Much of feminist theory takes issue with traditional, liberal theories of consent and obligation. Though none have proposed abandoning obligation outright, there has been a general shift among feminists towards a responsibility paradigm. Responsibility models acknowledge given relationships and interdependence, and so posit responsibilities as given, regardless of whether they are voluntary. But in theories that take freedom as a principal value, a move from a socially unembedded voluntarism to socially embedded responsibility leaves something missing. Constructive accounts of and prescriptions (...) for freedom must consider the reality of social life; yet acknowledging that relations are given need not require subordinating the role of voluntarism and consent in most relationships. In this paper I offer a commitment framework that seeks to supplant obligation while also reconciling relational given-ness and voluntarism. I propose an analysis of commitment that takes relations as the starting point and then show how the concept can: 1. guide actions 2. account for responsibilities 3. enhance freedom and 4. avoid a large share of coercive forces that are believed as necessary for reinforcing obligation and responsibility fulfillment. (shrink)

Ecological feminism is a feminism which attempts to unite the demands of the women's movement with those of the ecological movement. Ecofeminists often appeal to "ecology" in support of their claims, particularly claims about the importance of feminism to environmentalism. What is missing from the literature is any sustained attempt to show respects in which ecological feminism and the science of ecology are engaged in complementary, mutually supportive projects. In this paper we attempt to do that by showing ten important (...) similarities which establish the need for and benefits of on-going dialogue between ecofeminists and ecosystem ecologists. (shrink)

Ecological feminism is a feminism which attempts to unite the demands of the women's movement with those of the ecological movement. Ecofeminists often appeal to “ecology” in support of their claims, particularly claims about the importance of feminism to environmentalism. What is missing from the literature is any sustained attempt to show respects in which ecological feminism and the science of ecology are engaged in complementary, mutually supportive projects. In this paper we attempt to do that by showing ten important (...) similarities which establish the need for and benefits of on-going dialogue between ecofeminists and ecosystem ecologists. (shrink)

This article is intended to contribute to the discussion on the meaning of volunteering by investigating voluntary work from the viewpoint of volunteers active in Swedish civil society organizations.Meaning refers both to the cognitive meaning of concepts and to the perceived meaning in life. The aim to uncover the predicates that people attribute to the concept is an attempt to anatomize volunteering as a social construct. Five predicates emerged and they make up the phenomenological structure of volunteering. By contextualizing this (...) structure in contemporary Swedish society, it is demonstrated that the conceptual meaning of volunteering has significance for its existential meaning. The volunteers say that their authenticity is confirmed through the voluntary work since they are making themselves manifest in public. Following Hannah Arendt, the reasons for this is that authenticity demands that the volunteers conduct their actions in a public realm where their actions acquire an intrinsic value as neither coerced nor instrumental. (shrink)

The essay examines the impartialist view of justice as the first virtue of all relationships. I argue that in close associations where duties, obligations, and rights of persons are situationally contingent, abstract principles of justice fail to yield a unified moral perspective about what is fair. Solidarity and trust as moral emotions develop more complex moral competencies that go beyond what principles of justice alone require.

In this article I attempt to untangle the purported connection between moral virtue and flourishing in the context of examining what looks like an unexpected effect of oppression: If moral virtue is necessary for flourishing—as Aristotle assumes that it is when he describes eudaimonia as an “activity of the soul in accordance with virtue” — then members of structurally privileged groups can only flourish if they are morally good. However, it is hard to conceive of the privileged as morally good, (...) since their privileges result from unjust social positionings. Thus it appears that they are prevented from leading good lives. This is an odd claim to add to a theory of oppression, which one would expect to explain how the victims of oppression — rather than its beneficiaries — are denied a shot at the good life.While the privileged may enjoy especially ample opportunities to develop certain virtues, I will be thinking here about vices associated with practices of domination, including active or passive acceptance of the benefits that come from occupying positionings that depend upon systems of male dominance, white supremacy, class divisions under capitalism, norms of heterosexuality, and so on. (shrink)

Chenyang Li argues, in an article originally published in Hypatia, that the ethics of care and Confucian ethics constitute similar approaches to ethics. The present paper takes issue with this claim. It is more accurate to view Confucian ethics as a kind of virtue ethics, rather than as a kind of care ethics. In the process of criticizing Li's claim, the distinctiveness of care ethics is defended, against attempts to assimilate it to virtue ethics.

