Care theorists have made significant gains over the past twenty-five years in establishing caring as a viable moral and political concept. Nonetheless, the concept of caring remains underdeveloped as a basis for a moral and political philosophy, and there is no fully developed account of our moral obligation to care. This article advances thinking about caring by developing a definition of caring and a theory of obligation to care sufficient to ground a general moral and political philosophy.

This study explored how women with a diagnosis of cancer (lymphoma) deal with moral concerns related to their responsibility as parents. Ten women with cancer and who had children living at home were interviewed. The interviews were analysed according to the constant comparative method used in grounded theory. In order to provide a focus for the analysis, the ethics of care and the concept of mothering were used as sensitizing concepts. The core concept ‘experience of dealing with moral responsibility of (...) being a parent with cancer by redefining oneself as a mother’ was identified. The processes involved were: interrupted mothering; facing the life-threatening illness and children’s reactions; striving to be a good mother; attempting to deal with moral responsibility; and coming to terms with being a mother. (shrink)

In this paper I elaborate a notion of nurses’ professional self as one who is attracted towards intrinsic value. My previous work in 2003 has shown how nurses, who see intrinsic value in their work, experience self‐affirmation when they believe that they have made a difference to that which they see to have value. The aim of this work is to reveal a further aspect of nurses’ professional self. I argue that nurses’ desire towards that which they see to have (...) intrinsic value, is a necessary and self‐transcending aspect of a nurses’ professional self. I argue further that nurses’ desire towards intrinsic value inevitably involves their vulnerability. Nurses who see intrinsic value are shown to be vulnerable to self‐sacrifice in their inclination to work for the good of their patients, at the expense of themselves. Yet an ability to transcend their self in this way remains a necessary aspect of a nurse's professional self, which requires nurture and support through nurse education. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 4, April 2022. -/- In a moment where needs for care are acute and their provision precarious, feminist care ethics has gained new relevance as a framework for understanding and responding to necessary interdependence. This article reviews and evaluates two long-standing critiques of care ethics in light of this recent research. First, I assess what I call the pluralist feminist critique, or the dispute over the ability of care ethics to address the needs and histories (...) of a range of marginalized subjects. I identify two forms of this critique: the first disputes the biased starting points shaping the development of the theory, and the second concerns the weaponization of care in support of domination. Although these critiques are well-established, I draw attention to recent responses that move care theory in generative directions. I argue that the pluralist feminist critique demands both self-critical transformation in dialog with other feminist schools of thought and a robust account of care ethics' normative authority. I then take up critiques those levied by mainstream ethicists concerned with care theory's adequacy as an ethical approach. I show that recent work on normative authority, conceptual uniqueness, and the grounding of responsibility must be engaged before care theory can be dismissed as “under-theorized.” In articulating these two sets of critiques and evaluating recent rebuttals to them, I argue for a pluralist feminist theory of care within which strands informed by varying philosophical schools and methods can coexist. (shrink)

The ethics of care still appeals to many in spite of penetrating criticisms of it which have been presented over the past 15 years or so. This paper tries to offer an explanation for this, and then to critically engage with three versions of an ethics of care. The explanation consists firstly in the close affinities between nursing and care. The three versions identified below are by Gilligan (1982 ), a second by Tronto (1993 ), and a third by Gastmans (...) (2006 ), see also Little (1998 ). Each version is described and then subjected to criticism. It is concluded that where the ethics of care is presented in a distinctive way, it is at its least plausible; where it is stated in more plausible forms, it is not sufficiently distinct from nor superior to at least one other common approach to nursing ethics, namely the much-maligned 'four principles' approach. What is added by this paper to what is already known: as the article tries to explain, in spite of its being subjected to sustained criticism the ethics of care retains its appeal to many scholars. The paper tries to explain why, partly by distinguishing three different versions of an ethics of care. It is also shown that all three versions are beset with problems the least serious of which is distinctiveness from other approaches to moral problems in health care. (shrink)

