica (vol. 100, pp. 141–152). Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff. (Original work published 1970) Liebsch, B. (1996). Geschichte im Zeichen des Abschieds. München: Fink. Luhmann, N. (1973). Vertrauen. Stuttgart: Enke. Mackenzie, C., Rogers, W., & Dodds, S. (2014). What is vulnerability, and why does it matter for moral theory? [Introduction]. In C.  Mackenzie, W.  Rogers, & S.  Dodds (Eds.), Vulnerability: New essays in ethics and feminist philosophy (pp. 1-29). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Majik al-Noaimi, A. (2007). I write my hidden longing. In M. Falkoff (Ed.), Poems from Guantánamo: The detainees speak (pp. 59–60). Iowa: University of Iowa Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). Visible and invisible (A. Lingis, Trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of perception (D. A. Landes, Trans.). London: Routledge. (Original work published 1945) O’Neill, O. (2002). A question of trust: The BBC Reith Lectures 2002. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Rancière, J. (1999). Dis-agreement: Politics and philosophy (J.  Rose, Trans.). Minneapolis: Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1995) Rodriguez, J. D. (2017). The relevance of the ethics of vulnerability in bioethics. Les ateliers de l’éthique, 12, 154–179. Retrieved from Érudit: https://www.erudit.org/en/ journals/ateliers/2017-v12-n2-3-ateliers03964/1051280ar.pdf doi:10.7202/1051280ar Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Schües, C. (2013). Verwundung, Verwundbarkeit. In A. Kapust & O. Lemke (Eds.), Wörterbuch der Würde (pp. 210–211). Munich: Fink. Schües, C. (2015). Vertrauen oder Misstrauen vertrauen? In P. Delhom & A. Hirsch (Eds.), Friedensgesellschaften – zwischen Verantwortung und Vertrauen (pp.  156– 181). Freiburg: Alber. Schües, C. (2016). Die Philosophie des Geborenseins. Munich: Alber. Schües, C. (2016). Ethik und Fürsorge als Beziehungspraxis. In E. Conradi & F. Vosman (Eds.), Praxis der Achtsamkeit: Schlüsselbegriffe der Care-Ethik (pp. 251–272). Frankfurt a/Main: Campus. Selden, S. (2001). The Practice of Domestic Violence. UCLA Women’s Law Journal, 12(1). Retrieved from: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3hf3f3m1 Tronto, J. (1993). Moral boundaries: Political argument for an ethics of care. New York: Routledge. Tronto, J. (2009, August 4). Interview on August 4th, 2009. Retrieved from Ethics of Care website: https://ethicsofcare.org/joan-tronto/

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Tronto, J., & Fisher, B., (1990). Toward a feminist theory of caring. In E. Abel & M.  Nels (Eds.), Circles of care: Work and identity in women’s lives (pp.  36-54). Albany: SUNY Press. Waldenfels, B. (2002). Bruchlinien der Erfahrung. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Waldenfels, B. (2015). Sozialität und Alterität: Modi sozialer Erfahrung. Berlin: Suhrkamp. World Health Organization (2011). World Report on Disability. Retrieved from http:// www.who.int/disabilities/world_report/2011/en/index.html Worms, F. (2013). La vie qui unit et qui sépare? In Kairos: Revue de la Faculté de Philosophie de l’université de Toulouse (pp. 211-224). Toulouse: Presses Univ. du Mirail.

Notes Angela Browne, in: When Battered Women Kill (1987), supra note 1, p. 48. See for the term of “ambiguity” in Merleau-Ponty’s work: De Waelhens, 1978. 3 Tronto (2009), in an interview, also argues that care relationships among humans are part of what mark us as human beings. 4 Compare also: Mackenzie, Rogers, & Dodds, 2014, p. 6. However, vulnerability concerns far more than what can be captured by the term “interests.” This book is very valuable and insightful for the discussion about concepts of vulnerability with regard to dependency and autonomy. In my account, I will not subsume dependency under vulnerability as Dodds puts forward in her essay “Dependence, Care, and Vulnerability” in the same volume (pp. 181-203). Rather, my focus opens a discourse aside from the lively debated, mostly Anglo-American domain of dependency and autonomy. 5 Because the concept of vulnerability has this involved normativity to it, it is considered as the basis of ethics, also of bioethics and care ethics within the AngloAmerican and French tradition. See also, for example: Rodriguez, 2017. 6 See also: Delhom, 2000, pp.  90-102. Delhom explains how Levinas refers to Heidegger with regard to the other’s demand and call in silence and beyond actual meaning. 7 Thomas Hobbes, for instance, saw the problem of complexity as a security problem, and hence proposed to install a strict governmental structures. Trust and vulnerability is then replaced by fear and subjection. Luhmann refers to: E. Husserl (1913/1983). 8 Overall, Luhmann proposes a much broader notion of trust than I do insofar as he expands it to include trust in a system as well. I argue for a notion of trust that holds only within the interpersonal context and in regard to the human world. The normativity of the vulnerability is not in question when we talk about systems; they can be destroyed or destructed but not injured. They cannot suffer an injury. 9 See for the first three characteristics Baier (1991). For the fourth aspect: Schües (2015, pp. 169-172). 10 “This promise is not an act of speech, but a moral and a bodily parental promise, which is the mother as mother and the father as father; thus a promise with a double sense; the one lies in the presence of a person herself and her performance as 1 2

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mother or father and the other sense responds to the newcomer with recognition of him or her being a human person with dignity [my translation]” (Schües, 2016, p. 468). 11 “Trust me,” Nietzsche let the snake Kaa say in Zarathustra. The one who uses the explicit imperative “trust me” expresses already an ambivalence between strengthening and weakening someone else’s trust. 12 The distinction between the thematization of the body in the description of “I am physically injured” and “my body is injured” amounts essentially to the sensation of feeling as inner experience of, for instance, the pain of my injured body, on the one hand, and objectifying the body by abstracting from the inner feeling to observing the injury, perhaps the blood dripping out of a wound, on the other. If I have cut my finger and if this injury is not very painful, then I am easily able to objectify my finger and observe it from the outside. By so doing, I objectify the lived experience and I become an observer of my body and the experience. The former sense of subjectively lived experience of “I am bodily hurt and injured” can be such that I am not objectifying, perhaps not even able to objectify, the pain or the injured finger. In situations of brutal violence the objectification of a body part is not possible anymore. 13 Butler refers here critically to Charles R. Lawrence. 14 British philosopher John Austin (1962) discussed different types of speech acts, such as illocutionary acts and perlocutionary ones. The former refers to the performance of a linguistic utterance and intended social significance, such as a question, command, warning, threat, promise, thanks. Put briefly, it can be understood by “doing something in saying something.” Saying something is already acting. Perlocutionary acts aim at an actual effect, such as persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring or otherwise in order to get someone to do or realize something, whether intended or not. Put briefly it means “doing something by saying something.” See: J. L. Austin (1962). 15 See also Levinas’ approach of responding to the gaze of the other. To explain linguistic vulnerability just by discourse analysis of power in a Foucauldian sense or linguistic discourse analysis (e.g. by Ruth Wodak) would not bring out the slight nuances of how someone experiences and suffers a particular person’s address or how she is subjected to it. 16 My special thanks for language revisions and helpful comments go to Monica Buckland, Jackie Leach Scully and Christoph Rehmann-Sutter.

Ordinary Realism in Ethics Sandra Laugier

This chapter sets out to strengthen the connection that I have sought to establish, since the publication of my first writings on the concept of care (Laugier, 2011a, 2013b), namely the connection between the ethics of care and my own philosophical background and field. It comes down to find in Ordinary Language Philosophy (OLP) resources for a reformulation of what to my mind is at stake in feminism: the inclusion and empowerment of women’s voices (and that means all women) and expressiveness, and attention to their experiences. This is significant because OLP as represented by Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell, is often considered to be disconnected from gender issues (except through speech-act theory). OLP is a philosophy that focuses attention on ordinary lives by attending to the ordinary details of language and expression, as having moral weight and importance. I have in my work on Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell tried to open new perspectives on the neglected theme of the ordinary. My aim was to show the relevance of OLP in ethical and political issues by developing an ordinary conception of politics to think about civil disobedience and radical democracy (Ogien & Laugier, 2014) as well as an ordinary conception of ethics to think about care and gender inequality. This systematic exploration of the (theoretical and practical) question of the ordinary is anchored in OLP and the “rough ground” of the uses and practices of language. This then leads to a further exploration of the denial or undervaluation of the ordinary as a general phenomenon in contemporary thinking.

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My thesis is that the ordinary is often and in different ways denied, undervalued, or neglected (not seen, not taken into account) in theoretical thought. Such negligence (carelessness) has to do with contempt for ordinary life inasmuch as it is domestic and female, and it stems from a gendered hierarchy of the objects of intellectual research. One important outcome or consequence of OLP is its general attention to human expressiveness, and my contribution is to specifically elucidate that this attention to expression is to care about human expression as embodied in women’s voices. Making women’s voices heard is the first aim of feminism; making the human voice heard is the aim of OLP. And it is also the departure point of the ethics of care. In my own work, I have tried to understand the ethics of care as a heterodox ethics that allows us to recentre moral philosophy on ordinary language and expressiveness. Such features makes it a way to pursue OLP on the ethical ground. The chapter aims, therefore, to highlight the need for a transformation of ethics. This transformation is driven from the point of view of OLP. OLP thus can be a basis for redefining ethics while focusing on ordinary life and the care for moral expressivity. This reframing of ethics and moral life has been proposed by Cora Diamond (1991). At the same time I further aim to show the remarkable contribution made by the ethics of care to this transformation of ethics and its way to inherit the radicality of OLP. By proposing to place a value on moral principles like caring, attention to others, and solicitude, the ethics of care has contributed to modifying a dominant view or perception of ethics, and has profoundly changed the way we look at ethics. It has introduced ethical stakes into politics and thus weakens theories of justice by critiquing them. But, most significantly, it has given voice to the ordinary. The ethics of care draws our attention to the ordinary, to what is right in front of our eyes and for this very reason, invisible. It is an ethics that gives voice and attention to humans who are undervalued precisely because they perform unnoticed, invisible tasks, and take care of basic needs. More often than not, these humans are women; and most likely non-white women. Feminism is, at its core, about finding or claiming one’s voice.

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The “voice” Carol Gilligan ascertains is the ordinary voice of women, and OLP contributes to turning our attention to these voices. Gilligan’s work has been undervalued within feminist theory for its alleged essentialism: its controversial claim that women share a different moral sensibility. Beyond the controversy, I want to emphasize the fact that her work marks explicitly, and maybe for the first time, the necessity of bringing women’s voices into ordinary human conversation. To say it with Gilligan (2010) herself: “Bringing women’s voices into what was then called the human conversation, would change the voice of that conversation by giving voice to aspects of human experience that were for the most part unspoken or unseen” (p. 35).

Ordinary Language Philosophy and Its Relevance to the Ethics of Care The idea of an ethics formulated in a different voice and expressed in women’s voices is one, an ordinary conception of ethics, and two, an expressivist conception of ethics. Such an ethics is not founded on universal principles but rather starts from experiences of everyday life and the moral problems of real people in their ordinary lives. The starting point of my book Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy (2013) was the idea of a philosophy of language anchored neither in standard analytic philosophy nor in continental philosophy but rather in attention to uses of language; to language as it is used; as it is in circulation. This use of OLP can be termed realistic: it is an ordinary realism that construes language both as a human practice and as a tool for refining perception and depiction. In OLP, the ideas of adjustment, fitting, and the perception of differences and resemblances account for realistic aspirations, but are inseparable from recognition of the fact that language is part of the world. The meaning of ordinary language philosophy does indeed lie in the recognition that language is used and spoken by a human voice, filled with human breath; we may “come back to earth” (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 3) and to ordinary conditions of life. The notion of care is best expressed not in the form of a theory, but as an activity: care as action (taking care, caring for) and as attention,

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concern (caring about). Care is an activity necessary to maintaining or supporting persons and connections; it is work carried out both in the private sphere and in the public sphere, and it is sensitivity to the “details” that count. Care is something concrete, embedded in the ordinary details of human life, and it ensures the maintenance, sustainability, and continuity of the human world. It implies a redefinition of ethics, which may be called a paradigm shift: attention to and repossession of ordinary language. The ethics of care thus transforms the very notion of ethics, by enhancing the question of human vulnerability, and by connecting it to the vulnerability of language use. Such a perspective on the ethics of care – because it focusses attention on our common state of dependence – is politically and ethically inseparable; it develops an analysis of social relations organized around dependence and vulnerability – blind spots in the ethics of justice. Thus, approaches of care target the theory of justice as it has developed and taken the dominant position in both political and moral thinking over the course of the second half of the last century. This is not only because, as the controversies between the partisans of care and those of justice illustrate, these approaches call into question the universality of Rawls’ conception of justice, but also because they transform the very nature of moral questioning and the concept of justice itself – expressing not a mere and hopeless criticism of justice but rather the positive need for “more than justice” (Baier, 1995, pp. 18-32). The question is no longer one of choosing between care and justice, but of understanding how one can lose both dispositions. Again, Gilligan’s (1995) suggestions may be of use; and her recent writings may clear up some misunderstandings about her “essentialism”: The potential error in justice reasoning lies in its latent egocentrism, the tendency to confuse one’s perspective with an objective standpoint or truth, the temptation to define others in one’s own terms by putting oneself in their place. The potential error in care reasoning lies in the tendency to forget that one has terms, creating a tendency to enter into another’s perspective and to see oneself as “selfless,” by defining oneself in other’s terms. (p. 43)

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It is a matter, then, beyond the justice/care debate, of each individual finding his or her voice, and of hearing and expressing both the voice of justice and that of care, avoiding the following two distortions or deformations: “the equation of human with male, unjust in its omission of women; and the equation of care with self-sacrifice, uncaring in its failure to represent the activity and the agency of care” (Gilligan, 1995, p. 43). Care then appears as one of the existent paths towards a genuine ethics, one that is concrete, attentive to actual practices and forms of life, and not only normative. It is not a matter of making justice and sensibility compatible, in a sort of moralistic half-measure, nor of introducing a dose of care into the theory of justice. Numerous works in ethics have convincingly argued in favor of this compatibility. It is instead a matter, more radically, of seeing sensibility as a necessary condition of justice. Tronto notes that the care-justice debate has been essentially “one-sided,” as if it were always the burden of the ethics of care to prove that it is compatible with justice. One can integrate care into a general ethical and political approach that would not be reserved for women, but would be an aspiration for all, and would thus allow for an amelioration of the concept of justice. Here we need to give attention to the expressivity of women. The focus on moral notions such as duty or choice (a result of the influence of Kant and Rawls) leaves out the essential of ordinary moral questioning. As Diamond remarks, someone who is perfectly rigorous and moral may have something petty or stingy about her, and this unlovable feature is something that could, instead of being considered a vague, non-ethical, psychological concept, form an integral part of moral reflection. Annette Baier (1985a) suggests that we focus on a quality such as gentleness, which can only be treated in descriptive and normative terms and “resists analysis in terms of rules” (p. 219). Since this quality is a response appropriate to the other, according to circumstance, it necessitates an experimental attitude, sensibility to the situation, and the ability to improvise, to “move on to something else” when faced with certain reactions. Baier, like Murdoch (1997),

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criticizes the idea that moral philosophy can be reduced to questions of obligation and choice; the idea that since a moral problem can be formulated in these terms, it can also be treated thus. Perhaps the idea of women’s voices in ethics sounds controversial, but the fact that moral philosophy is about men’s voices may be less controversial. Baier takes up Ian Hacking’s observations on moral philosophy’s obsession with the model of game theory, calling it a masculine syndrome (a big boy’s game, and a pretty silly one too, as she writes). Tronto (1993) says in Moral Boundaries that care requires justice and that we think of justice in concrete cases and circumstances, not just as a general set of principles that courts, politicians, or philosophers have to apply. This transformation in ethics is possible because care is a practice, work, not “only” a moral feeling or disposition. Care is everywhere, and it is such a pervasive part of the human form of life that it is never seen for what it is: a range of activities by which we organize our world so that we can live in it as well as possible. When we get down to the ways in which we actually live our lives, care activities are central and ubiquitous. When we begin to take these activities seriously, “the world will look different if we place care, and its related values and concerns, closer to the center of human life” (Tronto, 2009). The ethics of care draws our attention to the ordinary, to what we are unable to see, though it is right before our eyes. So before claiming a “women’s ethics,” it claims to give voice an expression to humans (mostly women, and people of color) that are undervalued precisely because they are assigned to activities that have been socially and morally devalued, denied, because we (men and women) do not want to see, acknowledge, what we depend on. Care is defined by attention to differences (“I’ll teach you differences” was a favorite line of Wittgenstein’s). A main difficulty of the ethics of care, then, as a way of thinking about the world, is (according to Tronto) that a caring attitude requires us to reconcile the universal needs for care with the circumstances of what seems to be the best form of care in every individual case. What is at stake here is the validity of general moral principles, and hence, the relationship of the general to the

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particular. What is the relevance, the importance, of the particular, of individual sensibility? What can the individual claim? The subject of care is a sensible, sensitive, receptive subject inasmuch as it is affected, it is caught up in a context of relations, in a social and biological form of life, in relations and hierarchies of power that pervade our lives – what Foucault defines in terms of a biopolitics. The (polemical) importance of the ethics of care is that, like OLP, it subverts well-established intellectual and social hierarchies and attracts attention to a number of phenomena that are overlooked because they are connected to the female. Gilligan (1982) takes as her starting point the idea that the (moral) sentiments and expressions of women are not inferior forms of morality, but are rather moral resources that have been ignored, which, if taken into account, would allow for a profound renewal of moral and social thought. This will only become apparent if we recognize care not only as a sensibility or affectivity but as an ordinary practice, as an ethics defined by the work done for the most part by women, and neglected for that very reason; only if we see care as attention to the ordinary. Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell propose a new species of realism, which we will call ordinary realism. This is a realism based not on a metaphysical link between language and reality, mind, and world; but on our attention (another ordinary sense of mind) to the practices and life of language. In other words, to language as it is used within a form of life, but also as it is used to create new forms of life. Ordinary realism construes language both as a human practice and as a precision tool for the description of what matters. Fundamental to this vision is the recognition that language is used and spoken by human voices and that language is part of the world. For Austin (1961) and Cavell (1969), language use is a pursuit for the just perception of differences and resemblances, an effort to adjust or fit our expressions to the world and to our positions within it. To say that language is not only a representation of the real but a part of the real is to say that language affects us, allows us to affect others, and constantly transforms our meanings. This is the fundamental idea in Cavell’s book, Must We Mean What We Say?.

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“Linguistic phenomenology” – the name Austin (1961) gave his philosophy – means paying attention to our words. In return, we get a “sharpened awareness” of words and what they are about. When we examine what we should say when, what words we should use in which situations, we are looking again not merely at words (or “meanings” whatever they may be) but also at the realities we use the words to talk about: we are using a sharpened awareness of words to sharpen our perception of, though not as the final arbiter of, the phenomena (Austin, 1961, p. 182).

From OLP to the Importance of Women’s Voices One essential connection between OLP and care lies in the idea of attention to importance: more precisely “the importance of importance” (Cavell, 1981, chap. 3). The conversion required to put aside competing ideas of the important, to destroy our ideas of the important, is the condition of possibility for women’s expression. Attention to ordinary language becomes attention to the voices of women. Attention to human voices and to ordinary life creates a paradigm shift in ethics that is deeply connected with attention to, and repossession of, ordinary language. Attention to the experiences of everyday life and to human textures and expressions makes sense only when women’s expressions are included, and this is the deepest critical feature of OLP, as well as the starting point of its feminist accomplishment. Knowing what we mean and meaning what we say is the core of OLP. But it means (at)tending to the ordinary world, and Cavell (1969) – see also Laugier (2011b) – defines that world: To this extent, they had not known themselves, and not known the world. I mean, of course, the ordinary world. That may not be all there is, but it is important enough: morality is in that world, and so are force and love; so is art and a part of knowledge (the part which is about that world); and so is religion (wherever God is).

OLP takes ordinary use of language as the starting point for philosophical analysis to avoid the “scholastic illusion,” denounced by Austin in the 1950s and later by Bourdieu, of taking “the things of

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logic for the logic of things” which often lead to thought becoming sterilized in a vain scholasticism that loses all connection to the problems posed by ordinary life. Thus, OLP is from the outset orientated toward social and everyday matters and focused on the unseen, on the neglected reality. Its primary methodological ambition is thus a conceptual analysis that would make it possible to recognize the importance of context in the practice of language, thought, and perception – that is, in our different ways of engaging with the real – while at the same time defending a form of realism anchored in agents’ practices: their words, expressions, and thoughts. OLP’s ambition is to describe, as precisely as possible, the cognitive, perceptual, linguistic, social, and moral dimensions of our use of language and to analyze all forms of expression – not only descriptive and performative, but also emotive or passionate. With the Austinian notion of linguistic phenomenology, OLP orientates its reflection on language towards a type of adequacy that is no longer just communication or connection, but rather the adequacy of human adjustment to everyday situations. OLP does not encourage defining the meaning of a term as the set of situations where this term is appropriate or as a list of established uses, but rather advocates examining how meaning is made and improvised through its integration into practice and self-expression. OLP sees language as part of reality and as something that affects us, allows us to affect others, and constantly transforms our meaning. This is the main contributing idea of Cavell’s Must We Mean What We Say? (Cavell, 1979, p. 30). The agreement at the heart of linguistic phenomenology and OLP is not the connection between words and things but rather the agreement between ourselves, what we mean, and the reality. This sharpened attention to use completes the political agreement, as Wittgenstein says, in language, which is not a consensus. My agreement or my belonging to this or that form of life, political or moral, is not given. The form of one’s acceptance, the limits and scales of one’s agreement, are not known a priori, no more than one can a priori know the scope of a word; and this is essential to the relevance of

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the  theme of form of life for ethics, as shown e.g. by Veena Das (2016) in Boundaries of the “We” (see also Laugier, 2016). In this way, OLP arrives at two main lines of thought concerning gender, feminism, and the question of attention to women’s voices. First, women’s ordinary expressiveness and the ethics of care, which from the beginning has advocated for the recognition of women’s voices; that is, the “different voice” of women in ethics, which has been silenced or, more precisely, deadened or neglected, and not taken seriously as an ethical point of view. And second, attention as a moral value, beyond or before ethical concepts such as right, or wrong, or good. Attention is part of the meaning of care: one must pay attention to these details of life that we neglect (e.g., who has cleaned and straightened the room in which we are standing?), and to questions we do not want to consider. To do this is to pursue the method of OLP, questioning importance and examining ordinary, unseen details. Cavell’s major contribution on this point is to define our relations to our words and our expressions in terms of voice and claim (Cavell, 1979, 1994). This is also one of Austin’s insights or contributions: we must not concern ourselves only with analysis of what we say, but with the we, the should, and the say. Must We Mean What We Say? was perhaps the first work to ask the question of the relevance of our ordinary statements in terms of their relevance in relation to ourselves, in various domains and by turning to unexpected sources (literature, art criticism, theatre) that can also provide a space and time for women’s voices. The content (objective, semantic, or empirical) of propositions is no longer the question, nor is “nonsense” or “performativity,” but rather the fortunes and misfortunes of ordinary humans’ vulnerable expression – the search for (or loss of) the right tone or right word. The feminist approach to ordinary language reiterates an essential and human difficulty in the question of voice and of our agreement in language: that is, the question of my capacity to speak, and thus, to conform to shared criteria; as, Cavell (1979) says: The claim to speak for ‘the group’ – the question, namely, about how I could have been party to the establishing of criteria if I do not recognize

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that I have and do not know what they are .  .  . to emphasize that the claim is not that one can tell a priori who is implicated by me, because one point of the particular kind of investigation Wittgenstein calls grammatical is exactly to discover who. (p. 22)

One does not have a voice, one’s own voice, by nature: it must be found so as to speak in the name of others and to let others speak in one’s name. This is a central matter of feminism. For if others do not accept my words, I lose more than language: I lose my voice. “The alternative to speaking for myself representatively (for someone else’s consent) is not: speaking for myself privately. The alternative is having nothing to say, being voiceless, not even mute” (Cavell, 1979, p. 26). To not be public is not to be private: it is to be inexpressive; this is the very difficulty of philosophy and of reality OLP posits. The question of the universal voice is the question of the voice itself and its arrogation by men – an individual voice claiming to speak in the name of all others. This question only receives a response in Cavell’s Pitch of Philosophy. The philosopher claims to speak for all, as a man (hence, speaking for women, stealing their voices). Who is to say whether a man speaks for all men? Why are we so bullied by such a question? Do we imagine that if it has a sound answer the answer must be obvious or immediate? But it is no easier to say who speaks for all men than it is to speak for all men. And why should that be easier than knowing whether a man speaks for me (Cavell, 1969, p. XI)? This disquiet is expressed constantly in Wittgenstein, and Claim of Reason takes it to its limits. OLP is concerned that the human is constantly tempted, or threatened, by inexpressiveness: So the fantasy of a private language, underlying the wish to deny the publicness of language, turns out, so far, to be a fantasy, or fear, either of inexpressiveness, one in which I am not merely unknown, but in which I am powerless to make myself known; or one in which what I express is beyond my control. (Cavell, 1979, p. 351)

The question here goes beyond including women in the community of speakers: it is the question of any human being able to bear “the (inevitable) extension of the voice, which will always escape me and

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will forever find its way back to me.” And thus, the difficulty of philosophy (skepticism) lies not in the inexpressible but in expression: “the terror of being expressive beyond our means” (Cavell, 1979). OLP is in a way obsessed with the “unhappy” dimension of language, its failures – where words fail, are inadequate, inexpressive or inarticulate – and, with the vulnerability of voice. This failure is an indissolubly aesthetic and moral problem: the difficulty, in women’s voices, of achieving rightness of tone, adequacy of expression, and self-confidence. For Wittgenstein the importance of grammatical investigation is precisely that it destroys everything great and interesting, thus displacing our interests, our hierarchies; it is the condition of possibility for establishing a place for women’s expression in philosophy of language. Note, Cavell aims at that in his work on film, Pursuits of Happiness (1981), and symmetrically in Contesting Tears (1997). Here, the specific tone identified and expressed early on in Cavell’s reading of the later Wittgenstein may be seen, or heard, as a refusal of a kind of male assertiveness in finding the right words in favor of a more interrogative, or “minor” mode. Cavell achieves an alternative tonality of language that may be looked for in Wittgenstein, and which is one of the stakes of what we call “ordinary language philosophy.”

An Ethics of the Ordinary Care is a fundamental aspect of human life and it consists, as Joan Tronto and Berenice Fisher put it, of “everything we do to continue, repair, and maintain ourselves so that we can live in the world as well as possible” (Tronto & Fisher, 1990). Hence care corresponds to an ordinary reality: people look after one another, take care of one another, and thus are attentive to the functioning of the world, which depends on this kind of care. The ethics of care affirms the importance of care and attention given to others, in particular to those whose lives and wellbeing depend on personal, continual, and daily attention: ordinary vulnerable others. This ethics is based on analysis of the historical conditions that have favored a division of moral labor such that activities of care

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have been socially and morally devalued. The assignment of women to the domestic sphere reinforced the exclusion of these activities and preoccupations from the moral domain and the public sphere, reducing them to private sentiments devoid of public moral and political significance. The perspective of care carries a fundamental claim about the importance of care for human life, the relations that organize it, and the social and moral position of caregivers. To recognize this, means recognizing that dependence and vulnerability are aspects of a condition common to all, not just a special category of humans, namely “the vulnerable.” This sort of “ordinary realism” – in the sense of “realistic” proposed by Diamond – see Diamond (1991) and Laugier (2013a) – is absent from the majority of moral theories, which have a tendency to reduce the activities and preoccupations of care to concern for victims and the weak on the part of selfless mothers. Therefore the first tenet of the ethics of care, namely the vulnerability of the human, is a critically important acknowledgement. Vulnerability defines ordinariness, and OLP helps us to connect the ethics of care to the idea of human vulnerability as it is developed in ethics inspired by Wittgenstein. Cavell (1979) – see also Laugier (2006, pp. 19-38) – Diamond (1991), and the anthropologist Veena Das (2006) connect the idea of the vulnerability of the human to the vulnerability of, if I may say, our life form(s), Lebensformen. For Cavell and Das, this idea of a lifeform is connected to Wittgenstein’s anthropological sensitivity or sensibility, and his attention to everyday language forms as being both obvious and alien, foreign. Michel Foucault (2004, pp.  540-541) recognized this kind of attention as crucial to the role of philosophy. We have long known that the role of philosophy is not to discover what is hidden, but to render visible what precisely is visible – which is to say, to make appear what is so close, so immediate, so intimately linked to ourselves that, as a consequence, we do not perceive it. If we define ethics by such immanent caring, it directs our attention to the moral capacities or competences of ordinary people. Attention to the everyday is an important definition of caring. The complete

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definition of care by Tronto and Fisher (1990, p. 40) has here to be taken seriously. In the most general sense, care is a species of activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our world so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life sustaining web. Reflection on care can be construed as a consequence of the turn in moral thought illustrated by the work of Diamond against what Wittgenstein in the Blue Book (lecture notes published 1958) called “the craving for generality.” It is the attempt to validate, within morality, attention to the particular(s), to the ordinary detail of human life, the aspects of life neglected by philosophy and by us. This descriptive aim transforms morality: care, like OLP, brings our attention back to the basics of the ordinary, to the level of everyday life. It is a practical response to specific needs, which are always those of the singular other (whether close to us or not). It is work carried out just as much in the private sphere as in public; a commitment not to treat anyone as negligible, and it is a sensibility to the details that matter in lived situations. By giving back a (different) voice to individual sensibility, to the intimate, one ensures the conversation/conservation (maintenance) of a human world. This is obvious in the contexts Das (2006, p. 89) describes in Life and Words when violence or catastrophe destroys the everyday and the very sense of life (see also Das, 2016; Lovell, Pandolfo, Das, & Laugier, 2013). The subject of care is affected, caught in a context of relations or in a form of life that is both social and biological. This idea of Lebensform is associated in Cavell and Das with attention to the ordinary form of life: to what Cavell calls “the uncanniness of the ordinary” and Das calls “the everyday life of the human.” The center of gravity of ethics shifts from the “just” to the “important.” Measuring the importance of care for human life recognizes that dependence and precarity (Kittay & Feder, 2002) are not accidents that happen only to “others.” Going against the grain of the ideal of autonomy that drives most moral theories, care reminds us that we need others in

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order to satisfy our needs. This often unpleasant reminder may well be at the source of the misleading and inaccurate idea of care, when it is reduced to an empty or condescending version of charity. As Tronto (2005) writes: Recognizing the importance of care would thus allow us to revalue the contributions made to human societies by the outcasts, by women, by the humble people who work everyday. Once we commit ourselves to remap the world so that their contributions count, then we are able to change the world.

By bringing ethics back to the “rough ground of the ordinary,” to the level of everyday life, care aims at a practical response to specific needs, which are always those of singular ordinary others. The first point to be made here is that depicting our ordinary lives does not mean simply describing our practices. Ethics cannot simply be described by reference to our customs, and our practices cannot offer a sole foundation for ethics. Ethics is not empirical in this sense. As argued by Diamond: our practices are exploratory and not merely a given. Our practice is shaped by what we expect from ethics, and ethics is shaped both by what we do and by what we want or imagine. There is, for Diamond, no subject matter specific to ethics. This might seem to make ethics more general. But the second point is that it does just the opposite: Diamond’s aim, drawing on Wittgenstein, is to define an ethics of (attention to) the particular. And this is a perspective shared by the ethics of care: attention to ordinary life. Realism in ethics, in this regard, consists in returning to ordinary language, in examining our words and paying attention to them, in taking care of them (taking care of our words and expressions, and of ordinary others). OLP teaches us that our ethical lives cannot be captured with a half-dozen words like “good,” “right,” “duty,” “fairness,” “justice,” and the like, but rather require exploration of the way our ethical preoccupations are embedded in our language and our life, in clusters of words that extend beyond our ethical vocabulary itself and sustain complex connections with a variety of institutions and practices. In order to describe ethical understanding we

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would have to describe all of this, all these particular uses of words, of which a general definition cannot be given. From OLP’s perspective, the elements of moral vocabulary have no meaning except within the context of our customs and forms of life. In other words, they come to life against the background that “gives our words their meaning.” For Wittgenstein, meaning is not only determined by use or “context” (as many analyses of language have recognized), but is embedded in, and only perceptible against, the background of the practice of language. To redefine ethics from the basis of what is important means paying “attention to particulars.” We can look to a whole cluster of terms, a language-game of the particular – attention, care, importance, what matters – that is common to OLP and the ethics of care. Our capacity for attention is the result of developing a perceptive capacity, the ability to see a detached detail or gesture against its background. This focus of attention to detail is the source of the shift of perspective in moral philosophy: from examining general concepts and norms of moral choice to examining particular visions – the examining of individuals’ “configurations” of thought. Ethics of care merges with this sensitivity to words and the “realistic spirit” by drawing attention to the place of ordinary words in the intricacies and details of our lives, and our relationship with or distance from our words. In “Vision and Choice in Morality”, Iris Murdoch (1997) writes about the importance of attention (see also Laugier, 2013b). She describes differences in ethics as differences of Gestalt: “Here moral differences look less like differences of choice, and more like differences of vision” (Murdoch, 1997, p.  82). Our conceptualizations depend, for their very application, on our vision of – as Murduch puts it –what is important (what matters) to us (see Laugier, 2011c). Importance lies in details, and a focus of attention to detail is another obvious feature of OLP that is also central to the ethics of care. The moral philosophy inspired by OLP displaces the field of study and methods of ethics from general principles to the examination of the particular. Individual perspectives draw attention to the

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neglected aspects of life, or to invisible human beings – as Iris Murdoch (1997, pp. 80-81) puts it beautifully: When we apprehend and assess other people we do not consider only their solutions to specifiable practical problems, we consider something more elusive which may be called their total vision of life, as shown in their mode of speech or silence, their assessments of others, their conception of their own lives, what they think attractive or praiseworthy, what they think funny: in short the configurations of their thought which show continually in their reactions and conversation.

For Murdoch, this vision is not a theoretical point of view but rather a sensitivity to the texture of being. This texture is not a matter of moral choices, but of “what matters,” what counts. As Diamond (1991) writes: “The intelligent description of such things is part of the intelligent, the sharp-eyed, description of life, of what matters, makes differences, in human lives” (p. 375). The meaning of OLP does indeed lie in the recognition that language is used, spoken, by a human voice, and is our singular expressiveness through which we perpetually reveal and/or betray ourselves. It is clear that the contribution made by the ethics of care is to transform ethics into attention to the human life and to the practices in which language is caught. This notion of human life is also connected to Wittgenstein’s idea of a form of life as lifeform (as a form taken by life). The definition of care as a “life-sustaining web” (Tronto & Fisher, 1990, p. 40) has again to be taken into account. The uncanniness of the ordinary, for Cavell, is not resolved in the return to everyday life and words; the ordinary is not a given to be “accepted”; it is defined by the permanent threat of denial of the human. Attention to the everyday, to what Das calls the everyday life of the human, is the first step in caring and also the basis of ordinary ethics. Wittgenstein’s idea of a form of life/lifeform also defines a texture. “Texture” refers to an unstable reality that cannot be fixed by concepts but only by the recognition of gestures, manners, and styles. A form of life can be grasped only by attention to textures or moral patterns, perceived as “morally expressive” in/on the background provided by a form of life. Our capacity for moral expression is rooted in a mutable

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form of life, vulnerable to our better and worse use of language. The type of interest, the care that we have for others, the importance that we give them, does not exist except through the possibility of the display or revelation of the self in its moral expression.

The Ethics of Care as Philosophy of the Expressiveness of Women Attention to ordinary expression and human voice and texture leads to re-considering the question of women’s expression, which has been stifled or neglected and which finds its place in film (and, more recently, TV shows). OLP develops itself as an ethics and an aesthetics. Once again, ordinary language is not to be envisioned as having only a descriptive, or even an agentic function, but as a perceptual instrument that allows for refinement and adjustment of perceptions and actions. I want to highlight Cavell’s contribution to the question of what it is to be a woman (see Moi, 2005), to carry a woman’s voice with his explanation of the concepts of expression and voice – concepts that are most crucial to his development of OLP. The history of feminism begins precisely with the experience of inexpressivity, with which John Stuart Mill (1859/1982) was concerned: situations in which one does not have a voice for making oneself understood because one has lost contact with one’s own experience. Cavell has been clearly sensitive to the feminist tone in Mill’s sentence: Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. Now is this, or is it not, the desirable condition of human nature? (p. 6)

This is a description that captures all situations of loss of experience, language, and concepts (those can motivate a desire to exit this situation of loss of voice, to reclaim one’s ordinary language, and to find a world that would be the adequate context for it). To regain our contact with experience and to find a voice for its expression: this is the definition of an ordinary ethics. Care, understood as attention and perception, is to be differentiated from a sort of suffocation of the

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self by affect or devotion. It confronts us with our own inabilities and inattentions, but above all, it shows us how these inattentions are then translated into a theory about what matters. To cite Wittgenstein (1953, in paragraph 118): “Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems to destroy everything interesting, all that is great and important? What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards.” Wittgenstein’s point about importance is also that the importance of the grammatical investigation lies precisely in “destroying everything great and interesting,” displacing our interests and our hierarchies. Here the “fervor” as identified and expressed in Cavell’s reading of Wittgenstein, its specificity, may be seen and heard as a refusal of a kind of male (or paternalistic) assertiveness in finding the right words, and the all-too-easy identification of the important with the masculine. The conversion required to put aside competing ideas of the important, to destroy our ideas of the important, is the condition of possibility for a place for women’s expression (accomplished with the emergence of the women’s voice in conversation, which Cavell studied in Pursuits of Happiness (1981) and especially in his book on “the melodrama of the unknown woman,” where he focuses on women’s expressivity (1997, p. 158). Cavell finds in his autobiographical works, Pitch of Philosophy (1984a) and Little Did I Know (2010), a new attention to women through care for the voice. Attention to the ordinary voice makes OLP a liberating moment for women’s philosophical voices. Baier (1985b), a follower of both Empiricism and OLP, mentions in her paper “What Do Women Want in a Moral Theory” the fact that some moral Wittgensteinian philosophers should be called “honorary women.” Wittgenstein should similarly be acknowledged for “fathering” a long line of women philosophers: Anscombe, Murdoch, Foot, Diamond, Lovibond, Walker, Crary, and others. In this approach of ordinary ethics there are no univocal moral concepts that have only to be applied to reality; rather, our moral concepts depend in their very application upon the narration or description we give of our existences, of what counts for us. This ability to

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perceive the importance of things, their place in our ordinary life, is not only “affective”: it is the ability for adequate expression (or, equally, for clumsy, awkward, and failed expression). At the center of care is our ability for (our disposition to) moral expression, which, as Cavell (and besides, also Charles Taylor) have shown in various ways, is rooted in ordinary human and other life forms, in the (Wittgensteinian) sense of a simultaneously natural and social aggregate of forms of expression and connection to others. It is the form of life that determines the ethical structure of expression, and this expression, conversely, reworks life and gives it form. The relation to others, the type of interest and care we have for them, the importance we give them, take on their meaning within the context of a possible unveiling (voluntary or not) of oneself. Care is also specific attention to the invisible importance of things and moments: what Cavell (1984b) calls “the essential dissimulation of importance” which is part of what cinema educates us about. Cavell, in his work on film and in his autobiography (Little Did I Know), notes that the importance of film lies in its power to make what matters emerge. Film cultivates in us a specific ability to see the importance of things and moments, and it emphasizes the reviewing of the importance in our ordinary life. For importance is essentially what can be missed and may remain unseen until later, or possibly, forever. The structure of expression articulates the concealment and revelation of importance. This is the difficulty Cavell (1997) describes when he speaks of the temptation to inexpressiveness and isolation, and shows the essential vulnerability of human experience (another name for skepticism, expressed in the pre-feminist genre of “the melodrama of the unknown woman”). As Cavell says, “missing the evanescence of the subject,” failing to “guess the unseen from the seen,” is constitutive of our ordinary lives – and it is also the ordinary truth of skepticism. Acknowledging this consequence of skepticism, our own vulnerability, is a step toward genuine attention to ordinary life – care. Redefining morality on the basis of importance and the structural vulnerability of the human experience may thus help in rethinking the theoretical stakes of care. The notion of care points to a specific

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blindness in contemporary moral and political thought: blindness to the conditions of its own development within the human form of life. Thus, the ethics of care again joins OLP in a subversion of intellectual and ethical hierarchies. This perspective on care then leads us to explore the ways in which we – in practice and in theory – treat the demarcation of the spheres of personal relations (familial relations, but also love and friendship) and the so-called impersonal spheres of public relations, with their inevitable hierarchy: the political stakes of the ethics of care consist, again, in the ethical enablement of populations and categories that are assumed to be morally inferior. Tronto (2005) writes: The traditional association of caring with women rested on a social order that excluded women from many parts (or all) of the public sphere. Women (and for that matter slaves, servants, and often working-class people) as well as care activities were relegated outside of public life. One of the great accomplishments of the second wave of feminism was to break the caste barriers that excluded women from the public sphere. (p. 130)

OLP could lead us to go beyond the purely affective notion of care and, in the line of thought represented by Baier, Das, (and, besides, also Nussbaum), to engage in rephrasing ethics, not on the basis of grand principles, but rather on the basis of the fundamental needs of humans and women. The stakes of an ethics of care end up being epistemological by becoming political: an ethics of care seeks to highlight the connection between our lack of attention to neglected realities and the lack of theorization of these social realities, and in this way to understand why ethical – and often philosophical and political – thought is blind to certain ordinary realities: those connected with the domain of the private, the domestic, and the female. Thus, OLP delves into this renewed and deepened attention to what we depend on, to what makes ordinary life possible (what makes us ordinary).

Political Outcomes Here, the usual alternative between justice and care turns out to be deeply misleading. Justice and care are two different tonalities, or

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rival voices, existing inside each of us. The ethics of care does not aim at installing pity, compassion, solicitude and benevolence as subsidiary values that would lessen the hardness of an impartial conception of justice based on the primacy of rights attributed to autonomous, rational individuals. Rather, the ethics of care posits the obvious – an individual depends on others in a world that places high value on autonomy in both theory and practice. It even demonstrates that the most autonomous people are actually the most dependent (on all the help and support they get). It aims at the acknowledgment of an entire segment of common life that is systematically ignored in political discourse. Care is what makes our ordinary form of life possible. Tronto and Fisher (1990), in the definition quoted earlier, suggest that care should be defined (at the most general level) as a generic activity comprising all we do in order to perpetuate and repair our “world” so that we can live in it as best possible. Let’s quote them again: “This ‘world’ includes our bodies, our environment, and ourselves” (p. 40). Ethics, then, is not about how to live better or more virtuous or more rational lives, but simply, how to live an ordinary life in the world. The ethics of care can help us rewrite the narrative about OLP, a strong philosophical tradition that has been neglected since 50 years. OLP challenges the understanding and hierarchy of concepts that shape out the space in which research in ethics is pursued, and dominant. OLP and the ethics of care bring together into question standard approaches in moral and political philosophy, and constitute an actual subversion. Standard ethics and political analysis, in relation to the social contract, do not inquire as to how a society is made sustainable. It also carefully expel from ethics the world of fundamental care, and more generally speaking, all those actions that make ordinary social relations possible and alive. Neglecting the issue of care in ethics and politics amounts to ignoring the origin of what makes a moral society exist and endure: ignoring what makes our everyday lives, and ordinary language, possible, and alive. The question, again, is what the ordinary does to philosophy: it turns our attention to women. Attention to what we

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mean and what we say and “care for our words” defines ordinary language as a resource for feminist thinking.

