letters
believe they are readily realizable. I rec-
A Demanding Ethics of Care
In an otherwise sympathetic read-
ing of my book Learning from My
Daughter: The Value and Care of
Disabled Minds, the reviewers, Kevin
Mintz and David Wasserman, com-
plain about the demandingness of
the care ethics I propose (“Caring for
People with Disabilities: An Ethics of
Respect,” January-February 2020).
Demandingness surely cannot be too
grievous a fault or Kantianism would
long be dead. Yet the demandingness
they worry about is largely based on
some misreadings.
I do not propose, as Mintz and
Wasserman write, that “the cared-for
must treat the carer as family, display-
ing gratitude” (p. 45), and, indeed,
I am deeply suspicious of these senti-
ments. Treating the carer as family can
betray a failure to see her as having a
life of her own, and what I call for is
not gratitude but the gracious accep-
tance of care offered in good faith and
with competence. We fail “to receive
care graciously when we demand more
than is reasonable” (Learning from My
Daughter, p. 218)—that is the gra-
cious recognition that there are limits
to what can be demanded of one’s carer.
I reject Mintz and Wasserman’s idea
that the epistemic and motivational
demands of my ethics of care are so
strong that I must either limit the eth-
ics of care to small circles of family and
friends or relax the demands to encom-
pass the underappreciated professional
carer. Claiming that it is too demand-
ing to insist that the viewpoint of the
cared-for is of paramount importance,
the reviewers point to the person with
communication and cognitive dis-
abilities, saying that understanding
this person’s perspective requires years
of acquaintance. I formulated my view
based largely on what I have learned
from professional carers—especially
from one who, on her first day, tried to
46 HASTI N G S C E N T E R R E P ORT
observe the world from the viewpoint
of my very significantly disabled child.
While duration of acquaintance adds
epistemic access, most important is the
access gained by attending to the cared-
for’s viewpoint.
Nor do I believe that motiva-
tion must depend on strong affective
bonds—ones that can lead to an exces-
sive melding of selves and interests. I
repeatedly admonish that “to affirm
the relationality of the self, it is also
imperative to affirm the distinctness of
each self in the relation” (p. 182). I also
acknowledge duty as a valid motiva-
tion: “Although an ethics of care does
not demand duty, duty may be able to
compensate for the absence of feelings
of affection” (p. 195).
Nor do I believe that a caregiver
must be included in all facets of the life
of the person receiving the care. But I
object to the idea that a caregiver’s in-
visibility contributes “independence”
to the person assisted—not because I
advocate only affective bonds or the
full inclusion of the caregiver in the
disabled person’s life, but because this
“invisibility” is predicated on a perni-
cious overvaluation of independence
and undervaluation of the labor of care.
The reviewers construe my position
to rest squarely on the emotional con-
nection in caring relations, claiming
that my idea of respect is too thin. I
articulate a view of care that is coun-
ter, not to respect, but to paternalism,
and I offer as robust a notion of respect
as will ensure that the viewpoint of the
cared-for drives the care. Care requires
respect, but respect does not require
care; respect does not address the requi-
site competence, attention, responsive-
ness, and commitment to the other’s
flourishing.
Finally, although Mintz and
Wasserman acknowledge that I put for-
ward ideals, they seem to think that I
ognize repeatedly that, as ideals, they
can rarely, if ever, be fully realized. Yet
these are not transcendent or static but
regulative ideals; they are to serve as a
guide to action. Professionals may fall
short not because of their moral failings
but because of the conditions under
which they work. My view is that care
is always embedded in larger contexts
that can aid or undermine the possibil-
ity of acting caringly by both profes-
sional and family caregivers. Care given
in good faith and taken as care by the
cared-for is ethical care in my view, and
that is not an overly demanding stan-
dard even for a professional carer.
Eva Feder Kittay
DOI: 10.1002/hast.1102
Kevin Mintz and David Wasserman
reply: We thank Eva Kittay for her
thoughtful letter. Kittay notes that she
does not require the cared-for “to treat
the carer as family, displaying grati-
tude.” We should have been clearer
that we saw this as an implication of
her demand for carer visibility and in-
clusion, not as a requirement she ex-
plicitly endorses. If Kittay condemns
“invisibility” only when it is “predicated
on a pernicious overvaluation of inde-
pendence,” we may disagree less than
we thought. 
However, we may take issue with
what counts as “pernicious overvalu-
ation.” Efforts to increase task-specific
self-sufficiency need not reflect an over-
valuation (pernicious or otherwise) of
independence. Moreover, we still ques-
tion the motivational demands Kittay
imposes on carers. While we did not
take her to be demanding “strong af-
fective bonds,” only actions performed
“for the sake of ” the cared-for, we re-
gard even this as overly demanding.
Acting “for the sake of ” the cared-for
is not an ideal that professional caregiv-
ers should be responsible for achieving.
Because professional caregivers needn’t
possess this affection, they needn’t com-
pensate for lacking it. We also remain
convinced that Kittay is better served
March-April 2020