Is it true that an ethics of care offers something distinct from other approaches to ethical problems in nursing, especially principlism? In this article an attempt is made to clarify an ethics of care and then to argue that there need be no substantial difference between principlism and an ethics of care when the latter is considered in the context of nursing. The article begins by considering the question of how one could in fact differentiate moral theories. As is explained, (...) this cannot be done merely in light of the moral judgements they defend, nor their ontological commitments (e.g. their view of the nature of persons). Following these methodological beginnings, care-based ethics is described and critically discussed. It is shown that ontological commitments embraced within care ethics do not themselves show that care ethics is distinct from other approaches. The idea of ‘psychological care’ is also discussed, which stems from the work of Margaret Little. Her claim that the ‘gestalts’ of justice and care cannot be combined is rejected in favour of an approach that does just that and which has been developed by Joan Tronto. It is then claimed that the moral commitments of principlism are certainly not incompatible with those of an ethics of care in the nursing context. A challenge to the idea that principlism and ethics of care might be compatible is anticipated in the work of Eva Feder Kittay. This challenge is responded to and it is concluded that care considered as a moral orientation and the moral values embedded in principlism are best combined in the nursing context. Care provides a moral orientation over which the obligations referred to in principlism can be laid. (shrink)

We often come to value someone or something through experience of that person or thing. You may thereby come to embrace a value that you did not grasp prior to the experience in question. Moreover, it seems that in a large and important subset of cases you could not have fully appreciated that value merely by considering a report of the reasons or arguments that purport to establish that it is valuable. Despite its ubiquity, this phenomenon goes missing in a (...) great deal of contemporary work in ethics and political philosophy. In this paper I further specify the phenomenon of interest by developing a series of examples. Then I support the claim that philosophers routinely overlook it by surveying several significant philosophical positions that do so. (shrink)

Two years after the death of his small son, Ralph Waldo Emerson famously wrote of the experience, "I cannot get it nearer to me" (CW 3:29). Most readers have been troubled by this remark, reading it as a sign that Emerson's relationship to grief and even to his son was disturbingly oblique, and the predominant response has been that it demonstrates he was detached, cold, and disconnected in the service of his transcendental philosophy.1 Such a response is grounded in the (...) tacit assumption that philosophy seems to be, or to call for, some intellectually grounded transcendence of the personal, whether the personal is whimsical or fatal. Emerson himself worried at times that he was too cold, too intellectual, even as .. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory, as a method of management based on morals and behavior, must be grounded by a theory of ethics. However, traditional ethics of justice and rights cannot completely ground the theory. Following and expanding on the work of Wicks, Gilbert, and Freeman (1994), we believe that feminist ethics, invoking principles of caring, provides the missing element that allows moral theory to ground the stakeholder approach to management. Examples are given to support the suggested general principle for making business decisions (...) under feminist moral theory. (shrink)

Prior research has shown that human trafficking has multiple facets and is deeply enmeshed in societies around the world. Two central challenges for anti-trafficking organizations pertain to confronting systemic injustices and establishing caring organizations for survivors to start the process of healing and restoration. Analyzing the work of an anti-trafficking organization, International Sanctuary in Mumbai, we seek to elucidate how a space for caring for trafficking survivors is constructed in a largely non-egalitarian and unjust context. We contribute to discussions on (...) how caring infrastructures are possibly developed so that they do not write off existing gendered and in-egalitarian social structures and how they shape individual biographies. We also highlight how the specific, situated context—defined by those very structures—shapes and influences the transformative potential of care interventions. (shrink)

The dominant, individualistic understanding of autonomy that features in clinical practice and research is underpinned by the idea that people are, in their ideal form, independent, self-interested and rational gain-maximising decision-makers. In recent decades, this paradigm has been challenged from various disciplinary and intellectual directions. Proponents of ‘relational autonomy’ in particular have argued that people’s identities, needs, interests – and indeed autonomy – are always also shaped by their relations to others. Yet, despite the pronounced and nuanced critique directed at (...) an individualistic understanding of autonomy, this critique has had very little effect on ethical and legal instruments in clinical practice and research so far. In this article, we use four case studies to explore to what extent, if at all, relational autonomy can provide solutions to ethical and practical problems in clinical practice and research. We conclude that certain forms of relational autonomy can have a tangibl... (shrink)