Reference List Austin, J.L. (1961). A plea for excuses. In J. O.  Urmson & G.J.  Warnock (Eds.), Philosophical Papers. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Baier, A. C. (1985a). Postures of the mind: Essays on mind and morals. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Baier (1985b). What do women want in a moral theory? Noûs, 19(1), 53-63. Baier, A. C. (1995). Moral Prejudices. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Cavell, S. (1969). Must we mean what we say? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Cavell, S. (1979). The claim of reason: Wittgenstein, skepticism, morality, and tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cavell, S. (1997). Contesting tears: The Hollywood melodrama of the unknown woman. Chicago: Chicago University press. Cavell, S. (1981). Pursuits of happiness: The Hollywood comedy of remarriage. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cavell, S. (1984a). A pitch of philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cavell, S. (1984b). “The thought of movies”: Themes out of School. San Francisco: North Point Press. Cavell, S. (2010). Little did I know: Excerpts of memory. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Das, V. (2006). Life and words: Violence and the descent into ordinary. With a foreword by S. Cavell. Berkeley: University of California Press. Das, V. (2016). The boundaries of the “we”: Cruelty, responsibility and forms of life. Critical Horizons 17(2), 168-185. Diamond, C. (1991). The realistic spirit: Wittgenstein, philosophy, and the mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Foucault, M. (2004). La philosophie analytique de la politique (1978). In D. Defert & F. Ewald (Eds.), Dits et écrits 1954-1988 (Vol. 3, pp. 534-551). Paris: Gallimard. Gilligan, C. (1995). Moral orientation and development. In V.  Held (Ed.), Justice and care: Essential readings in feminist ethics (pp. 19-33). Boulder: Westview Press. Lecture presented in Paris. Gilligan, C. (2010). Une voix différente: Un regard prospectif à partir du passé. In V. Nurock (Ed.), Carol Gilligan et l’éthique du care. Paris: PUF. Gilligan, C. (2010, no exact date). In a different voice: Looking back to look forward. Unpublished lecture presented in Paris. Kittay, E., & Feder, E. K. (Eds.). (2002). The subject of care: Feminist perspectives on dependency. In Feminist Constructions Series. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Laugier, S. (2006). Wittgenstein: Anthropology, skepticism, and politic. In A. Norris (Ed.), The claim to community: Essays on Stanley Cavell and political philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Laugier, S. (2011a). Care et perception, l’éthique comme attention au particulier. In  P.  Paperman, & S.  Laugier, Le souci des autres – éthique et politique du care (2nd ed.). In Coll. Raisons Pratiques. Paris: EHESS. Laugier, S. (2011b). An introduction to the French edition of Must We Mean What We Say? Critical Inquiry, 37(4), 627-651. Laugier, S. (2011c). Matter and mind: Cavell’s (concept of) importance. Modern Language Notes, 126(5), 994-1003. Laugier, S. (2013a). Why we need ordinary language philosophy. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Laugier, S. (2013b). The will to see: Ethics and moral perception of sense (J. Chalier, Trans.). Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 34(2), 263-281. Laugier S. (2016). Politics of vulnerability and responsibility for ordinary others. Critical Horizons 17(2), 207-223. doi: 10.1080/14409917.2016.1153891 Lovell, A., Pandolfo, S., Das, V. & and Laugier, S. (2013). Face aux désastres: Une conversation à quatre voix sur le care, la folie et les grandes détresses collectives. Paris: Ithaque. Mill, J. S. (1982). On liberty. London: Penguin. Original work published 1859 Moi, T. (2005). Sex, gender, and the body: The student edition of What is a woman? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Murdoch, I. (1997). Vision and choice in morality. In I. Murdoch & P. J. Conradi (Ed.), Existentialists and mystics: Writings on philosophy and literature (pp. 76-98). London: Chatto & Windus. Ogien, A., & Laugier, S. (2014). Le principe démocratie. Paris: Découverte. Tronto, J. C. (1993). Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. New York: Routledge. Tronto, J. (2005). Care as the work of citizens: A modest proposal. In M. Friedman (Ed.), Women and Citizenship (pp. 130-145). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/0195175344.003.0008 Tronto, J. (2009). Preface. In J. Tronto, Un monde vulnérable: Pour une politique du “care” (H. Maury, Trans.). In Coll. Textes à l’Appui. Paris: Découverte. Tronto, J., & Fisher, B. (1990). Toward a feminist theory of caring. In E.  Abel & M. Nelson (Eds.), Circles of care (pp. 36-54). Albany: SUNY Press. Tronto, J. (2005). Care as the work of citizens. In M. Friedman (Ed.), Women and citizenship (pp. 130-145). OUP Usa. doi: 10.1093/0195175344.003.0008 Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations [Philosophische Untersuchungen] (G.E.M. Anscombe, Trans.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Preliminary Studies for the “Philosophical Investigations”, generally known as The Blue and Brown Books. New York: Blackwell.

Care Ethics and the Social Contract Virginia Held

The Appeal of Care Ethics The ethics of care, I argue in this paper, requires not only the revision of the social contract so that it adequately addresses the needs and concerns of care. It requires the reevaluation of the social contract altogether: its central place in our political and social theorizing, and in society. In the brief, few decades in which it has been developed so far, the ethics of care, as a moral theory, has become a viable alternative to the traditional and still dominant theories of Kantian ethics, utilitarianism, and Aristotelian virtue ethics. It can be understood to be more satisfactory and more promising than the traditional approaches for a vast range of moral issues. It can better reflect what human life in families and social groups and whole societies is like, and how it ought to be improved. It can better address problems not only in the more personal contexts of caregiving in which it was originally developed, but also in the widest contexts of such problems as intergroup violence, global poverty, and climate change. Understood first and often seen most clearly in the smaller contexts of families and of friendship, the ethics of care, or care ethics, has by now been shown to be, potentially, a comprehensive moral approach appropriate for the contexts of national states, international interactions, and global problems, as well as for the contexts of caregiving and care receiving in families, small groups, social services, healthcare, and the like.

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Kantian ethics, I have come to think, should be interpreted as an expansion to the whole of morality of the appropriate normative grounding, in justice, of law and legal systems, and the normative recommendations to which we should look on how such systems ought to be improved. Utilitarianism should be interpreted as an expansion to the whole of morality of the normative thinking appropriate for political and governmental policies to promote the general welfare, and of recommendations for how to best satisfy individual interests. And virtue ethics can helpfully clarify the character traits of individual persons that ought to be fostered. But these moral approaches are not satisfactory for other domains than the ones for which they are appropriate. They do not offer persuasive comprehensive guidance. The ethics of care, in contrast, is potentially both a more comprehensive morality, and a more satisfactory source of moral guidance for actual persons living lives that include far more than their legal, or political, or individual aspects. Care ethics understands persons as relational and interdependent, rather than as the imagined independent individuals of the traditional theories. It values caring relations, and the empathetic understanding, responsiveness to needs, trust and mutual concern, that enable and foster caring relations. Such relations are neglected not only by the individualism of Kantian and utilitarian theories, but also by virtue theory, centered as it has been on individuals and their dispositions. The ethics of care sees moral action as motivated especially by caring emotions and mutuality between actual persons, rather than by the rational recognition of universal principles by autonomous, free and equal individuals (Barnes, 2012; Bubeck, 1995; Held, 2006; Kittay, 1999; Petterson, 2008; Tronto, 1993). Conservatives sometimes understand better than traditional liberals that there should be more to society than the pursuit of individual self-interest. But conservatives’ attachment to traditions that include such basic injustices as racism and sexism, and their frequent attachment to divisive religious views, undermine the appeal of their alternatives. A feminist ethic of care offers a more promising alternative

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to the generalized promotion of self-interest within a social contract. It also offers an alternative to the overlegalization of society, and the overindividualization of persons. And it has no need for religious foundations. Daniel Engster (2015b) writes of the deficiencies of liberal individualist political theories, and, in contrast, the potential appeal of care ethics. For many countries, particularly those with more communal-based cultures and traditions, liberalism has limited value or appeal. Care ethics, however . . . can better engage with them and help to guide them toward a more just future. Contemporary social analyses rooted in individualistic ontologies likewise no longer seem to get things right in our increasingly interrelated and networked society. Care ethics provides, here too, a better way of understanding and coping with the important transitions we are undergoing. (p. 7)

Care ethics also offers new thinking on how contemporary societies ought to respond to the economic and social insecurities that so threaten their liberal foundations. The values of care are of great relevance to the organization of economic and social life beyond the structures of law and politics that allow, constrain, and promote various economic alternatives, but fail to provide the theoretical foundations for them beyond commitments to “free markets,” and vague and inadequate provisions of so-called “safety nets.” The pulling of more and more care into the market is another questionable development of recent trends. While the traditional exploitation of women through completely unpaid care work may be worse, market priorities are not the appropriate ones by which care work should be practiced. Care ethics offers promise for guiding more suitable arrangements. Amanda Gouws and Mikki van Zyl (2015) explore how care ethics and the southern African concept of ubuntu can illuminate how justice and care should be enacted. Ubuntu is a worldview that sees all humans as relational and interconnected by ties of care and obligation, and that asks persons to be caring and respectful, and to contribute to their communities. The authors show how a feminist ethic of care together with an understanding of ubuntu can suggest “ways

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to institutionalize care at the public level,” ways that are more satisfactory than the Northern liberal individualist arrangements (p. 179). An example of how care ethics and Ubuntu would lead to a shift in policies is that “the focus would shift to the empowerment of the survivors of violence rather than only on punishing the perpetrators” (p. 178). Care ethics can also and helpfully suggest, in ways that might not be expected, how to deal with such troublesome questions as the drawing of lines between privacy and surveillance. Marilyn Friedman (2015) shows how care ethics is capable of assessing the value of national security with its possible need for extensive surveillance aimed at preventing terrorist attacks. At the same time it can appropriately value privacy, without having to rest its case on a questionably narrow individualism. She notes that “privacy has great value for both the individual as such and the relational aspects of individuals” (p.  24). The way is thus clear for care ethics to weigh privacy and surveillance. In her article “Creating a Caring Society,” Evelyn Nakano Glenn (2000) shows how care work must be revalued, recognized as real work and as social contribution. It must be seen as a public responsibility, receivers as well as providers must have influence over how it is provided, and the burdens of care must be shared equitably. The “ideal would be a society in which there is an adequate amount and quality of care for all who need it” (p.  88), which would require “major changes in political-economic structures and relationships” (p.  93; see also Glenn, 2012). Most fundamentally, Glenn (2000) writes, “the liberal concept of ‘society’ as made up of discrete, independent, and freely choosing individuals will have to be discarded in favor of notions of interdependence among not wholly autonomous members of society” (p. 93). The needed view, as she understands, is provided by the ethics of care.

Care Ethics’ Growing Influence Interest in the ethics of care has continued to grow since its origins in the closing decades of the 20th century. It is now regularly

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represented in volumes aiming to be comprehensive, and it is being developed in countries around the world often far from those of its origin. This reflects how it is an ethic based on experience, and experience that really is universal: the experience of care. People around the world, whatever their cultures or nationalities, have experience providing the labor of taking care of others, and every single person has experience of having been cared for, at least as a child. Though their experiences often differ in different cultures, everyone, everywhere, can reflect on their experiences of care and can contribute to our understanding of its values and of the normative recommendations it suggests. And care ethics need not rest on the religious foundations that undermine the claims to universality of other moral theories. The current interest in care ethics reminds me of the interest in human rights that developed in the last half of the 20th century. At  mid-century, a prevailing moral relativism in the United States undermined much moral argument. Moral concepts were frequently interpreted as confused or essentially meaningless, and moral judgments were largely dismissed by dominant outlooks as little more than expressions of personal preference. This changed, however, with the rise of social movements demanding justice, with international concern about state behavior, and with philosophical work providing foundations for taking justice and rights very seriously. Around the 1970’s in the U.S., those influenced by the dominant “realist” approaches standardly dismissed discussion of human rights as little more than moralistic chatter with little real influence. But the discussion continued and grew, among philosophers and political and legal theorists around the world. Gradually, human rights became increasingly influential and important and came to be reflected in actual laws and policies. Today considerations concerning human rights have real and very substantial weight in international affairs, in the policies of states and leaders, and in public opinion. This interest in human rights, and the vast amount of theoretical work that has been done offering guidance on how persons and states should structure their institutions, provides clear evidence that moral

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discussion of such matters is now acceptable. It is reflective, however, of the great overconcentration on justice that has characterized recent normative inquiry. Feminist philosopher Sarah Clark Miller (2012) has examined the “justice-dominated discourse” that is evident in the ways theorists, and following them many office holders and activists, have been dealing with the global problems that morality ought to address. “Cosmopolitan theories of justice,” she writes, “have dominated contemporary philosophical discussions of global responsibility” (p. 121). In her book The Ethics of Need: Agency, Dignity, and Obligation, she makes the case, instead, for “cosmopolitan care.” She argues that the dominance of justice and rights in cosmopolitan thinking about global moral issues has grievous shortcomings, resulting especially from the “hyperindividualism, idealization, abstraction, and acontextuality” which characterize conceptions of justice and rights (p. 126). Miller (2012) argues, instead, for a focus on care to address global problems. She recommends the outlook of care ethics that sees persons as relational and interdependent, and located in actual contexts. From the care perspective, persons are understood as “vulnerable .  .  . embodied and finite,” and as sharing “a susceptibility to suffering and needing” (p. 124). To overcome the deficiencies of the emphasis on justice in thinking about global moral problems, she recommends accepting and working with a “relational, non-idealized, contextual oppression-informed account of feminist global responsibility”(p. 126). An emphasis on human vulnerability, need, and care, Miller (2012) argues, would transform in promising ways the current justicedominated discourse of global responsibility. She shows how the ethics of care is relevant to ethical, social, and political spheres at both the national and international level “when we understand care as the practice of taking responsibility for others’ needs in the context of dependency relations and of cultivating moral attunement to the vicissitudes of their lives” (p. 128). A focus on care rather than justice would lead, she argues, to a far more satisfactory recognition of our global responsibilities.

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I too will argue for the promise of a care perspective, though with a somewhat different view of the moral theory involved. And I think it should also be said that the two approaches of care and justice can be complementary rather than opposed if we recognize care ethics as the more comprehensive morality within which we should argue for justice and rights in their more limited legal and political domains.

Origins and Content of the Ethics of Care Care ethics arose as feminists started to pay attention to the work and practice of taking care of children and providing care for those who are ill or otherwise dependent. This whole area of human practice and experience had been dismissed by previous moral theorists as irrelevant to morality because it was part of “nature” rather than of culture or civilization or political life or what humans transform over the centuries, or because it belonged in a region governed by natural instinct rather than by rationality. Feminists contended that, on the contrary, this whole area of experience was highly relevant to morality, which purported to provide general recommendations for human choices and lives. Of course those providing care face innumerable moral choices and decisions, and can be guided by any number of moral considerations. Contexts of care present obvious moral problems and moral possibilities, but the guidance available from the traditional moral theories is singularly unsatisfactory. I trace the beginnings of the ethics of care to the work of Sara Ruddick (1980, 1989) on the thinking involved in the practice of mothering, and the work of Nel Noddings (1984) on the phenomenology of care work. The psychological inquiries of Carol Gilligan (1982) described differences in the ways most men and boys on the one hand, and many women and girls on the other, interpret moral problems. To the men and boys studied, the problems considered were often interpreted as calling for the application of abstract moral principles, such as principles of justice, to situations of conflicting rights. To the women and girls studied, in contrast, the problems were often interpreted as particular and concrete, as calling for meeting the

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actual needs of those for whom they felt responsible, and for maintaining human relationships. This “different voice” that Gilligan described strengthened the emergence of the delineation of care ethics as a normative moral approach in contrast with that of justice. Further inquiries took account of differences of race and of the effects of colonization on understandings of care (Collins, 1990; Narayan, 1995). Care ethics continued to be developed by feminist moral philosophers and contrasted with the ethics of justice of the dominant Kantian and utilitarian approaches, and its development and influence have continued to grow within and beyond philosophy (see especially Bowden, 1997; Bubeck, 1995; Collins, 1990; Held, 1993, 2006; Petterson, 2008; Sevenhuijsen, 1998; Slote, 2007; Tronto, 1993, 2013). The values discernable in contexts of care are those associated, especially, with responsiveness to need. Good care requires meeting needs effectively and with sensitivity and empathetic understanding, and it requires developing relations of trust and mutual concern. Care ethics evaluates practices on many grounds, but it especially fosters care that responds successfully, with empathy and sensitivity, to actual needs and that does so in ways conducive to trust and mutual consideration. The values of care can be seen to be very different from those evident in traditional moral theories, which have advocated the rational recognition of universal norms, or the rational pursuit of self-interest, or the acceptance of a social contract from an imagined position of freedom, equality, and autonomy, or the cultivation of individual virtue. Much actual care is not good care, and it is performed within structures that are highly unjust, especially in terms of gender equality. But care ethics has developed as the understanding of care as it ought to be practiced. This would require fundamental restructurings of society. And it involves paying as much attention to the perspective of care receivers as of care providers, so that care is respectful and not paternalistic and care providers are not domineering. But the values of care can be discerned even in actual practices that are far

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from ideal, and these values are very different from those of the dominant and traditional moral theories. In practices of care, emotion has value rather than constituting primarily a threat to the rational recommendations of morality. The emotion of caring and the development of empathetic concern have moral value that must be recognized. And care can be far more effective in motivating action than can the mere rational recognition of the implications of a universal principle such as The Categorical Imperative or the Principle of Utility. Its value is not merely in assisting agents in carrying out the obligations derived from rationally recognized norms, as traditional rationalistic moral theories can concede. The emotion of caring has value in helping us understand what we ought to do in the actual circumstances of interrelated persons with actual needs. What care ethics values especially, however, are caring relations between persons, rather than the emotions of individual persons. Care ethics is not a kind of virtue theory because it is focused on relations between persons, not individual or personal virtue. Trust, which must be a relation, is a good example. And the ethics of care sees persons as relational, rather than as the independent individuals of traditional theories. Care should not be thought of as a kind of benevolence or altruism, because seeing the interests of the care provider and of the care receiver as pitted against one another, with persons having to choose between their own interests and those of the other, is a mistaken way to interpret caring situations. Parents want their children to do well together with themselves, and children want the same for their parents. Care providers elsewhere also want those they care for to do well along with themselves, as do care recipients want their providers to also do well. Of course there may be conflicts, but the underlying aim is cooperative rather than one where interests conflict. Limited competition is certainly acceptable: siblings may compete in sports, institutions that provide care may seek to be the best of their kind, but such competition should be secondary to the cooperative aims of care.

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Once we understand the origins of care ethics in feminist attention to the work and values of caring labor, we can learn from and appreciate some earlier work in moral theory done by David Hume (1752/1957) and those known as British Sentimentalists (Baier, 1994; Tronto, 1993). Those earlier theorists did appreciate the value of emotion in morality, but they focused on individual sentiments rather than caring relations. Care ethics is, in contrast, a feminist approach calling for radical changes in social relations and radical restructurings of society. It calls on us to recognize the importance of care work and its values, and to reflect, in the ways society is organized and the ways we live our lives, the fundamental values of the ethics of care. Care ethics is not, as some may imagine, a mere version of earlier theory.

Revising the Social Contract As attention came to be paid to care and all the labor that it involves, many theorists saw how the social contract needed to be revised. The vast amount of care work needed in society was overwhelmingly being provided by women, and by poorly paid members of minority groups and by migrants. How could a society be fair or just with this disparity of responsibility for the care and upbringing of its future citizens? And how could a conception of society be adequate if it ignored this essential aspect of society? Care is obviously a highly important part of what society needs to be concerned about, and its social contract cannot possibly be satisfactory if it does not provide in some fair way for the work of care to be done. Eva Kittay, for instance, discussed the shortcomings of social contract theory. In her book Love’s Labor (1999), she observed that “few, if any, political theories have focused on the consequences of dependency and dependency work, because few, if any, political theories have seriously concerned themselves with the lives led by those persons (women) who have had to deal with inevitable dependencies” (p. 110). In liberal political and economic theory, Kittay (1999) writes, “public space has largely remained the domain of free, equal, rationally self-interested beings. [But] entering that space does not free the dependency worker from responsibilities to her charges” (p. 41). Assumptions

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about the free and equal and self-interested individuals hypothetically agreeing to the social contract underlying our political and economic institutions, ignores and distorts our understandings of those engaged in care work. “The voluntarism of social contract theory,” Kittay argues, “assumes individuals who act out of an elevated self-interest . . . and who are equally situated to engage in moral interactions with each other . . . Such a view . . . fails to take into account the circumstance that some individuals will always be dependent, [and it] does not explain the moral commitment of those who care for dependents. [It also] employs an unhelpful conception of equality” (p. 63). Kittay and quite a number of other theorists have tried to show how the social contract should deal with dependency and dependency work. Such work is essential and should not be ignored. We cannot have a just society until we figure out how it should be handled. Daniel Engster is among those who has argued persuasively for revisions of the social contract to take adequate account of the needs all have for care. Engster (2007) argues that to be satisfactory, a theory of justice must include adequate attention to care. He suggests that care should be seen as within justice, as the most important part of justice, a claim reflected in the title of his book The Heart of Justice: Care Ethics and Political Theory. Care, he thinks, is central to justice since, without care, no one would even live, let alone live well. “There would be no individual liberty or equality, community values or good life,” he writes, “without the caring practices necessary to sustain and foster human life and society” (p. 5). Justice, Engster (2007) argues, should assure that everyone gets the necessary minimums of care. “Caring,” he writes, “should be placed at the center of a public conception of justice and applied to the basic institutions and policies of society so that more support and accommodation is provided for care work” (p.  13). And in a later book, Justice, Care, and the Welfare State (2015b), he spells out in greater detail how a satisfactory theory of justice and of the social contract should provide for the care of children, for health care, for the care of the elderly, the disabled, and the poor. Engster seeks to construct a theory of justice that includes within it an adequate appreciation

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of care. But justice remains paramount, as if it covers the whole of morality. Fiona Robinson (2011) focuses more on international affairs, but seems to have a similar view. She does not see the need for a new moral theory, but aims to revise existing theories, such as theories of justice and of security, so that they appropriately reflect the central importance of care. Such theories, she persuasively shows, ought to pay appropriate attention to such global problems of deficient care as widespread poverty and the migration of care workers.

Justice and the Ethics of Care I strongly agree that theories of justice and conceptions of security for human beings should make clear how necessary levels of care for all persons must be provided. Principles of distributive justice for national states and at the global level ought to recognize that all persons have rights to basic necessities and the care needed to survive (Held, 1984; Jaggar, 2009). Justice ought most assuredly to cover the concerns of providing adequate care for all persons, and social contracts should be revised accordingly. I disagree, however, with various other theorists on the place of justice in morality. The ethics of care has been developed in contrast with ethical outlooks that interpret moral problems in terms of justice and place justice at their center. Care ethics is characterized by different ways of interpreting moral problems, different concerns and aims, different motivations, and especially different values. Justice, to care ethics, is only part of morality, but not suitable as a comprehensive morality. Justice is especially relevant for and applicable to legal and political affairs, but it is not the whole or even the most important foundation of morality, as has so often been thought. When theories of justice are seen as moral theories rather than only as legal and political theories, they can be contrasted with the ethics of care. They emphasize different values and concerns, such as the rights of individuals, fairness and equality between individual persons, and the promotion of individual interests. They rest on the rational recognition of the validity of abstract, universal norms. Care

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ethics, in contrast, recognizes and promotes the values of caring relations between actual persons. It promotes the values of building trust and mutual concern, and especially of responding to needs effectively, and with sensitivity and empathetic understanding. If we understand the ethics of care as a comprehensive moral theory, then it ought to have priority over our norms for particular areas of life and activity. I see the ethics of care as providing the most general normative guidance for all domains, applicable especially in the more personal contexts of family and friendship but also in the most general domains of global issues where caring relations are weak and thin but still highly important (Held, 2015a, 2015b). As with the civil society needed for political institutions to work (Putnam, 1994), weak but important caring relations make possible the legal and political and other more particular institutions of society. We must care sufficiently about our fellow human beings to want that their rights are respected, their voices heard, their needs adequately met. Within the caring relations of the larger society, some competition is acceptable: fellow-citizens may engage in a range of economic competition. But such competition should be limited, not total. There ought to be an underlying cooperation, which caring relations of varying strength can provide. With care ethics as our more comprehensive or fundamental moral approach, we can then recognize the validity of the more familiar theories of justice for the more limited domains of the legal and political. The principles to which hypothetical free and equal persons might agree can appropriately form the basis of our legal and political institutions once we have the minimal caring relations that hold us together as a society. Potentially, these principles can be extended to a global level. But they are still not the whole of morality. We still need the ethics of care as an alternative moral theory to have priority over theories of justice for legal and political institutions.

Shrinking the Social Contract I thus increasingly think that we ought to go beyond trying to fix the social contract and should explore how to shrink and downgrade it.

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When we see the ethics of care as a comprehensive morality, we can then question the ubiquity with which the social contract and its assumptions and ways of thinking have been applied, and the adulation with which it has been regarded. Instead of seeing individuals as constantly engaged in the rational pursuit of their own interests, restrained only by legal norms and political mechanisms of enforcement, we can see persons in weaker and stronger caring relations developing patterns of activity. These patterns may be more caring and admirable or less so. We can question the standard views of society that see its political and legal institutions as necessarily predominant. We can recognize in a new and more effective way that society is far more than law and politics and economic competition, and that this should transform our theorizing. We can see areas of society such as families, educational systems, health care institutions, social services, and much cooperative activity, as far more central to our views of society than we thought, and far more relevant to our theorizing about morality than has been recognized. We can see how the social contract ought to be limited. Instead of thinking of it as the foundation of the whole of society and of our relations with others and other states, we can see it as a restricted basis for limited institutions. And instead of having it dominate our moral and normative social theorizing, we should understand it as providing only a partial perspective. In 1987 I wrote a paper called “Non-Contractual Society” (1987). It asked us to perform the mental exercise of trying to conceptualize society as if social relations were all versions of the relation between a mothering person (female or male) and child, instead of versions of contractual relations. This was at a time when contractual relations between rational and self-interested individuals were being promoted for absolutely every context: popular advice columns suggested that we should contract with our children for better behavior – paying them, perhaps, for going to school or for doing their chores. And medical care and education were becoming more and more like businesses, with recommendations increasingly following the market

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models of rational choice and contractual exchanges. College students paid their money and expected, as customers, to get their money’s worth. Commentators argued for health care to be improved by the efficiencies of the market, and for-profit childcare enterprises were sprouting everywhere. This trend has unfortunately continued. I asked in that paper that we think about the model of human social relations as non-contractual. But I was hoping for, or aiming at, a halt to the continuing expansion of social contract and market thinking to absolutely everything. I did not seriously question the appropriateness of it for its original combined sphere of the legal and political and economic. And I didn’t venture any wider suggestions about how and where to think of the boundaries of this domain, except to say that at least the mothering person/child relation seemed best thought of as outside it. This was at a time when feminists tended to think of the political as including everything. The political is what has to do with power, and the exercise of power seems to be everywhere. The slogan of the time was that “the personal is political.” It would seem to follow, at least at first, that if social contract thinking is appropriate for the political, it would be appropriate everywhere else, even in the family where women should certainly have equal rights. Yet even then, one could see that this couldn’t be acceptable. There are certainly contexts where seeking contracts between rationally selfinterested individuals is not the best way to think about what is going on or what is needed, and various contexts of care seem to be salient among them. More common has been the radical split between public, where self-interest and contractual agreements prevail, and private, where caring for others is acknowledged. But feminist thinking and progress have broken down the radical split between public and private. We have not yet, however, developed adequate understandings of how to conceptualize the contrasting realms of care and contract. Recently I have been thinking more about how distorted our views about society have been in philosophy and political theory. And I think this is to a large extent because of the social contract tradition and the excessive influence of its assumptions and ways of thinking.

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Initially, it seems so plausible for us to think, with Hobbes, that a social contract has to come first, because without it there would be, if not a war of all against all, at least such chaos and disorder and violence that we could not get on with anything else. I have been among those who have criticized Hobbes’s assumption about men in the “state of nature” agreeing to the social contract. In The Citizen, Hobbes (1642/1972) asked us to think of men as “even now sprung out of the earth, and suddenly, like mushrooms, come to full maturity without all kind of engagement with each other” (p. 205). This view cannot be satisfactory because it leaves out women and ignores the upbringing of children and all that is involved. But this criticism can still leave in place the priority of the social contract. We can certainly agree with those who argue that of course our image of the people taking part in the social contract should include women, and that our political system should appropriately take account of all the care that is needed to keep it going. Of course our society should adequately provide, in a fair way, for the care of children and others who are dependent. However, that could still leave us thinking that the first and most important task of moral and political theorizing is the devising of a social contract, a basis for order so that marauding bands of thugs don’t kill the men and rape the women. We might still give priority to the legal order needed to keep the peace and let life progress. “State of nature” images could still dominate our thinking. But consider: the marauding bands are made up of men. They first had to be children. They had to be cared for and fed. Perhaps, if they had been cared for and brought up and educated appropriately, these persons would not have become marauding bands. This is just a thought, but it sheds light on the unexamined assumptions we fall into about the priority of the social contract. It opens the possibility of questioning the priority we accord to the legal and political in our theorizing and our views of society. Daniel Engster (2015) argues that contrary to the dominant assumptions about the pursuit of self-interest and the war of all against all, human beings have a natural tendency to engage in care.

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Drawing on research in evolutionary theory, neurobiology, ethology, and developmental psychology, he argues that “human beings have an innate disposition to care for others” (p. 227). Our natural caring inclinations tend to be parochial, directed toward our own kin and group members. But they can be expanded, and it is the task of morality and politics to bring this about (p. 228). Under the right conditions, our natural tendencies to care could be promoted and expanded so that we are progressing toward societies in which all who need care receive it in ways that are effective and fair. Certainly a war of all against all that is channeled into economic battlegrounds is better than one fought with weapons leading to violence and death, but it is still far from the kind of society to which we ought to aim. We could strive to bring about a caring society. This would require displacing the social contract from its current central place in our theorizing. The ways we conceptualize society have been dominated by the assumptions of social contract thinking about individuals acting on the basis of self-interest and entering into contracts. When we start reconceptualizing society from a contrasting perspective of care, we can see it very differently, and imagine very different efforts at improvement.

Care and Society It is persuasive to think that care is the most fundamental value of all, more fundamental even than justice, to which such overwhelming attention has been paid in the last half century. Much human life can proceed, and has gone on, with very little justice practiced. For instance, there has been for a very long time little justice for women and the members of other disparaged groups. But without an adequate exemplification of care and its values, life cannot go on, there would be no persons. Care is not simply an empirically needed kind of work. It incorporates and expresses and aims at values of the most important and fundamental kind. The ethics of care is a radically new way of interpreting moral issues. It has transformative implications for how we conceptualize

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society and political issues. Moral thinking in recent decades has been greatly influenced by what we have thought is needed in political and legal arenas: justice, equality, respect for rights, rationally persuasive principles acceptable to autonomous individuals. With the awareness and insights made possible by a care perspective, considerations and experience from other segments of society, such as educational practices, child care arrangements, health care systems, social services and the like should come to be much more influential in how we conceptualize society and the changes that ought to be recommended from a moral point of view (for an example, see Barnes, 2012). Philosophy, as I see it, is a kind of architecture of ideas. It offers conceptions of how we should understand persons and societies. It offers normative recommendations of the most general kind and explores them for the various segments of society and life. In my view, it should not simply apply general norms deductively, but should test them in experience, and revise them in the light of the real problems for which they should be helpful (Held, 1993, chap. 2). When we look at society from a feminist and care ethical perspective, it appears to be very different from the structure we are used to imagining, with government enforcing a social contract so that all can pursue their economic and other interests. It also looks very different from the picture of economic foundations on which are built the superstructure of government and law and culture and all the rest. From a care perspective, the birth and development of children would seem to be the heart and center and foundation of society. When we see care as the central value that it should be, we can imagine that society ought to be organized to reflect this. Economic life, for instance, should be organized so that, first of all, it provides the resources that children and their appropriate upbringing require. The economy could allow various people to pursue their own economic interests, but only within an economy organized to give priority to meeting the needs of care. We should make sure that every child receives the care and upbringing and education they need. This would require elevating social services and health care and education to appropriately dominant concerns of society.

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From a care perspective, legal and political institutions should be structured to uphold and protect above all the domains of care. Some political institutions and various laws may well be asked to be justified on the basis of an imagined social contract between self-interested and relatively self-sufficient adults, but only after persons understood as interrelated and cooperative have formed a society committed to providing the child care, and education, and healthcare, and social services needed by all. Internally, the legal domain should give priority to justice, but the structuring of this domain should be within a society recognizing the priority of care. An economy acceptable from a care perspective would call for severe limitations on markets, rather than the vast expansion of them into health care, childcare, and other public services that has characterized developments in recent decades. Schools and hospitals should not have economic gain as their primary objective (see Held, 2006, chap. 7). A care ethics approach to society would call on governmental policies to direct adequate resources to meeting the needs of all, rather than primarily rewarding the owners of capital and financial speculators. It would acknowledge the way very many people seek to use our human capacity to work to transform our societies for the better. It would organize economic activity accordingly, rather than primarily to further the interests of those seeking to enrich themselves. Seeing care as at the heart or foundation or center of society may all be questionable metaphors. But quite possibly we cannot do without some such metaphors. That we are governed by law based on a social contract to which we hypothetically agreed is, we can easily recognize, an extremely influential metaphor. Surely we can explore alternatives. Then, if we recognize care as central to society, we can see the domains of care as what should be the most important and primary concerns of us all. And we can see the relationality of persons as their most important aspect, rather than their pursuits of their individual interests or their ability to enter into contracts. We can understand the possibilities for relations between persons to be caring and cooperative, rather than conflicted and self-interested. And we can

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recommend and be guided by the norms of care, developed for the various spheres of our lives. Certainly there will be conflicts of interest, and definitely some competition will be acceptable. But priority will be accorded to the values of care and what they require. Competition and conflict will be contained by a deeper or more fundamental cooperation.

Global Problems and Care For some time, theorists addressing global problems have transferred to the global level the social contract thinking considered suitable for the foundations of states and their legal and political systems. Those who have thought of themselves as realists have often imagined the international arena as a “state of nature” along Hobbesian lines, and have drawn analogies between individual states and individual persons in a state of nature. Though they aim at the peace and stability that should be sought, these analogies are grossly unsatisfactory. Even vastly more than the structures of government within states, the boundaries of states and the decisions on who is included or excluded in them, have been decided by force and the imposition of outcomes on the weak, not through consent among autonomous individuals. Of course we should think of the social contract within states as hypothetical, not actual, but, although I have shown why this should be questioned, it has been seen as a plausible foundation for government. Imagining it as plausible for relations between states, as if international order is based on a social contract, freely entered into, establishing peace and international law, is even more far-fetched and distorting of reality and of plausible normative recommendations. Hobbes assumed a basic equality in fact between the persons entering into the social contract – the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, at least when the latter is asleep. Rawls (1971) and his many followers assumed a hypothetical equality and freedom between all persons rationally agreeing on the principles of justice to underlie the social contract. Between states, however, prevailing disparities of power and uses of force make such assumptions even more questionable. And tribal memberships and loyalties have had far more to do

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with the compositions of states than have the free choices of individuals. Those seeking to move beyond realist assumptions that morality is empty verbiage in international affairs have tried to propose principles of justice, such as those providing the foundations of human rights, to guide international law and the behavior of states. This represents very important progress in thinking about international affairs, but these recommendations have usually been far too attached to the assumptions of social contract thinking. Their focus on the legalistic and individualistic views incorporated into social contract approaches (Miller, 2012) are ill-suited for many of the most important global issues, for instance, global climate change, intergroup and international violence, global poverty, and migrations of workers and others. Feminism leads us to see national and international realities differently, and care ethics encourages us to reimagine our goals and ways of moving towards them. The ethics of care offers new perspectives on global problems, and more promising guidance for dealing with them than the traditional moral and political theories. Robinson (2011), for instance, has reconceptualized human security. She shows how relations of care “are a central axis around which the security of all people, in the context of webs of relations, revolve .  .  .” (p.  6). She asks for new attention to the ways needs for care are being and ought to be met. Various feminist scholars have dealt with global problems that have been neglected by the dominant outlooks, for instance the migrations of care workers to developed countries from developing ones. Economic necessity often tears mothers in poor countries away from their own families for years at a time. And because trained care providers leave their own countries, for instance nurses who can earn more as nannies in rich countries than as nurses in their own, these migrations often cause serious deficits of trained care workers in the developing world (Ehrenreich & Hochschild, 2003; Mahon & Robinson, 2011). Scholars are also examining the way neo-liberal restructurings of many economies leave many women unable to find

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jobs and unable to care for their families (Ehrenreich & Hochschild, 2003; Mahon & Robinson, 2011; Peterson & Runyon, 2010). Care ethics is more suitable than theories centered on justice and rights for dealing with these issues, because of its focus on care work, its attention to gender and race and class, and its understanding of persons as relational (Abu-Laban, 2012; Robinson, 2011). It encourages us to move “from consideration of a ‘world of strangers’ to a ‘world of relationships’,” giving us better insights into the problems involved and more promising ideas for addressing them (p. 157). The ethics of care is also more promising than the dominant theories for confronting the shameful problem of global poverty. While many persons around the world wallow in excessive wealth, millions of children still die of entirely preventable causes. Few realities are more offensive from a care perspective. Care ethics enlists the emotions, building on what Hume called “fellow-feeling.” It cultivates the moral and not only instrumental value of such emotions as empathy and responsiveness. It calls on persons and groups to take responsibility for meeting urgent needs, and it is more suitable than the dominant moralities for recognizing groups rather than only individuals, and for motivating actual action rather than mere recognition of norms (Held, 2018a). Nel Noddings (2015) asks whether large organizations can care. She argues that a satisfactory understanding of globalization should lead us to appreciate differences between groups, nations, and cultures, rather than to a Kantian universalism in which such differences disappear. Citing Fiona Robinson, she shows how care ethics would lead to the development of relationships that will disclose which differences should be overcome by cooperative action and which sustained and appreciated. Such caring relationships foster respect and avoid the paternalism that often undermines care. Doubt is often expressed on whether foreign aid is actually helpful. Caring relationships enable global efforts – to overcome poverty and to develop responsible governments – to be successful. Care ethics is also superior to theories of justice for normative advice on avoiding violence, or dealing with it if it occurs (Held,

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2010). In the international context as it exists at present, the ethics of care would foster respect for international law as it has developed (Held, 2011). However, looking ahead to the world to be aimed at, law and its enforcements through violence would be seen as less of an answer to world problems than many theorists of justice suppose. From a care perspective, we can envision a better world than one composed of states and individuals all intent on furthering their own interests at the expense of others, restrained only by the threat of violence. We can aim at a more satisfactory global society, one devoted to meeting actual needs and to addressing the social and economic problems that make law and its punishments so often inadequate. The ethics of care would promote trust and mutual consideration, and dealing with problems cooperatively before they lead to violent conflict (Held, 2006, 2010; Robinson, 1999, 2011; Tronto, 2007; Yeates, 2005). The ethics of care is not a kind of pacifism. It does not rule out the use of violence nor idealize human interactions. It recognizes and can offer guidance for violent situations, from domestic violence to international conflict (Held, 2010). The approach of care understands that some violence is to be expected as an ordinary part of human life. For children to become responsible adults, they must learn to deal with their own violence and that of others. But violence is antithetical to the values of care. Care ethics insists on ways to reduce and prevent it. Violence is never to be accepted as an intrinsic part of the practice of care the way it is an intrinsic part of the enforcement of justice. Care ethics would never encourage the self-defeating illusion that massive military force should be used to defeat weak groups using terrorism (English, 2016; Held, 2008, 2018b). Finally, care ethics is more suitable than the dominant and traditional moral theories for dealing with the problems of climate change and the environment. Interpretations of the issues in terms of individual rights and interests, or even justice and equality between Individuals, fail to connect with the magnitude of the problems. The values of care, on the other hand, offer promise.

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These global issues are examples of how the ethics of care might guide us to a better future. Care ethics offers a focus on taking responsibility for what needs to be done rather than on holding people or states responsible for purposes of blame or punishment. It fosters the building of empathetic understanding and trust, and shows the ways forward. It aspires to bring about a caring global society where needs are effectively met.

Reference List Abu-Laban, Y. (2012). A world of strangers or a world of relationships? The value of care ethics in migration research and policy. In W.  Kymlicka & K.  Walker (Eds.), Rooted Cosmopolitanism: Canada and the World (pp. 156-177). Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Baier, A. (1994). Moral prejudices: Essays on ethics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Barnes, M., (2012). Care in everyday life: An ethic of care in practice. Bristol: Polity Press. Bowden, P. (1997). Caring: Gender-sensitive ethics. London: Routledge. Bubeck, D. (1995). Care, gender, and justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Ehrenreich, B., & Hochschild, A (Eds.). (2003). Global woman: Nannies, maids, and sex workers in the new economy. New York: Metropolitan Books. English, R. (2016). Does terrorism work? A history. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Engster, D. (2007). The heart of justice: Care ethics and political theory. New York: Oxford University Press. Engster, D (2015a). Care in the state of nature: The biological and evolutionary roots of the disposition to care in human beings. In D. Engster & M. Hamington (Eds.), Care ethics and political theory (pp. 227-251). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Engster, D. (2015b). Justice, care, and the welfare state. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Engster, D. and Hamington, M. Introduction. In D. Engster & M. Hamington (Eds.), Care ethics and political theory (pp. 1-16). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Friedman, M. (2015). Privacy, surveillance, and care ethics. In D.  Engster & M.  Hamington (Eds.), Care ethics and political theory (pp.  108-126). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Glenn, E. N. (2000). Creating a caring society. Contemporary Sociology 9(1), 84-94. Glenn, E. N. (2012). Forced to care: Coercion and caregiving in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Gouws, A., & Van Zyl, M. (2015). Towards a feminist ethics of Ubuntu. In D. Engster & M. Hamington (Eds.), Care ethics and political theory (pp. 165-186). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Held, V. (1984). Rights and goods: Justifying social action. New York: Free Press. Held, V. (1987). Non-contractual society: A feminist view. In M.  Hanen & K.  Nielsen (Eds.), Science, morality, and feminist theory (pp.  111-137). Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Held, V. (1993). Feminist morality: Transforming culture, society, and politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Held, V. (2006). The ethics of care: Personal, political, and global. New York: Oxford University Press. Held, V. (2008). How terrorism is wrong: Morality and political violence. New York: Oxford University Press. Held, V. (2010). Can the ethics of care handle violence? Ethics and Social Welfare 4(6), 115-129. Held, V. (2011). Morality, care, and international law. Ethics and Global Politics 4(3), 173-194. doi: 10.3402/egp.v4i3.8405 Held, V. (2015a). Care and human rights. In R.  Cruft, S. M.  Liao, & M.  Renzo (Eds.), Philosophical foundations of human rights (pp.  624-641). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Held, V. (2015b). Gender, care, and global values. In D. Moellendorf & H. Widdows (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of global ethics. London: Routledge. Held, V. (2018a). Taking responsibility for global poverty. Journal of Social Philosophy, 49, 393-414. Held, V. (2018b). The moral dimensions of terrorism. In E. Chenoweth, R. English, A.  Gofas, & S. N.  Kalyvas (Eds.), Oxford Handbook on Terrorism (chap.  5). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobbes, T. (1971). Leviathan. Edited with an introduction by C. B.  Macpherson. Harmondsworth: Penguin. (Original work published 1651). Hobbes, T. (1972). The citizen: Philosophical rudiments concerning government and society. New York: Doubleday. (Original work published 1642). Hume, D. (1957). An inquiry concerning the principles of morals. New York: Liberal Arts. (Original work published 1752) Jaggar, A. M. (2009). Transnational cycles of gendered vulnerability: A prologue to a theory of global gender justice. Philosophical Topics, 37(2), 33-52. doi: 10.5840/ philtopics20093723 Kittay, E. F. (1999). Love’s labor: Essays on women, equality, and dependency. New York: Routledge. Mahon, R., & Robinson, F. (Eds.). (2011). Feminist ethics and social politics: Towards a new global political economy of care. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Miller, S. C. (2012). The ethics of need: Agency, dignity, and obligation. New York: Routledge. Narayan, U. (1995). Colonialism and its others: Considerations on rights and care discourses. Hypatia 10(2), 133-140.