The paper draws upon new conceptions of place, space, interaction and community in Geography and Media Studies to explore the possibilities of extending existing conceptions of care and caring from the context with which they are traditionally associated—face-to-face encounters within a shared physical locale. It proposes three structures of 'caring at a distance', all of which have a core element of mediated or distanciated interaction, and concludes that mass media and electronic networks play a significant role in extending the scope (...) of beneficence beyond our 'nearest and dearest' to embrace distant others. (shrink)

The paper draws upon new conceptions of place, space, interaction and community in Geography and Media Studies to explore the possibilities of extending existing conceptions of care and caring from the context with which they are traditionally associated—face-to-face encounters within a shared physical locale. It proposes three structures of ‘caring at a distance’, all of which have a core element of mediated or distanciated interaction, and concludes that mass media and electronic networks play a significant role in extending the scope (...) of beneficence beyond our ‘nearest and dearest’ to embrace distant others. (shrink)

It seems intuitive that human development and environmental protection should go hand in hand. But some have worried there is no framework within environmental ethics that suitably conjoins them. I...

: Unity, commonality, and agreement are generally understood to be the basis, or the aim, of community. This paper argues instead that disagreement and fracture are inherent to, and provide the expression of difference within, community. Drawing on the experience of race relations in Australia, this paper proposes that ongoing resis-tance and disagreement by Aboriginal groups against non-Aboriginal law and culture has enabled an unworking of homogenizing and totalizing forces which destroy alterity within community.

In this article I argue that Part II of the Family LawAct 1996 gives expression to a new form ofresponsibility. I begin by suggesting thatresponsible behaviour has shifted from prohibiting orrequiring particular actions: we now exhibitresponsibility by our attitude towards our actions. I then examine where this new conception ofresponsibility has come from. Through an examinationof the work of post-liberal theorists, principallyMichael Sandel, I argue that a changing view ofpersonhood within post-liberal theory has led to aquestioning of the possibility of (...) choice, and that theabsence of choice necessitates a shift in thedefinition of responsible behaviour. If we are createdby our decisions then we cannot be held to account forour decisions, but only for the care we have takenover them. Responsibility is therefore measured notby our level of self-control but by our level ofself-awareness. Finally I examine the consequences ofthis shift in the meaning of responsibility. Withinthis framework autonomy is illusory thereforedecisions do not need to be respected. This explainswhy the implementation of Part II of the Family LawAct 1996 has been called into question. Within thisframework responsibility is relative therefore itextends indefinitely. This enables the Family Law Actto be uniquely intrusive and judgmental: everydivorcing couple, on being held up to scrutiny, isfound lacking. (shrink)

Para Foucault, a amizade vai além da divisão tradicional entre eros e filía, tomando possível o estabelecimento de uma forma de vida a partir de uma escolha sexual. Os homossexuais em particular possuem a oportunidade histórica de utilizar sua sexualidade para a constituição de novas formas de existência. Os heterossexuais deveriam experimentar um "devir homossexual" que também conduzisse à procura de formas alternativas de sociedade.

I introduce the notion of the counterstory: a story that contributes to the moral self-definition of its teller by undermining a dominant story, undoing it and retelling it in such a way as to invite new interpretations and conclusions. Counterstories can be told anywhere, but particularly when told within chosen communities, they permit their tellers to reenter, as full citizens, the communities of place whose goods have been only imperfectly available to its marginalized members.

