Philosophy 361 Ethics Darwall Fall 1996 GILLIGAN II I Recall Gilligan's descriptioni of two different themes or voices: The "ethic of rights" involves: (a) the idea of a fair or just "system of rules for resolving disputes"; (b) self and others are conceived in implicitly "universal" or "general" terms (moral respect or concern is for "the generalized other"); (c) as a corollary: it aims to be impartial; (d) it expresses the ideal of (equal) concern and respect for all individuals; (e) recognizes the primacy of universal individual rights. On the other hand, the "ethics of care": (a) is primarily concerned with responsibility-within-relationship, (b) and with nurturing particular others within relationships. (c) Consequently, ethical issues are to be seen as problems within relationships, and can only be solved, therefore, within the relationship itself. II This last point is quite important and is somewhat obscured by Gilligan's categories. To see this, ask where utilitarianism would fit in Gilligan's two voices. It may seem inappropriate to locate it within the ethics of rights, since the utilitarian takes no such notion as fundamental. Moreover, one very plausible way of thinking of utilitarianism is as arising out of a kind of equal caring for the fate of all sentient beings. To see that this may not be right, consider her analysis of Amy and Jake's responses to Heinz's dilemma. Jake gives something like a utilitarian, or more generally, consequentialist, analysis of the problem: Amy, however, as Gilligan describes her responses, refuses to analyze the problem as having fixed parameters set by the situation as Heinz finds it; rather, she sees it as nested in a complex of relationships, all of which are continuously negotiated and renegotiated. Consider how Gilligan describes their differences on p. 31. This seems to amount to the difference between seeing the issue as (1) (a) fixed by the general features of the situation to which a more or less determinate answer should exist, where (b) the problem can, in principle, be thought about, and perhaps solved, impersonally as a problem of impartial judgment, versus (2) (a) a problem that arises within a network of particular relationships to particular people, and (b) which can be thought about, and solved, only by working within those relationships themselves, and not by impersonal, disengaged thought. III This, then, is the deepest challenge posed by Gilligan's work. On both modern traditions we have examined, Kant and Mill, ethical thought aims to be impersonal, or, at any rate, impartial. The moral point of view is disengaged from any particular relationships to particular others, whether to family, friends, or any particular community. With Aristotle, things are less clear. In any case, the challenge of the "different voice" to modern orthodoxy in moral philosophy, at least, is that by making impartiality fundamental, it disengages ethical thought from any location situated within relationships to particular others, and thus alienates the moral self from the particular other. Morality, then, becomes an obstacle to genuine relationship, rather than the expression of of human relationship. IV We must be careful to understand the precise nature of this challenge. A. First, as we have seen, if the challenge is that the more orthodox voice assumes a conception of the moral person as distinct from others, and seeks solely to protect individuals from each other, say, by a system of rights, then its target seems pretty restricted. Most obviously, utilitarianism, and arguably, even Kantianism, would not be its primary concern. Kant held that it is not enough to respect others as ends in themselves that one forbear harm. B. Still, while Kantianism urges that respect for others requires positive efforts to aid, and not just forbearance of harm, it might nonetheless be argued that there is an important distinction between respect, on the one hand, and concern or care, on the other. For one thing, to care about another person it must matters to you what happens to him/her, even independently of what you do. Not so with respect; it shows itself in conduct. You can respect persons in your conduct, treat them never simply as means, even if you care not a whit for what happens to them through natural causes. C. But are Kantianism, and what we might call libertarian moral views, the only targets of the challenge posed by the "different voice"? Utilitarianism itself seems to be challenged. Granted, it can be based on care and concern, but by extending it to every creature who can have a welfare, it seems to have no place, at least at a fundamental level, for the particular carings or concerns that constitute the specific relationships we have to particular others. In the context of these relationships, we care about the particular other, about, say, Madge. And we care about her not because she is a person, sentient being, or human being--we care about her because she is Madge. This is the kind of concern the ethic of care seems to voice, not simply an impartial equal regard for the interests of all. D. Here again we need to be careful. The point cannot be that utilitarianism, or even Kantianism, has no place for this sort of particularistic concern. 1. First, both a utilitarian and a Kantian can well argue that, given human nature, it is a good thing that people give weight to the interests of those with whom they share ties of friendship and family that they do not give to the interests of stranger. For various reasons, a practice rule, permitting, or even requiring, this may maximize utility, or be the object of rational choice from an original position. 2. Indeed, we can even imagine it to be the case that someone like Mill might argue that the happiness of human beings partly consists in flourishing human relations. Still, on these traditional views, the justification for giving expression to concerns for particular others--to a concern for Madge-- will be derivative from an impartial principle. To this the partisan of particularistic concern may object: particularistic concern is itself fundamental to ethics, not derivative. E. While we are at this point, we might note one way a utilitarian might try to respond to this objection. Consider two different ways of arriving at utilitarianism: 1. One way would be to reason as follows. What is good for each person is his own happiness. But surely no person's happiness is any more important than any other's from an objective point of view, or from the perspective of an impartial judge. So morality should further the welfare of all. 2. A different way, however, might go like this. We have all had the experience of responding with sympathy to another person. This is a response to the specific person. It is not as if we must first see the person as an instance of a more general kind--creature who is capable of feeling pleasure or pain--and then respond to the person under that category. We respond directly to the person. And in doing so we come into some kind of relationship to that person. Still, even if this is a response to a particular person, it is an instance of a kind of response that we can have to creatures more generally. Roughly: our capacity to come into this sort of relationship to a particular person is an instance of general capacity that can be engaged with, in principle, any particular person. Moreover, because we can see ourselves in this way as well, we can come to see all humans, say, as having a commonality, as all potential fellows, as fellow human beings. We might see all sentient beings as fellows. We might then feel an equal concern for all (as fellows). Voila! Utilitarianism. The utilitarian could then respond as follows: If we arrive at utilitarianism through the second line of thought, we do so in a way that derives (impartial) concern for all from the sort of concern that is voiced by the ethic of care. And the impartial concern that is derived is not that of an impartial judge, but that of an impartial member. We begin with the ethic of care and then extend it to get utilitarianism. V. In considering Gilligan's analysis of Amy and Jake's responses to the Heinz case above, we noted that the ethic of care conceives of ethical problems as problems of relationship "that must be mended with its own thread." This suggests that ethical issues can only be solved through a process of communication which results in mutual agreement. Moral thinking cannot be solitary; it must involve dialogue. This is surely suggestive, but it raises a number of problems: (a) Isn't there still the question that the two people, say, face together: what should we do? Of course, they will seek a mutually agreeable answer to this question. But do they seek to agree on what a reasonble answer might be, or, at least, on an answer within which they can both regard as a reasonable range? Or do they suppose that whatever answer they end up agreeing on will become correct, or as correct as things in ethics can ever be, just because it agreed? If the former is the case, then is this not an objective question that can, in principle, be considered in an impartial way. (b) What about situations when communication with others is not possible? (c) What about situations when there are different conflicting relationships? (d) What about situations when strangers are involved? VI Finally: (a) Can the "voice" of care be harmonized with any more orthodox ethical tradition we have studied, or does it stand in uncompromising critique of them all? Or perhaps, is there some more satisfactory view that we can think our way towards by working in dialectical fashion through the two different voices? (b) What metaethical positions would be required to locate the ethic of care within a systematic ethical philosophy?