The Norman Rockwell image of the American physician who fixed the broken arm of a child, treated the father for hypertension, and brought an unborn child into this world is now almost nonexistent. Since the time of the Rockwell portrait, a highly technical medical industry has evolved. Now two-thirds of physicians are board certified in subspecialties, and patients visit an average of 3–4 different physicians per year. Today's physicians see themselves less as “benevolent and wise counselors overseeing the patient's welfare (...) and more as objective scientists applying the latest technical methods to bring about the desired end.” The intimate patient-physician relationship that was once the norm in our society is rapidly disappearing. (shrink)

In the wake of a pilot study that indicated that the experience of medical education appears to Inhibit moral development In medical students, increased attention needs to be given to the structure of medical education and the Influence it has on medical students. Interest in ethics and moral reasoning has become widespread in many aspects of professional and public life. Society has exhibited great interest in the ethical issues confronting physicians today. Considerable effort has been undertaken to train medical students, (...) interns, and residents In how to reason through medical-ethical dilemmas. Media attention has focused on Issues such as abortion, euthanasia, care of severely handicapped infants, organ transplantation, and so forth, producing heated debates in both the professional and lay literature over the morality of the various positions. The curriculum of medical education has paralleled and reflected this general Interest in medical ethics. Most medical schools now offer, and frequently require, course work in ethics. However, further research Is needed to better characterize and understand the relationship of medical education to moral development. (shrink)

This paper concerns the influence of gender on a firm’s moral and economic performance. It supports Thomas White’s intimation of a male gender bias in the value system underlying extant business theory. We suggest that this gender bias may be corrected by drawing on the concept of substantive rationality inherent in virtue-ethics theory. This feminine-oriented relationship-based value system complements the essential nature of the firm as a nexus of relationships between stakeholders. Not only is this feminine firm morally desirable, but (...) it is also economically more efficient in that trust becomes a more feasible implicit contractual enforcement mechanism. In an organizational context, therefore, from both a moral and an economic perspective, long established economic man is dominated by nascent economic woman. (shrink)

Developing caring competences is considered to be one of the most important aims of undergraduate nursing education and the role of clinical placement is recognised as special in this regard. Students' reflection on caring, their experience and obstacles in being caring is recommended as a key strategy in the process of teaching and studying the nursing discipline. Therefore, the aim of this study was to describe the concept of caring, its manifestations and possible obstacles while caring, as perceived by first‐year (...) nursing students before and after their first clinical placement. Qualitative content analysis of 15 Polish students' narratives written before and after their clinical experience in the form of text‐diaries was undertaken. The findings revealed that students entered their nursing education with a deep humanistic vision of caring both on theoretical and practical levels and the first clinical placement has enriched this vision. Expressive caring was more appreciated by students than the instrumental one and their concept of caring was coherent with the caring behaviours as described in their narratives. Several internal and external obstacles for caring have been reported by students, indicating a specific tension between their ideal of caring and their practical experience of caring in the clinical reality. (shrink)

This study presents the Italian adaptation of the Measure of Moral Orientation, second revision. Based on Carol Gilligan’s theory of the Ethics of Care, the MMO-2 was designed to measure two complementary moral stances, namely, Care and Justice. For this study, questionnaire responses from 683 university students were assessed against an Italian-adapted MMO-2 scale. Data were analyzed through exploratory structural equation modeling first as separate scenarios and then as a single model. The final model comprises 4 intercorrelated pairs of latent (...) variables and shows highly satisfactory goodness of fit indices with moderate construct validity and reliability. Strengths, limitations, and directions for the future developments of the MMO-2 are discussed. (shrink)