This paper considers two accounts of the self that have gained prominence in contemporary feminist psychoanalytic theory and draws out the implications of these views with respect to the problem of moral reflection. I argue that our account of moral reflection will be impoverished unless it mobilizes the capacity to empathize with others and the rhetoric of figurative language. To make my case for this claim, I argue that John Rawls's account of reflective equilibrium suffers from his exclusive reliance on (...) impartial reason. (shrink)

I argue that Alasdair MacIntyre has important resources to provide in the debate over the moral status of severely disabled people. In contrast, Gregory Poore suggests that MacIntyre’s virtue theory cannot account for our responsibilities to severely disabled people. Given that MacIntyre bases his theory around community membership, this charge is made especially severe in the case of severely disabled strangers. I present an interpretation of MacIntyre that accounts for responsibilities to severely disabled strangers. I then argue that Poore is (...) wrong to conclude that MacIntyre does not include severely disabled people in communities. (shrink)

Most readers of Habermas would not classify him as an existential thinker. The view of Habermas as a philosopher in German Idealist and Critical traditions from Kant to Hegel and Marx to the Frankfurt School prevails among Continental as much as among analytic philosophers. And the mainstream Anglo-American reception of his work and politics is shaped by the approaches of formal analysis rather than those of existential and social phenomenology or even current American pragmatism. One may argue that both these (...) readings eclipse richer existential dimensions of a thinker who challenges the notorious methodological and political splits among analytic, Continental and pragmatist orientations. I argue that Habermas’ critical relation to Heidegger’s a historical history of Being and his misguided political career cannot explain a competing narrative of his own affirmative appropriation of existential-ethical dimensions of thought and activism. Second, if one sets in the foreground this competing narrative, there emerges a weak thesis, whether or not a plausible complementarity between the communications critical social theory and concrete existential categories can be established. Third, one may inquire further into a stronger thesis whether or not this link must be developed in order to render Habermas’ own theory of a communicatively competent self sufficiently concrete and critical. (shrink)

Over the past decade or so the term ‘communitarianism’ has been applied to a wide range of positions with great variation between them. This is not in itself an objection to its continued use, for a concept may be coherent and illuminating even though it shelters considerable diversity. What is troubling about the body of literature now labelled as communitarian is that it frequently appeals to images of community without giving the notion the analytical attention it deserves and that we (...) have come to expect in relation to other central political concepts such as ‘liberty’ and ‘justice.’ What I propose to do in this paper is to focus on a particular understanding of community which I think has been neglected in recent discussions, largely because it has not been sufficiently distinguished from others, and then to raise a question in the light of it which has been at the forefront of the debate: viz., can liberalism in its currently dominant form truly respect the value and importance of community? Several writers have responded to the critiques of liberalism develoged in the work of those such as Michael Sandel and Alasdair Macintyre by arguing that the basic framework of liberal thought is fully compatible with a due appreciation of community. Joel Feinberg, for example, attempts to show that ‘one can preserve one’s allegiance to personal autonomy in the way that liberalism requires while fully acknowledging the central and indispensable importance of community in human lives.’ I shall register some doubts about whether liberalism can show proper respect for community when ‘community’ is understood in the way I describe. (shrink)

This article discusses three main orientations in recent works of legal and political theory about the family-contract-based, community-based, and rights-based-and argues that none of these takes adequate account of two paradoxical features of family life and of the family's relationship to the state. A coherent political and legal theory of the family in the contemporary United States requires recognition of the relational rights and responsibilities intrinsic to family life.

This review looks at Sarah Hoagland's Lesbian Ethics from the position of a lesbian who is also a cultural participant in a colonized heterosexualist culture within the powerful context of its colonizing heterosexualist culture . From this position separation from heterosexualism acquires great complexity since the position described is that of a plural self. In Lesbian Ethics lesbian community is the community of separation where demoralization is avoided by auto-koenonous selves. Because heterosexualism is not a cross-cultural or international system but (...) a series of systems some of which dominate over others and threaten their extinction , lesbian pluralism cannot be achieved through the inclusion of lesbians of different cultures, classes and situations in a separating group. Neither the need for nor the value of separation from heterosexualism are undermined by the increased complexity that this position adds to the analysis. (shrink)

This review looks at Sarah Hoagland's Lesbian Ethics from the position of a lesbian who is also a cultural participant in a colonized heterosexualist culture within the powerful context of its colonizing heterosexualist culture. From this position separation from heterosexualism acquires great complexity since the position described is that of a plural self. In Lesbian Ethics lesbian community is the community of separation where demoralization is avoided by auto‐koenonous selves. Because heterosexualism is not a Cross‐cultural or international system but a (...) series of systems some of which dominate over others and threaten their extinction, lesbian pluralism cannot be achieved through the inclusion of lesbians of different cultures, classes and situations in a separating group. Neither the need for nor the value of separation from heterosexualism are undermined by the increased complexity that this position adds to the analysis. (shrink)

The new familialists argue that the decline of the intact two-parent family is responsible for our most pressing social problems and advocate public policies designed to promote family stability and discourage divorce and nonmarital births. This essay defends the freedom of intimate association and argue that family stability, while an important good, must be balanced with other goods such as equality and justice within the family, happiness, and individual self-development.

