Starting from Vandenberg’s criticism of feminine ethics, this paper takes up the challenge in search of the nature of the ‘ethics of care’. After an account of Noddings’ position, the central issues of feminist ethics are placed within wider ethical debate. Attention is given to the following issues: care and justice, universalism and particularity, symmetrical reciprocity, and trust. The considerations that are discussed generate not only a different way to conceive practices in society but also a theory that transcends the (...) way theory and practice are usually diametrically opposed. Finally, the paper outlines how care is a central concept for education and indicates in what sense it implies integrity and social justice. (shrink)

Perhaps the change of title says it all. This is the revised edition of Agich’s Autonomy and Long Term Care, which was itself a seminal work. The new title gives us the main drift: if autonomy is important in old age, so too is dependence. Indeed, in the actual world in which Agich is keen to locate his study, autonomy and dependence intermingle as inescapable features of old age for real people. As he says: “Maintaining a sense of autonomous wellbeing (...) is consistent with dependencies on medication or professional care if those dependencies help to maintain a more basic sense of functional integrity in those areas of life that individuals value” .The present book retains and renews its standing as a first rate work in the field of philosophical medical ethics. It aims “to sketch a framework for respecting autonomy in long term care”, rather than to work out practical guidelines . Nevertheless, its strength lies in Agich’s ability to move from the real world of often dependent older people to the philosophical underpinnings of our thinking about how we care for them. In so doing, Agich mounts a powerful attack on what he sees as a prevailing tendency in bioethics. It is the tendency to define autonomy “primarily in terms of a concept of human persons as rational, independent agents and decision makers, who are assumed to be competent and who can be understood without serious reference to society or history” . As he says: “Influenced by liberal theory, autonomy is often treated in bioethics as a concept that primarily applies to the public realm …. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore the ethical foundations for a caring conversation. The analysis is based on the ethics of Paul Ricoeur and deals with questions such as what kind of person the nurse ought to be and how she or he engages in caring conversations with suffering others. According to Ricoeur, ethics (the aim of an accomplished life) has primacy over morality (the articulation of aims in norms). At the ethical level, self-esteem and autonomy were shown (...) to be essential for a person (nurse) to act with respect and responsibility. The ethical relationship of a caring conversation was found to be asymmetrical, because of the passivity inflicted by suffering. This asymmetry was found to be potentially unethical if not balanced with reciprocity. In the ethical context, the caring conversation is one in which the nurse makes room through the ethos of caritas for a suffering person to regain his or her self-esteem, and thus makes a good life possible. (shrink)