This study articulates the relational constituents of good care beyond techno‐rational competence. Neoliberal healthcare means that notions of care are readily commodified and reduced to quantifiable assessments and checklists. This novel research investigated accounts of good care provided by nursing, medical, allied and auxiliary staff. The Heideggerian phenomenological study was undertaken in acute medical‐surgical wards, investigating the contextual, communicative nature of care. The study involved interviews with 17 participants: 3 previous patients, 3 family members and 11 staff. Data were analysed (...) iteratively, dwelling with stories and writing and rewriting to surface the phenomenality of good care. The data set highlighted the following essential constituents: authentic care: caring encompassing solicitude (fürsorge); impromptu care: caring beyond role category; sustained care: caring beyond specialist parameters; attuned care: caring encompassing family and culture; and insightful care: caring beyond assessment and diagnosis. The findings are clinically significant because they indicate the importance of nurse leaders and educators harnessing the potential capacity of all healthcare workers to participate in good care. Healthcare workers reported that participating in or witnessing good care was uplifting and added meaning to their work, contributing to a sense of shared humanity. (shrink)

Within this thesis, I argue for an interpretive approach to bioethics in pediatric intensive care. I begin by outlining the dominant bioethical doctrine that defines standards for ethical care in critically ill children. I critique this doctrine as legalistic and acultural. Drawing largely on the ideas of Charles Taylor, I call for a reconception of bioethics and propose an interpretive framework that is centred on culture and context. Finally, I illustrate this interpretive approach through a comparative study of two cases (...) in pediatric intensive care: the narratives of Marc and Larry. (shrink)

In this dissertation I examine the topics of ethics, religion, and their relationship in the work of Charles Taylor. I take Taylor's attempt to confront modern disenchantment by seeking a kind of re-enchantment as my guiding thread. Seeking re-enchantment means, first of all, defending an `engaged realist' account of strong evaluation, i.e., qualitative distinctions of value that are seen as normative for our desires. Secondly, it means overcoming self-enclosure and achieving self-transcendence, which I argue should be understood in terms of (...) transcending a `lower' mode of selfhood for a `higher' one in concern for `strong goods'. One of the main issues that Taylor raises is whether re-enchantment requires theism for its full adequacy. He advances - often as `hunches' - controversial claims regarding the significance of theism (1) for defending strong evaluative realism and (2) for motivating an ethic of universal human concern. I seek to fill out his hunches in terms of a theistic teleological perspective that is centered on the `telos of communion'. I argue that such a view is important for overcoming the problem of what Bernard Williams calls the `radical contingency' of ethical beliefs, which seems to undermine their normative authority. However, I argue that if a non-theistic view of cosmic purpose (e.g., Thomas Nagel's view) can be regarded as a viable option, then it could also help to address this problem and support a kind of re-enchantment. Taylor also advances the controversial view that (3) there is an ineradicable draw to `transcendence' in human life in connection to the quest for the meaning of life. Here he opposes certain mainstream theories of secularization that see it as a process involving the ineluctable fading away of the relevance of religion. I seek to fill out and defend Taylor's view in this matter. Besides providing a reading of Taylor's work as a whole and advancing further some of the issues he raises, I also examine his general evaluative framework based on his account of strong evaluation. In doing so I show how he provides a distinct and important perspective among contemporary moral philosophers. (shrink)

Many teachers struggle to maintain or build hope among themselves and their students in today’s climate of high anxiety and low morale. This article describes and responds to those challenging conditions. It offers teachers and scholars of education a philosophically sophisticated and feasible understanding of hope. This notion of hope is grounded in pragmatism and grows out of the pragmatist commitment to meliorism. Hope is described as a way of living tied to specific contexts that brings together reflection and intelligent (...) action alongside imagination and gratitude. Such hope is realistic and generative, rendering it well suited for teachers struggling in schools today. The article does account for some school conditions, including fatalism, passivity, and lack of persistent motivation, that pose obstacles for achieving pragmatist hope. The article closes by describing specific actions teachers can take to build and sustain hope in their schools, including developing supportive communities of inquiry, cultivating habits of hope among students, and practicing confirmation. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to shed light on two somewhat underappreciated theories, which, by drawing attention to the embodied and relational nature of the self, both went beyond the disembodied and individualist paradigm long before most current leading approaches in the field. The paper first considers the routes out of the crisis of this paradigm proposed by care ethics. The first part focuses mainly on Carol Gilligan’s relational account of subjectivity, which served as an inspiration for the (...) development of care ethics as a moral theory, and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of her account. In the next step, the paper sets out to compare the view of the self deployed by care ethics with Donald Winnicott’s account of the transitional area of play. The paper argues that both care ethics and Winnicott’s theory make it possible to understand human subjectivity as at the same time dependent and mature, ambivalent and integrated, vulnerable and responsible, relational and non-arbitrary. Winnicott and care ethicists jointly demonstrate that it is neither an absolute symbiosis with others, nor a total separation from them, that is decisive for the well-being of an individual and a social field. Rather, it is beneficial and morally desirable to cultivate concrete interpersonal relationships in the area of complex relationality. The paper concludes that the crisis of the disembodied and individualistic paradigm of the self cannot be overcome by an uncritical emphasis on the positive function of relational, embodied and supra-individual aspects of human existence. Though essential, these aspects are at the same time complex and developmentally conditioned. (shrink)