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Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley: University of California Press. Noddings, N. (2015). Care ethics and “caring” organizations. In D.  Engster & M. Hamington (Eds.), Care ethics and political theory (pp. 72-84). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pagina 72-84 Peterson, V. S., & Runyon, A. S. (2010). Global gender issues in the new millennium (3rd ed.). In Dilemmas in World Politics Series. Boulder: Westview Press. Petterson, T. (2008). Comprehending care: Problems and possibilities in the ethics of care. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Putnam, R. D. (1994). Making democracy work. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Robinson, F. (1999). Globalizing care: Ethics, feminist theory, and international affairs. Boulder: Westview Press. Robinson, F. (2011). The ethics of care: A feminist approach to human security. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Ruddick, S. (1980). Maternal Thinking. Feminist Studies, 6, 342-67. Ruddick, S. (1989). Maternal thinking: Toward a politics of peace. Boston: Beacon Press. Sevenhuijsen, S. (1998). Citzenship and the ethics of care: Feminist considerations on justice, morality and politics. London: Routledge. Slote, M. A. (2007). The ethics of care and empathy. London: Routledge. Tronto, J. C. (1993). Moral Boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. New York: Routledge. Tronto, J. C. (2007). Is peace keeping care work? A feminist reflection on “The responsibility to protect”. In R. Whisnant & P. DesAutels (Eds.), Global concerns: Feminist ethics and social theory (pp. 179-200). Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Tronto, J. C. (2013). Caring democracy: Markets, equality, and justice. New York: New York University Press. Yeates, N. (2005). A global political economy of care. Social Policy and Society 4(2), 227-234.

Care and Justice Daniel Engster

The relationship between care and justice has been a subject of debate ever since care ethics first emerged as a moral theory. Although most care theorists now accept that care ethics can be formulated in some way as a justice theory, the relationship between care and justice remains disputed (Collins, 2015, pp.  5-6). This chapter takes stock of the care and justice debate, attempts to clarify it, and offers a new interpretation of the relation between these concepts. I begin by reviewing Carol Gilligan’s original distinction between an “ethic of care” and an “ethic of justice” and then explore Joan Tronto’s and Virginia Held’s subsequent efforts to develop care ethics into a political theory. While Gilligan treated care and justice as different modes of moral reasoning, Tronto and Held effectively suggested that care could also be understood as the subject of justice, that is, as the organizing ideal of society or, as Rawls (1999, p. 3) put it, the first virtue of social institutions. Once care ethics was recast as a justice theory, the question arose anew: what is the relationship between a care ethics of justice and liberal (and other) justice theories? Held has argued that a care ethical approach to justice properly applies only to some domains of social policy while more abstract, impartial, and individualistic justice theories are more appropriate for others. Michael Slote has argued, by contrast, that care ethics can guide all domains of society. Harkening back to Gilligan’s original analysis of an ethic of care and an ethic of justice, I suggest that a care ethics of justice and other justice theories are best understood as

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offering diverse and potentially complementary perspectives on the overall organization of society – albeit not necessarily through a division of labor as Held suggests. Just as Gilligan suggested that a mature moral perspective requires an ability to view moral questions in terms of both an ethic of care and an ethic of justice, I suggest that a just society depends on the ability to combine artfully elements from a political theory of care and elements from liberal and other justice theories in order to create an optimal arrangement for living well with others.

Gilligan on an Ethic of Care and an Ethic of Justice Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice (1982) is often treated as the founding document of care ethics. In this work, Gilligan characterized “an ethic of care” as concerned with meeting needs in particular and context-sensitive ways, valuing relationships, and not harming others. She contrasted care ethics with “an ethic of justice,” which she associated with moral thinking based on impartial and universal moral principles. While an ethic of justice or rights “is predicated on equality and centered on the understanding of fairness,” Gilligan (1982) wrote, an ethic of care “relies on the concept of equity, the recognition of differences in need” (p. 164). In the history of moral philosophy right up to and including Lawrence Kohlberg’s hierarchy of moral development, Gilligan argued that care ethics and those who used it – mostly girls and women –had been denigrated. In In a Different Voice, she sought to correct this misguided notion by highlighting the sophistication and appeal of care ethics as a moral theory. One way Gilligan (1982) demonstrated care ethics’ appeal was by providing contrasting examples of justice and care thinking. In one of the most memorable passages from In a Different Voice, she recounted the answers of two children, Jake and Amy, to the hypothetical Heinz dilemma. In the Heinz dilemma, a man – Heinz – must choose between either stealing a drug that he cannot afford to save his wife’s life or not stealing the drug and letting his wife die. When asked to resolve this dilemma, the eleven-year-old Jake responds with a classical example of justice thinking – it’s “sort of like a math

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problem with humans,” he comments (p.  26). Appealing to the abstract principle that “a human life is worth more than money,” Jake suggests that Heinz should steal the drug (p. 26). Amy, by contrast, answers in a way that reflects “the insights central to an ethics of care” (p.  30). She seeks a resolution that meets Heinz’s wife’s need for the drug while maintaining good relations between all the parties (Heinz, his wife, and the pharmacist) and avoiding harm to anyone. She suggests that Heinz should first talk to his wife about his options and perhaps try to borrow money to buy the drug. She also asserts the pharmacist’s responsibility to make the drug available to Heinz and his wife, possibly on a loan or payment plan, and asserts that if Heinz and the pharmacist could just talk things out they would surely arrive at a solution acceptable to all (pp. 28-29). As Gilligan observes, even though Amy’s answers appear from a justice perspective (and more specifically from the perspective of Kohlberg’s moral hierarchy) as confused and immature, they are actually quite sophisticated. Amy has already decided that in one way or another Heinz’s wife must be given the drug. With her questions, she is merely trying to gather more contextual information in order to determine how Heinz might achieve this outcome while maintaining good relations with others and not harming anyone. She views the various actors in this dilemma as possible resources for solving the problem rather than antagonists whose claims are necessarily pitted against one another. The Heinz dilemma is important in In a Different Voice not only because it exemplifies the difference between care ethics and an ethic of justice and shows how care ethics can contribute unique insights to moral questions, but also because it frames Gilligan’s thinking about the relationship between care and justice. Here and in other early works, Gilligan treats care and justice as two distinct moral perspectives that offer different, albeit not opposed, ways of thinking about moral problems. She illustrates her understanding of this relationship by comparing it to the duck-rabbit figure from Gestalt psychology (Gilligan, 1987, pp. 19-20, p. 30). Just as one can see a duck or rabbit when looking at this figure but not both at the same time, Gilligan suggests that one can think about moral issues in terms of

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care or justice but not both simultaneously. Care and justice represent two fundamentally different ways of seeing moral problems that involve different terms and modes of moral reasoning. Tove Pettersen (2008) notes that in the latter parts of In a Different Voice and in some of her subsequent works, Gilligan points to the partial convergence of care and justice (p. 86, p. 93). Mature care, by Gilligan’s account, incorporates a concern for one’s own personal integrity and rights (1982, Chapters 5-6). Mature justice thinking similarly incorporates more attention to care and relationships. “Starting from very different points, from the different ideologies of justice and care,” Gilligan writes, men and women “in the course of becoming adult” develop “a greater understanding of both points and view” and “greater convergence in judgment” (p.  167). Petersen (2008, p.  96, pp.  98-99) interprets this to mean that Gilligan ultimately believes care and justice are fusible or reconcilable. Yet, at least in In a Different Voice, Gilligan maintains the distinctiveness of these perspectives to the end. Although she claims mature care and justice perspectives stand closer together than pure or simple versions of these modes of moral reasoning, she concludes In a Different Voice by reasserting that care and justice represent “two different moral ideologies” (p. 164) or two “different modes of language and thought” (p. 174). Moral maturity is marked in her account by recognizing the “complementarity” of these “two different moralities” and learning how to draw on both of them (p. 165).

An Ethic of Care and Justice After Gilligan Gilligan’s understanding of the relationship between care and justice provides a compelling pluralistic approach to moral theory and decision-making. As originally developed, however, it was problematic. Many readers took Gilligan’s description of care ethics to suggest it was suitable primarily for addressing private or intimate problems but not broad public issues. Her focus in the book on the personal decisions of individuals (mostly women) about matters such as relationships and abortion seemed to confirm this interpretation. Nel Noddings further reinforced this view in Caring (1984) by associating

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care ethics with “engrossment” in the particular circumstances and needs of others and suggesting that, because of its deeply relational nature, care ethics was incapable of guiding relations between strangers. A number of political philosophers interpreted these arguments to mean that a division could be drawn between care and justice, with care ethics serving primarily as a morality for close personal relationships and justice theories for public affairs (Tronto, 1993, pp. 87-90). With the publication of Joan Tronto’s Moral Boundaries (1993) and Virginia Held’s Justice and Care (1995), this interpretation of care ethics was upended. Tronto and Held (and many others soon after them) rejected the interpretation of care ethics as only a personal or private morality. Indeed, they argued that the very distinction between private and public was based on existing justice frameworks that devalued and delimited care. Care ethics could by their account support a broad political theory capable of guiding the organization of the basic institutions and laws of society. As Tronto (1993) wrote in Moral Boundaries, “a theory of care is incomplete unless it is embedded in a theory of justice . . . [and] justice without a notion of care is incomplete” (pp. 166-167). From the perspective of these theorists, the dichotomy between public justice and private care was a false one. Care ethics could guide the organization of the basic institutions of society and these institutions depended on the good care of the citizen-body to exist over time. In the years following the publication of Tronto’s and Held’s works, political philosophers outlined a number of different justice theories based on care ethics (Engster, 2007; Held, 2006; Kittay, 1999; Noddings, 2002; Robinson, 1999; Sevenhuijsen, 1998; Slote, 2001; 2007; Tronto 2013). The idea of a “care ethics of justice,” as Slote (2015) dubbed it, was nevertheless a source of some confusion. Wasn’t care ethics originally developed in opposition to justice theories? The confusion here stems from the failure of care theorists to distinguish between two different notions of justice. The first notion of justice is the one used by Gilligan and refers to a particular approach to moral relations emphasizing universal rules,

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impartiality, consistency, equality, fairness, rights, and individuality. Gilligan also sometimes calls this approach – perhaps more precisely – an ethics of rights. It embodies a particular understanding of justice that views individuals as equal but self-interested, and hence potentially conflicting, claimants to limited resources and basic goods (Miller, 2017). The second sense of justice is purely formal. Justice in this second sense refers to the organizing principles, ideals, or guidelines of society. The content of these principles, ideals, or guidelines is left blank for people to fill in based on the question: what is just or normatively right? Libertarians will argue for the justice of libertarian values and arrangements; market socialists will argue for a basic structure based on market socialist principles. Care theorists will argue that a just society is one oriented around ensuring good care for all and a fair distribution of caregiving labor. Despite some misgivings about phrases such as a care ethics of justice or caring theory of justice, there is no reason care ethics cannot frame a justice theory in this second sense. As Tronto and others have argued, an institutional structure supporting caregiving is important for the ability of people to give and receive good care. Most care theorists today further regard care as something that individuals are owed as a matter of obligation or right and not merely an expression of benevolence (see, for example, Collins, 2015; Engster, 2007; Held, 2006; Miller, 2011). Even though care ethics departs in a number of ways from justice theories based on universality, impartiality, and the like, it can thus still be the subject of a justice theory.

A Care Ethics of Justice and Neglected Issues and Groups A care ethics of justice nonetheless remains substantively distinct from liberal (and other) justice theories. The content that care ethics pours into a theory of justice is markedly different from what impartial, egalitarian justice theories provide. A care ethics of justice starts out, for example, from the inevitable vulnerability or dependency of all human beings and highlights the importance of caregiving relationships for human survival and development and the reproduction

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of society. It likewise focuses on meeting the needs of particular individuals in context-sensitive ways based on a principle of equity rather than impartiality and equality. The unique commitments of care ethics – to valuing caring relationships, meeting needs in context, and avoiding harm and mitigating pain and suffering – have important implications for its political theory. They give particular salience, for example, to a number of issues and groups that liberal justice theories have traditionally overlooked. The distinctive nature of a care ethics of justice can be brought out by comparing it with John Rawls’s liberal theory of justice (Eichner, 2010). Rawls (1999) frames his theory of justice in terms of “the familiar theory of the social contract as found, say, in Locke, Rousseau, and Kant” (p. 10). He starts out from the assumption of “free and rational persons concerned to further their own interests . . . in an initial position of equality” (p.  10). No relations are assumed to exist between the parties to the social contract, but instead they are characterized as “mutually disinterested” (p.  128). Consistent with standard justice theories, Rawls also assumes the relative equality of the parties, by which he means sameness. “I shall assume,” he writes, “that everyone has physical needs and psychological capacities within a normal range, so that the questions of health care and mental capacity do not arise” (pp.  83-84). He explains that sickness, frailty, disability, and other limiting conditions not only “may take us beyond the theory of justice” but also “distract our moral perception by leading us to think of persons .  .  . whose fate arouses pity and anxiety” (p.  84). Since his justice theory rests on an agreement among self-interested individuals, Rawls further suggests it cannot include (at least until a later stage) questions about the treatment of individuals whose physical and mental capacities render them potentially dependent on and costly to others. Purely self-interested actors would see no benefit in admitting a person with cognitive disabilities or chronic physical ailments into their social contract. Rawls’s theory of justice thus concerns only “the relations among those who in the everyday course of things are full and active participants in society and directly or indirectly associated over the whole span of their life” (p. 84).

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Because Rawls premises his justice theory on self-interest, individuality, and equality (understood as sameness), it is not wellequipped to address some important issues and groups.1 Although his theory offers valuable, albeit controversial, insights relating to the distribution of political and economic goods for healthy, non-disabled adult citizens, it has relatively little to say about justice for children, the sick, the elderly, people with disabilities, and caregivers. Even when he does discuss the family in the later portions of A  Theory of Justice, he simply assumes the love and good care of parents for their children and treats this institution as requiring little social support.2 Care ethics, by contrast, posits the care of all individuals as a central concern for justice (see, for example, Engster 2007, 2015; Held, 2006; Kittay, 1999; Noddings, 2002). Rather than premising justice upon an agreement among isolated and mutually disinterested individuals, care ethics starts out from the everyday caring relations that already exist between individuals. It posits human relationality – and specifically our universal vulnerability and dependency on others for survival, protection, and development – as the basis for our moral responsibilities. Because we all depend on the care of others for our survival at various times during our lives and to mitigate our vulnerability throughout our lives, care ethics suggests we have responsibilities to help others to meet their needs and reduce their vulnerability. A care ethics of justice asks how society can best organize institutions and distribute resources so that everyone receives their just due of care based on what they need to grow, function, flourish, and avoid harm and suffering. Central to these considerations is a commitment to ensuring that caregiving labor itself is adequately reimbursed and fairly distributed. A typical care ethics of justice brings to the forefront questions about what society can do to better support the healthy development of children, provide good care for the sick and chronically ill, and promote the flourishing of elderly and disabled persons all while working toward a more equal distribution of care work between men and women, rich and poor, and people of different colors and ethnicities.

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Care and Justice in Contemporary Political Theory Once care ethics was made into the subject of a justice theory, the question of the relationship between care and justice arose again in new form. Can care ethics support a comprehensive justice theory capable of guiding all matters relating to the basic structure of society (the constitution, political and economic institutions, and main policies)? Does it also offer a superior approach to justice in all domains? Or should it (justly) share the stage with liberal (or other) justice theories that give more weight to impartiality, equality, and rights? What, in short, is the relationship between a care ethics of justice and liberal (and other) justice theories? Two main answers have emerged to this question. Virginia Held has most clearly articulated and defended the first of these positions.3 Similar to Gilligan, Held (2006, p.  15) argues that care ethics and justice thinking represent two distinct modes of moral thinking: An ethics of justice focuses on questions of fairness, equality, individual rights, abstract principles, and the consistent application of them. An ethics of care focuses on attentiveness, trust, responsiveness to need, narrative nuance, and cultivating caring relationships.

Held (2015, p. 26) nonetheless finds Gilligan’s approach to the care and justice debate unsatisfactory: We encounter a moral problem, and see how it looks from the different perspectives of justice or care. But then what? . . . Thinking of them as equally valid and as applicable to whatever the problem is helps us to clarify alternatives, but does not guide the answers.

Instead, Held argues that we should see care ethics as a comprehensive morality within which justice might be applied within some limited domains (2006, p. 17, 2015, p. 27). Care ethics, by her account, arises out of practices of care that form the basis of society. As such, it should enjoy overall priority over justice. A care ethics of justice should nonetheless give way to other, abstract, egalitarian or rightsbased justice theories in subsystems or domains whose priorities or purposes are best served by impersonal procedures and calculations. In the domain of law, for example, and in political decisions involving

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the public interest and budget priorities, she argues that justice should have priority. More specifically, she argues that we should draw on deontological justice theories when the justifiable use of coercion is at issue, and look to utilitarian or consequentialist theories when deciding questions about the overall public interest. In other areas, such as family life, health care, and education, she argues that a care ethics of justice should predominate. This is not to say, Held (2015) observes, that care ethics has no place in law and politics or that justice should be ignored in matters of education or family life, but only that one or the other approach rightfully has priority in this or that domain based upon their functions (pp.  27-28, p.  32). Held (2006) ultimately maintains that care and justice as applied to various domains represent “features of an overall design for living good lives in caring relationships with others” which cannot be achieved as fully through care ethics alone” (p. 75). Michael Slote has most clearly described and defended the other main interpretation of the relationship between care and justice. Others who have endorsed a similar interpretation include Nel Noddings (2002), Eva Kittay (1999, 2015), and Joan Tronto (1993; 2013, p. 184 n5; 2015). For all these thinkers, care ethics offers a comprehensive alternative theory of justice. It is part of a “relational revolution,” as Tronto (2013, p. 184 n. 5) puts it, that carves out a new way for thinking about justice in all domains of society. Slote (2015) criticizes Held’s interpretation of the relationship between care ethics and other justice theories on two grounds (pp. 37-38). First, he claims Held’s interpretation implies that care ethics cannot adequately deal with some legal and political issues and thus is limited. In fairness, Held makes similar claims about Kantian and other justice theories and suggests that all things considered care ethics can adequately cover more issues, but as a general point, the objection stands. Held’s position does imply that a care ethics of justice cannot guide all domains well. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Slote suggests that the moral foundations of care ethics – rooted in connectivity and relationships – are diametrically opposed to the moral foundations of contemporary liberal

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justice theories – based on self-interest and equality. As a result, he claims that deep inconsistencies or contradictions will emerge in the basic structure of any society that attempts to organize different domains according to these different justice theories. In order to avoid these inconsistencies, he argues that a care ethics of justice needs to speak with its own distinctive voice to the full range of social, political, legal, and other issues. Slote ultimately maintains that a care ethics of justice not only can address all political and legal issues but also can do so in ways “that are superior to anything liberalism can provide” (p. 39). Contra Held, he thus suggests that care ethics can provide one unified theory of justice for all of society. He supports his claim by discussing the famous US Supreme Court case involving a neo-Nazi group’s petition to hold a rally in the predominantly Jewish community of Skokie, Illinois (USA) (pp. 44-45). This case provides a good challenge for care ethics, he notes, because it involves legal issues that theorists usually claim cannot be adequately addressed through values of care and empathy. Drawing on liberal justice principles, the Supreme Court in this case upheld the neo-Nazis’ right to march, and prominent liberal justice theorists have endorsed this decision for its impartial defense of free speech rights. Approaching the issue from care ethics, however, Slote argues that the rally should have been diverted to another location on the grounds that it “would very probably have had a (re)traumatizing effect” on the many Jewish Holocaust survivors who lived in Skokie. He (pp. 44-45) concludes: The weight of empathic and humane considerations . . . favor a refusal to let the neo-Nazis arch in Skokie rather than somewhere else. The frustration of the neo-Nazis is nothing compared with the retraumitization of Holocaust survivors. And in that case the liberal/rationalist “autonomy defense” of free hate speech in the Skokie case seems misguided.

Comparing the possible harm of the Neo-Nazi march on the residents of Skokie with the value of the Neo-Nazis’ free expression in this particular location, Slote favors rescheduling the march “somewhere else.” This example and others like it show, according to him, that care ethics can not only adequately handle questions of

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law and rights but also address them better than liberal justice theories can.

Reconsidering Care and Justice Although both Held’s and Slote’s interpretation of the relationship between a care ethics of justice and liberal (or other) justice theories contain valuable insights, both are also problematic. Held’s suggestion that liberal justice theories (or other theories that emphasize fairness, abstract equality, individual rights, and impartiality) might be able to complement care ethics in certain domains or cases seems intuitively plausible. In determining a property rights dispute between siblings, for example, where one sibling has bought out the share of some jointly inherited property from the other who now wants more, Held (2015) is probably right to suggest that a justice perspective is most useful (pp.  27-28). Whatever the exact nature of the dispute, we should want a judge who respects the rights of both claimants, interprets the law impartially, and ensures the original transaction was fair (e.g., there was no deceit, manipulation or coercion). Attention to the particular needs of the parties or their relationship does not seem relevant or desirable in this case.4 Slote’s criticisms of Held’s position further do not seem particularly damning. Even though political philosophers often claim comprehensiveness for their theories, most theories have blind spots and limitations. Rawls’s theory of justice, to provide only one example, has little to say about children, the elderly, and people with disabilities. Other justice theories are arguably better equipped to deal with these groups (Engster, 2015; Nussbaum, 2006). Acknowledging the limits of Rawls’ theory nonetheless does not make it any less valuable for what it can tell us about justice. Given their premises and concerns, all justice theories are likely to be stronger in addressing some issues than others. If the same is true of a care ethics of justice, this does not seem a decisive objection against it. In a similar vein, although philosophers might bristle at the idea of organizing society around diverse justice principles, some ideological inconsistency is unlikely to be a major source of instability in society. If a society wishes to

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organize its welfare system along care ethical lines but interpret civil rights in liberal terms, this does not seem a dire problem. Care advocates might push for more caring interpretations of free speech and association laws, as Slote does, but the concern would be not so much the inconsistency between the different domains of society as the potential harm done by liberal readings of individual rights. Held’s suggestion that care ethics or liberal justice theories should predominate in different domains nonetheless seems overly schematic. No doubt, we often want an impartial, egalitarian, consistent approach to justice in the criminal or civil law. And yet, some cases – say, where a young woman who was abused by her father has run away from home and been charged with selling illegal drugs or working as a prostitute – seem to call out for a more caring jurisprudence (West, 1997). Held (2015), of course, notes that “in saying that in a given domain, a given value should have priority is not to say that other values then become irrelevant” (p. 27). But I would go further to suggest that we should not prejudge or predefine which values or justice theories should predominate in any domain but instead draw on different theories on a case-by-case basis. If deontological theories turn out to be the best guide in legal cases and utilitarian theories in matters of budget priorities and the public interest, then so be it. But that would be an empirical observation to be arrived at over a lifetime or more of decision-making rather than a pre-existing normative commitment about where care ethics or liberal justice theory should hold sway. Each of these theories should be assumed to have something potentially valuable to say about the nature of justice in all domains and cases. Slote’s argument about care ethics and liberal justice theories is similarly insightful but also limited. Slote’s primary assertion – that care ethics should be able to offer insights on all issues – is persuasive. A robust moral theory should be able to speak to all issues and it seems odd to assume it cannot do so adequately before attempting to do so. It is something else, however, to claim, as Slote does, that any moral theory should be able to yield superior guidance in all cases. The concern here is more or less the same one voiced about Held’s

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theory. Empirically it may be the case that care ethics yields superior guidance on all matters. But that should be the conclusion of a long line of arguments rather than a starting premise. Slote’s claim seems to shut down debate before it has begun. Slote (2015) himself challenges a “defender of liberalism” to find cases where care ethics does not give the right normative answers but liberalism does (p. 46). Held’s example of the sibling property dispute might be one such case. The main point of contention in this case is an agreement struck between two persons, whether it is fair, and how it should be enforced. An impartial decision based on the law and specific facts of the agreement would seem to give the right normative answer, whereas a care-based approach (similar to Amy’s approach to the Heinz dilemma) could very well lead to a worse judgment. Even Slote’s Skokie example is not above reproach. It is hard not to agree with his specific conclusion that in this case the neo-Nazis should not have been permitted to march in Skokie. Yet, Slote’s more general suggestion that free speech cases should be decided on the basis of empathy – and specifically on the basis of not harming or psychologically damaging others – is concerning (p.  44). If government officials or judges are given discretion to determine if people should be allowed to express their views or not based on the potential harm their ideas might do to others, then all sorts of protests or forms of expression that challenge the status quo or upend community standards might be suppressed. Impartial applications of broad individual rights might be preferable in all but a few exceptional cases because they assure the fair and equal protection of basic liberties, even if they sometimes seem callous and cause some psychological harm. Rather than Held’s or Slote’s interpretation of the relationship between care and justice, I would like to suggest a return to Gilligan’s original position. Some updating is necessary here since Gilligan did not conceive of care ethics as a political justice theory, but the main idea remains the same. A care ethics of justice and liberal justice theories can be seen as two distinct but potentially complementary ways of thinking about and addressing moral and social issues. Based on their different premises, a care ethics of justice will emphasize

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meeting needs in context, supporting healthy relationships, and avoiding harm whereas liberal justice theories will focus on impartiality, fairness, and rights. Each theory can offer insights on a wide range of policies and issues but (like the duck-rabbit picture) from different perspectives. A care perspective is likely to be more useful in matters involving relations and needs while liberal justice perspectives are likely to be more useful in matters involving conflicts and assertions of rights. Gilligan’s vision for a mature moral perspective drawing on both care and justice is instructive here. What is normatively right, or just, from this perspective will entail the artful synthesis of elements of both a care ethics of justice and liberal justice theories. A couple of practical illustrations of this position may be helpful in supporting it. The first comes from an issue that Gilligan (1982) discusses at length: the morality of abortion. In In a Different Voice, she recounts the struggles of a number of women who frame their abortion decisions primarily in terms of an ethic of care. In considering whether or not to have an abortion, these women consider their ability to care for a child, their responsibility to the fetus, their relation with the biological father, their relations with existing family members, and their responsibility to themselves. Largely absent from these considerations, however, but equally valid, is the distinct voice of justice. Depending on their circumstances and beliefs, these women might have chosen to see their pregnancy as akin to being kidnapped by a society of violin-lovers and forced to sustain the life of a violinist for nine months.5 Or they might have compared their pregnancy to opening the windows in their house on a hot summer night only to find the next morning that some people seeds had blown in and implanted themselves in their carpet (Thomson, 1971). In other words, these women might have switched over at some point from an ethic of care to a liberal justice or rights framework for thinking about their decision. Thinking about abortion abstractly and strictly in terms of individual rights seems to miss some important considerations that care ethics can offer for and against abortion, but ignoring this perspective (which seems something different from a concern for self-care) also misses important insights that some women might wish

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to consider. Care and justice seem here two distinct but potentially complementary ways to think about abortion decisions and policy. The first provides a way to think about abortion in relation with others; the second provides a way to think about it in terms of selfinterest and rights. A second example provides perhaps an even better illustration of this neo-Gilliganian position on a care ethics of justice and liberal justice theories. Care theorists and other feminist political philosophers have long criticized bureaucracy for being uncaring (Ferguson, 1984; Waerness, 1987). The commitment to rules, hierarchy, abstract equality, and impartiality all squarely mark bureaucracy as a site of justice but not necessarily care. Indeed, bureaucrats are easily caricatured from a care ethics perspective as impartial functionaries who, even when efficient, care little about the particular needs or problems of the individuals whom they are supposed to serve. Tronto (2010, p. 165, p. 167, p. 168; 2013, pp. 157-158) argues in this regard that the dismantling or at least scaling back of several elements of bureaucratic organization – including standardization, rules, and hierarchy – is essential for the creation of more caring institutions. Several scholars have argued in recent years, however, that the most caring and just institutional arrangements for the state administration of policies involve combining the “discordant” elements of care and justice (Bourgault, 2017; Stensota, 2010, 2015; Zacka 2017).6 Sophie Bourgault (2017), for example, who has most fully developed this point with regard to care ethics, argues that the most caring and just bureaucratic arrangement is a “semi-hierarchical or hybrid decision-making” model rather than “flattened hierarchies” (p. 210). Semi-hierarchical or hybrid structures have “a clear division of authority, with some decision-making concentrated in particular offices” and standardized and uniform rules of assessment and procedures combined with some “consensus-based features” and a “high level of attentiveness and responsiveness” especially at the point of service delivery (2017, p. 207, p. 210, p. 212). She suggests that some rules, hierarchy, and impartiality are normatively preferable to a more purely caring approach to service delivery because they help to guard

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against potential abuses of power, domination, paternalism, and racial, gender, and class biases (p. 207). She also cites a “pragmatic reason” for embracing hybrid forms: care-based decision-making tends to be more time-consuming than justice-based decision-making (pp. 210-211). One need look no further than Jake’s and Amy’s different responses to the Heinz dilemma for proof of this claim. Good care takes time. One advantage of liberal/bureaucratic justice principles is that they tend to provide relatively quick and easy (even if imperfect) decisions to normative questions. From a different perspective, Bernardo Zacka (2017) makes a similar set of points about the need for both care and justice in public administration. Unless balanced by other considerations, Zacka argues that the commitment to particular care can easily lead to burnout among frontline bureaucrats who are usually assigned large caseloads (p. 106). A purely caring approach to service delivery can also give clients “a perverse incentive” to present themselves “in the most unfavorable and helpless light” in order to get the resources they need, and can come “at the expense of fairness and efficiency” (p. 105, p.  126). Without some basis for standardizing judgments or judging equitably, caring bureaucrats may throw themselves into the case at hand to the neglect of other equally deserving clients. Significantly, neither Bourgault nor Zacka suggest that care and justice should be reconciled or synthesized. Rather, both champion the importance of including diverse perspectives in public administration and policy implementation. Bourgault (2017, pp.  210-211) argues that states should include “explicitly discordant elements,” or what Karen Ashcraft (2001) calls “organized dissonance” in their public administration institutions in order to check the dangers of single perspectives while benefitting for the strengths of each. Zacka (2017, p. 49) contends that a pluralistic approach to service delivery is essential to democratic responsiveness in a pluralistic society. Even though Bourgault and Zacka are concerned primarily with the organization and practice of public bureaucracies, both indirectly support the argument outlined here that that the most just society includes elements from both a care ethics of justice and liberal justice theories.

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One more example of a substantive policy issue might be useful for highlighting the benefits of exploring issues from both the perspective of a care ethics of justice and liberal justice theories. Because of their highly personal and relational nature, sexual harassment policies should be caring. They should aim to create positive relationships between individuals, provide safe and easy modes for reporting wrong behaviors, and offer supportive trainings for individuals who may have unwittingly made minor transgressions of the policy. Some elements of impersonal justice, however, are also usually valuable in these policies. Because so many people are likely to want to discuss potentially harassing interactions without committing to making formal charges in advance – in part perhaps because they may have a friendly relationship with the perpetrator or are embarrassed or unsure about whether they should raise the issue at all – automatic reporting rules can be useful. Automatic reporting rules require individuals to report stories of potential harassment immediately to a superior. Though these rules can feel like a betrayal of trust, they can be particularly important in making sure victims’ voices are heard, repeat offenders are identified, and the judgments of managers (who may be friends with the alleged perpetrators) do not prevent harassment reports from being properly investigated. In sum, my suggestion is that we can achieve deeper insights about the normatively best policies and actions by considering in all cases the recommendations of a care ethics of justice and liberal (and other) justice theories. One useful exercise might be to place side-byside care ethics’ and (various) liberal justice theories’ views on immigration, taxation, abortion, religious freedoms, and so forth in order to see which views make the most sense on any given issue or if there might be some interesting way to take elements from diverse theories to create a hybrid policy. Similarly, one might consider (along the lines of the Heinz dilemma) care ethical and justice-typical responses to various normative challenges in order to gain a deeper understanding of different possible responses and develop solutions that creatively incorporate elements of both care and justice. One obvious objection to this approach to care and justice is that it is too indeterminate. Held 2006, in fact, challenges Gilligan’s

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original understanding of care and justice on just these grounds. If care and justice represent equally valid ways of thinking about an issue, she asks, “why should we see an issue as one of justice primarily or as one primarily of care?” (p. 62). Held here seems to want some ultimate philosophical criterion, or meta-principle, for determining which theory applies when. She herself offers up her domains argument as such a criterion or meta-principle. Because she recognizes that there is still some place for care ethics in law and politics and for justice in the family and other relational domains, however, she ultimately admits that the application of care or justice to different domains depends on practical reason and some measure of artistry (pp. 74-75). I suggest a similar solution with even more emphasis on practical reason and moral artistry. The normatively best decision or policy in any case should arise, by my account, from a consideration of the recommendations of a care ethics of justice, liberal justice theories, and other normative theories as well as the local context, existing conditions, and preferences of people. Since care ethical approaches have traditionally been neglected, and liberal justice theories have tended to obscure or devalue care, Gilligan’s original point about the special importance of attending to its insights remains valid (Held 2006, p.  62). A justice theory that ignores parenting, children, the sick, the elderly, people with disabilities, and other vulnerable persons is surely deficient. It misses, by my estimation, the “heart of justice” or basic relationships that make society possible and reproduce it (Engster 2007). Even so, the insights of care ethics should not necessarily guide every decision, policy, or institutional arrangement. Liberal justice or hybrid arrangements might appear best in some areas and cases. While no firm guidelines can be provided for when or where care or justice should apply, some loose practical rules of thumb can be suggested. A care ethics of justice is likely to be most appropriate for thinking about policies or decisions where relationships are preeminent or there appears a direct link between some special circumstances and some action or outcome. Liberal justice principles may be more useful for managing institutions based on

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competition and self-interest or making judgments where no mutually beneficial solution appears possible and there is limited time to make a decision. Although the indeterminateness of my approach might be seen as a source of weakness, I would like to suggest that it actually represents a source of strength. One of the criticisms of analytic or “morality first” justice theories is that they treat the political realm, and citizens, as mere conduits for the implementation of philosophers’ ideal visions of society. Justice theories are often envisioned from this perspective as blueprints that legislators and citizens are supposed to follow to the extent possible in building and reforming their societies. The idea that legislators or citizens in the act of discussing and developing policies and ideas might be able to come up with something normatively superior to the philosopher’s ideal is implicitly denied by these theories. My interpretation, by contrast, treats a care ethics of justice – and indeed all justice theories – as material for citizens, lawmakers, and others to interrogate, develop, extend, modify, and ultimately accept or reject through discussion, deliberation, and debate. Rather than citizens serving as the handmaids of philosophers in this interpretation, philosophers are the handmaids of citizens, offering up ideas and proposals for them to consider and weigh and possibly recombine with other alternatives. The importance of continuing to develop a care ethics of justice is not that lawmakers and citizens need a more complete blueprint to follow in organizing their societies but that they can benefit from having access to the insights of care ethics in all domains and cases even if its recommendations are not always best by themselves.

Conclusion Gilligan’s account of the relationship between care and justice still makes a lot of sense once care ethics is expanded into full political theory. A care ethics of justice and liberal (and other) justice theories represent different but potentially complementary ways of thinking about and approaching the organization of society. A care ethics of justice is likely to be particularly valuable when considering matters

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of everyday care. Liberal justice principles seem best suited for assuring the abstract equality of persons, checking biases, and mediating stark conflicts between self-interested parties. Both perspectives can nonetheless provide insights on all policies and domains, and what is normatively right will often involve elements from both theories.

Reference List Ashcraft, K. (2001). Organized dissonance: Feminist bureaucracy as hybrid form. Academy of Management Journal 44(6), 1301-1322. Bourgault, S. (2017). Prolegomena to a caring bureaucracy. European Journal of Women’s Studies 24(3), 202-217. Collins, S. (2015). The core of care ethics. New York: Palgrave & Macmillan. Eichner, M. (2010). The supportive state: Families, government, and America’s political ideals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Engster, D. (2007). The heart of justice: Care ethics and political theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Engster, D. (2015). Justice, care, and the welfare state. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ferguson, K. (1984). The feminist case against bureaucracy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gilligan, C. (1987). Moral orientation and moral development. In E. F.  Kittay & D. T. Meyers (Eds.), Women and moral development (pp. 19-33). Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield. Held, V. (Ed.). (1995). Justice and care: Essential readings in feminist ethics. New York: Routledge. Held, V. (2006). The ethics of care: Personal, political, and global. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Held, V. (2015). Care and justice, still. In D. Engster & M. Hamington (Eds.), Care ethics and political theory (pp. 19-36). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kittay, E. (1999). Love’s labor: Essays on women, equality, and dependency. New York: Routledge. Kittay, E. (2015). A theory of justice as fair terms of social life given our inevitable dependency and our inextricable interdependency. In D. Engster & M. Hamington (Eds.), Care ethics and political theory (pp. 51-71). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Miller, D. (2017). Justice. In E. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Retrieved January 15, 2018, from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/ entries/justice/. Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Noddings, N. (2002). Starting at home: caring and social policy. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nussbaum, M. (2006). Frontiers of justice: Disability, nationality, species membership. Cambridge, UK: The Belknap Press. Pettersen, T. (2008). Comprehending care: Problems and possibilities in the ethics of care. Lanham: Lexington Books. Rawls, J. (1999). A theory of justice, (Rev. ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, J. (2001). Justice as fairness: A restatement. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press. Robinson, F. (1999). Globalizing care: Ethics, feminist theory, and international relations. Boulder: Westview Press. Sevenhuijsen, S. (1998). Citizenship and the ethics of care: Feminist considerations on justice, morality and politics. New York: Routledge. Slote, M. (2001). Morals from motives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Slote, M. (2007). The ethics of care and empathy. New York: Routledge. Slote, M. (2015). Care ethics and liberalism. In D. Engster & M. Hamington (Eds.), Care ethics and political theory (pp. 37-50). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thomson, J. J. (1971). A defense of abortion. Philosophy and Public Affairs 1(1), 47-66. Tronto, J. (1993). Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. New York: Routledge. Tronto, J. (2013). Caring democracy: Markets, equality, and justice. New York: New York University Press. Waerness, K. (1987). On the rationality of caring. In A. S. Sassoon (Ed.), Women and the state: The shifting boundaries of public and private (pp. 207-234). London: Hutchinson. West, R. (1997). Caring for justice. New York: New York University Press. Zacka, B. (2017). When the state meets the street: Public service and moral agency. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press.

Notes Other philosophers have applied Rawls’ theory to issues such as health care, elder care, and disability rights, albeit with limited success. For critiques of these positions, see Engster (2015). 2 See also his later discussion of the family in Justice as Fairness (2001, pp. 163168), and the critiques of his position by Eichner (2010) and Engster (2015). 3 My own position in The Heart of Justice (2007) and Justice, Care, and the Welfare State (2015) is closest to Held’s. In the latter work (2015, p. 6), for example, I note that my care ethical account of welfare policies might be combined with Rawlsian or other liberal or democratic accounts of legal and political freedoms in order to generate a complete theory of justice. I further explain my position, including some differences with Held’s position, below. 1

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4 States should be cautious about requiring or encouraging any sort of solution in this case aimed at mending the relationship between the siblings since it lacks the historical background and contextual information about the relationship. By the time a property dispute comes to court, the relationship between the claimants is usually so frayed that the best outcome is likely to come from an impartial decision. 5 Or alternatively, they might choose to focus on the fetus’s right to life. I focus here on the right to choose simply because it is so well-established in the liberal literature on abortion rights. 6 In a similar vein, West (1997) argues that the zealous pursuit of justice without care in the law, or pursuit of care unconstrained by justice, will lead to both unjust and uncaring results. One needs to have resort to both care and justice, according to West, in order to achieve true justice (and care) in the law.

PART II Practices of Care

Applying or Reinventing? The Ethics of Care and Social Work Elisabeth Conradi

Introduction The ethics of care first entered academic discussions in the mid-1960s when Milton Mayeroff (1965) argued that the practice of care was an essential human activity overlooked by the vast majority of philosophers (p. 462).1 Some years later, Carol Gilligan (1988), inspired by her own psychological research, began to advocate the importance of establishing, cultivating, and strengthening social connections through attentive interaction in ordinary everyday situations (p. 16). In the early 1980s, a general discussion about professional ethics emerged independently of Gilligan’s work. Often, thinkers relied on conventional philosophical categories to understand the work of caregiving professionals and the dilemmas they faced. This was especially true for the life-and-death decisions that occurred in hospital settings and in the field of health more generally. Only rarely did an ethical understanding of care emerge from within the field, tailored to its unique dynamics and problems.2 Social work, too, became a field for the application of ethical concepts from the philosophical canon. Not surprisingly, Kantian bromides soon found their way into the discourse. Frederic Reamer (2016) cites one widespread ethical belief whereby “practitioners should never lie to clients and should never look the other way and ignore a law (e.g. onerous welfare regulations) in order to help a client” (p. 1). But like medicine, the field of social work has drawn on an internal system of ethics from its very inception. Indeed, no other discipline

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owes its origins as much to passionate civic engagement as social work. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, early pioneers in Europe and the US volunteered in charity organizations, organized and supervised other aid workers, fought for social reform, founded social work schools, and published theoretical treatises (Conradi, 2018; Reamer, 2014, p. 166; Wendt, 2017, pp. 423-452). The volunteer work of these pioneers and those they inspired rested on deeply held ethical and political beliefs; as the field underwent professionalization, its practitioners developed these beliefs and conceived new ones.3 One famous pioneer, Mary Richmond (1899/1903), who ran a charity organization society in the US, developed the idea of “friendly visiting,” “the intimate and continuous knowledge of and sympathy with a poor family’s joys, sorrows, opinions, feelings, and entire outlook upon life” (p. 180ff.). Jane Addams (1930b), an early champion of the settlement movement in the US, describes her work in contrast to institutions of higher learning: “It was the business of the universities, we said, to carry on research . . . It was the business of the colleges, broadly speaking, to hand down the knowledge . . . It was the business of the settlements to do something unlike either of these things. It was the function of the settlements to bring into the circle of knowledge and fuller life, men and women who might otherwise been left outside” (p.  276). Though Addams did not use the term “care” per se, she followed a relational approach based on what she called “sympathetic knowledge” (Conradi, 2011, pp.  270275; Hamington, 2004, pp.  108-121). Like Alice Salomon, who edited Addams’ works in German (Addams, 1913) and maintained a transatlantic dialogue with her for decades (Salomon, 1937), Addams (1902/1964) actively promoted the expansion of the welfare state and reflected on the relationship between ethics and politics in her writings. Furthermore, she developed a concept of citizenship that includes social rights in a plural society, attended to the tension between individual and social challenges, maintained that rigid moralism might leave important problems unsolved, and articulated the need to understand others through empathic listening and learning from them (Addams, 1902/1964; 1930a, p. 410).