My aim here is to clarify the practice of honoring and validating the relational model of self which plays an important role in feminist therapy. This practice rests on a tangle of psychological claims, moral and political values, and mental health norms which require analysis. Also, severe pathology affects the relative "relationality" of the self. By understanding it we can better understand the senses of autonomy compatible with and even required for a desired relationality.

This essay explores ethical conflicts underlying the discourse of the policy debate about transracial adoption, focusing on the adoption of Black children by whites. Three underlying conflicts are analyzed, namely, the values of equality versus community, interracial community versus multiculturalism, individuality versus racial-ethnic community. The essay concludes with observations on multicultural families.

This article introduces Designing for Care (D4C), a distinctive approach to project management and technological design informed by Care Ethics. We propose to conceptualize “care” as both the foundational value of D4C and as its guiding mid-level principle. As a value, care provides moral grounding. As a principle, it equips D4C with moral guidance to enact a caring process. The latter is made of a set of concrete, and often recursive, caring practices. One of the key assumption of D4C is (...) a relational ontology of individual and group identities, which fosters the actualization of caring practices as essentially relational and (often) reciprocal. Moreover, D4C adopts the “ecological turn” in CE and stresses the ecological situatedness and impact of concrete projects, envisioning an extension of caring from intra-species to inter-species relations. We argue that care and caring can influence directly some of the phases and practices within the management of (energy) projects and the design of sociotechnical (energy) artefacts and systems. When issues related to “value change” emerge as problematic (e.g., values trade-offs, conflicts), the mid-level guiding principle of care helps evaluate and prioritize different values at stake within specific projects. Although there may be several actors and stakeholders involved in project management and technological design, here we will focus on the professionals in charge of imagining, designing, and carrying out these processes (i.e., project managers, designers, engineers). We suggest that adopting D4C would improve their ability to capture and assess stakeholders’ values, critically reflect on and evaluate their own values, and judge which values prioritize. Although D4C may be adaptable to different fields and design contexts, we recommend its use especially within small and medium-scale (energy) projects. To show the benefits of adopting it, we envisage the application of D4C within the project management and the technological design of a community battery. The adoption of D4C can have multiple positive effects: transforming the mentality and practice of managing a project and designing technologies; enhancing caring relationships between managers, designers, and users as well as among users; achieving better communication, more inclusive participation, and more just decision-making. This is an initial attempt to articulate the structure and the procedural character of D4C. The application of D4C in a concrete project is needed to assess its actual impact, benefits, and limitations. (shrink)

While pragmatism as a philosophy and intellectual movement has been gaining inroads in international ethics and international political theory scholarship, feminist pragmatism is not yet as widely regarded. This paper explores the intellectual contributions of feminist pragmatism to international political thought, particularly Jane Addams’s social ethics which is largely overlooked in the literature on women’s contributions to international normative theory. Here I add to efforts to reconsider Addams as a thinker that was concerned with the multiplicity and diversity, features of (...) social life that make a foundational premise of international normative thought. In the paper, I explore how feminism and pragmatism challenge ideas about normatively constitutive communities. The nexus of the two philosophies come clearly in Addams’s progressive communitarianism and her ideas on the significance of settlement to social ethics. In addition to Addams’s pacifist thought and international humanism, I argue that her practice in Hull House draws attention to the site as a normatively significant category. The paper casts Hull House as an international social space that sustained social connections, instrumental to social ethics. Hull House serves as an exemplar that can inform further thinking about the international community and more democratised global governance structures. (shrink)