This short article provides an overview of "care ethics" for students who are new to moral theory.

The research project described in this report represents one of the most extensive studies of character education ever undertaken, including over 10,000 students and 255 teachers in schools across England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Research techniques consisted of a mixture of surveys, moral dilemmas and semi-structured interviews. This report explores: - The current situation in character education, both in the UK and internationally - How developed British students are with respect to moral character and the extent to which they (...) are able to understand and apply moral virtues, especially those aged 14 and 15 - How teachers in the UK understand their role in terms of students’ moral and character development - What helps or hinders the development of children’s characters according to teachers in UK schools. (shrink)

In this article we explore the underpinnings of what we view as a recent" backlash" in English law, a judicial reaction against considering children's and young people's expressions of their own feelings about treatment as their" true" wishes. We use this case law as a springboard to conceptual discussion, rooted in (a) empirical psychological work on child development and (b) three key philosophical ideas: rationality, autonomy and identity.

In this paper, I outline the cumulative network model of the self. This model articulates the self as relational, recognizing social relations as constitutive of the self. The theory arises out of concerns about the individualistic paradigms of two main frameworks in the analytic philosophical literature on personal identity, namely, the psychological and the animalist approaches to personhood and is explicitly inspired by feminist theories on relational autonomy and self. I argue that “relationality” is not only social, but that the (...) self is relational throughout, psychologically, physically, biologically, culturally, semantically, as well as socially. Hence, the self is a network of relations. The model also aims to recognize that temporality or historicity is constitutive of the self, that the self is a process, not a static three-dimensional thing. Hence, the self is a cumulative network. (shrink)

This chapter first introduces naturalistic approaches to ethics more generally and distinguishes methodological ethical naturalism (the focus of this chapter), from metaphysical ethical naturalism. The second part then discusses evolutionary ethics as a specific variant of methodological ethical naturalism. After introducing the concepts of evolutionary theory that are relevant for evolutionary ethics, I will sketch the history of evolutionary ethics, which offers an interesting lesson about why it became a controversial topic, and then focus on four central questions about ethics (...) that can be approached from within the framework of evolutionary ethics: 1. What should we do? 2. Why are we moral? 3. Are there moral facts? 4. Can we have justified moral beliefs and moral knowledge? (shrink)

Straipsnyje, analizuojant skirtingus Carol Gilligan darbus, pristatoma šiuo metu vis didesnį matomumą šiuolaikinėje moralės filosofijoje įgaunanti, bet Lietuvoje dar mažai žinoma rūpesčio etika. Gilligan yra amerikiečių psichologė, kurios pagrindiniai darbai skirti moterų psichologijos ir mergaičių vystymosi problematikai. Nors ir pripažįstamas jos, kaip rū-pesčio etikos pradininkės, statusas, tačiau neretai akcentuojamas jos darbų psichologinis, o ne etinis aspektas, tai yra, plėtojami empiriniai tyrimai, paneigiantys ar patvirtinantys moterų ir vyrų moralinio žodyno skirtumus, moralinių samprotavimų ir lyties koreliaciją. Šiame straipsnyje analizuosime, kaip Gilligan darbuose (...) susipina etinė bei psichologinė plotmės, ir teigsime, kad ją galima laikyti naujos etinės paradigmos pradininke, kadangi normatyvinę rūpesčio sampratą ji grindžia nauja moralės filosofijai reliacinio subjekto prielaida, tokio subjekto, kurį formuoja ir konstituoja santykiai su konkrečiais žmonėmis. (shrink)