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The popular “people’s kitchens” that emerged in early twentiethcentury Berlin thanks to the participation of dozens of volunteers distributing food under the supervision of Lina Morgenstern also grew out of a clear set of ethical beliefs (Conradi, 2018, p.  3). Together with Bertha Pappenheim, Sidonie Werner, and Henriette Fürth, Morgenstern sought to combine care of the elderly and sick with the creation of vocational training institutions. They pushed for strong social reform and identified a wide range of structural problems such as housing, poverty, access to public health and education, sanitation, unemployment, and labor conditions (Reamer, 2014, p.  166). As Wendt (2017) notes, the writings of Pappenheim, Werner, Fürth, Morgenstern, and others address a wide variety of additional ethical objectives as well (pp. 423-452). This brief sketch hints at the rudiments of an ethics of social work that came into being in the early twentieth century. It is worth further exploring these rudiments from the vantage point of their origins in social work practice. I believe that this is a far more fruitful approach than “applying” or “implementing” abstract ethical concepts from the philosophical canon to the fields of social work. In reality, the relationship between theoretical ethics and the practical ethics is far more complicated. Nevertheless, the ethical rudiments that emerged with the development of the profession have not received the recognition they deserve, whether as a theoretical framework or as a compendium of applied ethics. In this chapter, I draw on the general debates about the ethics of care and relate them to the field of social work. The need to define a specific ethics of care for social work is twofold. First, traditional moral philosophy assumes three conceptual “boundaries” that tend to marginalize issues related to care: the distinctions between morality and politics, between impartiality and engagement, and between public and private (Tronto, 1993, pp. 6-10.) This neglect of care also means that traditional philosophy overlooks the conflicts that emerge in its practice. Second, the need to define a specific ethics of care for social work arises from the absence of a general ethics that resolves the everyday conflicts faced by professional social workers in institutional

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settings such as nursing homes, counseling centers, women’s shelters, prisons, and schools. Such conflicts include questions whether to keep something secret for the sake of maintaining a professional relationship, or to break confidentiality and possibly save others from harm. In describing these conflicts, I seek to identify – rather than apply – suitable ethical concepts. Accordingly, I do not try to explain how an ethics of care could respond to concrete real-life issues. Those seeking such answers can find them in, say, the work of Pease, Vreugdenhil and Standford (2018), Reamer (2016), and Ward and Barnes (2016). My emphasis lies, instead, on grounding an ethics of social work through reflection on the ethics of care more generally. The chapter focuses on activities performed by people with vocational training, though it is not limited to professional social workers alone. Rather, my considerations also include those people who support, assist, or help others as volunteers without vocational training. These include family members, acquaintances, friends, and neighbors. People all around the world contribute in many areas and ways to community development, to individual support in complex difficulties, to maintaining human relationships, and to resolving conflict. In this sense, an ethics of social work must look beyond the traditional boundaries of the field and recognize that professionally trained social workers and self-taught volunteers collectively shape the social sphere. Social work as it is taught in schools or universities and practiced in various settings is a part of this overall picture. How the tasks of the social sphere are allocated – whether they are performed by professionals or volunteers – varies from country to country and is often a source of controversy. Social policy based on local traditions, individual decisions, economical structures, and municipal organization determine the location of the dividing line between professional and voluntary activities, and between those who receive help and those who do not. For instance, the introduction of new governance models in the 1990s in Germany changed the structure of social work funding from a retrospective to a prospective system, from an underlying self-funding principle to a performance-based approach (Bareis, Kessl, Leitner, & Sandermann, 2017, p. 28). As Sigrid Leitner argues,

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contract management commits social work to flat-rate budgeting that pre-defines their work with little room for flexible, individually tailored services. The objective of increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of funds against the backdrop of austerity policies at the municipal level created conflicts in the practice of social work (Bareis et al., 2017, p.  28). Because practitioners who are constrained by severe budgetary restrictions often find it difficult to maintain professional standards, one aim of this effort to outline a framework for an ethics of social work is to oppose the reductive economic logic that has influenced social services and some welfare policies. It is my hope that increased awareness of social work practice will help reshape social policy (Conradi, 2015). I begin with the general tasks of ethics and a discussion of Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy before reframing it, in the context of social work, as a question of how to organize individual cooperation. I then move to Max Weber, who unlike Kant thought about the consequences of actions and power. I would suggest that social work be understood as something like politics in Weber’s sense of the term, something that crosses the line between the personal and the professional and invests those who practice it with power. And just as Weber asked whether the same ethics that is appropriate to political action is also appropriate to other activities, I ask whether the same ethics that is appropriate to professional social work is also appropriate to nonprofessional work in the field. Do we need an ethics for social workers or an ethics for the specific setting in which conflicts arise? Could it be that we need an ethics for collectively shaping the social sphere in general? I propose that examples of successful practice can provide clues as to what constitutes such an ethics. After sketching the objective of ethics in social work, I turn to the  foundation of an ethics of care: attentive attachment between human beings. While the ethics of autonomy begins with rational self-determination and focuses on the protection of individual rights, the ethics of care begins at the bottom with acts of assistance, help, and support. Here I extract the normative content from care practices to provide a theoretical foundation for ethics. The crystallized gist,

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I argue, can enrich a general theory of ethics for social work. Building on pioneers in the field, I start from the specifics of practice in describing a general ethics of social work.

The Objective of Ethics in Social Work In Europe, especially in Germany, where social work has yet to be fully recognized as an academic discipline, a host of reasons have been put forward to explain why an ethics of social work is needed.4 Some hope that an ethics of social work could further advance the professionalization of the discipline and expand its influence. Others believe that ethical training in social work education could help reach social policy objectives. Thus, students in social work disciplines can acquire skills for critically reflecting on social work practice and thinking about how to integrate ethical reflection into their work with clients. Still others believe that it could enrich the entire discipline by strengthening the position of ethics in social work and its related fields. But these reasons do not describe the actual motives for developing an ethics of social work, which are both practical and theoretical: to provide a framework so that practitioners can sort out and think about their own impulses and to uncover the ethical concepts that systematically hamper reflection on social issues. In defining the objective of ethics in social work, I want to begin with the aim of ethics generally. Kant (1787/1999) puts it in the form of a question: “What should I do?” (B 833). This question is posed by an individual, who ponders which actions he or she is supposed to take. After reflecting morally on the matter, the individual then decides on a specific course of action, and the specificity of this course of action constitutes its binding character. For Kant, ethics arise from individual decisions without a collective or institutional context. But an ethics so conceived is not a suitable starting point for an ethics of social work. First, social work decisions are often made in cooperation with others. For instance, social workers in a high school routinely meet with the teenage clients but where appropriate also with their teachers, parents, and friends. Second, social work demands more than individual decisions about which actions to take. In most

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cases, it involves defining the purpose and execution of procedures in institutional settings. Third, the collective nature of decision-making in social work also applies to the realization of an action. For instance, an individual who promises to complete a certain task will be unable to do so if coworkers fail to do their part. When it comes to the ethics of social work, then, we must broaden Kant’s perspective. The question is not “What should I do?” but “How should we structure cooperative action?” For Kant (1788/2015), ethical decisions rely on rules, and the application of these rules are the most important part of being ethical (A 54, A 58). The actual outcome of a decision matters less because, unlike the application of rules, it does not lie completely in the hands of the individual who makes the decision. By contrast, Weber (1919/2004) advocates an ethics primarily based not on rules but on consequences. In his essay “Politics as a Vocation” he argues that a system of ethics where decisions do not take into account the expected consequences and the mechanisms of power that accompany them, is dangerously naïve in its failure to capture real-life complexity (p. 83). The “ethical demands made on politics,” Weber explains, are bound up with “the fact that politics operates with a highly specific means, namely, power, behind which violence lies concealed” (pp. 80-81). And according to him, that which “lays claim to the monopoly of legitimate physical violence” is the modern state (p. 33). Of course, one should add that the state is not the only area of society that operates with power and violence. Questions of coercion arise in social life as well. And for both the political and the social sphere, the improper use of power and violence represents a central ethical difficulty, the point where, as Weber (1919/2004) puts it, the “striving for power is separated from the matter in hand and becomes an object purely of self-intoxication instead of something that enters exclusively into the service of their ‘cause’” (p. 77). In “Politics as a Vocation,” Weber wonders whether politics is governed by its own system of ethics. If it is, he argues, Kant’s ethical individualism does not supply the foundation. He doubts whether “the ethic that applies to political action is “the same ethic” that holds true for any other activity,” and whether “the same commandments can be

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proposed for all relationships, whether erotic, business, family and official relations” (p. 80). The underlying question here is whether politics needs its own vocational ethics. In looking closer at Weber’s arguments, I would like to pose the same question for social work. Does social work require its own ethics separate from those of ordinary people in everyday situations or volunteers in the social sphere? A hard-and-fast distinction between professional and nonprofessional social work is problematic for a number of reasons. For one, much of ethical conduct seems the same regardless of whether it occurs in a professional or everyday context. And for those who tend to follow a variety of ethical commitments, why should the line separating them run between the professional and the everyday in particular? A way to test the legitimacy of the distinction would be to ask whether decisions made on either side of the divide are of vital importance, or to assess the different natures and weights of their responsibilities, or the different kinds of relationality with the people involved. A further problem is how to resolve conflicts between professional and nonprofessional spheres if they are governed by different ethical approaches. Say a social worker is helping a friend to handle some private difficulty when she receives a call about an urgent client matter. Conversely, think of the social worker who conveniently forgets his emergency phone at home on the weekend so he can enjoy an undisturbed night out with friends, and leaves his coworkers to field any incoming calls. Or imagine the social worker who at the grocery store after work bumps into a client generally in need of assistance when carrying out everyday tasks. Further still, think of the case when a fellow staff member is also a friend, or when a director gives her son an internship at her own institution. Another area where the distinction does not easily hold is the relationship between social workers and their clients (Barnes & Cotterell, 2012). With time, their interactions tend to blur the line between “the public life of the professional world and the private world of the individual sphere” because social workers “intervene in the personal lives and intimate spheres of their clients” (Großmaß & Perko, 2011, p. 17). This circumstance increases the need to answer

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the question whether ethics should bifurcate along the distinction between professional and nonprofessional activity. Boundary issues, as Reamer (2001) proposes, “arise when human service professionals encounter actual or potential conflicts between their professional duties and their social, sexual, religious, or business relationships” (p. 1). It is possible to manage a lot of these issues, but some are difficult to handle. Especially if situations involve unavoidable circumstances. In these situations, as Reamer explicates: Practitioners encounter boundary crossings and dual relationships unexpectedly and need to manage the circumstances in a way that protects clients, colleagues, and practitioners to the greatest extent possible. Boundary issues involving unavoidable circumstances fall into four major categories, including those that involve geographic proximity, conflicts of interest, professional encounters, and social encounters. (p. 174)

A fourth difficulty with the distinction of Weber is that abuses of power are not limited to professionals. Though the activities of fulltime workers can differ considerably from those of volunteers, in some areas – probationary services or work with adult immigrants, say – they nearly overlap, and it is necessary to curtail abuses in both groups. Moreover, some tasks are subject to the same ethical principles regardless who performs them. For example, neither professional social workers in state institutions nor volunteers in local organizations nor parents and au pairs in private householders should encourage children to take drugs. Moreover, some tasks are subject to the same ethical principles regardless of who performs them. Ethically, this would constitute an abuse of power in each case, irrespective of whether the adults are responsible for the children in a professional, semi-professional, or nonprofessional capacity. Social work education, training, and practice confer on social workers a high degree of professionalism in a variety of tasks. But many self-taught volunteers are active in the social field as well. Should professional social workers adhere to the same ethics as community volunteers or should ethics be limited to handling only those conflicts that fully trained social workers face in their jobs? I believe that it makes more sense to consider the activities of the social worker

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and the activities of volunteers within a broader context. Despite the at times significant differences between their skills and job descriptions, the decisive question is whether professionals and volunteers act well5 and whether they succeed in completing the tasks assigned to them, especially when undertaken in the same institutional setting. An ethics of social work should be no more confined to the professional practice of full-time social workers than medical ethics is to the conduct of physicians. Ethics in the medical profession seeks to promote ethical reflection in research and policy as well in everyday clinical situations. In a similar vein, an ethics of social work must accommodate a wide spectrum of topics. It is not just about the conflicts faced by individual social workers and volunteers; it also addresses institutions, public and semi-public activities, and civic engagement. And it must extend to larger social endeavors such as peacebuilding, reconciliation, and moral repair. As such, an ethics of social work would partly intersect with the concerns of political theory, including the formation of social and policy priorities. Given this diverse range of concerns, it would be a mistake to impose a binary framework on an ethics of social work, with workers on the one side and those they help on the other. Such a division overlooks the weaknesses, deficiencies, vulnerabilities, and neediness of those it deems to be professional and overlooks the real lives of those it deems to be weak, deficient, vulnerable, and needy. This way of thinking reaffirms societal hierarchies on the conceptual level by focusing primarily on what counts as successful work or sound decisionmaking on the part of the first group. An ethics of social work, I submit,  involves the reflection on and assessment of people’s actions – deciding whether it is good action or bad action – on both sides of the equation. A broader idea of ethics in social work speaks to the tension between the individual and society. “Every serious account of social work’s evolution,” Frederic Reamer (1999) writes, “acknowledges the enduring tension between ‘case’ and ‘cause,’ between amelioration of individual suffering and social change that addresses the structural flaws in the

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culture that foster the problems that individuals experience” (p. 13). While Reamer describes how practitioners seek to identify social causes for individual problems, I suggest that ethical reflection on interactions in their larger context can help us transcend from the “I” to the “we,” from individual ethics to social ethics. The question is not only what professional and volunteer social workers can do and should do, but also how the people who live in a society and shape its social landscape can and should treat each other. For Addams (1930a), a philosopher of social work and a pioneer in the American settlement movement, the effort to transcend from the “I” to the “we” meant learning from the poor immigrant communities she sought to help while giving them the resources for sharing their cultural heritage: “I believe that we can, and should, get something in the way of reviving and upping the culture of our contact with the groups who come to us from foreign countries. It implies of course a mutual interest in the life. The settlement makes a constant effort through books, through drama and through exhibits, to those with the expressions of permanent values which lie at the basis of world culture” (p. 410). By questioning the relationship between subject and object, social ethics offers a chance to see people who are considered weak, deficient, vulnerable, and needy and those who are not as co-subjects (Apel, 1993, p. 12). Co-subjects are people – social workers, clients, other coworkers – who cooperate in awareness of each other’s vulnerabilities without infantilizing them.6 Being a co-subject requires that we consider the way we conduct ourselves and the consequences of our actions in addition to our intentions. Moreover, it demands that we take into account the overarching structural and political context while seeking to create a more inclusive society overall (Moser, 2005, p.  797). An ethics of social work considers not only the current state of the field but also the ways conflicts arise; not only duties, rules, and good actions but also violations, malpractice, and misconduct. In the next section, I look at the normative content of social practice – be it performed by professionals or nonprofessionals – and identify specific theoretical building blocks for an ethics of care.

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In  doing so, I draw on particular aspects of practice to elaborate a general framework for such an ethics.

The Ethics of Care in Social Work Many social workers and volunteers understand care as an essential and integral part of their work. Care describes a general ethos in social work, a kind of basic conviction put into practice.7 It is about an assessment of the practice in the conduct of the action; action and the reflection of action go hand in hand. In the past decade, those who study the ethics of care have emphasized the importance of experience in reflection and problem solving (Barnes, 2012; Pratesi, 2011) and the impact of responsibility in interpersonal relationships, organizational environments, and policy choices (Held, 2010; Tronto, 2010). The ethics of care requires that we build, strengthen, renew, and restore social relations through attentive communication (Conradi, 2015, p. 118; Robinson, 2011, p. 857; Walker, 2006, p. 162ff.). This basic conviction hews to the idea that we should “not to turn away from someone in need” (Gilligan, 1988, p. 73). Carol Gilligan and Joan Tronto highlight two important elements of this idea and, by extension, of what an ethics of care in social work comprises. Gilligan, a psychologist by training, emphasizes that this moral intuition expresses itself in an individual’s orientation toward others. Tronto, a professor of political science, regards it as the impetus for certain kinds of care-giving activities. For Gilligan (1987), not turning away from someone in need means not abandoning him or her (p. 32). It is about initiating and maintaining relationships and solidifying bonds through conversation. She believes that feelings of loneliness and apathy result from a paucity of contact with others (Gilligan, 1988, p. xviii). Tronto (1993) stresses acts of assistance in which we involve ourselves with others’ situations, give them our attention, and accommodate their needs (p.  127ff.). She  believes that, in general, people pay too little attention to others on account of selfishness and because of what she calls “privileged irresponsibility,” a product of societal structures that allow some to avoid taking responsibility for others (p.  121). In sum, then, an  ethics of care is

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about initiating, maintaining, and strengthening relationships; and about satisfying peoples’ needs through active assistance (Conradi, 2018, p. 27; Gilligan, 1988, p. xviii; Tronto, 1993, p. 118). In social work, care does not take place alongside other activities; it is an inherent part of the process. Care is not the icing on the cake of professional social work, as it were, something that could be omitted whenever there’s need to cut back. Care is more like sugar. Without it, the cake might still look and smell like an ordinary cake, but one bite would reveal it to be a fake, bereft of the crucial ingredient that makes it cake. The idea that care permeates social work like sugar does cake may lead to the erroneous conclusion that this is all care is. But the fact that social workers can perform their work with care is what makes it ethically relevant. Care is more than a belief about how professional social workers and volunteers understand their work. It plays a crucial role in an ethics of care for many fields, and is central in everyday interactions, in friendships, and in civic engagement. The ethics of care offers the foundation for a variety of related concepts of which an ethics of social work is merely a part (Koggel & Orme, 2010; Reamer 2016; Ward & Barnes, 2016).8 Conversely, an ethics of social work need not be exhausted by an ethics of care. It might also include the reconciliation of conflicts that arise between duties. I believe that it is time to advance an ethics of social work to which various fields contribute: philosophy, education, gender studies, social work, nursing science, disability studies, medical ethics, theology, and political science. There is already a number of approaches within these disciplines that deal directly with the practice of care. But so far interdisciplinary collaboration has only just begun to emerge. Even if an ethics of care is not identical to an ethics of social work, the former is crucial for developing an interdisciplinary ethics of social work. For an ethics centered on care, it is key that practitioners include themselves among those they help. Ideally, they would find a balance between care of self and care of others. This attentiveness to both types of care is not grounded in a universal human essence that, through a free exercise of will, responds to the feeling of respect for the moral law,

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as in Kantian ethics. If there’s a universal underlying attentiveness, it is more likely to be reliance than autonomy. For all human beings must rely on each other, and practices of care often encounter individuals with differing levels of autonomy. Unlike respect for the moral law, a kind of right presumed to inhabit every individual, care is an interactive process. As such, it cannot be supposed; it arises between individuals as each turns to the other. This is especially important in moments of conflict, where disputants work to find common ground. Though an ethics of care does not start from the ideal of autonomous actors – be they care recipients or caregivers – it does aim to achieve self-determination as a result of care practices. The independence that care seeks to promote is not restricted to the mobility of individuals. It also extends to life planning, the availability of choices, deinstitutionalization, and the monitoring of how help is performed. In the vast majority of cases, an essential part of independence is the multifold inclusion of body and senses (Hamington, 2004, p.  55). While ethical deliberation in Kant’s philosophy is purely a cognitive affair where dignity lies in controlling one’s physical needs, the ethics of care is devoted to the conditions of the possibility of a broader, practical independence that may be accompanied by freedom of choice but is neither based on nor restricted to it. I don’t want to suggest a tidy opposition with cognitive decisionmaking on the one hand and physical capability on the other. One need not understand individual exercises of will as solipsistic, purely cognitive acts, or think of collective acts of will as arising only from a social contract. Rather, it is conceivable that multiple people might try to develop suitable options for individuals or groups. And promoting independence need not limit itself to physical rehabilitation and making the body more fit for everyday life. It can also help people find enjoyment in making their own decisions. Trained life coaches and experienced care-givers can identify past decisions and preferences from current courses of action. And on the basis of reactions to actions taken, they can determine whether their clients feel better than before. I now want to quickly touch on six additional elements of an ethics of care implicit in the discussion so far that merit separate mention.

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The first is presence. It consists of involving ourselves in other people’s lives and giving them our attention (Timmerman & Baart, 2016). More often than not, it is an ongoing process (Tronto, 1993, p. 103) that demands reliability (Käppeli, 2004, p. 282). A related part of presence is taking responsibility (Tronto, 1993, p. 133ff.). Caregivers bring to bear their expertise in interceding on behalf of care recipients; they advocate for their rights, dignity, needs, and interests (Käppeli, 2004, p.  282). In doing so, caregivers seek to identify ways of empowering everyone involved. These three elements of care begin at the individual level and extend to the political, covering specific social interactions, creating their societal context, and intervening in policy issues. The three other elements I want to mention concern social ethics and society in general. The first is that care is a gift and not an obligatory quid-pro-quo (Conradi, 2015, p. 121; Schnabl, 2011, p. 138). To give this gift means hearing the call for aid and support and drawing the appropriate consequences (Tronto, 1993, p. 127). In my understanding, an ethics of care escribes a common mode of moral action in which attentiveness takes place among persons. The quality of the contact established among participants within a relationship is, therefore, part of successful ethical action. At the same time, and in contrast to traditional notions of social determination, I understand the process of moral action to produce diverse forms of relating to others. Indeed, it is essential to the ethics of care that we understand the process of moral judgement and moral action as productive in this way. As Tronto (1993) explains, the way people respond to calls for support and aid is pivotal (p. 127). Do they take part with interest? Do they respond positively or negatively? Care is about hearing the call for aid and support and taking appropriate action. Finally, care consists of the valuing of those who provide it as well as those who receive it.9 This can also include nonverbal care and physical contact linking thought, feeling, and action.

Conclusion Let me finish this chapter with a short conclusion. Social workers and volunteers need to position themselves ethically before, during,

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and after an action. Conventional philosophical categories cannot provide them with the tools to do so. The development of a social work ethics needs the reflection of practical experiences. If philosophy is to contribute to those ethics, it needs relational concepts that do more than justify the personal actions of single individuals. Ethics in the context of social work arises out of systematic reflection on social activities and the experiences of solving problems in the social sphere. Social ethics in the context of social work has a strong overlap with the ethics of care. Well-known ethical terms that assume new meaning in the ethics of care such as empathy, benevolence, altruism, responsibility, need, and what the French call accompagnement can shed light on interactions in the social sphere. Although most care ethicists do not start with social work, social work practice and social work ethics can both benefit from and have an impact on care ethics. On the one hand, practitioners of social work – whether they are professionals or volunteers – can communicate their experiences of solving difficulties in contributing to care ethics. On the other hand, care ethicists can provide concepts that may help in finding terms to express practical experiences in dealing with social work problems. Care ethicists might be inspired to study the texts of social work pioneers from the early twenty century in order to strengthen their approach and gain ideas for drawing new distinctions and developing new capacities. Care ethicists might also present their ideas in a way that verifies the practices of social workers rather than imposing ethical categories from above. In reflecting on the quality and correctness of their practice, practitioners in the social work profession might be inspired to draw on unconventional philosophical concepts that have assumed new ethical importance in the ethics of care. In addition to the already mentioned terms – presence, responsibility, empowering, relationality – these include responsive connectedness, context sensitivity, judgement, and transformation. The ethics of care provides a framework that can help express the experiences and ideas that social workers gain while solving conflicts.

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Reference List Addams, J. (1913). Zwanzig Jahre sozialer Frauenarbeit in Chicago [Twenty years of social work for women in Chicago] (E. Münsterberg, Trans.). With an introduction by A. Salomon. Munich: Beck. Addams, J. (1964). Democracy and social ethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard-Belknap Press. (Original work published 1902). Addams, J. (1930a). The second twenty years at Hull-House: September 1909 to September 1929. New York: MacMillan. Addams, J. (1930b). Widening the circle of Enlightenment: Hull House and adult education. Journal of Adult Education, 2, 276-279. Apel, K-O. (1993). How to ground a universalistic ethics of co-responsibility for the effects of collective actions and activities? Philosophica, 52(2), 9-19. Arendt, H. (1998). The human condition (2nd ed.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Aristotle (2009). The politics (Oxford World’s Classics). (E. Barker, Trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bareis, E., Kessl, F., Leitner, S., & Sandermann, P. (2017). Zur Transformation sozialer Arbeit: Ein Streitgespräch [On the transformation of social work: A dispute]. In O. Bilgi, M. Frühauf, & K. Schulze (Eds.), Widersprüche gesellschaftlicher Integration: Zur Transformation sozialer Arbeit. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Barnes, M., & Cotterell, P. (2012). Critical perspectives on user involvement. Bristol: Policy Press. Barnes, M. (2012). Care in everyday life: An ethic of care in practice. New York: Policy Press. Benner, P., & Wrubel, J. (1989). The primacy of caring: Stress and coping in health and illness. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley. Brückner, M. (2012). Understanding professional care from the viewpoint of care receivers and care givers – the necessity of a special care rationality. Social Work & Society 10(2), 1-10. Conradi, E. (2011). Kosmopolitische Zivilgesellschaft: Inklusion durch gelinge des Handeln [Cosmopolitan civil society: Inclusion through successful practice]. Frankfurt a/Main: Campus. Conradi, E. (2015). Redoing care: Societal transformation through critical practice. Ethics & Social Welfare 9(2), 113-129. Conradi, E. (2018). Forgotten approaches to care: The human being as neighbour in the German-Jewish Tradition of the nineteenth century. In F. Krause & J. Boldt (Eds.), Care in healthcare. London: Palgrave & Macmillan. Conradi, E., & Heier, J. (2014). Towards a political theory of care. In G.  Olthuis, H. Kohlen, & J. Heier (Eds.), Moral boundaries redrawn: The significance of Joan Tronto’s argument for political theory, professional ethics, and care practice (pp. 29-50). In Ethics of Care Series. Louvain: Peeters. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Gilligan, C. (1987). Moral orientation and moral development. In E.  Kittay & D.  Meyers (Eds.), Women and moral theory (pp.  19-33). Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield.

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Gilligan, C. et al. (Eds). (1988). Mapping the moral domain. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Großmaß, R., & Perko, G. (2011). Ethik für soziale Berufe [Ethics for social professions]. Paderborn: Schöningh. Hamington, M. (2004). Embodied care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merlau-Ponty, and feminist ethics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Held, V. (2010). Can the ethics of care handle violence? Ethics and Social Welfare 4(2), 115-129. Kant, I. (1999). Critique of pure reason. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1781, rev. 2nd ed. published 1787). Kant, I. (2015). Critique of practical reason. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1788) Käppeli, S. (2004). Vom Glaubenswerk zur Pflegewissenschaft: Geschichte des MitLeidens in der christlichen, jüdischen und freiberuflichen Krankenpflege [From faith to nursing science: History of co-suffering in Christian, Jewish, and freelance nursing]. Bern: Huber. Koggel, C., & Orme, J. (2010). Care ethics: New theories and applications. Ethics and Social Welfare, 42, 109-114. Mayeroff, M. (1965). On caring. International Philosophical Quarterly 5(3), 462-74. Moser, V. (2005). German training schools. In G. L. Albrecht (Ed.), Encyclopedia of disability (Vol. 2, pp. 796-797). Thousand Oaks: Sage. Pease, B., Vreugdenhil, A., & Standford, S. (Eds.). (2018). Critical ethics of care in social work: Transforming the politics and practices of caring. London: Routledge. Pratesi, A. (2011). The productivity of care: Contextualizing care in situated interaction and shedding light on its latent purposes. Ethics and Social Welfare, 5(2), 123-137. Reamer, F. (1999). Social work values and ethics. New York: Columbia University Press. Reamer, F. (2001). Tangled relationships: Managing boundary issues in the human services. New York: Columbia University Press. Reamer, F. (2014). The evolution of social work ethics: Bearing witness. Advances in Social Work 15(1), 163-181. Reamer, F. (2016). Eye on ethics: The ethics of care. Social Work Today. Retrieved from https://www.socialworktoday.com/news/eoe_0916.shtml Richmond, M. (1903). Friendly visiting among the poor: A handbook for charity workers. New York: The Macmillan Company. (Original work published 1899) Robinson, F. (2011). Stop talking and listen: Discourse ethics and care ethics. International Political Theory Millennium – Journal of International Studies 39, 845-860. Salomon, A. (1937). Education for social work: A sociological interpretation based on an  international survey. International Committee of Schools of Social Work. Zürich: Verl. Recht u. Gesellschaft. Schnabl, C. (2011). Justice, care and (the) recognition (of dependency and vulnerability). In C.  Leget, C.  Gastmans, & M.  Verkerk (Eds.), Care, compassion and recognition: An ethical discussion (pp. 131-142). In Ethics of Care Series. Louvain: Peeters.

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Shakespeare, T. (2000). Help: imagining welfare. Birmingham: Venture Press. Timmerman, G., & Baart, A. (2016). Präsentische Praxis und die Theorie der Präsenz [Practice and theory of presence]. In E.  Conradi & F.  Vosman (Eds.), Praxis der Achtsamkeit: Schlüsselbegriffe der Care-Ethik (pp. 189-208). Frankfurt a/Main: Campus. Tronto, J. C. (1993). Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. New York: Routledge. Tronto, J. C. (2010). Creating caring institutions: Politics, plurality and purpose. Ethics & Social Welfare, 4(2), 158-171. Tronto, J. C. (2013). Caring democracy: Markets, equality, and justice. New York: New York University Press. Walker, M. U. (2006). The curious case of care and restorative justice in the U.S. context. In M. Hamington & D. Miller (Eds.), Socializing care: Feminist ethics and public issues (pp. 145-162). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Ward, L., & Barnes, M. (2016). Transforming practice with older people through an ethic of care. British Journal of Social Work 46(4), 906-922. Weber, M. (2004). The vocation lectures (R. Livingstone, Trans.) Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. (Original work published 1919) Wendt, W. R. (2017). Die Gesellschaft vor der sozialen Frage 1750 bis 1900 [Society and the social challenge 1750 to 1900] (6th, rev. and expanded ed.). Wiesbaden: Springer. Young, I. M. (1994). Punishment, treatment, empowerment: Three approaches to policy for pregnant addicts. Feminist Studies, 20(1), 33-57.

Notes 1 Many thanks to Dominic Bonfiglio for his translation of this essay from the German and for his suggestions during the revision of the English manuscript. 3 For instance, Patricia Benner and Judith Wrubel developed a concept of care particular for the field of nursing (Benner & Wrubel, 1989). While Benner and Wrubel argue that nurses are experts in the kind of caring practiced by ordinary people more generally (Benner & Wrubel, 1989, pp. 377, p. 398), Jane Brody, Madeleine Leininger and Jean Watson go further, asserting that nursing represents a unique form of care. 3 In this respect, I must strenuously disagree with Reamer, who in an otherwise insightful article claims that “during this period social work was much more concerned about the morality of the client than about the morality or ethics of the profession or its practitioners” (Reamer, 2014, p. 166). 4 While social work education is a well-established discipline in many countries, and English-language scholarship in the field is abundant and wide-ranging, it has yet to attain a comparable status in Germany and other German-speaking countries. 5 I use “act well” in the sense of Aristotle’s eu prattein. Importantly, Aristotle distinguishes eu prattein from eudaimonia, a kind of happiness or human flourishing. For more on this subject, see Conradi (2011, p. 142) as well as book 7, chapter 3 of Aristotle’s The Politics.

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6 In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt understands the Greek idea of praxis as a “coexistence” (Arendt, 1981, pp. 245-248) and an “acting together” (p. 198). She speaks of the “human togetherness” (p. 180) and the “web of human relationships” (p.  180) that arises from acting in concert. Arendt argues for a concept of politics focused not on rule but on action and on acting together. She is careful to distinguish situations where “people are with others” from those where they are merely “for . . . them” (p. 180). 7 While the ethics of care and its political dimension have been the subject of lively discussion in Europe, theorists in German-language regions have only just begun to talk about the ethics of care in social work (Brückner 2012; Großmaß & Perko, 2011, p. 134–168). 8 Research on care focuses on a host of areas that are relevant to the field of social work: emotions, relationships, and solidarity; work and migration; nursing; participatory parity‚ democracy and care; civil society, welfare, and communities; organizing, repair, and peace building. 9 Belief in the value of “caring labor and activities” and of “connection and relationship” is one of the four care convictions identified by Margret Urban Walker (2006, p. 148).

Care and the New Patterns of Precarity Flávia Biroli “Y esa interdependencia no es una carencia, no se trata de echarse las manos a la cabeza por la imposibilidad de ser autosuficientes” (Precarias a la deriva, 2004, p. 243)1

Introduction Interrelation and interdependency have been key issues for academic approaches about care and in the field of care ethics in recent decades. In order to analyze the dilemmas people face to care for others and to be cared for, these approaches develop from the assumption that we live with others and experience dependency in varying degrees during the different stages of life. Much has changed in this field since the publication of the first studies in the 1980s (Held, 2006). Research on care ethics and caring practices has become more complex with the inclusion of experiences and challenges coming from different social contexts in a globalized world (Robinson, 2011). For a point of departure, I draw on interdependency as a human fact. This interdependence is contextualized within the unequal conditions of caring and being cared for in the current stage of capitalism. Concepts such as de-democratization and economization have been recently utilized to describe the weakening of democratic regimes by the expansion of market paradigms that shape state institutions and every dimension of life (Brown, 2015; Dardot & Laval, 2016; Fraser, 2015; Lorey, 2015). New subjectivities are thus produced and, as some have argued, are key to the development of new

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kinds of governmentality (Brown, 2015; Dardot & Laval, 2016; Lorey, 2015). As boundaries and frontiers between public and private spheres – and with them the boundaries between politics and market, social and personal responsibilities, human affections and commodities – change, so do the ways individuals experience subjectivity and relationships. I argue that the changing features of care and interdependence are inescapable for the analysis of capitalism and democracy today, posing an important challenge to an ethics of care in its commitment to democratic values. Many researchers have shown how conditions to care for and to be cared for are affected by political decisions – including political decisions that posit the responsibility for care as a private matter by withdrawing the public budget and weakening policies focused on care (Esping-Andersen, 2009; Folbre, 1994, 2001; Fraser, 2016; Hirata & Guimarães, 2012; Precarias a la deriva, 2003; Williams, 2010). Caring and democratic deficits have been presented as “two sides of the same coin” (Tronto, 2013, p. 37) and the “crisis of care” has been interpreted as an “expression of the social reproductive contradictions of financialized capitalism” (Fraser, 2016, p. 99). These diagnostics will be discussed further in this chapter. Beyond care’s significance in current political impasses, could care also be set as the social and political reality from which we criticize “de-democratization” and its effects? Joan Tronto (2017) has suggested that care stands as an alternative to neoliberalism. I agree that care, defined within a democratic framework, could be the normative terrain from which we evaluate “disaster capitalism,” to quote Naomi Klein (2007). An ethics of care could be an alternative to competitive rationality, exposing the fact that this rationality is not “the” only way for individuals to survive the turmoil of the current crisis. However, it needs to face neoliberal rationality as such – not as an ideology that reality will eventually reverse, but as a “generalized normative logic” (Dardot & Laval, 2016, p.  34). This chapter focuses on care as a main issue to understand the connections between inequality, precariousness and the weakening of democracies. From the theoretical perspective that I assume here, an everlasting human need

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for care is not immune to the shaping of subjective expectations and fears within changing political rationalities. In the first section, I argue that care work is presently set as a gendered and racialized issue, although some of its gendered features have significantly changed. Sexual and racial division of labor are central to understanding the devaluing of care and the effects of specific social arrangements on caring demands and relationships. The need for care is unequally met, the possibilities to care for others are not evenly distributed, and the positions taken in care work reflect the unequal access to significant social resources, such as money, time, and political influence. Responsibilities may be allocated in ways that confront those patterns or contribute to their reproduction. The second section discusses the effects of the privatization of responsibilities. Making families and individuals responsible for a large share of care needs concerning children, the elderly, people who have special needs, and other significant ones, reinforces class, gender, and racial inequalities. It also reinforces commodification and inequality, as many will not be in a position to hire services from the labor market. Although “personal responsibility” is often codified as the result of voluntary choices, irresponsibility as a political issue is fundamental to understanding insecurity and “precarization” in a global financialized society. The last section discusses neoliberalism as a logic that organizes boundaries and frontiers between public and private life, democratic concerns, and corporative interests. Considering its impacts on individual lives and collective perspectives, I also draw some final considerations on the potential of a political care ethics in order to face the crisis of care and the crisis of democracy.

Care Work, a Gendered Issue Distinctions between the domestic and the public were intensified with the development of industrial capitalism. In this process, most of what we define as “care work” became classified as non-productive work. As a wide range of care activities was performed in the home environment, social reproduction2 ensured the close connection

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between “natural” roles and the responsibilities within the family. Much has changed since the time this was the prevailing configuration. As production took on new forms during different stages of capitalism, social reproduction and its contradictions were presented in distinctive guises (Fraser, 2016, p. 100). Changes in gender roles came along with redefinitions of the borders between the public, the economic, and the domestic. Conflicting politics of “responsibilization” accompanied and conformed them. In important ways, “care is no longer ‘at home’” (Tronto, 2013, p.  1) as it was, at least in the ideals and ideologies of 19th century liberal capitalism. Nevertheless, we may encounter very different meanings for this assertion if we think of post-war state-managed capitalism or the neoliberal regime that followed it (Fraser, 2016, p. 100). Private patriarchy, as it was defined by Sylvia Walby (1990), implied in this context close ties between production and social reproduction. Gender relations and the family were deeply affected by the separation between households and workplaces, which came along with the progressive specialization of the workforce. Women’s disadvantages in a changing world were strongly related to how social reproduction and gender roles were reorganized along with new patterns of production, redefined places, tasks, meanings, and duration of work. However, the split between home and work, a “general tendency” in the development of industrial capitalism, is not enough to explain a “particular” historic mode, that is, private patriarchy and the attribution of domestic work and responsibilities to women (Barrett, 1985, pp. 164-165). Naturalist ideologies had an important function in the 19th century, when a woman’s role had to be redefined as an answer to a crucial – but not always spoken or politically discussed – question, “who was to be primarily responsible for childcare?” (Barrett, 1985, p.  165). According to the same author, an ideology that was previous to capitalism and advantageous to men, set the conditions to answer that question. Political decisions on the allocation of responsibility had its role in updating and institutionalizing them. That is how women stepped into modernity: the normative ideal of motherhood largely defined femininity, as women were incorporated

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into industrial workforce in devalued positions and earning lower wages in comparison to men. Marginality in the workforce and in politics are different and complementary dimensions of a renewed patriarchal order, in which the strategies pursued by male trade unions to guarantee better wages for men reaffirmed the sexual division of care work. As state-managed capitalism took its course in European countries after the Second World War, gender exploitation was increasingly organized by the state, which defined market rules and practices in the “public patriarchy” (Walby, 1990). In this arrangement, collective exploitation is still anchored in private modes of exploitation, normalized by institutions, cultural norms and, significantly, by the absence of political alternatives to private arrangements that assign care responsibilities to women. Informal practices and ideologies that make gender roles in domestic life an advantage to women’s participation in public life converge in long lasting disadvantages for them (Biroli, 2016, 2018). Modernity affects gender rules and the pillars of “private patriarchy,” entailing new forms of prestige and oppression. Nevertheless, the social turn to which this amounts to, is diverse if we focus on the colonized world. Communities in Central and South America experienced public and domestic space as a duality in which the former did not subsume the latter or opposed it as private (Segato, 2016, p. 93). Once this world was captured by colonial domination, public space became “universal” and turned into the locus for every discourse aiming to be recognized as political. This is the genealogy of the state and the public that as “the son of colonial capture” has now the monopoly of what is legitimately political. Only then would the domestic become “the residual other,” incapable of producing statements understood as of universal value and general interest (Segato, 2016, p. 94). In keeping with this, the depreciation of communal life is equivalent to the expropriation of relational meanings of social life. It sets in motion the transition from “low-intensity” to “high-intensity” patriarchy, placing gender violence as the shadow of a broader violent domination that reorganized hierarchies (Segato, 2016, p. 94). Colonialism and racism make it difficult to assume a progressive

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narrative concerning the position of women, as if it necessarily equaled the overcoming of domesticity, itself a contested concept when we take a distance from Eurocentric perspectives. The racial matrix of patriarchy is crucial to understanding why the public and private dichotomy conforms women’s lives in distinct ways. Care work has long been racialized. In Brazil, it was first performed by women who were “house slaves” and, until today, mostly by black women hired as “maids” (Bruschini & Lombardi, 2010). Women often leave their communities in rural areas or poor hometowns for domestic jobs in other parts of the country when they are still girls. They work and live in the houses of wealthier families, taking care of children not much younger than themselves, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, ironing clothes. Children in domestic work are mostly female (93,7%) and black (67%), similar to the percentages of adult domestic workers. Gender and racial patterns act upon socialization, as the access to education and occupational alternatives is restricted by illegal labor and by the exposure of children to many kinds of abuses (reports FNPETI3 in 2013). The same household may offer different levels of protection and be organized in multiple caring arrangements revealing solidarity as much as gender, race, and class oppression. In public and high-intensity patriarchy (Walby, 1990; Segato, 2016), care work is racialized and still mostly done by women, be it paid or unpaid. Its social characterization as female work and, furthermore, as non-white female work is the basis for its devaluation. Furthermore, the devaluation of care work is itself an element of the devaluing of the social status of workers performing care work. This has much to do with the actual patterns of exploitable dependency and the relative vulnerability of women. Alternative professional careers for those who perform gratuitous care work are likely impaired by them taking on the responsibility for this work. Those who perform care work so that other women may have more advantageous opportunities, are poorly paid. That is why feminism has long pointed to domesticity and care work as chains from which women wish to be released (Friedan, 2001). Many have warned, though, against the

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narrow-sighted disposition of this approach. Caring for the closest and loved ones could also be seen as a privilege as most women, especially black women, have experienced structural obstacles in order to be in that position (Collins, 1990; Hooks, 1984). Care work is connected to different modes of dependency. Developmental dependency is inevitable and requires nurturance, care, and support. It is a regular feature of human life that demands varying levels of engagement by others in caretaking, whether we are talking about young children, the elderly, or persons with physical or cognitive disabilities. Inevitably, it generates derivative dependency, as “those who care for others are themselves dependent on resources in order to undertake that care” (Fineman, 2004, pp. 35-36). The sexual division of labor makes derivative dependence a gendered issue. Privatization makes this gendered issue a family matter, although we should remember that social institutions and the economy are, actually, dependent on familial (mostly women’s) care work. It may be performed to the advantage of people who could have done it themselves, for example when a wife prepares a meal for her husband, irons his shirts, or takes care of their kids to enable him to have longer hours of work or free time to watch a soccer game. It may also be performed to meet the needs of people who could not possibly take care of themselves. Changing diapers, preparing meals for children, and even accompanying disabled or elderly people, while taking a walk in the neighborhood or go to a doctor’s appointment, all fit this second alternative. The level of dependency experienced by the one benefitting from the care work provided by others is key to understanding the issue. Asymmetries are deeply rooted in gendered social roles in the first examples and developmental dependency and human fragility in the second. Providers and recipients of care are differently positioned not only in their needs or, as will be discussed later, in the public acknowledgment of their needs, but also in their possibilities to take care of others and themselves. Another way to approach asymmetries in care work is whether it is paid or not. Here the focus is also on relationships, but specifically on their social and institutional meanings. Whether or not monetary

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value is attributed to the work performed in the context of these relationships is a central issue. Typically, a wife is not paid for preparing meals for her husband, a mother is considered responsible (or parents are, when the sexual division of labor is less strict) for changing diapers and keeping babies clean and safe, and this is frequently not defined as work. However, when the same activities are carried out by people who are not connected as family to the receivers of this form of care, monetary value is (generally) attached to it, be it performed in a household or in care facility context. In these examples, the type and the quality of the work performed do not change its status; its condition of being costless is not affected. This happens because free of cost is accepted and expected within marriages and is extended to care typically performed by women to the advantage of other members of the family. Delphy and Leonard (1992) illustrated this fact with the example of a man marrying his maid or a prostitute: the same work, they say, would suddenly become gratuitous and non-productive. Anticipating arguments that will be further developed, it should be stressed that being free of charge is not a problem or an injustice per se. Present arrangements though, make it an important nexus in the social devaluing of care work and make women more vulnerable to exploitable dependency – within and outside the borders of domestic life. In the present era, when public budget and attention to care needs are being drastically reduced in many countries, privatized care may signal a lack of economic resources to engage in commodified relations of care. Thus, another factor to be considered is the degree of formality in care work relations, which might be connected to alternative definitions of caretaking. There may be an increase in monetary value and social appreciation if it is defined as a profession and regulated by labor legislation. Beyond explicit norms, layers of cultural practices and social hierarchies define ideas and habits, as in the controversial issue related to the legal definition of “care-worker” and how it differs from the category of “maid” in Brazil (Guimarães, 2016).4 Informal and precarious work and work conditions prevail in interclass relations of care, although this is also the domain of explicitly

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contractual relations. Migration adds to gendered cycles of informality in the job supply, exposing very clearly what may be taken as a general feature of capitalism in its actual patterns. Intra-class relations of care may be even less formalized. In this case, family and community networks are brought to the center of care arrangements. In working-class neighborhoods, care is often performed in complex networks of interpersonal support and solidarity (Collins, 2009; Sarti, 2011). It also constitutes an arena of informal economic relations, especially when unemployment rates are high, life costs increase, and social care services are not available or seen as trustworthy (Faur, 2012). Community-based childcare may be an expression of the lack of public care policy and equipment as much as an evidence of networks of cooperation that surpass the nuclear family in performing care and taking responsibility. Patricia Hill Collins (2009, p. 193) has described these “women-centered networks of blood mothers and othermothers” in black communities in the United States in ways that are very similar to patterns found in research in metropolitan areas in South America (Faur, 2012; Georges & Garcia dos Santos, 2016; Sarti, 2011). Race relations offer another approach to maternity and care. In Brazil, thinking of maternity as a private experience might hide the fact that many children are still taken care of by black women employed as “maids,” similar to being mothered by enslaved black women in earlier times (Gonzalez, 1984). In this wider sense, mothering may be constituted of love and racism. Intimate proximity and social distance (or even revulsion) constitute a complex set of feelings, values, and relationships (Brites, 2007; Guimarães, 2016). This adds to definitions of care as work, but it also makes us aware of the fact that it is a kind of work that produces ambiguous and ambivalent affections (Molinier, 2014, p. 20). The social experience that enfolds ambiguous proximity and affections also refers to larger networks of care and precarity. The same women who mother white children in wealthier neighborhoods fight against the violence that affects their own children in peripheral areas. Matriarchy in misery is a counterpart of the maternity ideal in

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unequal societies (Carneiro, 2011, p.  127) where a caring environment is denied to many, although mothers are, despite that, socially judged as if accountable for the social misery and violence that compromises the life of their children. Some of them have organized themselves, bringing to the public arena the political activism of “outraged mothering” (Rocha, 2014, p. 51). The devaluing of care work is connected to a gendered and racialized division of work. In this sense, it is attached to male and white privilege as well. While some people take responsibility for care in households or communities and/or assume badly paid domestic and care work, others are exempted from it. Structural inequalities feed the unequal allocation of care work, distributing burdens and joys according to gender, class, race, ethnicity, and nationality. Some individuals will likely perform gratuitous privatized care work, some will have the opportunity to hire care workers, others will more likely be in the position of being hired as care workers and may close the cycle as they also perform gratuitous care work in their own households and communities. These cycles of “responsibilization” are better understood if we analyze the social definition of responsibilities instead of focusing on people’s choices.

