Self and others

simone.galea@um.edu.mt

SIMONE GALEA
 THE SELF - Traditional ethics

 moral reasoning
abstraction and universal rules emphasized
over partiality, particularity, and concrete
situations
 Rational, autonomous individuals
 characteristics

independence and autonomy are valued over

relationships, interdependence
 consider them as universal values
 isolated unrelated individuals
Detachment?

 My ability to reason shows me the possibility of

detaching myself from my own perspective and Objection
shows me what the universe might look like if I  Is there an impartial “point of view” of the
had no personal perspective”. (How are we to universe?
Live p.229)
 what are the dangers of detachment?
 Impartiality. No favouritism is involved in moral
decision-making; a kind of universal perspective
which anyone would adopt.
 Universality Anyone in the same situation
should do the same thing
 UBUNTU

Ubuntu –a concept found throughout Africa.

 ‘a person is a person through other people’. It describes the philosophy of kinship across race
and creed, and represents an openness that all people could have to one another.
 "My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours." You are what you are
because of other people.’ Desmond Tutui
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMSqZckROfA

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcvFZf2fe9c&t=7s
Care ethicists -social relations are the source of who we are, how
we know and how to act

 Kohlberg is well known for having proposed

“Utilitarians and Kantians think that detachment in
moral decision-making is a virtue: judging
dispassionately, weighing evidence even-handedly,
etc.
From a care perspective, detachment is the moral
problem.” (Gilligan, p. 271)
we are relational creatures !
watch a lecture by Carol Gilligan
Educating the 21st Century Child - Carol Gilligan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJRcD1AKzlw
that there are “six stages” of moral development
from childhood to adulthood, based on a study
of 84 boys he worked with for more than 20
years. At the higher more nature stages of moral
Kohlberg maintains, universal principles of
justice and rules become increasingly significant
mature forms of moral development. Women,
according to Kohlberg, rarely pass beyond the
lower stages, where morality is worked through
in terms of caring for and attachment to
particular others, and is not worked out in
relation to universal principles
 What is Caring?
Need to be cared for and care is a human universal
Receptive attention - Encounter.
A caring encounter has 3 elements, according to
Noddings:
1. A cares for B – that is A’s consciousness is
characterized by engrossment and motivational
displacement
2. A performs some act in accordance with B
3. B recognizes that A cares for B
Care encounter
contextual
reciprocal
circular response
Recognition
engrossed in who/what I am caring for,
and other motives become
displaced. There is a flow of
motivational energy which is shared and
put at the service of the other.
Natural caring Ethical caring

not rising out of duty an ethical ideal built of
but it informs recollections of caring
situations where we act and being cared for
out of duty
 Caring: A Feminist Approach to Ethics and
Moral Education
Nel Noddings argues that the relation of
natural caring ‘‘is that condition toward
which we long and strive, and it is in our
longing for caring—to be in that special
relationship—that provides the
motivation for us to be moral. We want to
be moral in order to remain in the caring
relation and to enhance the ideal of
ourselves as one-caring.’
“An ethic of care emphasizes the value of caring relations and
evaluates moral growth in terms of one’s capacity to form such
relations and share responsibility for the growth and happiness of
others.” (Noddings, 2007, p.55).
Caring is a response to something or someone in a manner that
enhances their growth
Humans, are under continuous construction; constantly affected by
each and every encounter we experience and their effect on us as
reflective beings
Noddings, N. (2007).
‘Caring as Relation and Virtue in Teaching’. In Walker, R.L. & Ivanhoe, P.J. (ed.). Working Virtue: Virtue
Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
 Conditions of caring
 Ask what the other is going through…
does care come naturally?
not simply how we should /could have reacted were
Reflections parents who kill their children we in a similar situation
Ruddick’s disassociation of mothering but attempts at understanding
from caring? Political move
caring should be acknowledged by the attentiveness
one being cared for
listening
Is caring to entail love?
empathy
A separate but connected self
 caring

 Modeling~ this is showing through your own behavior what it means to care. It is
demonstrated in our relations with our students.
 Dialogue~ engaging in conversation about caring and exploring all the different ways it can
be manifested. As we care about others the feedback we get from the recipients of our care
helps us to evaluate our own attempts to care.
 Practice~ Nel Noddings (1998: 191) argues that the experiences in which we immerse
ourselves tend to produce a ‘mentality’. ‘If we want to produce people who will care for
another, then it makes sense to give students practice in caring and reflection on that
practice’.
 Confirmation~ Confirmation is affirming and encouraging the best in others. Confirmation
involves trust and continuity. One must know the person they are confirming and the person
my see the confirmer as credible and trustworthy.
 carer cared for

(A)Ontologies what kinds of things do or can exist in? what might be their conditions
relational ontologies respect the integrity of individuals while understanding how their being is
fundamentally constituted by relations of all kinds.
(B) Epistemologies describe how we come to know the world. They define the criteria, standards, and
methods for understanding reality
account for the observer’s role in shaping knowledge;
(C) Ethics describes how we act- ‘cultural values, morals, and norms shaped by social and political life
what is morally good and bad
considers agency to be distributed among various actants—none of which are themselves
Solely responsible for the change.
can we understand things objectively? Without any connections?
Should we care for the ones we know?

learning first what it means to be cared for,

then to care for intimate others,
finally to care about those we cannot care for directly”.
 Butler -how do we live well with others?

 ‘‘Whatever it means to have or

pursue a moral mode of being in
the world, it will not be something
that is exclusively ‘mine’ and so
will have to be a mode of being
that is bound up with others with
all the difficulty and promise that
implies.”
 Interview with Thomas L. Dumm ( 2008) for The Massachusetts

.
Review, Butler
 Human beings occupy socially-situated subject
positions
 interrogate the conditions of our positions- are we
living well?
 which lives are viable and flourishing in particular
socio-political contexts and which lives are not?
 positional contingencies.. when we ask what makes a
life livable, we are asking about certain normative
conditions that must be fulfilled for life to become
life”
 the physical conditions of life
 social and economic networks of support
 exposition to injury, violence, and death”
 recognition of as a subject capable of living a life that
counts.
vulnerable and precarious

“living socially, the fact that one’s life is

always in some sense in the hands of the
other. It implies exposure both to those we
know and to those we do not know; a
dependency on people we know, or barely
know, or know not at all”.
explore ways to reduce precarity so that the
widest possible persistence and flourishing of
life can be promoted. It is in this way that
encounters with precariousness and precarity
hold potential to engender alternative ethical
and non-violent responses.
 opening up their foundations to contestation= which means they are man-made and can be
contested and rethought
 Grievable lives- A political issue

"One way of posing the question of who “we” are in these times of war is by asking
whose lives are considered valuable, whose lives are mourned, and whose lives are
considered ungrievable. We might think of war as dividing populations into those
who are grievable and those who are not. An ungrievable life is one that cannot be
mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as a life at all. We
can see the division of the globe into grievable and ungrievable lives from the
perspective of those who wage war in order to defend the lives of certain
communities, and to defend them against the lives of others—even if it means
taking those latter lives."—Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?
Frames of war

in these times of war is by asking whose lives are considered valuable, whose lives
are mourned, and whose lives are considered ungrievable. We might think of war as
dividing populations into those who are grievable and those who are not. An
ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it
has never counted as a life at all. We can see the division of the globe into grievable
and ungrievable lives from the perspective of those who wage war in order to
defend the lives of certain communities, and to defend them against the lives of
others—even if it means taking those latter lives.