A new program of teacher training in a dialogical spirit in order to prepare them towards working in the field of philosophy with children combines cultivating creativity and self-reflective thinking had been operated as a part of cooperation between the academia and the education system in Israel. This article describes the program that is a part of their practice towards co-operation between academia and schools as a part of PDS (Professional Development Schools) partnership. The program fosters creativity and self-reflective thinking (...) in schools and teacher training, and offers dialogical methods through the philosophy of Martin Buber, Emanuel Levinas and Paulo Freire. The program encourages adopting principles proposed by Martin Buber (1947, 1957, 1959), who perceived education as a dialogue among people whose humanity is fully manifested in its reciprocity. This is an unequivocal stance, maintaining that neither skillful technique nor exciting contents can replace the experience of the spontaneous, authentic concrete presence of the educator’s personality. The dialogic dimension of the program draws its significance from the principle of responsibility, as expressed by Emanuel Levinas (2003). It is based on the idea that the human being, as a speaking subject, does not place himself/herself in the center, but turns to the other. This committed attitude of the other must be expressed in education action, in clothing the naked and feeding the hungry as expressed by Paulo Freire (1973). These principles implemented in teacher education and teacher training requires active listening, a capacity to be response-able to environment in which teachers are situated and it seeks to uncover assumptions, reflect on concepts in use and assist the new teacher to be involve on a philosophical inquiry, as well as situating self-understanding in the context of philosophy of education. (shrink)

Researchers who argue that moral judgment is based on emotions (`emotion-backers') and those who believe that it is based on reasoning and deliberation (`reasoning-backers') have both struggled to account for the notorious moral deviance of incarcerated psychopaths. Emotion-backers, such as Jonathan Haidt, focus on psychopaths' lack of a affect,or defciencies in particular emotions, such as sympathy. Reasoning-backers, such as Lawrence Kohlberg, focus instead on psychopaths' de cient reasoning. Both accounts offer separate descriptions of what goes wrong in the disorder, but (...) neither can fully explain psychopathic moral deviance. The moral account that I built, bridges these accounts in an attempt to better and more fully describe the empirical data available on psychopathic moral judgment. I argue that their judgment is best explained with a dual-process account of moral judgment that incorporates a large system of moral emotions as well as integrates multiple bases of morality, such as concerns of fairness, harm, and purity. It is only by focusing on both the reasoning and emotional de cits in psychopaths that we can begin to understand psychopaths' use of utilitarian reasoning, general population psychopaths, and psychopaths' di erential presence in the prison popu- lation. All of these issues are best described using a dual-process account of moral judgment that incorporates a larger system of moral emotions than other accounts of morality as well as a pluralistic conception of moral foundations. I used psychopaths because their moral deviance can teach us about morality more broadly. By understanding the cognitive processes implicated in the moral judgment of psychopaths, I better explain how moral judgment works in the general population more broadly. My account of moral judgment has both theoretical and practical applications. Theoretically, it o ers a new dual-process paradigm for describing moral behaviour which bridges reasoning-based and emotion-based accounts. This description can explain both the moral deviance of psychopaths as well as, more broadly, moral judgment in non-psychopaths. Additionally, my theory challenges accounts of moral emotion that narrowly focus on speci c emotions, such as guilt or empathy. It in- stead integrates all emotions, including disgust, fear, and sympathy, and links speci c emotions to moral judgments. Practically, my paradigm of moral judgment encourages the development of new moral judgment measurements such as new self-report questionnaires of moral reasoning. According to my research, in order for these tools to accurately measure morality, they need to account for both emotion-based and reasoning-based judgments. (shrink)