Need and Responsibility Ontological assumptions about human fragility and connectedness have been put at the center of a feminist ethics of care (Tronto, 2013, pp. 30-31). This account of human nature is not contradictory with the recognition of the fundamentally social character of experiences of fragility and connectedness. Those experiences are diverse for many reasons, including developmental issues and the way they are approached in different contexts, physical and neural diversity, cultural meanings, environmental conditions and natural resources, technological developments and, of course, institutions and political decisions concerning resource allocation and public policy. They are also experienced differently because needs are unequally voiced and met. The fundamental political issue here is whether and how fragility is codified as a need in the public debate and what are the social

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responses to the needs that are brought to the public sphere as political matters. Analyzing conflicting interpretations of needs, Nancy Fraser (2013) has called attention to “the struggle to validate the need as a matter of legitimate political concern or to enclave it as a nonpolitical matter” (p.  57).5 This struggle over the political status of needs was defined as the first of three interrelated moments in “the politics of need interpretation” (Fraser, 2013, p.  54). The second one concerns who would be in the position to interpret the needs recognized as of political significance and, therefore, define these needs once they are recognized as deserving political attention. Once these are recognized and interpreted, it needs to be determined how they will be addressed and what resources will be allocated to meet these needs. This final moment is still under political dispute. Struggles over needs take place within broader disputes on the boundaries between the political, the domestic, and the market. They could also have impacts on the political agenda and the state. How much collective responsibility does society assume in respect to children and what does that mean, practically? Children’s need for protection against violence has been transformed into rights in many countries with relatively little contestation. Children’s need for some level of security requiring budget allocation and care work – for example, adequate shelter and nourishment – is quite agreed upon, but its conversion into rights to housing and food is nevertheless a subject for further discussion. The line drawn between public and private responsibility is also at stake in this case. In Brazil, a successful conditional income transfer program that focuses on poor families (called “Programa Bolsa Família”) commenced in 2003 and benefitted 13,7 million families and approximately 50 million people in 2015. The program’s objective is to supplement the income of poor families via a benefit delivered to women (mothers) who must guarantee that their children are in school. It is undeniable that it has reduced poverty and also helped to increase the number of children in school. It also advanced a political agenda, i.e. social responsibility concerning children, poverty, and education. Children’s welfare is the main goal

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and women are set as agents between the state and families and made responsible for keeping children in school (Georges & Garcia dos Santos, 2016, p. 275). In a way, established and unjust allocation of responsibilities were taken for granted when women were positioned in their traditional roles as mothers and caregivers (Mariano & Carlotto, 2010). Thus, the program reinforces arrangements that produce significant vulnerabilities. On the other hand, with the current arrangements, women are effectively responsible to care for their children and exercise autonomy and responsibility within these conditions. Some have reported that the benefit has allowed them to leave violent relationships or to make new claims concerning marital arrangements and individual autonomy (Rego & Pinzani, 2014). Sexual and racial divisions of labor position individuals very differently in caring relations, as we have seen. Advantages and disadvantages are settled reflecting existing hierarchies of sex, race, and class and contributing to their reproduction. These are inversely correlated to hierarchies in political representation and voicing: the more they take responsibility in care work, the slighter the chances that they will be able to take part in public debate or take up a political office. In Brazil, women spend double the amount of time as men in domestic work (Fontoura & Araújo, 2016) and are the large majority among those who perform care work (Hirata & Guimarães, 2012). On the other hand, they are far from being voiced as much as men in political news (Miguel & Biroli, 2011), and have never reached more than 10% in the Chamber of Deputies, although they have the right to vote since the 1930s and their participation is supported by a law that reserves 30% of candidacies for women in proportional elections since 1997.6 There are significant connections between the relative position of individuals and groups in the assessment of care, the unequal allocation of responsibility for care and the voicing of needs and interests in public debates.7 Approaching need in a merely distributive model would not be enough because interpreting it and taking part in decision processes concerning public policy and budget are key political issues. The distributive dimension of politics will not be democratically framed if

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we do not include in our theoretical approaches the unequal capacity of groups to act collectively and produce political effects. Responsibility for care is a crucial political issue that may not frame public discussion or even be framed as a public matter. There is a two-way movement, from unjust assignments of care responsibilities to the imbalance of political influence and, then again, from political influence to the reinforcement of unjust assignments of responsibility. Tronto (2013) draws attention to the fact that “social and political institutions permit some to bear the burdens (and joys) of care and allow others to escape them” (p.  32). Among the latter would be those “presumed to have less interest and concern with such matters as protection, production, self-aggrandizement, or wealth” (p.  33) and, I add, those who would not carry enough political ambition and would be voluntarily at the margins of political decisions that affect them, their employment prospects, and their engagement in care relationships. Here we could underline another issue concerning need interpretation. If some groups are excluded from public debate and deliberation, necessities might be interpreted in ways that prevent changes in unjust arrangements. This is even more of a compelling issue when we deal with conflicting responsibilities. Within predominantly masculine legislative bodies, the understanding that children’s needs justify measures to keep them with their mothers in the first years of their lives, could easily prevail. Alternatively, if women’s needs are considered and gender inequalities are a political concern, the idea that mothers (and not parents) should be conditioned to stay with young children could be put in perspective and balanced among conflicting reasons and needs. Similarly, if we have a heterogeneous body in terms of class interests, the same idea may be addressed from the perspective of working class mothers and fathers and public and collective alternatives could have better chances to gain ground. The comparative focus on individual capacities to accept certain responsibilities (Anderson, 1999, p.  289) is far from a realistic approach of the social dynamics that make some responsible while others are granted exemption. That is why the focus on “privileged

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irresponsibility” gives us a better perspective to understand “the way that some groups may be able to give themselves ‘passes’ out of certain forms of responsibility” (Tronto, 2013, p. 64). Because the assignment of responsibilities is determined on gendered and racial bases and deeply rooted in class society, the focus on individual choices and moral deserving leads to a kind of “amnesia about the relationship between social groups” (Phillips, 1999, p.  58) and displaces dominance and oppression as central issues of analysis and political concerns. People’s preferences and choices emerge in circumstances that are “beyond a single person’s control” and “affect her life prospects” (Young, 2011, p. 33). These circumstances are an outcome of structural conditions enacted by “a complex combination of actions and policies by individual, corporate, and government agents” and considered by most people “normal and acceptable, or even necessary and good” (Young, 2011, p.  99). Although individual and group actions are entangled with structural processes, background conditions should be evaluated when we face a series of connected actions and their outcomes. It is important to keep in mind that exploitation is the twin of constrained choices. As “one person’s success may depend on exploiting other people” (Phillips, 1999, p.  57), one person’s “privileged irresponsibility” (Tronto, 2013) may depend on others assuming care responsibilities. The degree of public responsibility for children is a factor in structural injustices and affects interpersonal relations. It conditions children’s prospects (Esping-Andersen, 2009) at the same time that it affects women’s alternatives. It may restrict or amplify women’s opportunities and reduce or add to their vulnerabilities, although this takes place unevenly, as women who have better earnings are able to reduce the combined impact of the sexual division of labor and the low public responsibility on care by hiring services. In working-class families, tensions between the need to work and earn enough to care financially for oneself and her family, and the need to take care of others and keep a functional household, are acute (Williams, 2010). For most women, opting-out is not an option and unemployment and precarious jobs restrict the margin for private family arrangements,

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making new informal contracts between women and men in their private lives an incomplete and unstable alternative, a reality that becomes even more critical when women are single mothers. Care is poorly approached if we think of it as a choice. If we leave aside the abstraction of autonomous healthy adult males and inscribe our vision of humanity in the reality of fragility and dependence, it is actually far from being a matter of choice. Politically, the unjust assignment of care work is anchored in unbalanced power relations that antagonize values such as freedom and equality. Caring for others is unlikely to be a choice for women who are taught from an early age that gratuitous domestic work and care are part of their “natural” roles. It is, broadly, a constrained choice if we consider black women who have low-paying jobs in which they take care of other women’s children and houses while they have little time to care for their own children, houses, and communities. In this case, they may be seen as responsible domestic workers as they are socially judged if something goes wrong with their own children – even though they might not have been able to count on public child care, adequate work journeys and time-off. As all responsibility is transformed into personal responsibility, “collective or market irresponsibility” and “privileged irresponsibility” (Tronto, 2013, p. 43, p. 58) are effaced.

Care, Democracy, and Neoliberalism Personal responsibility for care is not actually a private matter. Although this assertion could be ethically defined, considering our collective responsibility for social reproduction and for finding just arrangements to deal with human fragility, it can also be defined in a political economic perspective. In capitalism, state and economy do not only rely, but effectively depend on care work provided mostly by women, although it either “accords them no monetized value and treats them as if they were free” (Fraser, 2016, p.  101) or devalues them in gendered and racialized cycles that extend from unpaid work to high-degree exploitation. Social reproduction is at the core of capitalism’s developments, contradictions, and crises. Nancy Fraser (2016) describes what she

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sees as three different “regimes of social reproduction-cum-economic production” (p. 104). In the 19th century, liberal competitive capitalism produced the separation between private and public spheres, promoting it to an ideal that since then has had moral and political consequences. It framed institutions, practical conditions, and social judgements, although it has never been within range of most people and has taken different contours in non-European societies. The second regime took place with the advancement of statemanaged capitalism in the 20th century. It included state provisions for social reproduction, the defense of the “family wage” by unions and, to a certain degree, corporate interests, and the disputes concerning equal payment and rights for women in private and public life. Families were, more than in the preceding regime, constituted as unities of consumption in which gender roles were less stable as women took on a larger part in economic production.8 The third regime in her description takes us to the care crisis of the present era. Financialized capitalism has, simultaneously, relocated manufacturing to low-wage regions, recruited women into paid workforce, and promoted state and corporate disinvestment from social welfare. It should be added that it also promotes an accelerated deregulation of labor rights, justifying it as necessary to attract economic investment and reduce the impact of financial global crises in national economies. Care is privatized while individuals and families have their capacity to perform it reduced, resulting in a dualized organization of social reproduction, commodified for those who can pay it, privatized for those who cannot, to say it with Fraser (2016). Privatization sets “familialism” as an essential requirement, as the dismantling of public infrastructure that could offer support follows its course in neoliberalism (Brown, 2015, p.  105). The gendered order thus produced combines moral defense of conventional family arrangements to ideologies of individual commitment to success according to market imperatives and competitive rationality. A complex affair between neoconservatism and neoliberalism is at the center of the dilemmas faced by democratic institutions and values (Biroli, 2018).

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Neoliberalism rules through “precarization.” Precariousness as a human condition is experienced within neoliberal forms of regulation that normalizes precariousness (Lorey, 2015, p.  39), as “neoliberal politics operate with institutions, turning them away from the production of social safe guards towards the production of social insecurity” (Lorey, 2015, p. 65). In the postcolonial world, the production of new subjects also comes from the destruction of communal relationships. The “effect of precarity” imprinted on people’s lives should not be understood as an equivalent to poverty or scarcity, but as the “precarization” of patterns of relational life that have been displaced (Segato, 2016, p. 100). Some authors have shown that neoliberal politics do not equate to a retreat of the state, but to rules and decisions that favor market interests (Dardot & Laval, 2016). In a globalized economy they have, in fact, reduced national democratic rule, as multinational corporations and international financial agencies advanced their capacity to constrain and guide national politics. Precariousness is connected to non-democratic rule and demands that are foreign to popular claims and needs. At the same time, “precarious living and working conditions are currently being normalized at a structural level and have thus become a fundamental governmental instrument of governing” (Lorey, p. 63). Personal insecurity may be a consequence of the lack of a safety net, be it the lack of objective protection and guarantees or fears arising from accelerated social changes in traditional networks of support and conventional gender roles. Insecurity issues may as well be contemplated by acknowledging changes in its meanings. The state has not become less active, but differently active. The effects of austerity politics are felt together with the ones coming from low-intensity wars that justify selective repression and create the conditions for the systematic violence against women, ethnic groups, and racialized neighborhoods (Fregoso & Bejarano, 2010), promoting the encounter between unemployment and sexual exploitation (Falquet, 2011). This happens as the “battle to maximize domestic security” has significantly increased in the richest countries (Lorey, 2015, p.  64) and migration is part of

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the dynamics in which “not only work” becomes “precarious and dispersed, but life itself” (Lorey, 2015, p. 9). From this perspective, we could inquire the current meanings of security and insecurity and develop adequate conceptual and methodological tools to understand how neoliberal reason simultaneously wrecks relational life and democracy. Privatization of risks, private responsibility, and commodification are not experienced as externalities. Self-invested subjectivities (Brown, 2015) accomplish neoliberal ideological understanding of individual isolation as they conform to competitive logic. Instead of approaching an open future through collective action, they aim to surpass “precarization” as they play by its rules. Significantly, resistance coming from organized women in different parts of the world have called attention to relational needs, challenges to maintain caring relationships, and the deficiency of abstract accounts of autonomy and individual safety (Precarias a la deriva, 2004; Quintela, 2017). Neoliberal rationality may well accommodate “familialism” as an ideology. Nevertheless, it antagonizes the conditions for care in domestic and public arenas and disrupts cooperative efforts beyond the nuclear family. Its functioning is the opposite of a kind of connectedness in which people “understand themselves in solidarity with close and distant others” and therefore “aim to work together to improve the state of well-being of themselves and/or others,” taking an active approach to history (Young, 2011, p. 120). Here, the uncertainty of the future may be a reason to act together and take political risks. Neoliberalism, as indicated earlier, privatizes risks and mobilizes fear as well as the uncertainty that is constitutive of life, favoring corporative profit and governmental control.

Concluding Considerations Neoliberal rationality poses difficult questions to democratic theory and care ethics. Basic assumptions about men as political beings may be at stake, pushing democratic theories to analyze changes in the political lexicon as an economic one seems to take its place and codify all human interaction. Care ethics, in its inter-personal dimension,

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depends on the social training of individuals to be attentive to other person’s needs (Tronto, 2013, p.  49). A democratic care ethics goes beyond inter-personal relations, embodying the defense of equal voicing of people diversely positioned in care relations and their possibility to publicize conflicting needs. Democratic procedures should guarantee that asymmetries and inequalities are not effaced, as if they did not exist, but voiced as a political issue in public debate. What I state here is that to be able to counter neoliberal rationality and the dedemocratization that it promotes, care ethics may also need to develop as a critique of capitalism in its current stage. Care as a political issue could be thus situated between precariousness as a human condition and as a form of life induced by political regimes. Precariousness and vulnerability would then be an issue for care ethics within a theoretical framework in which concrete and possibly unequal relationships are addressed from the beginning. It is certainly important to understand that “all humans are vulnerable and fragile” and the assumption of human fragility is at the core of an ethics of care as much as the concept of individuals “as being in relationships” (Tronto, 2013, pp. 30-31). In order to become an effective forum in favor of the critique of politically produced precarity, political ethics of care would have to connect relational assumptions to an acute social-political criticism, ensuring the contextual conditions in which fragility is experienced may be incorporated in ethical political reasoning. Fraser (2015) asserted that democracy cannot be discussed without a critical account of capitalism. It seems that neither can care relations. In this case, a political ethics of care may face, necessarily, capitalism and its current rationality. Moral and political dimensions of “personal responsibility” are crucial to neoliberal practices (Tronto, 2013, p. 41). Privatization and commodification are two sides of the same coin. This brings us to what I consider a key point: insecurity is structural in a neoliberal regime in which human fragility is framed as lucrative business. Presenting an alternative to this approach of human precariousness demands that we do not reject relationships and dependency at the cost of adding to neoliberal rationality and its conception of isolated

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individuals. It may require that we imagine and practice “forms of self-reliance that start from connections with others,” taking current experiences of precarization “as a starting point” for political struggles (Lorey, 2015, p. 146) and for ethical reasoning.

Reference List Anderson, E. (1999). What is the point of equality? Ethics, 109(2), 287-337. Barrett, M. (1985). Women’s oppression today: The Marxist/feminist encounter (Rev. ed.). London: Verso. Biroli, F. (2016). Divisão sexual do trabalho e democracia. Dados, 59(3), 257-290. doi: 10.1590/00115258201690 Biroli, F. (2018). Gênero e desigualdades: Limites da democracia no Brasil. São Paulo: Boitempo. Brites, J. G. (2007) Afeto e desigualdade: Gênero, geração e classe entre empregadas domésticas e seus empregadores. Cadernos Pagu, (29), 91-109. doi: 10.1590/ S0104-83332007000200005 Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism’s stealth revolution. New York: Zone Books. Bruschini, C., & Lombardi, M. R. (2000). A bipolaridade do trabalho feminino no Brasil contemporâneo. Cadernos de Pesquisa, (110), 67-104. doi: 10.1590/S010015742000000200003 Carneiro, S. (2011). Racismo, sexismo e desigualdade no Brasil. São Paulo: Selo Negro. Collins, P. H. (2009). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge. Dardot, P., & Laval, C. (2016). Ce cauchemar qui n’en finit pas: Comment le néolibéralisme défait la démocratie. Paris: Découverte. Delphy, C., & Leonard, D. (1992). Familiar exploitation: A new analysis of marriage in contemporary Western societies. Oxford: Polity Press. Esping-Andersen, G. (2009). The incomplete revolution: Adapting to women`s new roles. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Falquet, J. (2011). Por las buenas o por las malas: Las mujeres en la globalización. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia/Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Faur, E. (2012). El cuidado infantil desde la perspectiva de las mujeres-madres: Un estudio en dos barrios populares del Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires. In V.  Esquivel, E.  Faur, & E.  Jelin (Eds.), Las lógicas del cuidado infantil: Entre las famílias, el Estado y el mercado (pp. 107-164). Buenos Aires: IDES. Fineman, M. (2004). The autonomy myth: A theory of dependency. New York: New Press. Folbre, N. (1994). Who pays for the kids? Gender and the structures of constraint. New York: Routledge. Folbre, N. (2001). The invisible heart: Economics and family values. New York: The New Press.

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Fontoura, N., & Araújo, C. (Eds.). (2016). Uso do tempo e gênero. Rio de Janeiro: UERJ. Fraser, N. (1992). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the public sphere (pp. 109-142). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fraser, N. (2013). Fortunes of feminism: From state-managed capitalism to neoliberal crisis. New York: Verso. Fraser, N. (2015). Legitimation crisis? On the political contradictions of financialized capitalism. Critical Historical Studies 2(2), 157-189. doi: 10.1086/683054 Fraser, N. (2016). Contradictions of capital and care. New Left Review 100, 99-117. Retrieved from https://newleftreview.org/issues/II100/articles/nancy-fraser-contradictions-of-capital-and-care. Fregoso, R.-L., & and Bejarano, C. (Eds). (2010). Terrorizing women: Feminicide in the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press. Friedan, B. (2001). The feminine mystique. New York: Norton. Georges, I., & Garcia dos Santos, Y. (2016). As novas políticas sociais Brasileiras na saúde e da assistência: Produção local do serviço e relações de gênero. Belo Horizonte: Fino Traço. Gonzalez, L. (1984). Racismo e sexismo na cultura Brasileira. Revista Ciências Sociais Hoje, 223-244. Guimarães, N. A. (2016). Home and market, love and work, nature and profession. Cadernos Pagu, (46), 59-77. doi 10.1590/18094449201600460059 Klein, N. (2007). The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. New York: Metropolitan Books. Held, V. (2006). The ethics of care: Personal, political, and global. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hirata, H. & Guimarães, N. A. (Eds.). (2012). Cuidado e cuidadoras: As várias faces do trabalho do care. São Paulo: Atlas. Hirata, H., & Kergoat, D. (2007). Novas configurações da divisão sexual do trabalho. Cadernos de Pesquisa 37(132), 595-609. Hooks, B. (1984). Feminist theory: From margin to center (2nd ed.). New York: South End Press. Lorey, I. (2015). State of insecurity: Government of the precarious. New York: Verso. Mariano, S., & Carlotto, C. M. (2010). Halfway between the private and public sectors: A debate on the role of women in social welfare policy. Revista Estudos Feministas 5, 1-18. Miguel, L. F., & Biroli, F. (2011). Caleidoscópio convexo: Mulheres, política e mídia. São Paulo: Unesp. Molinier, P. (2014). Cuidado, interseccionalidade e feminismo. Tempo social 26(1), 17-33. Phillips, A. (1999). Which equalities matter? Cambridge, United Kingdom: Polity Press. Precarias a la deriva. (2004). A la deriva: por los circuitos de la precariedad feminina. Madrid: Traficantes de sueños. Retreived from https://www.traficantes.net/sites/ default/files/pdfs/A%20la%20deriva-TdS.pdf

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Quintela, D. F. (2017). Maternidade e ativismo político: A luta de mães por democracia e justiça. Brasília: Universidade de Brasília. Rego, W. L., & Pinzani, A. (2014). Vozes do Bolsa Família: Autonomia, dinheiro e cidadania. São Paulo: Editora Unesp. Robinson, F. (2011). A feminist approach to human security. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Rocha, L. O. (2014). Outraged mothering: Black women, racial violence, and the power of emotions in Rio de Janeiro’s African Diaspora. Austin: The University of Texas. Sarti, C. (2011). A família como espelho: Um estudo sobre a moral dos pobres (7th ed.). São Paulo: Cortez. Segato, R. (2016). La guerra contra las mujeres. Madrid: Traficantes de sueños. Tronto, J. C. (2013). Caring democracy: Markets, equality, and justice. New York: New York University Press. Tronto, J. C. (2017). There is an alternative: Homines curans and the limits of neoliberalism. International Journal of Care and Caring, 1, 27-43. doi: 10.1332/23978 8217X14866281687583 Walby, S. (1990). Theorizing patriarchy. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Williams, J. C. (2010|). Reshaping the work-family debate: Why men and class matter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Young, I. M. (2011). Responsibility for justice. New York: Oxford University Press.

Notes Translation: “And this interdependence is not a deficiency, it is not a matter of bemoaning our impossibility of being self-sufficient.” “Precarias a la deriva” is a feminist initiative situated between research and activism and means literally “Precarious women adrift.” 2 Social reproduction refers to the transmitting of social inequality from one generation to the next. 3 FNPETI is the abbreviation of Fórum Nacional de Prevenção e Erradicação do Trabalho Infantil. 4 Only in 2015 in Brazil were domestic workers granted access to equal rights, following decades of political struggles. This was a culmination of political and social changes driven since 1988, when Brazil had a new democratic Constitution after more than twenty years of military authoritarian rule. Thereafter, the controversial deposition of President Dilma Rousseff, in 2016, opened opportunities for an accelerated dismantling of social rights. A new law defining labor rights was approved in 2017, reducing guarantees and protections included in previous legislation. 5 Fraser (2013) sees a “peculiar juxtaposition of a discourse about need with discourses about rights and interests” as one of the “distinctive marks of late-capitalist political culture” (p. 54). Here I do not pursue the questions posed by the author about the impacts of “need-talk” for the boundaries between the political, the economic, and the domestic. I assume, though, that “the politics of need interpretation” 1

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is an important issue for the discussion in this chapter as the political status of care depends on how needs are interpreted and who voices them. 6 In Brazil’s proportional representation system, candidacies are presented in open lists. Parties or party alliances compose lists without any hierarchy, and each candidate must campaign on their own behalf. That is one central reason for the failure of electoral quotas in the country. In 2018, a new decision by the Brazilian Supreme Court (STF) and a new ruling by the Electoral Court defined that a minimum of 30% of public party funds may be used to support women candidacies. 7 Although I have briefly mentioned data on political participation, my main concern here is political influence. Capitalists might not be themselves performing political functions and running for elections, but their influence is effective because they have means to guarantee that their interests are taken into account or directly favored and that their perspectives shape political debate. 8 This tension concerning gender roles is not sufficiently discussed by Fraser in this article. However, it is fundamental to understand current disputes concerning gender in many parts of the world. Women’s protection in dependency (Lorey, 2015, p. 67) was a cornerstone during Fordism, but certainly a contested one.

“Time Matters a Lot in Care Practices” Palliative Care Meets Care Ethics1 Helen Kohlen

Introduction Over the last ten years I have been supervising empirical research of master and doctoral students in the field of palliative care and ethics. Although time never has been the focus of the studies, nearly all data reveal the importance of time when practicing care (e.g. Adam-Paffrath, 2014; Baumann, 2013; Haas, 2014). The findings of an international study – I was involved in with colleagues from England, Ireland and Brazil – about end-of-life care in intensive care also indicate how powerful time and timing can be (Gallagher et al., 2015; Kohlen, McCarthy, Bousso, Gallagher, & Andrews, 2016). Having time on one’s hands is anything but natural in an increasingly accelerated environment. This is the conclusion of Hartmut Rosa’s (2005; 2016) chrono-sociological analyses. Lack of time in the increasingly accelerated healthcare sector is therefore an expected and experienced reality – accelerated, since the “pulse of time” is constantly intensifying. As a result, care-givers are under pressure to “work quickly while at the same time giving patient-oriented care” (Arnold, Kersting, & Stemmer, 2006, p. 173)2, while physicians lack the time to give patients due attention (Maio, 2011, p. 240)3. On the other hand, the physicians in the field of palliative care assert that having time is a prerequisite and a distinctive characteristic of their palliative attitude (Baumann, 2013, p. 10). They ascribe special significance to this palliative attitude. They see their caring actions at the end of a patient’s life as being borne along by this attitude

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(Baumann, 2013). Seriously ill and dying patients at the end of their lives and their families are given time to regulate final matters and live through the process of mourning. Time thus seems to be a prerequisite for a palliative practice, seen from the perspective of patients, families and care professionals, for whom it means time available for caring actions and time available in the context of caring relations. It is important to stress that palliative care practices and palliative care competencies as well as an end-of-life care-oriented leadership and management are rarely found in health care settings where people are dying. An empirical study in Germany reveals the differences of dying in regular and palliative care settings (Pfeffer, 2005). Nevertheless, the number of facilities like palliative care units and hospices that have systematically implemented the palliative care model has been growing world-wide over the last 20 years. In this chapter I explain in three steps what time as a prerequisite for a palliative practice means in view of an accelerated modern era and an accelerated healthcare sector. In the first step I demonstrate that caring relations in the field of palliative care are care-ethically grounded and that it is best to understand care ethics as a practice. In a second step, on the basis of Rosa’s acceleration theory I investigate the meaning of acceleration and deceleration in the field of palliative care.4 Finally I refer to Rosa’s resonance theory in order to highlight that palliative practice requires time for attention thus ensuring that care-ethical relations can be resonance relations. Thereafter a conclusion follows.

Palliative Care Meets Care Ethics Amidst the many different notions of palliative care, the concept ascribed to Cicely Saunders (Du Boulay, 2007) which has been further developed and refined in the definitions of the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), comprises the following cornerstones5: (1) active total care; (2) quality of life; (3) symptom management; (4) team; and (5) societal remit (Steffen-Bürgi, 2006, p. 30; Deutsche Gesellschaft

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für Palliativmedizin e. V., Deutscher Hospiz- und PalliativVerband e. V., & Bundesärztekammer, 2010; Baumann, 2013). Remarkably, time as a key factor of good care for the dying is not considered. Grounded in the ideas described by Saunders (1990), palliativelyoriented care creates a framework that enables seriously ill or dying patients to be active subjects within the context of their history up until the end of life. As persons with needs, they are not passive recipients, and more specifically, not mere objects of the care-giver. Admittedly, because of their needs and vulnerabilities, these relationships are usually of an asymmetrical nature vis-à-vis the care-providers. According to the palliative care idea, needs and resources should be acknowledged and taken seriously. Moreover, dying people should not – neither paternalistically nor maternalistically – receive the best care in the perception of another person, but participatively the best care in terms of their own notions of good living and dying. Palliatively-oriented care is holistically directed. The entire human being as a person, not merely his or her illness, is at the focus of such care. The holisticallyoriented care concept, which besides the physical dimension also extends to the psychological, societal, cultural and spiritual dimensions of a need, is a response to the concept of “total pain” as described by Saunders (Steffen-Bürgi, 2006, p. 32). However, no single person can provide such comprehensive care. The pallium (the Roman protective coat) is therefore jointly held by a team, which as it were, encloses the patient and his or her family. At the same time, it is wrapped around the team itself, whose protagonists provide good care for themselves and then good care for others in a balance of care and self-care. This can only prove successful when holistically-oriented care is structurally supported by health care institutions, desired by society and politically backed up. However, even if caring institutions are created and care becomes a central focus in politics, issues of power and conflict will still be prevalent among people who act along different interests and motivations (Kohlen, 2009). The ethics of care is aware of the irreducible dimensions of power, antagonism and ambiguity. Especially Elisabeth Conradi (2001) points out that the reflection of power is essential when the ethics of care is understood as a practice.

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Palliative care is oriented towards an understanding of care that it shares with the proponents of care ethics. It is the approach where (1) Care is provided by people stirred by the neediness of the other and they therefore become care-providers; (2) Care-providers assume responsibility for seriously ill and dying persons in care relations and their families; (3) Care-givers attentively accompany this last phase of life of the person entrusted to them, by perceiving and attentively addressing the limitations of both the patient and themselves. This they do to come to terms with their daily confrontation with both death and dying and their own mortal nature; (4) Care-givers are aware that the demanding task of balancing care and self-care in care relations is borne not only on their own shoulders. Care and self-care are dependent on framework conditions subject to the responsibility of institutional leadership (Conradi, 2001). Below I explain an understanding of care ethics as a practice, and reflect on the reality of palliative practices from the perspective of this understanding. Care ethics as a practice In 2016 Elisabeth Conradi and Frans Vosman edited a book on care ethics under the title “Practice of Attentiveness. Key Notions in Care Ethics” (my translation)6. The collection reveals a shared understanding of care ethics as a practice among scholars across the world. Vosman highlights the importance of care practices within an ethics of care by saying: “The ethics of attentiveness studies diverse practices of care, also institutional and professional practices of help, of support, of cure, companionship, consultation and assistance. From its start the engagement of ethicists for caring practices has placed a decisive role” (p. 47).7 He critically adds that care ethics due to its relation to practices has to cope with the challenge to evaluate, enlarge and correct its insights (p. 47).8 Attentive care is an essential part of human life, not only during childhood, or when someone is sick or old. It has a role also in instances of insecurity and vulnerability which are also part of life (Laugier, 2016, pp. 298-299). Especially in the field of palliative care

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it is accentuated that dying is a part of living and that the one who is dying needs attentive care (Saunders & Baines, 1991). Many modern moral and political theories are based on the ideal of autonomy. The ethics of care disagrees with such a foundation by reminding us that we are relational human beings and that we are dependent on others to fulfil our basic needs. In health care a language of care is required to articulate what happens when care is done well but also when care is not done well or even not done at all. Care ethics should be part of ethical debates to reflect caring activities and to bring the importance of attentiveness forward instead of merely focusing on principles. In my empirical study on hospital ethics committees I show how a language of autonomy dominates committee debates in the US and how issues of care are marginalized and dismissed (Kohlen, 2009). Care ethics can bring issues to a head that would otherwise be marginalized. This is possible because a care ethics is grounded in the practices of carers. While care ethics is understood as a practice that takes place at least between two people, the context of care-giving and care-receiving matters. (Care) Ethics is not something external coming from the outside into the sphere of care practices to assess and judge, but a care ethics evolves in (and through) practices, stimulates reflections, invites criticism and ideas of how things might change for the better. Annelies van Heijst (2011) has investigated health carer’s practices through a perspective of what she calls “Professional Loving Care” and which has to cope with institutional constraints. She highlights the necessity of a critical reflection of the health care sector. Moreover, the theory of presence can help to shed light on what can be the effects when institutional freedom allows relationship-based, high quality care (Timmerman & Baart, 2016). Care as a practice according to Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto (1990) can be described as a process comprising mutually dependent phases: caring about, caring for, care giving and care receiving. In her work Caring Democracy (2013), Tronto deepens her ideas about democracy and the necessity to care in solidarity (caring with).9 She  regards the ability to assume and administer care as an ethical

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act of responsibility. She has attributed ethical elements of care to the different phases: attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness or resonance as well as trust and respect (Tronto, 1993, p. 127): 1) Caring about involves giving attention to the need or demand for caring and involves attentiveness. 2) Caring for means assuming responsibility. 3) Care-giving refers to giving practical attention to needs and fulfilling them – this demands competence. 4) Care-receiving is reacting to the attention and care experienced and involves responsiveness or resonance. 5) Caring with appeals to all citizens who act in solidarity and share a commitment to plurality, communication, trust and respect.10 Conradi (2001, 2013) draws on Tronto’s interpretation. She understands care as a comprehensive perspective of connectedness and a framework for moral decisions. Care-givers and care-receivers are united in care relations, which are borne by personal, institutional and societal responsibility. It is therefore “decisive that the actors include themselves in the circle of those for whom attentive consideration and encouraging actions are intended. Ideally, self-care and care for others are in equilibrium” (Conradi, 2013, p. 10). She understands care (or care ethics) as a practice in which thinking, feeling and acting are interwoven (Conradi, 2001, pp. 44-60). (1) Care is an interactive human practice. Care interactions can also be non-verbal. This also extends to physical touch. Care interactions are concerned with reflected action that links affective-emotional and cognitive aspects; they give rise to interpersonal relations. Care thus includes the aspects both of relatedness and of caring activity. Care thus extends to both giving and receiving attention. (2) Care is a societal practice. The asymmetry of care interactions has a special significance, since it is connected with a dynamic of power. We are called upon to become aware of and to limit differences in power, since those involved in care interactions are autonomous to a differing extent. They differ in terms of their abilities, competencies and in their

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autonomy. Respect in care interactions cannot presuppose autonomy, since care interactions are concerned with respect for persons with differing abilities to realize autonomy, rather than presuming the possession of autonomy as such. Neither autonomy nor consensus is the focus of care ethics, but rather relatedness and deference.11 The authors include socio-political conditions in their analyses of “care” as a practice. Along with Conradi and Tronto, Eva Feder Kittay (1999) is a proponent of a care practice ethic that addresses socio-political conditions from the perspective of the care-giver. She points to the obligation of the social community to give due attention to the well-being of the care-giver. The conditions for care must be such that the care-givers can attend to those entrusted to them without being exploited themselves. This prerequisite is embedded in Kittay’s multidimensional understanding of care, which is reviewed below as basis for a reflection on palliative practice while also referring to similarities with Tronto’s concept of care. Care as a virtue, an attitude and work The idea of care as a practice necessarily arises as a reaction to dependency and vulnerability, which for Kittay (2004, pp. 78-79) are the basic constants of human life. A precondition for care as a practice is an understanding of the human being which, due to his or her fundamental condition of relatedness, sees him or her as invariably dependent and reliant. The remit for care is founded in this greater or lesser degree of dependence in a particular situation and context: dependence as conditio humana makes us equals. By reason of this equality, we are called to solidarity with each other. Like dependence, care is thus anchored within every person as an anthropological basic characteristic and becomes effective as such in the institutional and societal setting. Dependence can therefore not be understood negatively but is the point of departure for consideration of our life reality and our actions. The self-determined independence of the human being, which has acquired the status of a norm and assumes equality of all people as subjects of moral actions (Kittay, 2006) is by comparison pure fiction. It is a societal construct, since self-determined

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and independent humans have never existed (Kittay, 2004, pp. 75-79). According to Kittay (2004, 2006), a normative determination of independence as the “highest good” leads to a negative assessment of dependence and thus does not yield greater justice (in the sense of equality) but a negative and therefore unjust assessment on the part of society of those who receive and those who give care. Kittay (2004, pp. 71-72), as a mother of a handicapped child, turns away from analytical philosophy, reflects on her caring experiences and develops the following ideas: care as caring practice can be understood through the interrelated dimensions of virtue, attitude and work: (1) As a virtue, care is a characteristic that motivates one to carry out caring actions. As a human quality it is a precondition for being a care-giver, i.e. acting in a caring manner. We are of a caring disposition, and are responsive to care (Tronto’s caring about). (2) Attitude means an inner approach to performing caring work. This attitude results in a positive affective connection to the care-receiver, and the carer wishes to invest in that person’s well-being (Kittay 2004, p. 72). Since humans are never independent, but have invariably been in a state of relation, care has an impact as conditio humana in the unavoidable condition of being addressed by the other. This attitude embodies the remit to exercise solidarity with and bear responsibility for others (Tronto’s caring for). (3) Work is that which is performed in the context of care or which is implemented as activity in order to care for those in need. Embedded in this is the resonance to care in the context of care relations (Tronto’s care-giving and care-receiving). Such an understanding of care as practice can constitute the basis of a care-ethical reflection of a palliative practice that is borne by a palliative attitude which constitutes the required attitude in care relations in palliative situations and contexts. The framework for a care-ethical reflection and justification of (current) care practices in situations and contexts of dependence and vulnerability within the framework of care relations, thus takes the form of questions regarding our responsibility and attentiveness, questions of power, powerlessness and conflicts, and questions about our concepts of what

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constitutes a good living and dying. This takes place on three levels: the personal, the institutional and the societal. In the context of a care-ethical reflection and justification of palliative practice, our practice may be put to question in terms of these aspects. Palliative care practices from a care-ethical perspective The fact that an individual is not separate from other individuals and that well-being is connected with the well-being of others (Kittay, 2004, p.  78) reveals our dependency and potential vulnerability in our dealings with others. This fact does not imply that humans see themselves responsible for the development of a caring society or as Tronto (2013) has put it, a “caring democracy.” In the words of Kittay (2006), humans don’t view themselves as a societal organization that enables and supports relations of dependence and dependence work, to ensure that care relations can be successful. This poses the question: what consequences does this have for a palliative practice? (1) Misdirected humaneness and the vicious circle of degradation When dependence is seen as a burden that stands in the way of my independence, this sets a vicious circle in motion that has its origins in a lack of responsibility on the part of society, according to Kittay (2004, pp. 70-71): devaluation of dependence leads to devaluation of those in need of care. Devaluation of care-receivers leads to devaluation of care-givers. In the eyes of those devalued, devaluation of the care-givers themselves leads to devaluation of the care provided, and in turn to devaluation of those for whom they are care-givers – a vicious circle of degradation. Without an appropriate systemic framework through the creation of suitable good conditions for care work, in which neither the care-receivers nor the care-givers nor their care work are degraded, devalued or negated, it is not possible to escape the vicious circle of degradation that has already been set in motion. Responsibilities that are constitutive of an ethics of care can be put into action by making care-receivers and care-givers audible to society, because this “introduces new values to a society that does not treat some of its members well” (Kittay, 2004, p. 74).

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(2) Care systems in the palliative field Palliative care as a theory and as a practice takes this remit seriously. From its origins as a citizens’ movement that set out to bring the dying back to the center of society, palliative care has achieved a great deal. Firstly, our society presents itself in its diversity in people working in a voluntary capacity in terminal care on the side of seriously ill and dying patients, who are brought back to the center of society through this honorary work (Napiwotzky, 2017, p. 94; Student, 2017, p. 83). And secondly, palliative practice takes account of this requirement by ensuring development of appropriate forms of care for this practice. Nevertheless, there is a certain imbalance between the care forms of specialized palliative care (SPC) in hospices, in palliative wards and in the domestic environment resulting from the support of specialized outpatient palliative care (SOPC) on the one hand and general palliative care by general practitioners and care services, in hospitals and care facilities of the geriatric and disabled services on the other. From a care-ethical perspective, a critical point is that the implementation of the pillars of palliative care – not only in the context of SPC, but also generally and sustainably in the context of general palliative care, has not been successful. Equitable care conditions remain a non-negotiable or indispensable (Borasio, 2012, p. 50; Engelke, 2015, pp. 193-231; Kellehear, 2017, p.  22; Kohlen, 2016, pp.  3-4). Moreover, what is permissible in the field of SPC is lacking in the overall healthcare sector – specifically time as a prerequisite for the provision of integrated holistic care. (3) The objective of care: a fulfilled life “to the end” Humans are human by virtue of relatedness. Since dependence is thus assumed, an entirely dependent life is merely one possibility of the lived life. A fulfilled life then does not mean living in the greatest possible independence or self-determination, but experiencing protection (against loneliness and isolation), a sense of security, love and joy within the context of one’s own dependence. A fulfilled life is therefore not self-determined by definition but is more or less dependent and

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lived in relation with others. This can grant the possibility of a fulfilled life, independent of one’s actual degree of dependence. A society in which the seriously ill and the elderly feel worthless and see themselves as a burden, and in which handicapped life is put out of sight and awareness (Abé et al., 2014, pp. 33-34), denies itself this very possibility to an increasing extent: from a care-ethical perspective, a fulfilled life arises not only where the greatest possible independence exists, but where I can live with my greater or lesser degree of dependence resulting from my human condition because my fellow humans, institutions and society can readily accept it. In situations of infirmity and at the end of life, the issue at hand is not making a speedy death possible and deciding for or against euthanasia, but acknowledging the fact that a person has reached the last phase of his or her life and attentively accompanying this person in every respect.12 In careethical reflection and openness, we listen to what moves this person and in what ways he or she moves us. What are his or her concepts of a good life and of dying, and what are those of his or her family? What are my concepts, and what concepts are represented by the institution in which we encounter each other and by the society through which we are connected? Also, what is the meaning of “good” – under conditions of illness, disability, and the experience of pain, suffering and dying and thus of limited time? Therefore, there is an attentive and responsible awareness of the intertwined nature of personally, institutionally and societally standardized concepts of a good life and dying within the context of care relations. There is also the awareness of the power these performances exert on patients and care-givers in care relations that are asymmetrical by nature. For a care-ethical perspective, this means constantly questioning the personal, institutional, societal and cultural framework of understanding infirmity and mortality and how they are approached. This applies both to the debate within society of euthanasia and to personal palliative practice, which in this view, however, is never a purely personal practice, but is always also institutionally and societally standardized. The conclusion is that palliative practice can be theoretically  grounded in care-ethics without falling into an ideological trap.

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Therefore, questions of power, conflict and ambiguities have to be foregrounded. In the reflection of this practice – and in the self-image of care ethics – this care-ethical justification has the task of constantly care-ethically justifying practice by critically questioning the personally, institutionally and societally standardized framework of this practice. In the following section, the question will be considered as to what it means that time is and should be available in the palliative field, which is not necessarily the case in an accelerated healthcare system.