This dissertation draws on the Aristotelian and contemporary communitarian belief that humans are socially constituted, and analyzes the manifestations of this belief in contemporary identity politics and in the concept of 'culture' that often underlies identity politics. While I argue that it is important to maintain a communitarian conception of the self, I depart from Aristotle and the communitarian tradition by rejecting the assumption that a constitutive community is characterized by unity and homogeneity. I then claim that identity politics has (...) inherited both the virtues and the problems of communitarian theory. Just as communitarians claim that the self is never free from social constitution, so identity politics have taken the self's identity to be formed along lines of socially defined group differences, and like communitarianism, some identity politics has entailed a call for unity. In the case of identity politics, the requirement for membership in the community may be sharing certain essential characteristics of identity; difference can result in marginalization, forced assimilation to the group norm, or expulsion. Because identity politics often relies upon the concept of 'culture' to ground group identities, I also examine this concept. When a community's unity derives from its members understanding themselves to share a culture, the maintenance of the culture itself can be conservatizing; the culture can remain closed off from changes as it preserves the "traditional" or "authentic"; furthermore, it can come to be treated as an object outside of the people who live it and as such the changing lived realities of these people--particularly changes that cross lines of identity--do not serve to continually offer new, changing, and ambiguous ways of conceiving of what is shared between members of the community. I argue for the development of group identity that recognizes intersecting group differences, and can permit hybridity or mixed identities. I end by suggesting that for a constitutive community to remain truly constitutive without harming its members through marginalization, forced assimilation to a norm or a shared essence, or stagnation, members must give up the sort of control that maintains the community as a unity. (shrink)

Should we limit prenatal diagnosis for adult-onset disorders? Since genetic medicine has dissociated its eugenic past, the principle of respect for autonomy has become a model for conduct. However, this model promotes individualism and neglects the impact on disabled people. Since the implications of aborting a fetus with possibly four decades of health are potentially greater for society, moral theories that incorporate meaning about communal bonds may be more appropriate.

The aim of this paper is to explore the ethical possibility of rethinking the role of care and human bonds outside a patriarchal framework. First of all, I revise some philosophical understandings of friendship that havemaintained that women were incapable of it. Equality and symmetry were the requirements for friendship and the subordinated status of women in history was the fact that had made impossible for them to aspire to the moral excellence of philía. Secondly, I analyze the gender subtext (...) of the idea of autonomy to show that have been constructed by masculine patterns, specially, when it dismiss the constitutive fact of human interdependence. Finally, I focus on the last contributions of feminist bioethics to reflect about the need of conceiving autonomy in a framework of relationships and mutual obligations of care. This opens the possibility of recovering a new sense of a autonomy , that is coherent with the moral experience of women, focused on care, and this relational autonomy seems to me a essential point of depart to rethinkmany of the current bioethical debates. (shrink)

Issues relating to diversity and pluralism continue to permeate both social and political discourse. Of particular contemporary importance and relevance are those issues raised when the demands associated with forms of pluralism clash with those of the liberal state. These forms of pluralism can be divided into two subcategories: thin and thick pluralism. Thin pluralism refers to forms of pluralism that can be accommodated by the existing liberal framework, whereas thick pluralism challenges this liberal framework. -/- This thesis is an (...) examination of four forms of political association that may be able to accommodate and support the demands of pluralism. These four models are Rawls’ political liberalism, Crowder’s value pluralism, Rorty’s post-foundational liberalism, and Mouffe’s radical democratic project. What unites these four forms of political association is their capacity to avoid the exclusionary effects of a form of liberalism that I, following Gaus, refer to as Enlightenment liberalism. As the name suggests, this conception of liberalism is anchored in the Enlightenment, and in particular with what may be considered as the Enlightenment view of reason. As such, therefore, Enlightenment liberalism is both universal and perfectionist. In this context, I argue that Enlightenment liberalism is a species of what Berlin refers to as ‘moral monism’. -/- These four forms of political association are ordered in such a way as to chart an intellectual trajectory. Rawls and Crowder are both situated firmly within the liberal tradition, whereas Rorty and Mouffe move beyond this, and embrace a form of post-foundational politics. It is in this trajectory that the second theme of this thesis emerges. This is centred on a paradox: in order to avoid the exclusionary effect of Enlightenment liberalism and embrace a form of political association that meets the demands of pluralism and diversity, the models examined still promote autonomy as the dominant virtue. (shrink)