This dissertation is based around conceptual conflicts introduced by the notion of rewilding and the challenges rewilding poses to place and cultural landscapes. Rewilding is a recent conservation strategy interested in the return of wilder, less human-managed environments. Often presented as an antidote to increasingly homogenized, organized, and managed environments, rewilding deliberately opens up space for the return of wild nature, typically by removing human elements that have obstructed or diminished its free reign or by reintroducing locally extinct species to (...) re-activate trophic cascades. There is, however, an increasing awareness that rewilding in many places will threaten cultural landscapes that are prized for their human meanings and histories. This dissertation does not attempt to resolve this conflict but instead takes a hermeneutic interest in it and tries to understand better what is at stake in such a conflict. This is attempted by means of a hermeneutic detour through the concepts of place and of wilderness, and ultimately the dissertation argues that instead of understanding rewilding simply as undermining notions of place, we should understand rewilding itself as placemaking. This conceptual work is informed by actual cases of rewilding and an examination of the conflicts arising out of the various modes of placemaking rewilding performs. Three modes of placemaking are demonstrated: wilderness placemaking, experimental placemaking, and place-regenerative placemaking. Taken in total, these reveal ways in which rewilding confronts us with relations with nonhuman others and with questions of belonging and not belonging that are increasingly at issue. (shrink)

When women become perpetrators of suicide bombing, their agency – their ability to act upon and affect the world – is often denied. There are a number of reasons for this and one this thesis considers is that – as females – they are not expected to be violent. Accordingly, such women are judged to be coerced or incompetent, and so unable to rule themselves sufficiently as agents. Models of autonomy propose various frameworks for assessing whether acts or persons are (...) self-governing, and the relational approach in particular has garnered much support recently. However, some aspects of the relational account remain under-theorised, including how autonomy might be measured. In this thesis, I aim to bring these two elements together by examining whether an extension of the relational model may offer a way in which to estimate the autonomy of the bombers in a more nuanced fashion. I make two claims. First, that the relational conception of the agent and autonomy ‘fits’ the bombers. Second, that my spectrum view, which is rooted in the relational approach, maps the bomber’s autonomy approximately but in detail. As such, my spectrum view is a befitting notion of autonomy and allows a graded and comparative representation of the bomber’s autonomy. (shrink)

Šiame straipsnyje analizuojama ryškėjanti tendencija sutapatinanti rūpesčio etiką su sentimentalizmu. Lyginant šios tendencijos atstovo Michaelo Slote’o ir vienos iš rūpesčio etikos kūrėjų Nel Noddings filosofiją, analizuojamas rūpesčio etikos ir sentimentalizmo santykis, pastarojo galimybės adekvačiai konceptualizuoti rūpesčio / rūpinimosi specifiką. Teigiama, kad sentimentalizmo konceptualinis žodynas, grindžiamas empatijos sąvoka, užgožia reliacinį rūpesčio etikos pobūdį. Straipsnyje empatijos sąvokai priešpriešinama dėmesio sąvoka, kurią nemaža dalis rūpesčio etikos atstovų pasitelkia apibrėžti moralinį rūpestį / rūpinimąsi. Analizuojant Simone Weil ir Iris Murdoch filosofiją, atskleidžiama dėmesio sąvokos reikšmė (...) rūpesčio etikai. (shrink)

The aim of this dissertation is to critically investigate and problematize how museum exhibitions on Difficult Matters, like war and sexual violence, can be designed in order to contribute to teaching-learning relations between museum and visitor, which may transform existing perceptions of self, others, and the world and evoke a deepened sense of responsibility in the viewers, i.e. an ethical transformation.Based on a hermeneutic phenomenological approach the study takes three paths to shed light on the above. 1) Investigating literature on (...) museum studies on New Museology and Difficult Matters on the basis of which the research maps out current problems of understanding the pedagogical and ethical potentials. 2) From conducting case studies of two specific exhibitions to make an in-depth examination of designing exhibitions on Difficult Matters and how these are related to contextual conditions. 3) Investigating pedagogical theoretical literature inspired by the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and literature in feminist philosophy on ethics of vulnerability all closely linked to the case studies, the study develops a conceptual basis for understanding the practice of designing exhibitions on Difficult Matters. A main finding is that designing exhibitions on Difficult Matters is related to the condition of vulnerability and this demands a pedagogical perspective sensitive to the ethical implications of exhibition making. This is because evoking ethical transformation is conditioned by a teaching-learning relation, which inspires openness on the part of the visitor to an encounter with the other and her/his life-story as being different from existing perceptions - an openness which is defined by vulnerability. As a result, vulnerability is at the heart of exhibitions on Difficult Matters.The overall conclusion to be drawn from the study is that vulnerability is a key concept in museum pedagogy and that vulnerability is an ambivalent potentiality which must be addressed from a double perspective on vulnerability as being inherent to the human condition and dependent on the particular situation. Consequently, vulnerability calls for pedagogical considerations and ethical attention from museum professionals, when designing exhibitions on Difficult Matters. (shrink)