The Significance of Time for Palliative Practice “The value and the core of the care professions consist in . . . a person attending to another person in his or her suffering. This care for another person is the core of what constitutes the care professions” (Maio 2011, p.  243). This kind of care, however, seems to require time in order to enter into a relationship with the other person, to open oneself to this person and his or her concerns and needs and questions. From a care-ethical perspective, Andrew Sayer (2016, p. 367), stresses the point that face-to-face care requires time. Herein lies the very dilemma of the present time: that “all processes in the clinics are accelerated to such an extent that ultimately the very asset that is central to human healing, namely time is being rationalized out of existence– the time we need for care and attention” (Maio, 2011, p. 240). This reality in an accelerated healthcare system stands in contrast to the protagonists in the palliative field, who hold fast to the ideal of having sufficient time as a prerequisite for a care-ethically founded palliative practice. Translated into a guiding principle of palliative care, is the idea not of giving life more time in the form of days but giving the days more time for life in relatedness. Inspired by Hartmut Rosa, and drawing on Baumann and Kohlen (2018), I have endeavored to deal with the question of time in the field of palliative care. In a first step, we address the understanding of the phenomena of acceleration and deceleration on the  basis of Rosa’s acceleration theory. This is followed by considerations of the significance of a decelerated palliative field within an accelerated healthcare system. In the third step, by drawing on Rosa’s resonance

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theory (2016, p. 13), consideration is given to what it means in this context, i.e. that the problem of acceleration is to be solved not by deceleration, but by resonance. Acceleration and deceleration In his acceleration theory, Rosa (2016) examines the question of the systematic transformation of time structures in modern societies, which he endeavors to unite under the concept of acceleration. He defines acceleration as an increase in amount (of doing more and experiencing more) per unit time (Rosa, 2005, pp.  112-124, 2016, p.  13). “This means that modern, capitalist society must .  .  . constantly expand, that it must grow and innovate, must increase production and consumption, and must extend options and opportunities for connection” (Rosa, 2016, pp.  13-14). In this way temporal relationships standardize our lives, so that the objective of a critical theory of acceleration is to point out the silent normative force of temporal structures (Rosa, 2005, p. 481). Acceleration is a self-driving process that places the acceleration of technology, of social change, and of the speed of life in a relationship of mutual intensification (Rosa, 2005, p. 243). (1) Technical acceleration impacts transport, communication, and production. Space is reduced as a result of a faster covering of distances (p. 62) and thus loses its significance against time (p. 466). Connected with technical acceleration is the will to exercise control over nature and over living and dying, which has led to the tenet of “making live” and “no longer allowing to die” of the late-modern human in the context of optionoptimized medicine. (2) The acceleration of social change has led to a shortening of the use-by dates of theoretical, practical and moral inventories of knowledge, and of orientation guidelines for action and forms of practice within society (p.  462). The present is shrinking, i.e. the time allowed in orientation guidelines for actions and relationships is becoming increasingly short. (3) An accelerated speed of life increases our heart rate in our constant experience of time pressure and stress on the one hand, and as a result of the desire to do and experience more and more within a shorter time (p.  463).

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We  are  driven by the fear of missing out on something and by the compulsion to adapt to constantly changing requirements in order not to be left behind (pp.  220-221, pp.  469-470). Our identity becomes a “situative identity” (p. 446, p. 700). There are furthermore phenomena of deceleration which are not subject to dynamization, because these cannot be accelerated (inertia) or are intentionally opposed to it (deceleration) (pp. 462-466). With regard to the field of palliative care, these phenomena include: (1)  Natural limits to speed such as dying, which has become a long and slow process (Göckenjan, 2008, p. 9). (2) Islands of deceleration such as the palliative field (Bauman & Kohlen, 2018). (3) Forms of intentional deceleration: on the one hand a functional or acceleratory form of deceleration. In this situation deceleration is an acceleration strategy, since the temporary deceleration serves for recuperation in order to further one’s own actions and experiences in an even greater state of acceleration. On the other hand, there is an oppositional or ideological form of deceleration, in which deceleration is elevated to an ideology in the name of a better society or form of life (Bauman & Kohlen, 2018, pp. 95-119). On the basis of these forms of intentional deceleration, a closer look is afforded to the significance of a decelerated palliative field within an accelerated healthcare system. Here the focus is on an ethical-theoretical approach and not on an empirical or political inquiry. Palliative care as a form of intentional deceleration (1) Palliative care as a mode of deceleration The hospice movement and palliative medicine, perceive palliative care as the outcome of a palliative attitude that arose in the 1960s and that concerned itself with providing a suitable place of repose and encounter for the dying – free of taboos; somewhere where dying has its place, where death has its place, and where time may and must have its place. The concept of palliative care can be interpreted as an oppositional or ideological form of acceleration as the necessary consequence of a palliative attitude. Whereas the pulse of time is

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becoming increasingly intense in facilities within the healthcare system, the palliative attitude creates islands of deceleration in which time seems to stand still for accompanying people at the end of their life. The palliative attitude entails awareness of having time, and of the possibility and obligation to make use of this time for accompanying a person through the dying process (Heimerl, 2010, pp. 335-336). The palliative attitude manifests itself in a practice that exists of decelerated time. The palliative field sets itself apart from other fields of society by virtue of such a palliative attitude and practice (Baumann, 2013, p. 116). The palliative field with its institutions, which link the time of the care-givers available to the remaining time of the patients, is the counter-model to the trend within society towards a pulsing and fragmentation of time, which seeks to replace activities involving a high degree of temporal and societal binding by activities with a low degree of binding (Rosa 2005, p. 206). After all, palliative practice is particularly characterized by a high degree of temporal and societal binding. In the palliative field, the economic interpretation of time as money has been retracted (Rosa, 2005, p.  473). Time is understood here as societal capital (Baumann, 2013, p. 220), which may explain the high degree of temporal and societal binding within palliative practice. This is currently changing once again, since time even in the palliative field has become a chargeable service. (2) Palliative care as an accelerative form of deceleration “We live in a time when all areas of public life are organized according to the categories of the market and are permeated by economic thinking” (Maio, 2011, p. 240). This is also true of the institutions of the healthcare system, with the result that medicine, and care are accelerated by process optimization and the extension of options. However, dying and death are disruptive elements in an accelerated healthcare system (Baumann, 2013, p. 236). Death has an unsettling and hurtful effect, because as a destroyer of options it is the enemy of all acceleration. Contrary to this, dying decelerates. The accelerated human is thus decelerated in a palliative situation at the end of his or her life. As a palliatively decelerated person, with a perhaps long,

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slow process of dying, he or she has become too slow for an accelerated healthcare system. Dying as a deceleration, and death as the standstill of all societal acceleration, must be removed to an outlying area – to the palliative field, which was created in a societal context for this very purpose (Rosa, 2016).13 This field is becoming the new home for the palliatively excluded patient. The requirement for care may be implemented in the context of palliative care. At the end of life, modern society (at last and in some form) allows the requirement for care to be realized and creates the necessary time and space. The time made available is a necessary anachronism within the accelerated healthcare system – after all, dying requires time. By means of such an island of deceleration, accelerated society relieves itself of the burden of decelerated dying and disconcerting death. As functional or acceleratory deceleration, palliative care is then not the outcome of a palliative attitude but the will of an accelerated healthcare system, in order to retain the possibility of further acceleration of healthcare by extracting the dying patient from an accelerated system. According to this understanding, the emergence of palliative care and of a palliative attitude is not merely a reaction to perceived deficits in care for seriously ill and dying patients – in a hospice-ideological interpretation. Rather, the formation of a palliative field – in an acceleration-ideological interpretation – is also to be understood as a compensatory reaction to the dictates of the modern era. There are three dictates, the first two relate to time: (1) A modern era that individualizes and sees life as a project in which the matter of time is individualized. (2) A modern era that functionally differentiates must therefore relinquish death, which has become a special case, to the functionally differentiated field of palliative care with its specially trained experts. Dying and death – as unpredictable, uncontrollable and therefore unsettling entities – are functionally differentiated and to be controlled in an institutionalized manner. To this end it is placed in the palliative field, at the edge of the healthcare system, where they are supposedly made controllable. (3) Finally, a modern era that follows

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the dictate of acceleration banishes everything that hinders or threatens this acceleration to the specially created palliative field. Time for care and attention is habitually secured in a palliative attitude as a meaningful moment (Baumann, 2013, pp.  98-188). Time, as a structured structure, becomes available as societal capital – to the protagonists for their care, to the patients for their life to the end, and finally for their mourning. As a structural element, it is having time at one’s disposal that gives the actions of the protagonists in the field of palliative care the status of palliative practice. However, with this outsourcing of time for care and attention, an accelerated healthcare system has lost a significant salient characteristic. Time for care and attention has been outsourced to the palliative field, even though it is a prerequisite for successful care relations in their entirety. Resonance and the question of a good life Having time at one’s disposal is not a sufficient characteristic of a palliative attitude – rather, time that enables resonance experiences at the end of one’s life so that the life before dying can be a successful life. By analogy with Rosa’s (2016) resonance theory, resonance is a precondition for the possibility of a good life. “Whether life is successful or unsuccessful depends on how the world is and can be (passively) experienced and (actively) acquired or modified” (p. 53). In other words, resonance is determined by whether we touch the world and allow ourselves to be touched by it in the resonance spaces in which we are situated, so that we may see ourselves and our counterpart as responding to each other (p. 285). Resonance spaces can be care relations or the institutional frameworks of care relations in the field of palliative care. In these spaces, resonance touches the whole person; it is “an emotional, neuronal and above all entirely physical reality” (p.  747). Rosa thus shares the care-ethical view of the human as a being that is determined by relations, and thus also the “notion of innate relatedness that precedes the distinction between subject and object” (p. 66). Relations are the basic material of reality; by reason of their innate relatedness, the human and the world have from the outset been made for resonance experiences” (p. 212). Therefore, “an

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immediate appeal for resonance emanates from the physical presence or the face of another person, from which we – as physical beings ourselves – can never entirely withdraw, so that the complete reification of another person invariably entails a moment of self-mutilation” (pp.  666-667). Regarding a patient, it is an appeal for resonance which leads resonance relations being initiated. Patients “want to be seen, heard, touched”; they expect “answers, not merely treatments” (p.  400), since treatments transform us into objects; they reify us. Resonance criticism must therefore take as its point of departure societal conditions “in which people are exploited or disregarded, for exploitation is a form of reification” (p. 750). Resonance theory is the compass “for a relation-oriented dealing with . . . persons in need of care, who must not be reduced to ‘care cases’ and a burden for the welfare system, but as constant sources of ‘invocations’” (Rosa, 2016, p. 760). This must, however, not be misunderstood in a paternalistic or maternalistic sense. It is not the needy per se that lead to or result in the power of helping. The invocation originates in fact not from the other person, but it arises from a situation of relatedness. Being called and allowing us to be called are two sides of the same coin. In other words, we are touched because we allow ourselves to be touched by becoming conscious of our relatedness and the resulting response and responsibility toward others, while we are and remain resonant towards ourselves. A person is not merely called to responsibility; it is a vocation. Care relations are thus embedded in institutional and societal contexts that either support or hinder them. At the same time, resonance spaces are spaces for conviviality; but also, for encounter for a limited time. In this context, conviviality refers to a societal climate of “mutual attentiveness, assistance and loyalty, a binding engagement and commitment to the well-being of others, through which all ‘residents’ . . . of a ‘conviviality space’ can feel securely and reliably supported” (Petzold, 2010, p. 7). Care relations in which care-receivers and care-givers are appreciated, not degraded, are embedded in institutional and societal frameworks that remain true to themselves in the aspiration and reality of being a resonance space and a space for conviviality. Since establishing resonance

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on  a permanent basis is very time-consuming (Rosa, 2016, p.  692), the  logic of intensification of an accelerated modern era is hostile to resonance.14 Having time is on the one hand a precondition for the possibility of resonance, but at the same time an effect of resonance. Having time and having resonance is a result, one from the other and to have the one requires the other. For care-givers in institutional contexts this means that the pressure of acceleration undermines “the possibilities of transformation in the work process” (Rosa, 2016, p.  400). This can be understood as follows: transformation takes time. A survey of palliative wards on the topic of burden in dealing with death confirms that an accumulation of deaths in the sense of an increasing pulse of time, places a particular burden on employees (Müller & Pfister, 2012). Transformation in the process of mutual acquaintance in the context of a hospice takes time, so that “one can die here better than anywhere else” (Pfeffer, 2005). But what does this mean for employees in the institutional contexts of palliative care, where this time is lacking although 80% of people in Germany die in these surroundings? (Weihrauch, 2014, p. 43). Can and may resonance arise at all in technically and functionally oriented contexts? How do employees under time pressure deal with resonance experiences? Rosa (2016) sees the hospital as a “place where human closeness is needed and practiced, but it is insignificant and perhaps even represents a disturbance for actual institutional performance” (p. 665; cfr. Maio, 2011). “The clock ticks relentlessly in the course of every action, and resonance must be constantly suppressed, because it is not affordable” (Rosa, 2016, p. 667). Under these conditions, people feel alienated. Palliative care as a resonance space of life in a state of departure What then is the significance of palliative care as a space of deceleration and resonance for the accelerated modern human – for a person who has transformed his or her stable identity into a situative identity due to the fear of missing out on something and the compulsion to adapt in order to remain constantly up to date; for whom a good life must serve the purpose of increasing credit by increasing

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resources and options; and for whom everything in the field of palliative care suddenly makes a turn-about? In the field of palliative care, dying and death as the destroyers of options jeopardize the possibility of increasing credit, instead placing supposedly “important” and “essential” elements at the focus of the time remaining through the reduction of options. “Good dying” with its restricted options and resources for realization is a possible response to a life that is good because it has been rich in options. The wish for a good life makes way for the wish for good dying. Palliative care responds to an overemphasis of life as the last opportunity, dominated by the desire for a longer life, by focusing on quality of life as a characteristic of good dying. Palliative practice thus takes seriously the principle of individualization, according to which “one’s own life . . . is a project to be carried out in terms of time” (Rosa, 2005, p. 355). This principle is then applied to the remaining life of the dying patient, who within the context of a good, long and slow process of dying is to understand his or her own life in the face of imminent death as a project to be carried out in terms of time (Gronemeyer, 2007, 2012). A slow process grants the other person time for his or her decisions. It grants the other person the right not to undergo further therapy-optioned treatment, instead deciding in favor of the palliative option. Caregivers will not carry out caring actions any longer as a matter of routine but negotiate them with the patient in accordance with the situation. They endure with the other person – his or her fear of dying and his or her hope until the end (Engelke, 2015, pp. 141-142, p. 166) – and they are not required to remove his or her fear in a reflex action, but remain with him or her in the most difficult hour and endure – together with the patient’s family – the restlessness of dying. “Hospice and palliative work is ultimately nourished by the gift of time, of being there and of being able to endure” (Kohlen, 2016, p. 4). In a palliative attitude, the care-giver and the care-receiver are bonded to each other in care relations – in jointly leaving the spiral of acceleration in favor of an extended space of long, slow dying. The process of dying, which at times is slow, acquires its space in life,

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which is becoming constantly faster. In this space, the time of the care-receiver is intertwined with that of the care-giver. People at the end of life, their families and the palliative staff experience the palliative field as the place to confront their own temporal ambivalence, as a place of their own existence between two worlds of time: that of a decelerated palliative field and that of an accelerated existence. Mourners express this in the process of mourning15: even though an accelerated societal reality demands that I rapidly function once more, I  give myself the time I need for mourning. And people whom I  have met say in retrospect: my experience of time was suddenly changed. When I sat at the bed of my dying wife, I suddenly had time – the time that I needed for her, the time that I was there for her and endured with her, and the palliative staff with us. Time stood still while I sat there. And it stood still when my wife died. In palliative situations, the diminished present moment expands into this questioning. Care-givers and care-receivers see themselves united in these questions and find the answer in the attitude of life in a state of departure, as a binding and obligatory value. Living in a state of departure means that in this phase, death projects into the openness of existence and confronts it with its temporal, finite nature (Weischedel 1980, pp. 188-189, pp. 194-197, pp. 209-215). In becoming aware of the unavailability of life and thus of one’s own transience, the modern human’s uncertainty and fear of loss of control can return with full force at the end of life. The palliative attitude interposes itself as a mediator between the modern human’s need for security and control and his or her insecurity and fear of loss of control. Thus, a mediator situated between the demand of the modern human for a good, secure and controllable life on the one hand and the reality of the invariably broken person on the other, who is insecure and has lost control in the face of his or her own finite nature. Where relinquishing the will for realization has become possible, the situational identity expands into a life in view of dying. Those affected become conscious of what they have been from the outset: dependent humans determined by relations, who in view of their own fragility encounter themselves and others in a new way, because they

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know they are embedded in their fragility at their time of dying. The person who enters the process of awareness of his or her own dying becomes the dying subject that he or she has in fact always been. For the care-givers, this means they are also confronted on a daily basis with the ambivalence of their own life script. Palliative practice has a retroactive effect on one’s own life. The palliative attitude is a reflexive and self-reflexive attitude. However, it is the palliative field that makes this possible, since it offers the time that is necessary for processing and transforming the experiences of an accelerated life into experiences of decelerated dying at the end of life – time for resonance experiences.

Conclusion Merely having time does not constitute palliative practice. I have endeavored to demonstrate that a specific type of palliative practice is care-ethically founded. In the context of this argument, time is a prerequisite for a practice that has time at its disposal and makes it available within the framework of palliative care relations. It is time that we need when we allow ourselves to be addressed by the needs of others and thereby become care-providers; time to be able to assume responsibility in care relations for the seriously ill and the dying, and for those close to them; time to be able to attentively accompany the last phase of life of persons entrusted to our care, while remaining aware of the limitations of both our opposite number and ourselves, and acting attentively in this situation. To fulfil the demanding task of balancing care and self-care in care relations, caring actions are determined by framework conditions with responsibility borne by institutions and society to making time available for care and attention. The palliative attitude, which is thus secured on a personal, institutional and societal basis, is dependent on the availability of time, which is essential to generating resonance at the end of life: resonance arises where we open ourselves to our condition of relatedness, where – responding to the other – we perceive ourselves as the object of relations and can therefore invest in the other’s well-being. Resonance needs time, to enable life to succeed at the end of life.

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Kohlen, H. (2009). Conflicts of care: Hospital Ethics Committees in the USA and in Germany. Frankfurt a/Main: Campus. Kohlen, H. (2016). Sterben als Regelungsbedarf: Palliative Care und die Sorge um das Ganze. Ethik in der Medizin, 28(1), 1-4. Kohlen, H., & Kumbruck, C. (2008). Care-(Ethik) und das Ethos fürsorglicher Praxis (Literaturstudie) . Bremen: Universität Bremen, Forschungszentrum Nachhaltigkeit (artec-paper, 151). Retrieved from SSOAR: https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/bitstream/ handle/document/21959/ssoar-2008-kohlen_et_al-care-ethik_und_das_ethos_fursorglicher.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y&lnkname=ssoar-2008-kohlen_et_al-careethik_und_das_ethos_fursorglicher.pdf Kohlen, H., McCarthy, J., Bousso, R.S., Gallagher, A., Andrews, T. (2015). Dialogisches Realisieren und Reorientieren – Pflegerische Entscheidungsfindungsprozesse und Aktivitäten am Lebensende auf der Intensivstation im internationalen Vergleich. Pflege, 6, 329-338. doi: 10.1024/1012-5302/a000458 Laugier, S. (2016). Verletzlichkeit und Verantwortung: Über das Alltägliche in der Ethik. In: E. Conradi & Vosman, F. (Eds.), Praxis der Achtsamkeit. Schlüsselbegriffe der Care-Ethik (pp. 297-319). Frankfurt/M: Campus. Maio, G. (2011). Zur inneren Aushöhlung der Medizin durch das Paradigma der Ökonomie. Ärzteblatt Baden-Württemberg, 66(4), 240-243. Müller, M., & Pfister, D. (Eds.). (2012). Wie viel Tod verträgt das Team? Belastungsund Schutzfaktoren in Hospizarbeit und Palliativmedizin. Göttingen: V&R. Napiwotzky, A. (2017). Mitmenschlichkeit als Leitmotiv: Freiwillige prägen das Hospizkonzept. In B.  Steffen-Bürgi, E.  Schärer-Santschi, D.  Staudacher, & S.  Monteverde (Eds.), Lehrbuch Palliative Care: Begründet von Cornelia Knipping (3rd ed., pp. 92-100). Göttingen: Hogrefe. Petzold, H. G. (2010). Trost/Trostarbeit und Trauer/Trauerarbeit – Konzepte, Modelle, Kontexte – Materialien aus der Integrativen Therapie. POLYLOGE 19, 1-9. Retrieved from ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316646142_TrostTrostarbeit_und_TrauerTrauerarbeit_-_Konzepte _Modelle_Kontexte_-_Materialien_aus_der_Integrativen_Therapie Pfeffer, C. (2005). “Hier wird immer noch besser gestorben als woanders”: Eine Ethnographie stationärer Hospizarbeit. Bern: Huber. Rehbock, T. (2000). Braucht die Pflege eine eigene Ethik? Pflege, 13(5), 280-289. Rosa, H. (2005). Beschleunigung: Die Veränderung der Zeitstrukturen in der Moderne. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Rosa, H. (2016). Resonanz: Eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Saunders, C. (1990). Hospice and palliative care: An interdisciplinary approach. London: Hodder Arnold. Saunders, C., & Baines, M. (1991). Leben mit dem Sterben: Betreuung und medizinische Behandlung todkranker Menschen (I.  Erckenbrecht, Trans). Göttingen: Hogreve. Sayer, A. (2016). Zugewandte Unterstützung und anteilnehmende Sorge als Weltverständnis. In E.  Conradi, & F.  Vosman (Eds.), Praxis der Achtsamkeit: Schlüsselbegriffe der Care-Ethik (pp. , 351-369). Frankfurt a/Main: Campus.

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Sevenhuijsen, S. (1998). Citizenship and ethics of care: Feminist considerations on justice, morality, and politics. London: Routledge. Stadler, P. (2006). Psychische Belastungen am Arbeitsplatz: Ursachen, Folgen und Handlungsfelder der Prävention. Retrieved from Bayerisches Landesamt für Gesundheit und Lebensmittelsicherheit website: https://www.lgl.bayern.de/downloads/arbeitsschutz/arbeitspsychologie/doc/psybel_arbeitsplatz.pdf Steffen-Bürgi, B. (2006). Reflexionen zu ausgewählten Definitionen der Palliative Care. In C. Knipping (Ed.), Lehrbuch Palliative Care (pp. 30-38). Bern: Huber. Student, J.-C. (2017). Palliative Care im stationären Hospiz. In B.  Steffen-Bürgi, E. Schärer-Santschi, D. Staudacher, & S. Monteverde (Eds.), Lehrbuch Palliative Care: Begründet von Cornelia Knipping (3rd ed., pp. 82-91). Göttingen: Hogrefe. Timmerman, G., & Baart, A. (2016). Präsentische Praxis und die Theorie der Präsenz. In E. Conradi & F. Vosman (Eds.), Praxis der Achtsamkeit: Schlüsselbegriffe der Care-Ethik (pp. 189-209). Frankfurt a/Main: Campus. Tronto, Joan C. 1993. Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. New York, London: Routledge. Tronto, J. C. (2013). Caring democracy: Markets, equality, and justice. New York: New York University Press. Van Heijst, A. (2011). Professional Loving Care: An ethical view of the health care sector. In Ethics of Care Series. Louvain: Peeters. Vosman, F. (2016). Kartographie einer Ethik der Achtsamkeit: Rezeption und Entwicklung in Europa. In: E. Conradi, & F. Vosman (Eds.), Praxis der Achtsamkeit: Schlüsselbegriffe der Care-Ethik (pp. 33-53). Frankfurt a/Main: Campus. Weihrauch, B. (2014). Fachliche und politische Voraussetzungen zur Organisation eines guten Sterbens in stationären Pflegeeinrichtungen. In W.  George (Ed.), Sterben in stationären Pflegeeinrichtungen: Situationsbeschreibung, Zusammenhänge, Empfehlungen (pp. 43-51). Gießen: Psychosozial Verlag. Weischedel, W. (1980). Skeptische Ethik. Berlin: Suhrkamp. World Health Organization (2002). WHO Definition of palliative care 2002. Retrieved from the DGP website: www.dgpalliativmedizin.de/images/stories/WHO_Definition_2002_Palliative_Care_englisch-deutsch.pdf

Notes The text is translated from German into English by Andrew Leslie. Parts of the German text are based on ideas of an article published by Baumann and Kohlen (2018). Permission was given by Baumann for writing a new version with a focus on care ethics. 2 The fact that care-givers are highly burdened and stressed by their work situation is likewise the finding of labor and organisational psychology (Glaser & Höge, 2005; Stadler, 2006; Bartholomeyczik et al., 2008). 3 On the basis of Rehbock‘s broad understanding of medicine, Maio’s finding can be extended to all professional care-givers in the healthcare system: according to Rehbock, medicine as a practice is first and foremost “an elementary form of human 1

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life practice, the remit and objectives of which are founded in fundamental moral orientations of a good life” (Rehbock, 2000, p. 285). She distinguishes this understanding of medicine as an anthropologically authenticated remit for care from an understanding of medicine in which care comprises professional care, and an understanding in which medicine signifies knowledge to be conveyed. 4 Re-thinking the idea of palliative care from the perspective of Rosa’s acceleration theory is based on joint work with Baumann (2018). 5 At the centre of the modern hospice movement is Saunders (1918-2005). In the context of the establishment of the first modern hospice (St. Christopher’s Hospice, 1967), she defines the cornerstones of a concept which as “palliative care” (first so designated by the Canadian oncologist Balfour Mount) is a significant component of the national health systems of over 50 countries. 6 Original: “Praxis der Achtsamkeit. Schlüsselbegriffe der Care-Ethik”. 7 Translated by the author, Helen Kohlen. 8 This critical idea has been outlined earlier by Arvidsson and Peitersen (2013). 9 “First, our social, economic, and political institutions no longer fit with our modes of caring and need to be revolutionized. Second, in a democratic society, the way to rethink institutions and practices .  .  . is to rethink them democratically. Third, caring democratically requires a democratic process by which citizens are able to care with their fellow citizens. Yet as they learn to renegotiate caring responsibilities, citizens’ care for democracy solidifies and reinforces the democratic nature of society” (Tronto, 2013, p. 13). 10 Tronto (2013) refers to Sevenhuijsen (1998) who argues that care requires commitment to (acknowledgement of) plurality, communication, trust and respect. Addams (1902), known for her socio-political work at Hull House, points to similar commitments: interaction and pluralism. 11 For the understanding of care: see the overview work on care ethics by Kohlen & Kumbruck (2008). 12 For the significance of the hospice movement as an opposite stance to the euthanasia debate, see Kohlen (1999) and Jordan (2007). 13 This is also described by Rosa’s (2016) resonance theory: “A longing for resonance, and the desire for resonance ultimately motivating those strategies of reification, . . . are banished to specific, not every day special zones of societal activity” (p. 733). 14 In the logic of increment, however, Rosa (2016) does not see resonance experiences rendered inevitably, fundamentally impossible. An increase in resources and options can even intensify resonance experiences, as long as the means is not mistaken for the end. Resources and options can be a means to the end of promoting the possibilities of resonance experiences and therefore be conducive to a good life. But resources and options are not good life. In a similar vein, Maio (2011) in his determination of the relationship between medicine and economy, according to which “the objectives of economy must stand in the services of the objectives of medicine” (p. 241), and not vice versa, so that medicine can hold fast to its own objectives. 15 The following are experiences the author encountered in her dealings with mourning.

Empirically Grounded Ethics of Care An Argument Andries Baart

Introduction: the Subject of This Contribution In the ethics of care attention is generally focused on its theoretical and philosophical dimensions, which are at once essential, elucidating, and challenging. Complementing the theoretical and philosophical dimensions is the objective of empirically-oriented care ethicists like Carol Gilligan, Marian Barnes, Helena Olofsdotter Stensöta, Jeannette Pols, Tula Branelly, and Helen Kohlen. As the founding father of the theory of presence which is grounded in 9-10  years of empirical research, I position myself as a care ethical theorist by developing and building theories that are grounded in empirical research. This chapter is positioned, therefore, at the intersection of theory and the empirical aspects of an ethics of care, and it will deal with the dynamics and the rationale of that nexus. The central thesis will be that an ethics of care requires good, thorough empirical research, and that the normative ideas of the ethics of care are and/or should often be corrected, rejected, or amended on the basis of its empirical findings. Empirical research ensures that the ethics of care remains “down to earth” or at least grounded. In developing my argument, the focus will be on (mainly) professional care and more specifically on questions such as: what do we, in the field of the ethics of care, really know about care ethical practices (i.e. the translation of care ethical ideas into action)? What do we know about care ethical professionals (i.e.: professional care providers who work according to the philosophy of the ethics of care)? Practices

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of care and care providers: what do these look like when studied from a care ethical perspective? The focus is not on care ethicists, but on nurses, doctors, social welfare workers, teachers, psychiatrists, youth workers, who deliver care in a care ethical way: is this possible, what is needed, how must they be trained, how do they persevere, what are the results, what do their practices mean for theories on the ethics of care, and what can care ethical theorists learn from this? The outline of this discussion of an empirically grounded ethics of care is as follows: I.

The fact-value discussion: A preliminary question should be asked and answered: what is the relation between (empirical) facts and (care) ethics? Can these be linked, and if so: how? Usually facts and values are strictly separate and are not reducible to one another. I will try to outline my position, which is that of an empirically grounded ethics of care. II. Turning to care and the ordinary life. Thereafter, I will address the real, empirical world of daily life where care is provided by professional and mostly non-professional carers. First I will characterize the empirical research and then present the consequences (useful results as well as serious complications): (1) eliminating theoretical naivety, (2) engaging with burning issues, and (3) illuminating the necessity and risks of interdisciplinary development of the ethics of care. III. Conclusions. The conclusions will set out an empirically grounded theory of an ethics of care.

I. First Approach to the Empirical Issue: the Fact – Value Discussion A. Problem The link between fact and value, and the distinction between empirical data and moral values is a frequently discussed issue in ethics. According to a widely accepted maxim, doing empirical research has only limited value for developing an ethics (of care) because, according to Hume and other naturalistic philosophers, it is not possible to derive conclusions about what should be done from mere facts. Facts

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are facts and although they are morally relevant, they themselves produce no ethical insights or preferences, let alone decisions. David Hume’s famous saying (1740/1896, in Book III of Treatise of human nature) argues that moral distinctions are not derived from reason: In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ‘tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it . . . [I] am persuaded, that a small attention [to this point] wou’d subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv’d by reason. (Part I, Section I)

There is or there should be a fundamental (logical) gap between “is and ought,” “the descriptive and the prescriptive,” “fact and value,” and “motive and reason.” Although he misinterpreted Hume, the famous Cambridge philosopher George Edward Moore (1903: Ch. 1, par. 10) defined the “naturalistic fallacy” in morals (trying to define moral goods in terms of something else). He held that moral concepts are indefinable or at least not definable in terms of natural properties or concepts. This distinction, and what Hume (1740/1896) did or did not mean by his famous dictum, have recently been explored in depth in the beautiful and fascinating book Hume on Is and Ought (Pigden, 2010). The interpretation of Hume’s intentions should be subtle, as the issues at stake are complex and hardly touch upon a more straightforward practical interwovenness of the two modes of knowledge. The strict separation has strong theoretical, conceptual, analytical, and logical relevance. However, in the daily practice of empirically-informed moral decisions, an extended map of possible positions and relations of the two (facts and values) is more helpful (Christen, Van Schaik, Fischer, Huppenbauer, & Tanner, 2014).

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There are broadly-accepted views on empirical data in ethical decision making. Although some authors mention no less than 20  positions, I will restrict myself to the most important (see also Musschenga, 2005). (1) Empirical data as necessary context information, e.g. within the domain of medicine: knowing the medical history of the patient (who is affected by an ethical decision), all the treatment, therapies, the family context, the patient’s philosophy of life, the applicable procedures in the situation of action, etc. Although they are not directly derived from this kind of information, sound moral decisions cannot be made without this information. The same goes for (2) empirical data as (probable) consequences of a moral decision. This position basically entails the estimation of what the most probable results of the (moral) action will be, and the subsequent questions: are they the results and impacts that we intended and would prefer, or do they possibly cause greater harm, suffering, and other morally undesirable effects than another ethical decision? The third position: (3) the empirical data concerns (value-driven opinions and) values as they occur in the (social) reality: which of these are strongly adhered to in society in general, in what way are preferred values applied (or: applicable) in practice, what kind of values can be found in concrete professional practices, what are the prevalent contradictions and tensions between values, what are their hierarchies, etc.? And, closely related to these questions: what moral issues are seen as highly relevant in specific contexts but mostly escape the attention of ethicists? John Gardner and Clare Williams (2015) offer a good example of this when they argue for “empirical ethics” in the context of the European Commission’s Responsible Research and Innovation programme. To name just one of their examples: they plead for the understanding of the highly complex “innovation ecosystems” that encompass the views, values, and practices of clinicians and scientists of various specialisms, engineers, manufacturers, commercial companies, regulatory agencies, and users and patient support groups. (4) A fourth position regarding empirical data in moral or ethical decision making relates to motives and reasons. Why do people do what they do, why does altruism exist, how is it

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motivated, and how can it be promoted? The Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal (2006, 2009, 2013) makes a remarkable and strong case in this field, by showing convincingly that great apes have what we loosely call “moral” intuitions and behavior, and definitely know how to balance egoism on the one hand and empathy or cooperation on the other. And lastly, (5) empirical data play an important role in making behavioral predictions, which are relevant for moral decisions: if these are the rules, how will people respond, will they obey, violate the rules, feel helped or disempowered, will they search for exemptions, gaps or deviations? Psychological insights are relevant here. These are not all the possible links between empirical data and moral decisions. Discourse analysis, for instance, may offer another link (how do people think about ethical issues: in what kind of concepts and language, with which power distribution in mind?). Similarly, ethnographic research (e.g. of Tim Ingold) can show how people live a more or less moral life: how do they conduct themselves, how do they make various kinds of ethical decisions? However, the abovementioned five connections are generally seen as the most important ones, and at the very least they show that moral decisions dearly need well-informed, context-sensitive empirical data. The social sciences can provide that necessary information. But the gap between fact and value, and the necessity of a leap still remain. While acknowledging the importance and usefulness of empirical data, what ought to be done morally speaking is still dependent on moral reasoning and cannot be derived or deducted from this kind of empirical knowledge. This could be called the undisturbed ethics and the ancilla function of the social sciences in ethics: empirical data are the ancilla (“handmaid”) of ethics, and although ethical reasoning is informed by these data, it is in essence not changed by it, nor can it be changed by it. Narrowing down the focus The “facts and values” dichotomy suggests a reasonable degree of clarity but at the same time it generates a specific kind of blindness and arrogance. “Blindness,” because the obvious and inevitable embeddedness of moral goods – in “lived” relationality, “polluted” contexts, and

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“complex” practices – allows for the idea of moral goods that show themselves locally. Moral goods emerge in materialized practices. They are routinely lived, are tacit or half-conscious, and are sometimes explicitly balanced. A “good ethical reflection” cannot and should not be prescribed as the Big Disentanglement. The empirical interwovenness of evident moral goods constitutes their plausibility and sometimes their legitimacy. It seems “arrogant” to articulate, or at least to suggest this kind of opinion: on our high, dry theoretical grounds (cfr. Schön 1983), we judge the humble and imperfect practices of those situated, half-blind actors, and in our analytic approach we strip all the redundant details out until we have a clear view, on which truth we subsequently base our general prescriptions. If we look at self-confident ethical consultants in highly complex health organizations, too often we find this kind of detached arrogance: they “know” (best). The central issue is thus not the absolute distinction between “fact and value,” but the value-ladenness of facts and the fact-ladenness of values. Facts are relevant because they mean something (they are value-laden in the sense of having significance and thus being of value) and values matter because they are practically relevant (factladenness) – see Andrew Sayer (2011). In this regard, I would like to distinguish between “moral standards from the outside” and “moral standards from within” and their osmotic relationship. For this reason, a few years ago I advocated Table 1, option D: integrated empirical ethics. But now I believe this was a mistake. I was happy with how the compilers of that table – Molewijk, Stiggelbout, Otten, Dupuis, & Kievit (2004) – constructed their overview and distinctions: “We have grouped these approaches [to the fact-value dichotomy] mainly according to the question of whether moral theory or morality within a social practice should be the final moral arbiter (i.e. the location of the moral authority)” (p. 56). B. Five ways of using empirical data within ethics Some ethicists have sketched a more nuanced, actual map of the main positions in this debate. The abovementioned overview of Molewijk et al. (2004), see Table 1, will do for our purposes. Five “approaches” are

Note. Retrieved from “Empirical Data and Moral Theory. A Plea for Integrated Empirical Ethics” (p. 60) by Molewijk et al., Kluwer Academic Publishers. Copyright 2004, (n.p.).: Kluwer Academic Publishers (edited slightly by the author, AB).

Table 1: Heuristic Overview of Different Ways of Using Empirical Data within Ethics

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identified (the rows) and compared on eight variables (the columns). The emphasis is on columns IV (does the normativity come from external sources?), V (are the empirical data simply conditions, the object or even the subject of the moral decisions?), and VI (the balance between deductive and inductive reasoning). Referring again to Table 1, consequentialist moral theories can easily be recognized in row (A): empirical data demonstrate that the prescriptive function of moral theories is being successfully applied; in row (B) empirical data can lead to a further refinement of a moral theory, and in row (C) the deductive and inductive approaches are alternated. Molewijk et al. (2004) write: “An example of a critical applied ethics study in which the empirical data function as a means to improve moral theory is the assessment of the validity of the empirical background assumptions of a moral theory (Heeger & Van Willigenburg, 1992; Pearlman et al., 1993; Musschenga & Van der Steen, 1999)” (p. 57). Row (C) portrays the radical position of particularists who exclude any interaction between empirical data and moral theory. This category includes researchers who “collect” heartbreaking narratives (of patients, doctors, people who wish to die, people who suffer from psychiatric illnesses, etc.) and suggest that these narratives show what actions are good. Our position – which will be elaborated further on in this chapter as an empirically grounded ethics of care – is rather similar to the fourth approach, row (D), namely integrated empirical ethics. However, it differs from this in certain crucial respects, and it has a number of characteristics in common with row (C), even if it does not fit into this (or any similar) overview. The main reason is the indisputable but rather clumsy starting point: two variables that conflict (facts and values). We do not think that the number “two” is correct, nor do we think that they are irreconcilable. The distinction of facts and values is in any case not that absolute. In the ethics of care this kind of bold epistemological dichotomies has been disputed (for these contested dichotomies, see: Putnam, 2002; Bergström, 2002; Rolston, 2004; Zammito, 2012): it is a characteristic of the ethics of care to dispute these  dichotomies, like it disputes other boundaries and frames of

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conceptualization that are taken for granted. Our position is akin to “integrated empirical ethics” (option (D) in Table 1), but augmented with elements from option (C), and as we will show below: the differences may seem slight but they have radical consequences. C. Our proposal The longitudinal experiments carried out to develop an appropriate qualitative-empirical care-ethical research design have now been ongoing for almost 30 years (1991-2019; from 2007 on a structural basis with Frans Vosman, and from 2014 with Guus Timmerman) and have not yet been concluded. They started rather intuitively in the tradition of the (classical) grounded theory approach and were subsequently driven by: • a mixture of persistent theoretical and methodological problems at the interface of ethics, empirical research, and theory development; i.e. we define the problem more broadly than “factvalue,” and include “theory development”; • discontent with what too often seem facile or inadequate solutions (in literature and practices); “facile” here means: responses to problems that involve reducing complexity and choosing schematized solutions without empirical validation; • the strong belief that the ethics of care should not only be philosophically informed and shaped but also underpinned by thorough empirical understanding of complex care practices; empirical research can strengthen the ethics of care and refine its concepts; • continuous critical evaluation of our empirical research and theoretical reflections in various domains of care: the relentless search for correction, improvement, and extension of our views; • a strong intention to be simultaneously scientifically solid, methodologically rigorous, philosophically informed, relevant to burning issues in society, and aware of the restrictive institutional or political embeddedness of (health) care. Figure 1 depicts these developments, and Table 2 provides a summary based on various forms of political phenomenology, the inquiry into

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Empirical Research

2

Ethical Reflection

Phenomenology 4

3

1

Theory Development

Figure 1: The four relations we have explored in our search for an appropriate model of qualitative-empirical care-ethical research design (based on a model by Guus Timmerman).

three (not two!) relations, while each relation influences the other ones. D. Growing insights This kind of empirical research described above can teach us, particularly as care ethicists, a number of very interesting lessons that can be summarized in three points: 1. Care is less about fixed values and their realization than about the emergence of goods in particular, contextual, relationally constituted practices: highly unpredictable, uncontrollable, and unforeseeable (Greve & Schnabel, 2011), but morally important goods (as opposed to externally proclaimed values). Example: in our research we find that being in relation (for instance with your health care professional) can be a good per se. The relationship does not predominantly have the value of a means (by which pills, advice, money or a therapy is “transferred” from carer to care receiver and a solution is found), but even without those instrumental values it often turns out to have a

Sociology “Emergence vs. Forcing”

In discussion with: a) discipline and

grounded theory. Lindemann (2008), because of her ‘Theoretische Empirie’ [theoretical empirics].

less fellow travellers

Problem to solve Unleashing the theoretical power of practices. To do that successfully, the dichotomy in the analysis between radical but rather blind inductivism on the one hand, and arrogant and deductive application of already known concepts on the other has to be overcome.

Strauss & Corbin (1990), because of the abductive variety in

b) two main authors, more or

issue

How empirical research and theory development should be related (= dynamics of empirical research and theory generation).

Issue

Relation 1

significance of so-called facts: bridging the gap, conceived in too absolute terms, between fact and value in ethical reflections on empirical data.

The disregard of the ethical

argued for or against.

ethics. Putnam (2003), because of rejection of the claims that values are not capable of being rationally

Molewijk et al. (2004), because of the option of integrated empirical

Bio-ethics “No ought from is”

should be done reflectively, not necessarily remotely.

The purity of science or (as stated by Donald Schön, 1983, pp. 42-43) the view of science as ‘high, hard ground overlooking a swamp’. We have to put the idea in perspective that (good) scholarly research should be value-free and disengaged. Scientific research

Taylor (1989), because of his ideas about the emergence of types of goods and hypergoods.

Sayer (2011), because of his ‘meaning-laden facts’.

Philosophy of science “Value-free social science”

To do greater justice to the lived lives of care receivers and of the actual processes of care, and thus to prioritize the perspective from within.

perception. Waldenfels (2006/2011), because of his political phenomenology.

Merleau-Ponty (2002), because of his phenomenological theory of

Political phenomenology “Zu den Sachen selbst” ["to the things themselves"]

and influence one another.

reflection should be related.

reflection should be related.

Relation 4 How relation 1, 2 and 3 are related

Relation 3

How empirical research and ethical How theory building and ethical

Relation 2

Table 2: Very concise summary of our search for an appropriate model of qualitative-empirical care-ethical research design

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The necessity of a meandering procedure between two poles of information: the abductive analysis.

Timmerman & Vosman, 2014, pp. 325-327 Baart & Timmerman, 2016, pp. 133-139 Timmerman, Vosman, & Baart, 2017, p. 83

Baart & Timmerman, 2016, pp.

130-133

Timmerman, Baart, & Vosman 2017, pp. 83-84

Vosman, Timmerman, & Baart, 2018, pp. 412-413

Vosman, Timmerman & Baart, 2018, pp. 410-411

Baart, 2013, pp. 87-98

Timmerman, 2018

2014

Klaver, Van Elst, & Baart,

Klaver & Baart, 2011

318

324

p. 328

Timmerman, 2010, pp. 315-

Timmerman, 2010, pp. 320-

Baart, 2001, 2004

Moralistic judgements

value-laden and never ‘objective’: we prefer to build middle range substantive theories on the basis of well-elucidated practices.

Theories as meaningful configurations of understanding social phenomena are inevitably

Timmerman & Vosman, 2014,

Please note: This table is not intended to situate or judge colleagues.

own research

underpinning and some practical examples in our

Our own theoretical

Ethical particularism

general principles, but the emergence of situated goods propels the moral / ethical reflection.

Not the deductive application of

relations. Theory critically assists therefore thematize. this process by broadening the view and making suggestions about what may be relevant.

needs of the care receiver. Connecting and attuning presuppose understanding the explicit and tacit concerns of the

Care is good care as far as it successfully meets the various

2018, p. 414

Vosman, Timmerman, & Baart,

Vosman, 2018

2017, p. 83

Timmerman, Vosman, & Baart,

139

Baart & Timmerman, 2016, p.

Baart 2011

Systemic blindness

political, institutional, and power relations.

Because of the centrality of the meaning of social phenomena (more than their explanation) we give priority to the first-person perspective, embedded in its

and systemized insights in handling care receiver, and how lived life them; they are not general shows itself to that care receiver. prescriptions.

lenses for interpreting and understanding social needs, precarity, endangered lives, injustice, etc. and offer grounded

movement in such a way that empirical data determine the substance and reach of the formation of concepts and their

turned out to be morally relevant goods and procedures in a particular situation, and into what a relevant ethical reflection should

Care-ethical theories are first and foremost reliable resources and

The analysis should contain both an Empirical research generates inductive and a deductive grounded insights into what have

Main criticism to Lack of groundedness rebut: our approach suffers from…

Central argument

Our position

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crucial value: being seen, being recognized, having the experience of being worthwhile. Whether or not this “good” will emerge in a caring relationship is hard to predict, but when it does, it is unwise to handle the relationship as just another professional tool. 2. The lived meaning of facts and factual circumstances blur the classical fact-value distinction. In moral reasoning, facts are not objective, free-floating entities, but experienced, lived, interpreted human realities – they “matter to people” and thus have a valueladen meaning. While Andrew Sayer (2011) has elaborated this insight, the care ethicist Per Nortvedt (2005, p.  82) describes it concisely: It is important to distinguish moral perception from moral evaluation and judgement. To discover a set of morally relevant features of a case is not the same as deciding which features are the most relevant to consider appropriate for moral action. This may seem trivial but is not . . . Moral rightness is not a question of sensitivity, but of reason and deliberation. But this deliberation depends on features of relevance that reason itself has not chosen nor created. The discovery of value in the human as well as in the clinical encounter resonates on a receptivity towards expressions of human vulnerabilities that best can be explained as sensibility.

3. Lived morals: carers (and those cared for) make all the time situated inquiries in which they connect (1) lived meaning, (2) the perceived needs and concerns, (3) an assessment of resources from within (what would be possible here?), (4) their own abilities for endurance, (5) the loyalties to particular people, the system, the law, the rules they have to deal with, (6) their uncertainty, (7)  their intuitions, (8) their own bodily reactions to situations, etc. (see e.g. Hämäläinen, 2014). These factors are, so to say, gelled together in practical wisdom (even when this “wisdom” turns out to be not that smart), or “phronesis.” In our version of the ethics of care, this phronesis plays an important role – a related position has been defended in the classical views of virtue ethicists Pellegrino and Thomasma (1983, pp. 84-92). In lived morality a

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professional can hardly refuse – at least not systematically – his or her responsibility to care (Van Niekerk & Nortjé, 2013), and precisely these messy and urgent circumstances of the practice bridge the gap between fact and value in a particular way. In a certain way, these three (or even more) understandings that underlie empirical research bridge the fact-and-value gap, and it is this kind of empirical research we favor. This kind of empirical research generates critical insights that guide moral discourse, it keeps moral reasoning empirically grounded, and prevents scholastic and principle-driven irrelevance (as a result of not addressing burning issues and being too strongly self-referential). It widens the focus and scope from moral dilemmas to the broader question: what makes care good care? Our version of the ethics of care is not about moral dilemmas. We are certainly not the first to think like this: Nel Noddings (1982 and 2002, p. 214) already criticized the abstract constructions of moral dilemmas (“too short stories”). This kind of care-ethical research absorbs a greater number of sources of relevant knowledge into the moral debate (such as relationally grounded knowledge, contextual intuitions, personalized goods, physical boundaries, etc.). It amplifies the moral subject from the ethicist (experts) to involved members of the moral community. By doing so, ordinary practitioners are recognized as competent in matters of ethics, at the very least as people who in everyday life continuously handle ethical problems – even when ethicists cannot find an acceptable solution. Practitioners have to find a solution. This kind of empirical research immediately reveals the actual political and systemic pressure on the situation (it cannot deny this) and makes the politically ethical reasoning immediately relevant or even unavoidable. We will demonstrate these conclusions in the sections to come. Why can this stance be called care-ethical? To refer to a number of widely accepted characteristics of the ethics of care: the structure of ethical reasoning is radically relational, meaning that social (inter) dependencies (loyalties, obligations, appeals) matter as ethical argument and are not overruled by principles. Moreover, the object is

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good care (not just accountable care) and the aim of good care is a just, meaningful, decent, sustainable, livable world. The sources of the moral deliberation are multiple (knowledge, loyalties, emotions, physical reactivity, etc.) and local considerations play an essential role in ethical decision making. The ethical perspective prioritizes the first-person position (from within; the phenomenological point of view) and political-ethical interpretation. The justice-care dichotomy is not solved but settled in a sensible, pragmatic way (as Virginia Held 1995 and 2006 does too).

II. Second Approach to the Empirical Issue: Care and the Ordinary Life Intermezzo: a snapshot picture of the kind of research we do/have done Before elaborating on the “empirical turn in the ethics of care” as explored and developed by Vosman, Timmerman, and Baart, I will give the reader at least an impression of the empirical research we have done and continue to do. Designing research projects: formal picture All our empirical research falls within the domain of formal and informal care: youth care, general hospital care, social care in disadvantaged neighborhoods, psychiatric care, foster care, care for substance-dependent people, homeless people, or people who suffer from (slight or serious) mental, intellectual, or developmental impairments, and so on. The settings vary from highly institutional, ruledriven, intra-mural, contractual interactions (with doctors, nurses, psychiatrists in hospitals) to less formal, sometimes more grassrootslike relations (social workers in neighborhoods and youth care providers or playground workers). We have researched both private or protected one-to-one care (one professional and one patient) and care in (semi-)public spaces: community center, street, hospital ward or “family homes” of youth protection. We concentrate on professional behavior, sometimes on care receivers and the meaning that behavior has for them, sometimes on the setting and the influence this exercises, sometimes on the results and impact.

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Methodologically, most of our research is qualitative empirical research (sometimes using mixed methods), based on the traditions of ethnography, phenomenology, discourse analysis, visual data analysis, narrative analysis, auto-ethnography, conversational analysis, and such like. In short, we utilize a relatively broad spectrum, given our research interest, of approaches and tools that we need in specific situations. We work with different datasets and data collecting tools: interviews, focus groups, observation, shadowing, and pre-prepared documents (diaries, medical files, letters of complaint, website chats of family members and patients, formal documents drawn up by organizations, etc.). We prefer a multiple-perspective approach, choose broad triangulation techniques and repeated theoretical sampling: these guarantee the richness of the data. In our (often multiple-case) research designs we mostly practice thorough and in-depth analysis, staying on the spot for protracted periods of time (around five to nine years with a minimum of two years), and we also use computer-assisted analysis techniques and programmes (Kwalitan, Atlas-ti, MaxQDA) aimed at theory building (grounded theory, including description, exploration, pattern finding, devising a typology, etc.). We aim more at interpretation and understanding than at evaluation, let alone moral judgment. In order to have a fruitful exchange between empirical data and the theory of the ethics of care, we believe that an open and multiple approach is needed, continuous changes of perspective, patient zooming in and out, and reliance on (very) different methodological traditions. We have tried to avoid one-sidedness in our choice of settings, issues, disciplines, analytic frames, complexity and so on. This wideranging character of our research is a prerequisite for relevance, fitness, and depth of the results, and consequently for their impact on the ethics of care (see the “three major shifts” section below). Doing research projects: towards a substantial picture To illustrate this short sketch of our stance and intentions, some specific examples of our research will follow – all sources are listed on www.andriesbaart.nl. We do this to add credibility to the methodological and thematic breadth of the research and the strong internal

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links between research and theory development in the field of the ethics of care. I carried out complex, comprehensive research (1992-2001) on how certain professionals (in this case: pastoral workers) – who were unanimously deemed by residents and colleagues to be the best carers in the neighborhood – gave support, help, and care to the most vulnerable residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods. This is where the sources of the presence theory lie (Baart, 2001). During another project, a small team and I used intensive shadowing of patients and their relatives (2011-2012) to explore what people experienced as they waited in the Emergency Department of a general hospital. This turned out not only to be informative and revealing research, but it also stood in sharp contrast to research of the same issues conducted in large-scale surveys. It gave us a new frame of analysis (inquiry into the match or mismatch of patients’ concerns on the one hand and care providers’ responses on the other). Together with our PhD students we carried out (2010-2014, continued thereafter with a different design) phenomenological research on the lives and lived reality of MS patients; this is essential to understanding what makes care good care for them. Using discourse analysis, phenomenological approaches, and content analyses of medical files and family diaries, Frans Vosman and I carried out (2011-2013) an in-depth case study of the so-called burdensome and “socially ill-adjusted” relatives of a neurological patient, but instead we found unprofessional, anxious, and clumsy nurses and doctors, caught in a disastrous web of routine, scripts, and arrogance. Epistemological injustice and highly complex practices turned out to be the best analytic frames. (This case is elaborated below, see the “Emotions” section, p.  282f.) We often study excellent or even virtuoso care providers compared to mainstream professionals, in order to understand what they do better, or in what way they are more capable. Using a variety of methods and tools, and assisted by colleagues and PhD students, I am continuing to do this kind of research (2014- present) on the care of severely mentally handicapped people who suffer from autism and have demanding behavior, and also on the care for young people in various settings

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(2011-2015) who mostly have a fivefold diagnosis (addiction, homelessness, intellectual handicaps, psychiatric problems (bi-polar, traumatized, unsafely attached, etc.), demanding behavior). On my own and thereafter together with Klaartje Klaver (2009-2014) I carried out and supervised a five-year research project (of participant observation) on attentiveness in oncological care (with Klaartje Klaver, 2009-2014). Together with Annelies van Heijst, I supervised a fouryear study (2006-2010) of good care for the elderly who are in the last stages of Alzheimer’s. Together with colleagues, I carried out (and supervised) long-term research into transitional processes in social (2008-2012) and hospital care (2009-2014), especially concerning learning processes. Together with Guus Timmerman, I carried out a short discourse analysis of letters of complaint (2014-2015); on my own I performed another discourse analysis of narratives of the lives and fates of older people in sub-Saharan Africa (2014-2016); and, again in conjunction with Timmerman, I carried out a praxeological multiple-case study of end-of-life care by general physicians (20142017). In short, all these projects (and there are more) without exception (a) were done within the framework of the ethics of care and by consequence they (b) specify and update (parts of the body of knowledge of) the ethics of care. Sometimes they even (c) further develop the ethics of care in a substantial way (as is illustrated below). These projects also often (d) make critical corrections and unmask ideological stances. For instance: it is regarded as common sense nowadays that patients must be seen as rational choice makers, that they want to be rational choice makers, and should be stimulated to join the reasonable and well-guided process of shared decision making with their doctor. However, in our various studies we hardly found any proof at all that this ideal has any reality, let alone that it is common practice: (1) patients are much more than only rational, (2) there hardly is such a thing as “a decision,” (3) furthermore: decisions are not made but mostly found, “jumped to,” and they need to be constantly renewed, and (4) deliberation with the doctor can hardly be called “shared” because of the inevitable epistemological paternalism

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involved (“doctor knows best”). Of course, it is a good idea for doctor and patient to deliberate with each other, and it is also good that the doctor puts forward different options, but this does not make it “shared decision making.” It must not be considered an excellent example of “relational” care. The difficulties behind these findings are much too interesting to be discarded as soft or irrelevant. In our research into general physicians’ end-of-life care, the most caring doctors were those who could least be described as accommodating “rational choice.” Characteristic of the way we do our empirical research into the domain of the ethics of care is that we want to be researcher and theorist (ethicist) in one: I am not doing humble, muddling empirical research in order to present it to the theorists on their high, dry ground, asking for their appreciation. We practice the way of grounded theory, abductive theory building, moving from this kind of research to fully-fledged care ethical (sub)theories or theoretical issues. I am as much a philosopher as I am a social scientist. Three major shifts in the ethics of care, based on empirical research Our “empirical turn” in the ethics of care has caused shifts in care ethical attention. Three of these will be discussed below. A. Images of care beyond naivety One of the most prominent and illuminating results of the empirical turn is the breakdown of various simplistic assumptions and naivety. I will elaborate on this below, based on our research. These results implicitly criticize the too abstract fast-forward in ethics, which is theoretically excellent but is far removed from ordinary lived experience. First of all, this empirical research implies exposure to ordinary life and to care as part of this, to the lifeworld, and everyday worries and concerns. It inevitably confronts us with the (weak and modest) meaning of care amid other important features of and powers in life. As a consequence, our reflection on care proceeds in a less isolated way, no longer from the position of an outside. The meaning or

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urgency of care depends heavily on its position with respect to other “facts of life,” comparable to the meaning of “red” amid other, contrasting, and similar colors, or the meaning of a word in a system of other words, sounds, and usages – the structural dimension. We must concede that our care ethical reflection here becomes “uneasy,” and is raised beyond the non-existing purity of the ideal of care (including such care concepts as relations, dedication, encounters, sacrifices, empathy, “going the extra mile,” etc.) and all the estheticizing, often romantic and context-less talk about care and its precious values. Care as an object of research and intervention becomes much more situated, complex, relative, filthy, laborious, whereas the all-too-easy, all-too-abstract philosophical reflections fail to have any relevance. These reflections are not false, but their truth simply does not have any practical meaning beyond the academic community. It does not matter whether or not they exist. We may formulate this as follows: this radical empirical research causes a turn to (care as related to) real life, to things as they are, and life as it is actually lived. Thinking about care is powered by life as lived, and not by academically construed dilemmas, fictional cases or art house movies, regardless of how important it may be to think in such a way. This raises another critique of ideology: the almost irrelevant, but influential ethical reading of the world in a deductive way: top-down, from principles, maxims, and other “high grounds.” But we know that real life occurs in “swamps” (Schön, 1983) and continues by endlessly muddling through. In many instances it is not the “quality of life” that is at stake, but mere “survival.” In other words: this research invests care ethics with the humble intention to be open and sensitive to real life in order to transcend theory-driven irrelevance. Furthermore, this kind of research implies a turn to care as highly complex practices (Nicolini, 2012; Schmidt, 2012): care and caring as the intersection of many forces, artefacts, scripts, routines, bodies and institutions. Care is then explored as a phenomenon that is hard to predict, hard to oversee or control; as a phenomenon that cannot be understood on its own. This means going beyond the attractiveness of simplicity. For all who have the intention of changing care in a

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more care ethical direction, this is a serious warning. There is no simple button to push or splendid idea to apply. A seriously developed practice perspective can help care ethics to overcome its naivety. The kind of empirical research we practice and would like to promote therefore implies a turn to the untidiness of care, because caring is mostly interwoven with varieties of powerlessness, with the tragic and the fateful, with messy duties, with malodourous fluids, and with horrifying and frightening (physical and mental) injuries, trauma, and pain. Too often, caring means: not successfully repairing, but staying there, to do what a decent, loving, or conscientious person would do, even though this will not solve or cure any major problem. Empirical research thus reaches beyond the dream of healing and recovery. By consequence this turn is changing our view on care: care is fluid, an instable, permanently changing, adapting, escaping effort; an endeavor that easily fails because of its fitful character, strict rules, inflexible principles, and rigid criteria of quality. This brings us to a concept of care that is beyond the artificial fixation of care by general rules. B. Issues that matter Another effect of the empirical turn is the unavoidable concreteness of actual practices of care provision. I elaborate this in relation to two aspects. 1. On the level of concepts The empirical turn elicits the concrete specificity of care, the identification of its multiple non-identical forms, its conceptual differentiation; away from broad and unspecified concepts. The central concepts of care must be specified in an operational way, which will become even more possible as a result of empirical research. The specificity of care can thus go beyond the luxury of generalities. To give an example: our empirical research gradually made us discover relevant differences between relations, links, connections, contacts, contracts, chains, bonding, bonds, interaction, acquaintance, mutuality, social understanding, etc. Furthermore, we eventually

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found five basic forms of relational caring (Baart 2018: 87-94). The general, ontological answers of the ethics of care (we are all socially interdependent and no one would have been here without the care of others) is mainly (not always!) correct but is unsatisfactory stated in that form. It can and must be formulated much more precisely and this is a process from which the ethics of care will also profit. Two illustrations are offered below. Emotions (illustration 1) In a dramatic case (Baart & Vosman, 2015, pp.  181-206), already briefly referred to above, we studied the emotions of one patient’s relatives in depth – these family members caused the doctors and nurses a lot of trouble during the nearly three months they stayed with their mother/wife in the Intensive Care Unit. She was hospitalized following a stroke and she eventually died after 82 days in the same hospital. We reconstructed and categorized the kinds of emotions, the severity and also the meaning of these emotions over this period of time. The hospital staff was inclined to link these emotions to the phased, semi-automatic process of loss, namely the famous five stages of loss and grief by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1997): “Denial and Isolation,” “Anger,” “Bargaining,” “Depression,” and “Acceptance.” We found that the relatives’ emotions did not develop phase-byphase (Kübler-Ross herself acknowledged later in her career that this often happens) but were all present all the time; a new insight. Furthermore, the interaction with the hospital staff was by far the most important cause of the type and intensity of the actual emotions that the relatives experienced under the surface of their everyday lives, even more so than the “objective condition” of “mum.” I decided to prepare a time line divided into equal periods of time, and related these periods both to “mum’s condition” and to the conflicts with hospital staff. The result is depicted below (Figure 2): emotions as layers with a changing thickness. The relational quality of the interactions with the doctors and nurses turned out to influence the composition of emotions, how thick or thin each layer was, and which layers were closer to or further removed from the surface. The closer to the surface they were, the

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more probable it is that these emotions are triggered (by the care providers) during episodes of stress and by incidents. Event A had a deep impact, but nevertheless triggers only sadness, while “innocent” event E, with a relatively shallow impact, triggers immediately anger and agitation. During the last periods, the layer of anger was extremely thick, and very close to the surface, while at the moment the patient died, the layer of positive feelings drove back this anger and almost reached the surface – ultimately there was no more grief, no more anxiety, no more gloom, just positive feelings and a residue of anger. For me, the big discovery was the model of layered rather than phased emotions, and the ethical implications that this entails. If one understands this layered composition of the totality of emotions, one can understand why a specific incident in the caring process immediately activates already existing emotions, and thus vulnerability and concerns of those involved (here: relatives), even when the incident seems harmless. In the end, the layered composition of emotions is a relational concept and not a given logic of people’s grief. The care provider is not just accountable for how he or she values and handles already existing emotions, but also for their emergence, composition, urgency, and sensitivity. That is: for whether his or her (“good”) care inflicts more pain, stress, and suffering. Relational care (illustration 2) Nearly ten years of empirical research convinced us of the necessity to picture precisely how care and relations – or care and a relational approach – are linked in the variety of the practices we researched. It was very unsatisfactory to endlessly repeat the slogan of the ethics of care: “all care is relational,” meaning we depend on others as others depend on us (interdependency). We thought it could be explained better, more operationally, and in a way that was more relevant to the uninitiated. Over the years, all kinds of summaries of my findings have been published or presented; Table 3a is a compilation (mainly based on Baart, 2018, pp. 74-95). It summarizes the following findings: (1) relational caring is a particular practice (not an act, nor a virtue, not

Note: retrieved from Baart & Vosman, 2015, p. 191; the original figure has been re-edited and substantially expanded with relevant data.

Figure 2: Five incidents and their impact on a patient’s relatives and their emotions, conceptualized as variable layers instead of phases.

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4. Modus

3. Space and time

2. Ethical

1. Structural

Entry

Values and goods

Addressee

Motive

Form

Result

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Caring out of the relationality Caring as relationality Caring in relationality Caring through relationality Caring in view of relationality

Offering a reliable stage where people in need of care may come forward as they are

Sensitive to requests, needs, concerns, moral appeal and tacit longings

A comprehensive practice, including doings, sayings, bodies, convention and other “rules,” material environment, etc.

Characteristic

Table 3a: The empirical analysis of “relational caring”

Caring is relational

Diagnosed care receiver

Explicit requests

Empathic behavior

Not just

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Dimension Provision dimension

Contextual dimension

Political-ethical dimension

Existential dimension

Modes

1. Relational caring in a strict sense

2. Social-biographical relationality

3. Social-institutional relationality

4. The finality of relationality

Caring in view of relationality Relationality as the ultimate destination of man: a good life for and with others in a just and decent society

Caring through relationality Relationality as the formal (and informal) embeddedness of the care provider: at the intersection of institutional obligations and rules

Caring in relationality Relationality as the network of the care receiver, his or her context and embeddedness, identity (father, daughter, neighbor, employee), loyalties, duties and concerns (not a person on his/her own)

A. Caring out of the relationality Relationality as the steering mechanism of caring: what, when, how long, in what form, etc. B. Caring as relationality Relationality as a good per se: being seen, heard, taken seriously and not being meaningless or insignificant

In key words

Table 3b: Further elaborations of the fourth entry in the empirical analysis of “relational caring”: the modes of relationality

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behavior, nor an emotional fuss); (2) it is a fundamentally moral “activity” (not a market-driven supply-demand response); (3) it offers place and time to the care receiver to show him/herself, allowing a link, tuning and matching the caring that is offered; (4) and it is executed in (one or more of its) five modes. Each of the rows is elaborated in Table 3a, but those five modes are elaborated in Table 3b, which zooms in on row four of Table 3a. It is essential to understand that the emphasis is not on the noun (the relation) but on the verb (the dynamics of relational caring). My conclusion is that this kind of empirical research enriches the conceptualization of the ethics of care (here: because it helps to understand “relationality” more precisely and with more differentiations and nuances) and it fuels the philosophical reflection while being grounded in the everyday reality of caring. 2. On the level of burning issues Let us return to the line of my argument: empirical research directs our attention to issues that inevitably matter, first of all empirically and subsequently theoretically. The first elaboration concerned relevant/irrelevant concepts and their specification. In this section we will focus on research of big issues in the public domain that block care ethical practices. The empirical research led to our deep involvement in, our delving into: (1) issues of professionalism (and the incredibly difficult question of the appropriate care ethical formation of professional care givers) and (2) issues of organizational transitions towards a more care ethical system of care provision (hospital, youth care, psychiatric centers, etc.). These issues are immediately at stake, but in most care ethical literature they do not get the attention they deserve. (3) Our empirical research highlighted the closely related issue of public care discourses as they can be found in the language of hospitals, insurance companies, governmental policy, grey literature, and in professional journals. These discourses shape a taken-for-granted world with a fixed balance of power (what counts as a valid view on care?) and they are seldom open to the care ethical way of thinking. Discourse

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analysis can lay bare the contours of the battle field. (4) The research ultimately leads inevitably to thinking about and consideration of the issues of the concrete, complex, tacit, appropriate, and unbearable needs of care. Not only the types (such as needs, concerns, worries, longings, shortcomings) but also their political acceptability: some “needs” are evident but lack sanction or approval and will not be met in the formal care system (such as the needs of refugees); other “needs,” although less vital, have a high ranking on the political agenda (such as in vitro fertilization, transplanting an embryo into the womb of the “intended mother”). The point here is that the empirical turn makes our ethics of care issue-driven and deeply dedicated, as the empirical turn always asks the provoking, uneasy question: how would you care ethically describe, interpret, judge, and improve the issues of poverty, domestic violence, shared decision making, intergenerational conflict, moral deliberation, the knowledge of the patient, the policy of caring communities, the deinstitutionalization of people with mental disabilities? To illustrate this point: we not only develop care ethical theory and execute care ethical research, but as the Presence Foundation we also promote care ethical practices by offering training, formation, lectures, (supervision of) transitional trajectories, and so on. We do this on both the professional level for individuals and also for organizations. But by doing this and by being successful, we are at the same time creating a problem: if actual quality systems (as espoused by funding bodies, the national health care inspection, insurances, universities, client and patient organizations, and by professionals) cannot manage this type of care, then we are creating a burn-out situation for our trainees. To prevent that, we started a research and development project (2006 -2018) in order to conceptualize, create, test, improve, and publish a comprehensive care ethical quality system that is reliable and workable, and that covers the whole care process of professionals and their organizations. It is a system that will be acceptable to and even welcomed by the mainstream of care and is compatible with the current quality systems in the Netherlands (in the domains of medicine, psychiatry, disability, social work, youth

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care, care for the elderly, addiction, and so on). In 2018, I published a book which seems to meet these criteria (Baart, 2018). This book describes the thorough theoretical underpinnings and offers a critique of existing quality systems or the building blocks of our care ethical quality system. See the resulting model (Figure 3). The model does not prescribe or contain norms or criteria. In essence, it is a coherent and systematic network of questions for a guided care ethical inquiry into the quality of care on four levels: (1-center) the care receiver; (2-top) the care provider; (3-bottom) the care organization, and (4-background) the formal systems in the background that influence the processes of care in a formal way. Each “row” has its own “little philosophy,” successively on (1) humanness, (2) solicitude, (3) habitability, (4) justice and decency. And each row consists of four “buttons” with their own thematic focus (orientation): the buttons conceal a great quantity of worksheets with dozens of questions and issues to inspect. The model is consistently and radically relational in its conceptualization of good care with respect to (1) the care receiver, (2) the nature of professionalism, (3) management style and organizational processes, and (4) the attention paid to caring democratic systems in the background. By alleviating the care receiver’s concerns (center), the model as such does not aim at “quality of life,” but at finding one’s own satisfactory relationship with the fragility of existence (right side), i.e. being able to make the best of living with one’s potential, vulnerability, wounds, talents, dependencies, madness, and desires. C. Interdisciplinarity The third shift is about interdisciplinarity: the conceptual apparatus of the ethics of care does not suffice to do this kind of research. Thus we need sociological theories, theological concepts or psychological ideas. Why should it be forbidden to borrow from other disciplines? A possible response could be: there is no prohibition, if it works, it works. Another response could be: not every imported insight is compatible with the nature of the ethics of care. In practice we constantly encounter this issue: professionals claim to practice the ethics of care,

Note. Retrieved, slightly adjusted and translated from De ontdekking van kwaliteit: Theorie en praktijk van relationeel zorg geven [The  discovery of quality: Theory and practice of relational caring] (p. 150) by Baart, Amsterdam: SWP 2018.

Figure 3: The Care Ethical Quality System – a comprehensive model for reflective inquiries into quality of care (© Baart 2018).]

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but in reality we see that they are applying ethical principles, or that they prefer strength and despise vulnerability, or refuse to think contextually. Or they are not sensitive to gender issues. This is not something one would expect to see in the context of the ethics of care, not in practice and even less so in concept building and theory development. In such cases, care ethics is mixed up with “alien” elements which weaken the ethics of care. I am not interested in prohibitions but I am interested in consistency. If you promote consistency, you cannot say “anything goes.” This means we must ask: what does not fit? How can we determine the care ethical framework in which “imported insights” should fit? What is the identity of “the ethics of care”? The problem surfaced in the research of our PhD students and it turned out to be a persistent issue that is difficult to solve. We therefore carried out an inquiry into this issue and published the result (Klaver, Van Elst, & Baart, 2013). The concern was about how to develop crucial concepts in a care ethical way. For instance: what is the care ethical version of the concepts of “attention,” “coping,” “learning,” “vulnerability,” “quality of care,” without thoughtlessly importing ill-fitting psychological, philosophical, sociological, and other concepts from different paradigmatic backgrounds that undermine the typical care ethical structure of those concepts? Which concepts – even if generally used – are a threat to the care ethical perspective and should therefore no longer be used? Or positively assessed: which promising concepts in sociology, philosophy, etc. are welcome extensions of the vocabulary of the ethics of care? In our research into “attentiveness in hospital care” (Klaver & Baart, 2011) we conducted a broad exploration of the scientific literature and came up with the following concepts: being attentive could mean being concentrated, not-interruptible, conscious, awake, devoted, kind, vigilant, mindful, open, alert, watchful, thoughtful, heedful, and so on. Critically evaluating all these interesting concepts, we could see that some of them are best suited to a philosophy of the mind, others to the psychology of perception, to a theory of art and creativity, or to the ideology of hospitality and service. But are

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we, as care ethicists, interested in the functioning of the mind or in the desirability of being kind? No, or at least not necessarily or unconditionally. But neither were we prepared to decide that these concepts were irrelevant. We thus decided to reshape (“recast” or “reconfigure”) the most promising concepts of other disciplines within the framework of the ethics of care. For that purpose we formulated the essential characteristics of the ethics of care. We identified four (internally differentiated) essential characteristics of the ethics of care: 1) The ethics of care focuses first and foremost on an ethical appreciation of relationships and relationality: persons, communities, and organizations are conceptualized as relational and interdependent, and ethical issues are seen as relevant or urgent in that relational context. Relationality is internally linked to strong concepts such as vulnerability, precarity, and solidarity. 2) The ethics of care analyses, interprets and judges in a contextbound and situation-specific way. The ability to generalize judgments is not a substantial criterion in the ethics of care. 3) The ethics of care is a political ethics. It reconceptualizes traditional notions about the public and the private and takes into account the institutional and systemic realities in which care is provided. It furthermore interprets care in terms of power and domination. 4) In the ethics of care, empirical and ethical knowing are specifically related to each other (see above). The good is emergent and shows itself in practices: good is what empirically turns out to be good (in a specific situation). On the basis of these criteria we tried to reconfigure and recast “attention” as a care ethical concept (Klaver, 2016). Some scholars (Leget, Van Nistelrooij, & Visse, 2017) have criticized this proposal: they argue that by formulating these four essential characteristics of the ethics of care we are too pedantic and prescriptive. Leget et al. prefer a more dialogical approach with an open, more welcoming starting

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point concerning the ethics of care. But that is not the problem, and neither is “dialogical” versus “grid-based” a relevant distinction in this context. We are trying to solve a serious, tricky problem and it is not sufficient or satisfactory to turn your back on that problem (it is not mentioned in Leget’s critique) and simply state: at least we are open. That openness (a pragmatic and bleak “anything goes”?) is part of the problem we are aiming to solve. One prerequisite for starting a fruitful dialogue is that one must be as explicit as possible concerning the substance that is at stake and one’s own position in it; procedural suggestions may be helpful but cannot replace that substantial statement. The empirical turn raises questions about the multidisciplinary development. In short, we think that the ethics of care is developing as a discipline, not as a perspective or as one of the many varieties of applied ethics, or as a specific field of philosophical ethics or political ethics. It would be more useful if the ethics of care were to develop beyond being a vague approach that consists of many heterogeneous insights imported from various disciplines. In this development it will gradually move from multidisciplinarity to interdisciplinarity and in the end into intradisciplinarity: the “outside” knowledge as well as the “methodologies from the outside” then become intrinsically part of the discipline itself and no longer need to be imported. In this process, the boundaries of the (intra)discipline will be identified step by step and agreed upon in a discursive process: its particular identity will grow as its intradisciplinary character is established.

III. Conclusions In this contribution I have argued for (the radicalization of) the empirical turn in the ethics of care and I have described how far that turn has already been executed in our own research. This argument is not a plea against philosophy or theoretical thinking – on the contrary. I am a convinced member of that respected guild. In fact, my argument is that empirical input is essential and possible to achieve a philosophically sound and relevant ethics of care. In a separate article, our “progress in the empirical turn” may be compared

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with that of other care ethicists like Marian Barnes and Chris Gastmans and the others we have mentioned in the first section of this chapter. In the first section, I sketched the classic objection, according to which there should be an absolute gap between facts and values, between “is” and “ought.” But we (Baart, Timmerman, Vosman) have defended a subtle intermediate position: an empirically grounded ethics of care. It is characterized by attentiveness to the emergent good, lived meanings and morals in such a way that rigorous ethical reasoning about good care is possible. In close connection to that stance, we have effected an empirical turn within the discipline of the ethics of care and have developed a three-pole model that links empirical research, ethics, and theory development together, a model that explains how to do this kind of research in practice. We have illustrated our research over the past decades in an overview. In the second section, we presented and illustrated three consequences of this empirical turn. (1) Firstly, the care ethicist loses his/ her innocence, certainty, and arrogance: there is almost no purity or simplicity in care when one turns to the ordinary life, there is a serious risk of being irrelevant as long as one is strongly theory-driven, whereas real life is fluid, its meaning easily escapes us, and definite recovery is rare. (2) Secondly, this turn generates a number of burning issues that theoretically and practically matter to the ethics of care and that propel care ethical research, theory building (conceptualization), and practical commitment. It is essential to understand that the best way to develop the ethics of care is through this empirical impetus. This assertion has been made plausible by the theoretical contribution to the ethics of care made by the empirical research into emotions and relational caring, and, on a more practical level, by our research into care ethical professionalism and an acceptable care ethical quality system. (3) Thirdly, we have tried to answer the question that continuously presents itself in empirical research: how can the ethics of care be developed as an interdisciplinary endeavor? Closely linked is also the following question: what kind of discipline is the ethics of care and how can it integrate insights, concepts, and

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methodologies from other disciplines? In fact the question is: what is the identity of the ethics of care? There are many strategies to further develop the ethics of care. In this chapter, we have presented a substantiated preference: this involves engaging deeply and critically in burning societal issues, urgent theoretical puzzles, and care practices with and for the most vulnerable. This empirical way will generate an agenda for the ethics of care that can contribute to a just and decent society for all.

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Musschenga, A.W. (2005). Empirical ethics, context-sensitivity, and contextualism. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 30(5), 467-490. doi:10.1080/03605310500253030 Nicolini, D. (2012). Practice theory, work, and organization: An introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Noddings, N. (1982). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley: University of California Press. Noddings, N. (2002). Starting at home. Caring and social policy. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nortvedt, P. (2005). On the fact-value distinction and the phenomenology of caring. Editorial of Nursing Philosophy, 6(2), pp. 81–82. doi: 10.1111/j.1466-769X.2005.00211.x Pearlman, R.A., Miles, S.H., & Arnold, R.M. (1993). Contributions of empirical research to medical ethics. Theoretical Medicine, 14, 197-210. Pellegrino, E.D., Thomasma, D.C. (1993). The Virtues in Medical Practice. New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pigden, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). Hume on Is and Ought. Basingstoke: Palgrave & Macmillan. Putnam, H. (2002). The collapse of the fact/value dichotomy and other essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rolston, H. (2004). Caring for nature: From fact to value, from respect to reverence. Zygon 39(2), 277-302. Sayer, A. (2011). Why things matter to people: Social science, values and ethical life. Cambridge, UK: University Press. Schmidt, R. (2012). Soziologie der Praktiken; konzeptionelle Studien und empirische Analysen [Sociology of practices; conceptual studies and empirical analyses]. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Schön, D.A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books. Sneddon, A. (2009). Normative ethics and the prospects of an empirical contribution to assessment of moral disagreement and moral realism. Journal of Value Inquiry, 43(4), 447-455. Strauss, A. L., & Corbin, J. M. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. London: Sage. Timmerman, G. (2010). Respect for autonomy and authenticity: The pastor’s responsiveness to the person of the pastoree. Ethical Perspectives, 17(2(Special issue: Ethics and empirics – Strange and fragile bedfellows)), 309-341. Timmerman, A. B. (2011). Gezien de ander: Eerbied voor autonomie en authenticiteit in het pastoraat – Een kwalitatief-empirische, moraaltheologische studie [With regard to the other: Respect for autonomy and authenticity in pastoral care – A qualitative-empirical, moral theological study]. Bergambacht: 2VM. Retrieved from Tilburg University Research Portal: https://pure.uvt.nl/portal/files/1337111/ Timmerman_gezien_13-04-2011.pdf Timmerman, G. (2018). Empirically grounded ethics and Charles Taylor’s relational ontology of goods. In S. C. van den Heuvel, P.  Nullens, A.  Roothaan (Eds.), Theological ethics and moral value phenomena: The experience of values (Chapter 3). New York: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781315110257-4

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Timmerman, G., & Vosman, F.J.H. (2014). Steuermannskunst als empirisch begründete Metapher in der Seelsorge: Zur Methodologie und Epistemologie qualitativempirischer Forschung in der Moraltheologie [Steersmanship as an empirically grounded metaphor in pastoral care: About the methodology and epistemology of qualitative empirical research in moral theology]. In W. Schaupp (Ed.), Ethik und Empirie: Gegenwärtige Herausforderungen für Moraltheologie und Sozialethik [Ethics and empirical research: Actual challenges in moral theology] (pp.  323335). Freiburg: Academic Press Fribourg Verlag Herder Timmerman, G., Baart, A., & Vosman, F. (2017). In search of good care: The methodology of phenomenological, theory-directed “N=N-case studies” in empirically grounded ethics of care. European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry Proceedings 2017, pp. 82-89. Retrieved from https://kuleuvencongres.be/ECQI2018/ecqi-2017-proceedings.pdf Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Van Niekerk, A. A., & Nortjé, N. (2013). Phronesis and an ethics of responsibility. South African Journal of Bioethics and Law, 6(1), 28-31. doi:10.7196/SAJBL.262 Vosman, F. (2018). The moral relevance of lived experience in complex hospital practices: A phenomenological approach. In S. C. van den Heuvel, P. Nullens, & A. Roothaan (Eds.), Theological ethics and moral value phenomena: The experience of values (pp. 65-92). New York: Routledge. Vosman, F., Timmerman, G., & Baart, A. (2018). Digging into care practices: The confrontation of care ethics with qualitative empirical and theoretical developments in the low countries (2007-2017). International Journal of Care and Caring, 2(3), 405-423. Waldenfels, B. (2011). Phenomenology of the alien: Basic concepts [Grundmotive einer Phänomenologie des Fremden] (A.  Kozin, & T.  Stähler, Trans.) Evanston ILL: Northwestern University Press. (Original work published 2006) Zammito, J. H. (2012). The last dogma of positivism: Historicist naturalism and the fact/value dichotomy. Journal of the Philosophy of History, 6(3), 305-338.

INFORMATION ABOUT THE AUTHORS Andries J.  Baart, professor emeritus, now visiting professor, Department Psychiatry, University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands; extraordinary professor, Optentia Research Focus Area, North-West University, South Africa. Three key publications: Baart, A. (2018). De ontdekking van kwaliteit: Theorie en praktijk van relationeel zorg geven [The discovery of quality: Theory and practice of relational caring]. Amsterdam: SWP. Published as 1st & 2nd edition. Bontemps-Hommes, C. M. M. L., Baart, A., & Vosman, F. T. H. (2018). Practical wisdom in complex medical practices: a critical proposal. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 22, 95-105. doi: 10.1007/s11019-018-9846-x Vosman, F., Timmerman, G., & Baart, A. (2018). Digging into care practices: the confrontation of care ethics with qualitative empirical and theoretical developments in the Low Countries, 2007–17. International Journal of Care and Caring, 2, 405–423. doi: 10.1332/239788218X15321005652967

Flávia Biroli, professor of Political Science at the University of Brasília (UnB). Three key publications: Biroli, F. (2018). Gênero e desigualdades: Limites da democracia no Brasil. São Paulo: Boitempo Editorial. Biroli, F. (2015). Responsabilidades, cuidado e democracia. Revista Brasileira de Ciência Política, 18. doi: 10.1590/0103-335220151804 Biroli, F. (2018). Violence against women and reactions to gender equality in politics. Politics & Gender, 14, 681-685. doi: 10.1017/S1743923X18000600

Fabienne Brugère, professor of Philosophy at Paris 8 University. Three key publications: Brugère, F. (2014). Martha Nussbaum or the democracy of capabilities. (K. McNaughton, Trans.). Retrieved from Books&Ideas.net: https://booksandideas.net/MarthaNussbaum-or-the-Democracy.html Brugère, F. (2018). The work of emotions. In S. Bourgault & E. Pulcini (Eds.), Emotions and care: Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp.  37-56). In Ethics of Care Series. Louvain: Peeters. Le Blanc, G., & Brugère, F. (2017). La fin de l’hospitalité. Paris: Flammarion.

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Elisabeth Conradi, professor of Philosophy and Social Theory at the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University Stuttgart (DHBW), Germany. She is also affiliated with the Institute for Political Science at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Three key publications: Conradi, E. (2018). Forgotten approaches to care: The human being as neighbour in the German-Jewish Tradition of the nineteenth century. In F.  Krause, & J. Boldt (Eds.), Care in healthcare. London: Palgrave & Macmillan (book) and Springer International Publishing AG (online with open access). Conradi, E. (2015). Redoing care: Societal transformation through critical practice. Ethics & Social Welfare 9(2), 113-129. Retrieved from Taylor & Francis Online: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/resw20/9/2 Conradi, E., & Heier, J. (2014). Towards a political theory of care. In G.  Olthuis, H. Kohlen, & J. Heier (Eds.), Moral boundaries redrawn: The significance of Joan Tronto’s argument for political theory, professional ethics, and care practice (pp. 29-50). In Ethics of Care Series. Louvain: Peeters.

Daniel Engster, professor, the Hobby School of Public Affairs, the University of Houston.  Three key publications: Engster, D. (2007). The heart of justice: Care ethics and political theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Engster, D. (2015). Justice, care, and the welfare state. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Engster, D., & Hamington, M. (Eds..). (2015). Care ethics and political theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Virginia Held, professor emerita, City University of New York, Graduate School and Hunter College. Three key publications: Held, V. (2006). The ethics of care: personal, political, and global. New York: Oxford University Press. Held, V. (1993). Feminist morality: Transforming culture, society, and politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Held, V. (1984). Rights and goods: Justifying social action. New York: Free Press.

Jaco Hoffman, professor of Socio-Gerontology and leader of the Optentia Research Focus sub-programme: Ageing and Generational Dynamics

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in Africa (AgenDA) at North-West University (Vaal Triangle Campus), South Africa and James Martin Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, Oxford University. Three key publications: Hoffman, J. (2014). Policy and practitioner responses to the challenges of population ageing: Introduction. In S. Harper & K. Hamblin (Eds.), International handbook of ageing and public policy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.  Hoffman, J. (2014). Families, older persons and care in contexts of poverty: the case of South Africa. In S.  Harper & K.  Hamblin. (Eds.), International handbook of ageing and public policy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Hoffman, J., & Pype, K. (Eds.). (2016). Ageing in Sub-Saharan Africa: spaces and practices of care.  In Ageing in a Global Context Series. Bristol: Policy Press. doi: 10.1332/policypress/9781447325253.001.0001

Helen Kohlen, professor of Care Policy and Ethics, Faculty of Nursing at the Philosophical-Theological University of Vallendar (PTHV), Germany. Three key publications: Kohlen, H. (2009). Conflicts of care: Hospital Ethics Committees in the USA and in Germany. Frankfurt a/Main: Campus. Gallagher, A., Bousso, R. S., McCarthy, J., Kohlen, H., Andrews, T., Paganini, M. C. . . . Padilha, K. G. (2015). Negotiated reorienting: A grounded theory of nurses’ end-of-life decision-making in the intensive care unit. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 52, 794-803. doi: 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2014.12.003 Kohlen, H. (2018). Evaluation for moving ethics in health care services towards democratic care. A three pillars model: education, companionship and open space. In M. Visse & T. Abma (Eds.), Evaluation for a caring society (pp. 143-159). Charlotte: IAP.

Sandra Laugier, professor of Philosophy, Université Paris 1, Panthéon Sorbonne Three key publications: Laugier, S. (2014). Recommencer la philosophie. Stanley Cavell et la philosophie en Amérique. Paris: Vrin. Laugier, S. (2013). Why we need ordinary language philosophy. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Translation of Du réel à l’ordinaire: Quelle philosophie du langage aujourd’hui? Paris: Vrin, 1999. Laugier, S., & Ogien, A. (2014). Le principe démocratie. Paris: La Découverte.

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Christina Schües, professor at the Institut für Medizingeschichte und Wissenschaftsforschung, Universität zu Lübeck. Three key publications: Schües, C. (2016/2017). Natality – Philosophical rudiments concerning a generative phenomenology. Thaumàzein – Rivista di Filosofia, 4-5, 9-36. Schües, C. (2018). Phenomenology and politics: Injustice and prejudges. In S. C. Shabot & C. Landry (Eds.), Rethinking feminist phenomenology: Theoretical and applied perspectives (pp. 103–120). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Schües, C. (2017). The trans-human paradigm and the meaning of life. In H. Fielding & D.  Olkowski (Eds.), Future directions in feminist phenomenology (pp.  218241). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Frans Vosman, professor emeritus Ethics of Care, University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht, the Netherlands Three key publications: Vosman, F. J. H. (2018). The moral relevance of lived experience in complex hospital practices: A phenomenological approach. In S. C. van den Heuvel, P. Nullens, & A.  Roothaan (Eds.), Theological ethics and moral value phenomena: The experience of values (pp. 65-92). Abingdon: Routledge. Vosman, F. J. H., Timmerman, G., & Baart, A.J. (2018). Digging into care practices: The confrontation of care ethics with qualitative empirical and theoretical developments in the Low Countries, 2007–17. International Journal of Care and Caring, 2(3), 405-423. doi: 10.1332/239788218X15321005652967 Vosman, F. J. H., Bakker, J., & Weenink, D. (2016). How to make sense of suffering in complex care practices? In G. Spaargaren, D. Weenink, & M. Lamers (Eds.), Practice theory and research: Exploring the dynamics of social life (pp.  117-130). London: Routledge.