There is all over the world a sort of fever affecting all the research fields related, closely or somewhat loosely,with human health issues. Some of them – cloning, therapeutic cloning, stem cell therapy, human enhancement, etc. – arise fierce and controversial public debates. At the same time, a concern can be felt worldwide that tomorrow’s medicine might well become more and more « dual », the advanced health devices threatening to become the privilege of a small whealthy minority, or at (...) least excluding the vast majority of the poor and the low middle class. Furthermore, there are even greater disparities between wealthy and poor nations in access to health care and in the level of protection available to members of the latter’s population in a medical context. The theme of rationing health care has been ongoingly gaining in prevalence over the two to three last decades in the public debates, causing many to express worries about the ability of our health system to provide both efficiency and justice in health care. But, among all the new health care devices, are there not some which could be efficient both in terms of improvement of the management of patients’ health and of a just allocation of care ? Besides, not only emerge concerns linked with the development of new technologies in health care, but also in connection with the impact of social-political transformations onto the medical relationship : what are in this context the doctor-patient relationship in regard to autonomy and gender ? Should we be free to use or not to use these new technologies ? Might not the « quest for perfection » develop into a duty of perfection ? And, with the improvement of the therapeutic power to prolong human life, are we to think of assisted suicide as the future of death ? These are some of the issues that this conference wants to adress from an ethical perspective and with rigour. To enrich our discussions also medical and life science praticioners willing to reflect ethically on moral questions of health issues in their professional life and politicians faced with ethical decisions in the domain of health are welcome to participate. (shrink)

The purpose of the thesis is to put forth and explore a notion of teaching as a practice of attention formation. Drawing on educational philosophy and the Didaktik/Pädagogik-traditions, teaching is explored as a relational and lived-though practice that can promote, form, and share attention. In the context of teaching, attention is connected to the acts of showing and observing. As such, teaching can be seen as a complex of relations that emerges through the intersection of the intentions of the one (...) who is showing and the one who is observing. This intersection creates a tension between the self-active student and the paths made possible for this self-activity. The pedagogical dimension of this tension can be expressed through the principles of the summons to self-activity and Bildsamkeit. By turning to some key-texts of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière, I explore how the notion of teaching as attention formation can be understood from within a radical relational perspective on education and also how attention itself can be thought of as an educational phenomenon. From this critical relational perspective, where the relation is seen as constitutive of educational situations and where the possibility for uniqueness, difference, and freedom are regarded as central characteristics for a democratic conception of education, I interpret Rancière’s notions of intellectual emancipation and partage du sensible as political/aesthetic analogues to the summons to self-activity and Bildsamkeit, respectively. While the event of intellectual emancipation, although constituted relationally, mainly addresses the unique attentive subject, the notion of le partage du sensible draws attention to the larger and shared context in which this event takes place. In the thesis, teaching as attention formation is addressed as a relational phenomenon in which the unique and irreplaceable subject is called into being and is given space to respond to the summons of the surrounding world and to strive against the materiality of that very same world. It is suggested that attention formation might be the educational event when someone, as a unique other, is called into presence and is given room to claim and to speak for his or her interest. It is an event made possible by those teachers who have the sensibility to discover its coming, the courage to let it happen, and the strength to accept the consequences of it. (shrink)

Open Access: I rely on Nel Noddings’ analysis of receptivity as "an essential component of intellectual work," to argue that receptivity is a virtue of argumentation, practicing the principle of charity excellently for the sake of an author and their philosophical community. The deficiency of receptivity is epitomized by the philosopher who listens to attack. The excess of receptivity is the vice of insufficiently critical acceptance of an author regardless of the merits of an argument.