Index of Names Abé, N., 243, 255 Abel, E., 110, 136, 255-256 Abu-Laban, Y., 158, 160 Adam-Paffrath, R., 233, 255 Addams, J., 190, 199, 205-206, 255, 259 Améry, J., 100, 108 Anderson, E., 221, 228 Andrews, T., 233, 256-257 Apel, K-O., 199, 205 Araújo, C., 220, 229 Arendt, H., 91, 93, 99, 108, 205, 208 Aristotle, 205, 207 Arnold, D., 233, 255 Arvidsson, A., 255, 259 Ashcraft, K., 179, 183 Austin, J. L., 9, 101, 103, 108, 111, 113, 119-120, 122, 135, 230 Baart, A., 1-2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12-14, 17-18, 27, 37, 55, 58, 62, 203, 207, 237, 258, 261-262, 264, 266, 268, 270-272, 274-278, 280, 282-284, 286, 288-292, 294-296, 298 Baier, A. C., 1, 15, 70, 72-73, 77-78, 86, 97-98, 108, 110, 116-118, 131, 133, 135, 146, 160 Baines, M., 237, 257 Bareis, E., 192-193, 205 Barnes, M., 24, 41, 55, 62, 138, 154, 160, 192, 196, 200-201, 205, 207, 261, 294 Barrett, M., 212, 228 Bartholomeyczik, S., 255, 258 Bauhardt, W., 20, 55 Baumann, M., 233-235, 244, 247, 249, 255, 258-259

Bejarano, C., 225, 229 Benhabib, S., 81, 84, 87 Benner, P., 205, 207 Berger, E., 255 Bergström, L., 268, 295 Bernardini, M. G., 40, 55 Bilge, S., 19, 44, 55 Biroli, F., 3, 6, 12-13, 25, 31, 52, 209210, 212-214, 216, 218, 220, 222, 224, 226, 228-230 Blech, J., 255 Boff, L., 49, 55 Borasio, G. D., 242, 255 Bourgault, S., 5, 15, 25, 40-41, 55, 60, 67, 87, 178-179, 183 Bousso, R. S., 233, 256-257 Bowden, P., 144, 160 Bozalek, V., 54-55 Brites, J. G., 217, 228 Bröckling, U., 42, 55 Brotto, S., 40, 55 Brown, W., 136, 209-210, 224, 226, 228 Brückner, M., 205, 208 Brugère, F., 5-8, 15, 17, 24-25, 40-42, 55, 67-68, 70, 72, 74, 76, 78, 80, 82, 84-88 Brunner, C., 20, 55 Bruschini, C., 214, 228 Bubeck, D., 27, 138, 144, 160 Burggraeve, R., 28, 61 Butler, J., 61, 74, 87, 93, 101-104, 108, 111 Butnor, A., 18, 59 Cantillon, S., 17, 55 Carbo, C., 295 Carlotto, C. M., 220, 229 Carneiro, S., 218, 228

304

index of names

Casalini, B., 20, 25, 34, 40-41, 43, 55-56, 63 Casid, J. H., 52, 56 Cavarero, A., 9, 94, 108 Cavell, S., 9, 23, 58, 113, 119-126, 129-132, 135-136 Chen, M., 50, 56 Christen, M., 263, 295 Collins, P. H., 18, 33, 38, 41, 56, 144, 160, 163, 168, 183, 215, 217, 228 Collins, S., 18, 33, 38, 41, 56, 144, 160, 163, 168, 183, 215, 217, 228 Colpani, G., 44, 56 Conradi, E., 4, 6, 11, 15, 18, 25-26, 55-56, 61-62, 109, 136, 189-194, 196, 198, 200-208, 235-236, 238239, 255, 257-258, 295 Cooper, D., 22, 24, 56, 62 Corbin, J. M., 271-272, 297 Cotterell, P., 196, 205 Crenshaw, K., 44, 47, 56 Dardot, P., 209-210, 225, 228 Das, V., 23, 58, 108, 122, 125-126, 129, 133, 135-136, 255-257 Davis, K., 44, 56 De Waal, F., 265, 295 De Waelhens, A., 108, 110 Deggerich, M., 255 Delhom, P., 94, 108-110 Delphy, C., 216, 228 Demertzis, N., 68, 87 Dieterle, W. E., 255 Dodds, S., 108-110 Donath, E., 255 Dorlin, E., 20, 32, 35, 52, 56 Du Boulay, S., 234, 255 Dupuis, H. M., 266, 296 Eatwell, R., 52, 56 Edwards, St., 28, 56 Ehrenreich, B., 157-158, 160 Eichner, M., 183-184 Engelke, E., 242, 252, 255

Engster, D., 3, 6, 10-11, 18, 24, 27-30, 33, 36, 49, 52-56, 58, 60, 62, 139, 147, 152, 160-164, 166-168, 170, 172, 174, 176, 178, 180-184 Eribon, D., 45-48, 56-57, 60 Ernaux, A., 45, 47, 57, 63 Esping-Andersen, G., 210, 222, 228 Falquet, J., 225, 228 Faur, E., 217, 228 Feder, E. K., 21, 24, 76, 126, 135, 239 Ferguson, K., 178, 183 Fineman, M., 215, 228 Finley, J., 44, 61 Fischer, J., 263, 295 Fisher, B., 7, 27, 48-49, 91, 110, 124, 126, 129, 134, 136, 237, 256 Folbre, N., 210, 228 Fontoura, N., 220, 229 Foucault, M., 119, 125, 135 Fraser, N., 63, 209-210, 212, 219, 223224, 227, 229-231 Fregoso, R.-L., 225, 229 Fricker, M., 96, 108 Friedan, B., 214, 229 Friedman, M., 136, 140, 160 Galerand, E., 48, 57 Gallagher, A., 233, 256-257 Gambetta, D., 98, 108 Garcia dos Santos, Y., 217, 220, 229 Gardner, J., 264, 295 Garrau, M., 25, 40, 57 Gastmans, C., 38, 55, 61, 206, 294 Georges, I., 217, 220, 229 Gilligan, C., 1, 5, 10, 15, 24-25, 29-31, 39, 57, 67-70, 72, 80-81, 85, 87, 115117, 119, 135, 143-144, 160, 163168, 171, 176-177, 180-183, 189, 200-201, 205-206, 261 Gilson, E., 22-23, 57, 59 Gilson, L. L., 59 Giolo, O., 40, 55 Glaser, J., 256, 258

index of names Glassmann, U., 47, 57 Glenn, E. N., 140, 160 Göckenjan, G., 246, 256 Gonzalez, L., 217, 229 Goodwin, M., 52, 56 Gouws, A., 139, 161 Greve, J., 270, 296 Gronemeyer, R., 252, 256 Großmaß, R., 196, 206, 208 Güemes, C., 24, 57 Guimarães, N. A., 210, 216-217, 220, 229 Haas, M., 233, 256 Häkli, J., 49, 58 Halwani, R., 28, 58 Hämäläinen, N., 273, 296 Hamington, M., 18, 24-25, 29-30, 35-36, 52, 56-58, 60, 160-162, 183184, 190, 202, 206-207 Hammer, E., 50, 57 Hankivsky, O., 7, 24-25, 41, 44-48, 57 Harcourt, C., 20, 55 Heeger, R., 268, 296 Heier, J., 25, 57, 205 Heimerl, K., 247, 256 Held, V., 5-6, 9-10, 15, 18, 24-28, 36, 40, 42, 48, 57, 86-87, 135, 137-138, 140, 142, 144, 146, 148-150, 152, 154-156, 158-164, 167-168, 170-176, 180-181, 183-184, 190, 200, 206, 209, 229, 235, 263, 275, 296 Hirata, H., 210, 220, 229 Hobbes, T., 10, 110, 152, 156, 161 Hochmann, L., 34, 58 Hochschild, A., 53, 157-158, 160 Hoffmann, C., 255 Höge, T., 256, 258 Honneth, A., 58 Hooks, B., 215, 229 Hume, D., 72, 77-78, 146, 158, 161, 262-263, 296-297 Huppenbauer, M., 263, 295 Husserl, E., 108, 110

Isenia, W. J.,

305 44, 56

Jackson, A. Y., 7, 15 Jaggar, A. M., 148, 161 Jordan, I., 256, 259 Joronen, M., 49, 58 Kangas, A., 43, 58 Kant, I., 77, 117, 169, 193-195, 202, 206 Käppeli, S., 203, 206 Kellehear, A., 242, 256 Keller, R., 40, 48, 58 Kergoat, D., 229 Kersting, K., 233, 255 Kessl, F., 192, 205 Kievit, J., 266, 296 Kistner, A., 255 Kittay, E., 5, 15, 21, 24-26, 33, 36, 40, 58, 61, 73, 76, 87, 126, 135, 138, 146-147, 161, 167, 170, 172, 183, 205, 239-241, 256 Klaver, K., 17-18, 58, 271-272, 278, 291-292, 296 Klein, N., 210, 229 Knaup, H., 255 Knipping, C., 256-258 Koehn, D., 30, 58 Koggel, C., 201, 206 Kohlen, H., 6, 11-12, 40, 57-58, 205, 233-238, 240, 242, 244, 246, 248, 250, 252, 254-259, 261 Kubaczek, N., 20, 55 Kübler-Ross, E., 282, 296 Kumbruck, C., 40, 58, 257, 259 Laugier, S., 6, 9, 23, 25-26, 31, 52, 58, 91, 109, 113-114, 116, 118, 120, 122, 124-126, 128, 130, 132, 134-136, 236, 257 Laval, C., 209-210, 225, 228 Le Goff, A., 25, 40, 57 Leget, C., 17-18, 29, 55, 58, 206, 292293, 296

306

index of names

Leitner, S., 192, 205 Leonard, D., 216, 228 Levinas, E., 62, 94-96, 109-111 Liebsch, B., 99, 109 Lindemann, G., 271-272, 296 Lombardi, M. R., 214, 228 Lopez de la Vieja, T., 40, 59 Lorey, I., 63, 209-210, 225-226, 228229, 231 Louis, É., 45, 47, 58 Lovell, A., 58, 126, 136 Luhmann, N., 97, 109-110 Lutz, H., 44, 59 Lynch, K., 55 Lynch, R. J., 17, 27, 40, 55, 59 Mackenzie, C., 109-110 Madge, C., 34, 59 Mahon, R., 157-158, 161 Maio, G., 233, 244, 247, 251, 257259 Majik Al-Noaimi, A., 105, 109 Mariano, S.,, 220, 229 Marmion, J. F., 50, 59 Marsico, G., 17, 59 Martinsen, E. H., 59 Mathieu, J. E., 23, 59 Mayeroff, M., 189, 206 Maynard, M. T., 23, 59 Mazzei, L. A., 7, 15 McCall, L., 44, 59 McCarthy, J., 233, 256-257 McCormick, P. T., 6, 15 McLaren, M., 28, 59 McLaughlin, K., 23, 59 McRobbie, A., 59, 63 McWeeny, J., 18, 59 Merleau-Ponty, M., 90, 101-102, 104, 108-110, 271-272, 296 Miguel, L. F., 220, 229 Miles, S. H., 297 Mill, J. S., 130, 136 Miller, D., 168, 183 Miller, D. C., 25, 35, 207

Miller, S. C., 142, 157, 161 Mocellin, S., 28, 59 Moi, T., 130, 136 Mol, A., 28, 59 Molewijk, B., 266-268, 271-272, 296 Molinier, P., 27, 30, 58-59, 217, 229 Montanaro, M., 20, 51, 59 Moore, G. E., 263, 296 Morera, E., 59 Moser, I., 28, 59 Moser, V., 199, 206 Müller, M., 251, 257 Müller, P., 255 Mulvaney, K., 20, 55 Murdoch, I., 117, 128-129, 131, 136, 296 Musschenga, B. (A. W. ), 264, 268, 296297 Napiwotzky, A., 242, 257 Narayan, U., 144, 161 Nelson, M., 136, 255-256 Nicolini, D., 280, 297 Niemeijer, A., 37, 42, 62 Noddings, N., 24-25, 27-28, 33, 59, 79, 87, 143, 158, 162, 166-167, 170, 172, 183-184, 274, 297 Nordhaug, M., 28, 59 Nortjé, N., 274, 298 Nortvedt, P., 273, 297 Noxolo, P., 34, 59 Nussbaum, M., 59, 76, 133, 174, 184 O’Neill, O., 98, 109 Ogien, A., 113, 136 Okano, Y., 40, 59 Orme, J., 201, 206 Otten, W., 266, 296 Padilha, K. G., 256 Paganini, M. C., 256 Paley, J., 28, 59 Pandolfo, S., 58, 126, 136 Paperman, P., 37, 40, 58-60, 136

index of names Pateman, C., 80, 87 Pearlman, R. A., 268, 297 Pease, B., 192, 206 Peitersen, N., 255, 259 Pellegrino, E. D., 273, 297 Perko, G., 196, 206, 208 Perreault, J., 40-41, 55, 60 Peterson, V. S., 158, 162 Petherbridge, D., 22, 60 Pettersen, T., 27, 60, 166, 184 Petzold, H. G., 250, 257 Pfeffer, C., 234, 251, 257 Pfister, D., 251, 257 Pfriem, R., 34, 58 Phillips, A., 222, 229 Pigden, C. R., 263, 297 Pinzani, A., 220, 230 Pols, J., 28, 59, 261 Porter, E., 4, 15 Pratesi, A., 200, 206 Puig de la Bellacasa, M., 5, 15, 4849 Pulcini, E., 5, 15, 33, 52, 60, 62, 67, 76, 87 Putnam, H., 149, 162, 268, 271-272, 295, 297 Putnam, R. D., 149, 162, 268, 271272, 295, 297 Quintela, D. F.,

226, 230

Raghuram, P., 20, 28, 34, 45, 59-60 Rancière, J., 105, 109 Raunig, G., 20, 55 Rawls, J., 10, 26, 78, 116-117, 156, 162-163, 169-170, 174, 184 Re, L., 5, 40, 55, 103, 107, 130, 173, 259, 270, 284 Reamer, F., 189-192, 197-199, 201, 206-207 Reckwitz, A., 42, 60 Rego, W.l., 220, 230 Rehberg, P., 47, 60 Rehbock, T., 257-259

307

Richmond, M., 190, 206 Rieger, M. A., 255 Robinson, F., 24, 43, 60, 84, 87, 148, 157-159, 161-162, 167, 184, 200, 206, 209, 230 Rocha, L.o., 218, 230 Rodriguez, J. D., 109-110 Rodríguez-Ruiz, B., 72, 87 Rogers, W., 108-110 Rolston, H., 268, 297 Rosa, H., 12, 233-234, 244-245, 247252, 257, 259 Rousseau, J.-J., 74-77, 87-88, 169 Ruddick, S., 24-25, 60, 62, 143, 162 Runyon, A. S., 158, 162 Sahraoui, N., 20, 60 Said, E. W., 17, 22-23, 60, 78, 82, 143, 190 Salmenniemi, S., 43, 58 Salomon, A., 190, 205-206 Sander-Staudt, M., 18, 25, 27-29, 36, 40, 60 Sandermann, P., 192, 205 Sarti, C., 217, 230 Saunders, C., 234-235, 237, 255, 257, 259 Sayer, A., 244, 257, 266, 271-273, 297 Scarry, E., 106, 109 Schmergal, C., 255 Schmidt, R., 280, 297 Schmidt, S., 255 Schnabel, A., 270, 296 Schnabl, C., 203, 206 Schön, D. A., 266, 271-272, 280, 297 Schües, C., 6, 8-9, 89-90, 92, 94, 96, 98-100, 102, 104, 106-111 Segato, R., 213-214, 225, 230 Selden, S., 89, 109 Sen, A., 85, 87 Sevenhuijsen, S., 24, 26, 60, 144, 162, 167, 184, 258-259

308

index of names

Shakespeare, T., 207 Shaw, J., 53, 60, 63 Simplican, S. C., 21-22, 32, 38, 61 Slee, R., 23, 61 Slote, M. A., 10, 18, 27-28, 40, 61, 144, 162-163, 167, 172-176, 184 Smith, A., 72, 76-77, 87, 296 Sneddon, A., 297 St. Pierre, E. A., 7, 15 Stadler, P., 258 Standford, S., 192, 206 Steffen-Bürgi, B., 234-235, 257-258 Stemmer, R., 233, 255 Steyl, S., 28, 61 Stiggelbout, A. M., 266, 296 Strauss, A. L., 271-272, 297 Student, J.-C., 136, 242, 258 Sugimoto, T., 40, 61 Supik, L., 44, 59 Tanner, C., 108, 263, 295 Taylor, C., 132, 271-272, 297-298 Thomas, A., 28, 61, 110 Thomasma, D. C., 273, 297 Thomson, C., 44, 61 Thomson, J. J., 177, 184 Timmerman, G. (A. B. ), 18, 27, 55, 62, 203, 207, 237, 258, 269-272, 275, 278, 294-295, 297-298 Trnka, S., 34, 61 Tronto, J. C., 5, 7, 15, 19, 24, 26-28, 31-32, 34, 39, 41-42, 48-50, 53-55, 57, 61-63, 73, 78, 80, 87, 91, 109-110, 117-118, 124, 126-127, 129, 133-134, 136, 138, 144, 146, 159, 162-163, 167-168, 172, 178, 184, 191, 200-201, 203, 205, 207, 210, 212, 218, 221223, 227, 230, 237-241, 256, 258-259 Trundle, C., 34, 61 Van der Steen, W., 268, 296 Van Elst, E., 58, 271-272, 291, 296 Van Heijst, A., 18, 26, 33, 61, 237, 258, 278

Van Niekerk, A. A., 274, 298 Van Nistelrooij, I., 17, 35, 37, 58, 61, 292, 296 Van Schaik, C., 263, 295 Van Willigenburg, T., 268, 296 Van Zyl, M., 139, 161 Vanlaere, L., 28, 38, 61 Vergès, F., 4, 15 Visse, M., 17, 32-33, 35, 37, 58, 61, 292, 296 Vivar, M. T. H., 44, 59 Vosman, F., 1-2, 4, 6-8, 10, 12, 14-15, 17-18, 20, 22, 24-30, 32, 34, 36-38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 48, 50, 52, 54-56, 58, 60-62, 109, 207, 236, 255, 257-258, 269, 271-272, 275, 277, 282, 284, 294-295, 298 Vreugdenhil, A., 192, 206 Wacquant, L., 50, 62 Waerness, K.., 178, 184 Walby, S., 212-214, 230 Waldenfels, B., 94, 104, 110, 271-272, 298 Walker, M. U., 24, 33, 62, 131, 160, 200, 207-208 Ward, L., 192, 201, 207 Ward, N., 45, 62 Weber, M., 193, 195-197, 207 Weihrauch, B., 251, 258 Weischedel, W., 253, 258 Wendt, W. R., 190-191, 207 West, A., 31, 62 West, R., 175, 184 White, R. J., 19, 45-46, 53, 62, 68, 102, 114, 214, 217-218 Williams, C., 264, 295 Williams, F., 19, 45, 62 Williams, J. C., 210, 222 Winberg, C, 54-55 Winnicott, D. W., 70, 87 Wittgenstein, L., 9, 23, 58, 113, 115, 118-119, 121, 123-129, 131, 135136

index of names Wittich, A., 255 Wolf, S. M., 17, 62 Worms, F., 90, 110 Wrubel, J., 205, 207 Yeates, N.,

159, 162

309

Young, I. M., 2, 17, 95, 175, 207, 215, 221-222, 226, 230, 277 Zacka, B., 178-179, 184 Zammito, J. H., 268, 298 Zechner, M., 20, 62.

Index of Subjects act(s), 12, 30, 76, 81-82, 85, 102-104, 106-107, 110-111, 113, 147, 182, 193, 198, 200, 202, 207, 214, 221, 226, 235, 238, 283 action(s), 8, 19, 30, 37, 43, 50, 69, 71, 73-74, 76-78, 80, 96, 115, 130, 134, 138, 145, 158, 161, 180-181, 193-195, 198-200, 202-205, 208, 222, 226, 233234, 238-241, 245-246, 249, 251-252, 254, 261, 264, 268, 273, 297 actively, 106, 190, 249 activism, 51, 62, 218, 230 activity/-ies, 9, 11, 20, 27, 35, 40, 48, 69, 80-84, 96, 98, 115-118, 124-126, 133-134, 149-150, 155, 189, 192-193, 195, 197-198, 200-201, 204-205, 208, 211, 216, 237-238, 240, 247, 259, 287 actor(s), 29-30, 54, 68, 83, 165, 169, 202, 238, 266 affection(s), 210, 217 affective/-ity, 32, 35, 55, 69, 72, 76-77, 79, 119, 132-133, 238, 240 altruism, 60, 70, 145, 204, 264 ambiguity, 22, 52-53, 110, 235 ambivalence, 5, 111, 253-254 ambivalent, 8, 21, 217 attention, 8-9, 17, 19, 32, 34-36, 53-54, 68-70, 73, 76, 113-122, 124134, 136, 143-144, 146-148, 153, 157-158, 166, 174, 200, 203, 216, 219, 221, 226, 233-234, 238-239, 244, 249, 254, 261, 263-264, 279, 287, 289, 291-292 attentive(ness)/-ly, 12, 15, 35, 42, 91, 117, 124, 171, 178, 189, 193, 200203, 227, 236-238, 240, 243, 250, 254, 278, 291, 294, 296

autonomous, 4, 20, 50, 82, 134, 138, 140, 154, 156, 202, 223, 238 autonomy, 11, 40, 68, 72, 78, 110, 126, 134, 144, 173, 193, 202, 220, 226, 228, 237, 239, 297 awareness, 5, 20, 51, 55, 120, 154, 193, 199, 243, 247, 254 bioethics, 2, 62, 109-110, 298 bond, 84 bureaucracy/-tic, 10, 178-179, 183 bureaucrat(s), 178-179 capabilities, 29, 69, 103 capitalism, 15, 78, 82, 209-213, 217, 223-224, 227, 229 care ethical practices, 261, 287-288 care labor, 2, 4, 6, 20, 23, 31, 39, 52 care practice(s), 11-12, 30-31, 35-39, 57-58, 62-63, 91-92, 104-105, 193194, 202-203, 205-206, 233-260, 269-270, 295-298 care practices, 298 care(give)rs, 13, 26, 34-35, 71, 81, 125, 137, 160, 168, 170, 189, 202203, 220, 237, 240, 252, 262, 270, 273, 277 caring practice, 240 caring practices, 6, 14, 147, 209, 236 charity, 82, 127, 190, 206 children, 2, 13, 70-71, 73, 75, 90, 97, 143, 145, 147, 150, 152, 154, 158159, 164, 170, 174, 181, 197, 211, 214-215, 217-223 citizen, 26-27, 68, 83, 136, 146, 149, 152, 161, 167, 170, 182, 238, 242, 259

312

index of subjects

citizenship, 11, 26-27, 55, 60, 136, 184, 190, 258 colonial, 2, 20, 213 color, 6, 19, 39, 41, 44-47, 51, 56, 118 compassion, 55, 68-69, 84, 134, 206 complexity, 14, 21, 42-44, 48, 59, 97, 110, 195, 269, 276 conflict, 61, 76, 145, 156, 159, 192, 202, 235, 244, 268, 288 connected(ness), 20, 22, 39, 52-53, 69, 71, 75, 82, 92, 119-120, 125, 129, 133, 204, 215-216, 218, 222, 225226, 238, 241, 243, 245, 263 connection(s), 12, 18-20, 28, 33, 39, 44, 48, 52-54, 70, 72, 78-80, 99, 102, 113, 116, 120-121, 127, 132-133, 189, 208, 210-211, 220, 228, 240, 245, 265, 281, 294 consequentialist, 172, 268 context(ual), 3-5, 11, 22, 25-26, 33, 36, 38, 55, 69-70, 72, 74-76, 78-79, 90, 92-93, 102-103, 110, 119, 121, 126, 128, 130, 132, 137, 142-144, 149-151, 157, 159, 164-165, 169, 177, 181, 185, 193-194, 196, 198-199, 203-204, 207, 209, 212, 216, 218, 227, 234235, 237, 239-243, 245, 248, 250-252, 254, 259, 264-265, 270, 274, 280, 286, 291-293, 297 courage, 96-97 critic(al), 4, 6-7, 10, 14-15, 17, 20-24, 28, 35, 37-39, 42-45, 47-49, 53, 56, 59-62, 72, 78, 111, 120, 125, 135136, 194, 205-206, 223, 227, 229, 236-237, 242, 244-245, 259, 268269, 271-272, 274, 278, 291, 295 criticism, 5, 48, 79, 85, 87, 116, 122, 152, 227, 237, 250, 271-272 criticize, 28-29, 44, 68, 102, 118, 152, 172, 178, 210, 274, 279, 292 critique, 11, 40, 43, 47, 51, 57, 59-60, 62, 73, 86-87, 206, 227, 229, 280, 289, 293 cultural practices, 216

decelerate/-ion, 12, 234, 244-248, 251, 253-254 democracy/cratic, 8, 12-15, 18, 20, 32, 43, 56, 61, 68, 83-86, 113, 162, 179, 184, 205, 207-211, 220, 223-230, 237, 241, 255, 258-259, 289 dependence/y, 15, 71, 74, 82, 99, 108, 110, 116, 125-126, 215, 223, 239-243 dilemma(s), 11, 29, 162, 164-165, 176, 179-180, 189, 209, 224, 244, 274, 280 disable(d)/disability, 15, 22, 32, 61, 69, 90, 110, 147, 169-170, 174, 181, 184, 201, 206, 215, 242-243, 288 discourse, 22, 24, 49, 58, 75, 87, 110111, 134, 142, 189, 206, 213, 230, 265, 274, 276-278, 287 distributive justice, 25-26, 148 domination, 32, 35, 67, 70, 72, 80-81, 114, 116, 134, 137, 141-142, 144145, 152-154, 157-159, 179, 213, 222, 252, 292 economy, 154-155, 160-162, 215, 223, 225, 255, 259 education, 2, 15, 39, 55, 57, 59, 61, 86-87, 150, 152, 154-155, 162, 172, 183, 191, 194, 197, 201, 205-207, 214, 219, 296-297 educational practices, 154 elderly, 13, 90, 147, 170, 174, 181, 191, 211, 215, 243, 278, 289 embodied/-ment, 78, 86, 92, 95-96, 101, 104, 114, 142, 206 emerge(nce), 5, 17-18, 54, 107, 131132, 144, 163, 171, 173, 189, 191, 201, 222, 248, 266, 270-273, 283, 296 emotion(al), 6-8, 14-15, 25, 27, 36, 47, 67-73, 75-87, 94, 97, 106, 138, 145146, 158, 208, 230, 238, 249, 275, 277, 282-284, 287, 294 empathy, 58, 61, 68-69, 80, 82, 84, 105, 138, 144-145, 149, 158, 160, 162, 173, 176, 184, 204, 265, 280, 295

index of subjects empirical turn, 275, 279, 281, 288, 293-294 empowerment, 23, 59, 113, 140, 160, 207, 228 epistemology/-ical, 4, 19, 21, 44, 46, 50, 67, 133, 268, 277-278, 298 ethical practices, 261, 287-288 ethics of care / care ethics, 1-15, 17-29, 31-63, 65, 67-73, 75-78, 82-83, 85-87, 90-91, 94, 109-110, 113-119, 122, 124-125, 127-130, 133-134, 137-151, 153, 155, 157-184, 189, 191-193, 199-206, 208-211, 218, 226-227, 229, 234-239, 241, 244, 258-259, 261-263, 265, 267-269, 271, 273-283, 285, 287-289, 291-298 ethics of... ethics of (attention to) the particular, 127 ethics of attentiveness, 236 ethics of autonomy, 193 ethics of co-responsibility, 205 ethics of justice, 67, 81, 116, 144, 163, 167-174, 176-182 ethics of knowing, 108 ethics of need, 142, 161 ethics of rights, 168 ethics of social work, 11, 191-195, 198-199, 201 ethics of the ordinary, 124 ethics of the profession, 207 ethics of ubuntu, 161 ethos, 58, 98, 200, 257 exploited/-ation, 23, 57, 68, 73, 82, 95, 139, 213, 222-223, 225, 228, 239, 250 fact-value (dichotomy, discussion, debate), 13, 262, 266, 273, 295, 297 fairness, 127, 148, 164, 168, 171-172, 174, 177, 179, 184 feeling(s), 8, 27, 47, 67-71, 74, 76, 79-82, 86, 90, 94-96, 98-99, 104-105, 111, 118, 130, 158, 190, 200-201, 203, 217, 238, 283

313

femininity, 25-26, 212 feminism, 4, 15, 17, 19, 37, 43-44, 48-49, 51, 59-60, 62, 87, 113-114, 122-123, 130, 133, 157, 214, 229 feminist, 1, 3-5, 8, 15, 17, 32, 35, 37, 41, 44, 47, 52-53, 55-60, 62, 81, 86-87, 108-110, 115, 120, 122, 130, 132, 135-136, 138-139, 142, 144, 146, 151, 154, 157, 160-162, 178, 183-184, 206-207, 218, 228-230, 256, 258, 296 form of life / life form, 23, 29, 52, 62, 117-119, 121-122, 125-126, 128-130, 132-135, 227, 246 freedom, 75, 144, 156, 202, 223, 237 friendship, 89, 104-105, 107, 133, 137, 149 gender(ed), 5, 13, 41, 44-47, 56, 59-60, 67, 80-82, 85-86, 93, 113-114, 122, 136, 144, 158, 160-162, 179, 201, 211215, 217-218, 221-225, 228, 231, 291 groundedness of theories, 7, 13, 35, 37, 85, 98, 106, 138, 192, 201, 234-235, 237, 243, 256, 261-263, 265, 267269, 271-277, 279, 281, 283, 285, 287, 289, 291, 293-295, 297-298 harm, 9, 30, 59, 73, 92-96, 100-101, 103, 105, 107, 164-165, 169-170, 173, 175-177, 192, 264 healthcare, 12, 61, 137, 155, 205, 233234, 242, 244, 246-249, 258 hospitality, 84, 87, 291 human practice, 115, 119, 143, 238 humanity, 73, 76, 223 humankind, 8, 33, 49 humans, 25, 49, 91, 101, 110, 114, 118, 122, 125, 133, 139, 143, 165, 227, 240-243, 253 identity, 72, 80-81, 85-86, 109-110, 246, 251, 253, 255-256, 286, 291, 293, 295, 298

314

index of subjects

ideology, 14, 67, 79, 166, 174, 210, 212-213, 224, 226, 243, 246, 248, 278, 280, 291 impartiality, 6, 78, 168-169, 171, 174, 177-178, 191 informal practices, 213 injustice(s), 31, 86, 96, 108, 138, 216, 222, 271-272, 277 institution(s), 79, 98, 170, 196, 243 interdependent/-ce, 25, 40, 49, 58, 60, 72, 75, 84, 138, 140, 142, 183, 209210, 230, 282-283, 292 interdisciplinar(it)y, 15, 17, 43, 53, 58, 87, 201, 257, 262, 289, 293-294, 296 intersection(ality), 7, 21, 34-35, 42-48, 55-57, 59-62, 198, 261, 280, 286 irresponsibility, 13, 34, 200, 211, 222223 judge(ment), 68, 76, 95, 141, 166, 176, 179-180, 182, 203-204, 218, 223224, 271-273, 276, 292 justice, 2, 6, 10-11, 15, 25-26, 56-58, 60-62, 67, 70, 78, 81, 86-87, 96, 114, 116-118, 127, 133-135, 138-139, 141144, 147-149, 153-185, 206-207, 230, 240, 258, 271-272, 275, 289, 296 kant(ian ethics), 6, 8, 11, 67, 72, 77-78, 117, 137-138, 144, 158, 169, 172, 189, 193-195, 202, 206 learning, 15, 166, 190, 199, 278, 291 liberalism, 60, 78, 82, 139, 173, 176, 184 listening, 23, 30, 54, 105, 190 maternity, 217 migration, 148, 160, 208, 217, 225 moral theory, 10, 71-72, 109, 131, 135, 137, 143, 146, 148-149, 163-164, 166, 175, 205, 266-268, 296 motherhood, 69, 79, 212 mothering, 25-26, 143, 150-151, 217218, 230

neoliberal practices, 227 neoliberal(ism), 13, 34, 41, 43, 49-50, 58, 61-62, 210-212, 223-230 oppression, 35, 70, 79, 142, 213-214, 222, 228 ordinary practice, 119 organization, 10, 44, 83, 93, 110, 139, 164, 167, 178-179, 182, 190, 192, 224, 234, 241, 258, 289, 297 palliative, 6, 11-12, 233-236, 239-244, 246-249, 251-259 palliative practice, 234, 239-244, 247, 249, 252, 254 palliative practices, 236 paternalism, 31, 39, 158, 179, 278 paternalistic, 131, 144, 250 patriarchal, 39, 68, 78, 213 patriarchy, 57, 212-214, 230 perception, 27, 46, 69, 84, 109, 114115, 119-121, 130, 136, 169, 235, 271-273, 291, 296 personal practice, 243 phenomenology (theory, method and object), 8, 17-18, 33, 35-36, 42, 50-51, 87, 89, 92, 97, 99-104, 108109, 113, 119-121, 143, 244, 246, 269-272, 275-277, 280, 295-298 philosophy analytic philosophy, 115 kant’s philosophy, 202 moral philosophy, 114, 118, 128, 164, 191, 193 ordinary language philosophy, 9, 113, 115, 124, 136 philosophy of language, 115, 124 political philosophy, 134-135 social philosophy, 161 pity, 68-69, 134, 169 political, 2, 4-10, 12-13, 15, 17, 19-20, 23-24, 26-27, 31, 34-36, 39-43, 46-47, 49-58, 60-61, 68-69, 81-87, 104-105, 109, 113, 116-117, 121,

index of subjects 125, 133-143, 146-152, 154-157, 160-164, 167, 169-174, 176, 178, 182-184, 190, 193, 195, 198-201, 203, 205-208, 210-213, 218-224, 226-231, 237, 239, 246, 258-259, 269, 271-272, 274-275, 286, 288, 292-293, 295-296 political ethics, 20, 31, 227, 292-293 political philosophy, 134-135 political theory, 2, 10, 17, 24, 26, 39, 43, 50, 52, 56-58, 60, 147, 151, 160164, 167, 169, 171, 182-184, 198, 205-206 poor, 69, 79-81, 85, 147, 157, 170, 190, 199, 206, 214, 219 populism, 52-53, 56, 62, 87 postcolonial, 20, 34, 51, 56, 59, 225 poverty, 53, 84, 137, 148, 157-158, 161, 191, 219, 225, 288 power, 2, 9, 19, 22, 34-35, 37, 41, 44-45, 60, 73-74, 79, 82, 85-86, 97, 108, 111, 119, 132, 151, 156, 179, 193, 195, 197, 223, 230, 235, 238, 240, 243-244, 250, 265, 271-272, 287, 292 powerful, 37, 47, 79-80, 233 powerlessness, 32, 35, 240, 281 practice of care, 8, 48, 89, 107, 159, 189, 201, 295 practice of language, 121, 128 practice of mothering, 143 practice theory, 297 practice(s), 2, 4-6, 8-9, 11-12, 14-15, 18-20, 22, 27-30, 33-38, 42, 46-50, 54-57, 59, 62-63, 69, 84-85, 89-91, 101, 103-105, 107, 109, 113, 115, 117-119, 121, 127-129, 133-134, 142-145, 147, 154, 159-160, 171, 179, 187, 189, 191, 193-194, 197202, 204-207, 209, 213, 216, 227228, 233-245, 247, 249, 251-255, 257-259, 261-264, 266, 269-272, 274, 276-281, 283, 285, 287-292, 294-298

315

practices of care, 2, 6, 11, 14, 18-19, 27-29, 38, 49-50, 145, 171, 187, 202, 236, 281 practices of carers, 237 practices of language, 113 practitioner(s), 2, 25, 189-190, 193194, 197, 199, 201, 204, 207, 242, 274, 297 precarias, 209-210, 226, 229-230 precarious(ness), 6, 12-13, 82, 93, 96, 210, 216, 222, 225-227, 229-230 precarity, 12, 20, 53, 93, 126, 209, 211, 213, 215, 217, 219, 221, 223, 225, 227, 229, 231, 271-272, 292 precarization, 13, 20, 211, 225-226, 228 presence, 53-55, 110, 203-204, 207, 237, 250, 261, 277, 288, 295 profession(s), 191, 198, 204, 206-207, 216, 229, 244-245 professional practice, 198 professional practices, 236, 264 professionalism, 197, 287, 289, 294 professionalization, 21, 190, 194 race, 13, 55, 60, 62, 144, 158, 214, 217-218, 220 racial, 12, 179, 211, 214, 220, 222, 230 racialized, 31, 49, 211, 214, 218, 223, 225 racism, 4, 39, 55, 138, 213, 217 realism, 9, 40, 91, 113, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125, 127, 129, 131, 133, 135, 297 realistic, 6, 115, 125, 128, 135, 221 reality, 19, 36-37, 91-92, 94, 119, 121, 123-124, 129, 131, 156, 191, 210, 223, 233, 236, 239, 244, 249-250, 253, 264, 277-278, 287, 291 recast(ing), 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13-15, 163, 292 recognition, 19, 25, 39, 54-55, 60, 111, 115, 119, 122, 129, 138, 142, 144145, 148, 158, 164, 191, 206, 218

316

index of subjects

relate(s), 7-9, 37, 68, 81-82, 191, 248, 264 relatedness, 17, 71-72, 238-239, 242, 244, 249-250, 254 relating, 170-171, 203 relational(ly), 6-7, 11-12, 14, 22, 25-26, 29-30, 36, 42, 59-60, 72-74, 80-82, 90, 92, 97-98, 104-105, 138140, 142, 145, 158, 167, 172, 180181, 190, 204, 213, 225-227, 237, 270, 274, 279, 282-283, 285-287, 289-290, 292, 294-295, 297 relationality, 10, 14, 21, 23-24, 36-38, 52, 92-93, 105, 155, 170, 196, 204, 265, 285-287, 292 relationship(s), 4, 6, 10, 13, 24-26, 30, 33, 35-36, 42, 45, 52, 55, 69-72, 74, 76-77, 81, 83, 86, 89-97, 100-101, 103-105, 107, 110, 118, 128, 140, 144, 158, 160, 163-169, 171-172, 174, 176-177, 180-182, 185, 190-192, 196197, 199-201, 203, 206, 208, 210-211, 215-217, 220-222, 225-227, 235, 237, 244-245, 259, 266, 270, 273, 289, 292 religion/-gious, 18, 120, 138-139, 141, 180, 197 resonance, 12, 30-31, 234, 238, 240, 245, 249-251, 254, 259 response giving, 4-5, 9, 20, 33-34, 41, 59, 68-69, 73-74, 79, 84, 90, 95, 104, 108, 111, 117, 123, 126-127, 139, 144, 149, 164, 179-180, 192, 201, 203, 219, 235, 249-250, 252, 254, 265, 269, 277, 287, 289, 295 responsibility/-ties, 2, 6, 10, 13, 20, 23, 32-36, 59-61, 73, 80-81, 84, 91, 95, 135-136, 140, 142, 146, 158, 160162, 165, 170, 177, 196, 200, 203205, 210-214, 217-223, 226-227, 230, 236, 238, 240-241, 250, 254, 259, 274, 298 responsive(ness), 12, 17, 26, 33-37, 91, 96, 104, 107, 138, 144, 158, 171, 178-179, 204, 238, 240, 297

security, 2, 70-71, 93-94, 110, 140, 148, 157, 162, 219, 225-226, 230, 242, 253 sensitive/-ity, 95, 102, 104, 107, 116, 119, 125, 128-130, 144, 149, 160, 164, 169, 204, 265, 273, 280, 283, 285, 291, 297 sentiment(s), 8, 59, 67-68, 72, 75-79, 87, 119, 125, 146 sentimentalis(t), 75-76, 78 sexism, 39, 41, 138 social contract, 6, 9-10, 100, 134, 137, 139, 141, 143-147, 149-157, 159, 161, 169, 202 social insecurity, 20, 73, 225 social need(s), 271-272 social policy, 57, 60, 82, 86, 162-163, 184, 192-194, 297 social practice(s), 101, 199, 266 social problems, 41 social relation(s), 33, 91, 93, 97, 104, 107, 116, 134, 146, 150-151, 200 social reproduction, 212, 223-224, 230 social right(s), 83, 190, 230 social vulnerability, 91, 103 social work practice, 191, 193-194, 204 social work(er), 6, 11, 60, 189-201, 203-208, 275, 288 societal practice, 238 solicitude, 69, 82, 114, 134, 289 solidarity, 11, 20, 47, 62, 208, 214, 217, 226, 237-240, 292 state state institutions, 197, 209 state violence, 100 welfare state, 56, 73, 86, 147, 160, 183-184, 190 strength, 9, 89, 107-108, 149, 156, 182, 291 strengthen, 97, 111, 113, 189, 194, 200-201, 204, 269 suffer(ing), 9, 29, 75, 84, 93-94, 96, 100-101, 105, 107, 110-111, 142, 169-170, 198, 206, 243-244, 264, 268, 271-272, 275, 277, 283

index of subjects sympathy/-ic,

2, 50, 68, 72, 190

theory and practice, 56, 134, 290, 295 transform(ation), 26, 86, 92, 103, 105, 114, 116, 118-119, 121, 126, 161, 204-207, 219, 223, 245, 251, 254 uncaring, 117, 178, 185 uncertainty, 62, 76, 226, 253, 273 unjust, 93, 117, 144, 185, 220-221, 223, 240 utilitarian, 138, 144, 172, 175 victims, 23, 32, 125, 180 violence, 9, 22, 31-32, 35-36, 39, 47, 56, 61, 89, 92-94, 100-101, 104-109, 111, 126, 135, 137, 140, 152-153, 157-159, 161, 195, 206, 213, 217219, 225, 230, 288 virtue, 28-29, 58, 60-61, 137-138, 144145, 163, 239-240, 242, 247, 263, 273, 283 voice/-cing, 1, 5, 9-10, 12, 15, 23-24, 26, 28, 30-32, 39, 43-47, 52-55, 57, 60, 68-69, 72, 78, 80-81, 83-87, 113115, 117-120, 122-124, 126, 129-131,

317

134-135, 144, 149, 160, 164-166, 173, 177, 180, 183, 205, 220, 227, 231 vulnerability, 6, 8-9, 11, 21-23, 33-34, 36-38, 40, 50, 57, 60, 69-71, 73-76, 80-82, 84, 89-111, 116, 124-125, 132, 136, 142, 161, 168, 170, 206, 214, 227, 236, 239-241, 283, 289, 291-292 vulnerable, 8-9, 11, 22, 40, 49, 54, 68, 70-71, 73-74, 76, 80, 82-84, 89-93, 96-97, 99-101, 103-105, 107-108, 122, 124-125, 130, 142, 181, 198199, 216, 227, 277, 295 welfare, 56, 61, 73, 86, 138, 147, 160161, 175, 183-184, 189-190, 193, 205-208, 219, 224, 229, 250, 262 women, 2, 4, 6, 9, 13, 15, 20, 23, 25, 30-31, 37, 39, 43, 47, 51-52, 54, 56-59, 68-69, 71, 73, 78-83, 87, 91, 109-110, 113-115, 117-120, 122-125, 127, 130-131, 133-136, 139, 143, 146, 151-153, 157, 160-161, 164, 166, 170, 177, 183-184, 190, 192, 205, 212-217, 219-226, 228-231, 255-256.

Ethics of Care

1. C. Leget, C. Gastmans, M. Verkerk (eds.), Care, Compassion and Recognition: An Ethical Discussion, 2011, IV-250 p. 2. A. van Heijst, Professional Loving Care. An Ethical View of the Healthcare Sector, 2011, VI-212 p. 3. G. Olthuis, H. Kohlen, J. Heier (eds.), Moral Boundaries Redrawn. The Significance of Joan Tronto’s Argument for Political Theory, Professional Ethics, and Care as Practice, 2014, IV-232 p. 4. I. van Nistelrooij, Sacrifice. A Care-Ethical Reappraisal of Sacrifice and Self-Sacrifice, 2015, X-302 p. 5. R.J. Lynch, Care: An Analysis, 2016, X-305 p. 6. S. Bourgault, E. Pulcini (eds.), Emotions and Care: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 2018, VI-262 p. 7. F. Brugère, Care Ethics, The Introduction of Care as Political Category. With a Preface by Joan Tronto, 2019, VI-101 p.