From the Rational to the Relational: an exploration of an ethic of care

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From the Rational to the Relational an
exploration of an ethic of care

• Irene Stevens (SIRCC)
• Laura Steckley (GSSW)
• Mark Smith (University of Edinburgh)

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The Scottish Enlightenment(1740-1790)

• Hutcheson (1694-1746) argued that humans have
  natural and disinterested feelings of benevolence
  which guide their moral acts and an innate "moral
  sense" which informs their moral judgments a
  reaching out for the other, with traditional
  virtues such as benevolence and generosity

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The Scottish Enlightenment(1740-1790)

• Hume (1711-1776) said that although it could be
  argued that morality is founded on reason, we
  also have feelings of approval or disapproval
  about our actions. This shows that sentiment is
  also part of the human condition. The connection
  between reason and sentiment, driven by hedonism
  was the essence of morality

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The Scottish Enlightenment(1740-1790)

• Smith (1723-1790) tried to marry the views of
  Hutcheson and Hume. Man, conscious of his own
  weakness, and of the need which he has for the
  assistance of others, rejoices whenever he
  observes that they adopt his own passions,
  because he is then assured of that assistance
  and grieves whenever he observes the contrary,
  because he is then assured of their opposition.

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Kant and universal ethics

• Act only on that maxim through which you can at
  the same time will that it should become a
  universal law (Kant)
• Universal ethics
• Social work is legitimated by state authority.
  Social workers cannot give priority to their
  private judgement of client actions over key
  principles of law and accepted morality (Clark)

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Some consequences

• Bureaucratisation
• Managerialism
• Professionalisation
• What works and Best value agendas

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Critique of the rational approach

• The consequences of the rational such as
  managerialism threaten the caring dimension of
  social work
• There should be a re-engagement with the ideas of
  care
• A care ethic can inform the modernising agenda
• Offered a feminist critique of managerialism
• (Parton and Meagher,
  2004)

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What is feminism?

• Feminism was established so that unattractive
  women could have easier access to the mainstream
  of society. Just look at the history of feminism
  if you doubt the truth.
• 
  Rush Limbaugh, 2005
• I myself have never been able to find out
  precisely what feminism is I only know people
  call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments
  that differentiate me from a doormat, or a
  prostitute
• 
  Rebecca West, 1913

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What is feminism?

• Feminismencourages women to leave their
  husbands, kill their children, practice
  witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become
  lesbians.
• 
  Pat Robertson, 1992
• Feminism is the radical notion that women are
  people.
• Bumper
  sticker, date unknown

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In A Different Voice

• Carol Gilligan
• Assistant to Kohlberg
• Girls tended not to fit model
• Thus deemed morally less developed than their
  male counterparts.
• Raised Questions
• Voice and relationship
• Psychological processes and theory, particularly
  theories in which mens experience stands for all
  of human experience.

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Reframing questionsmaking the relational
realities explicit

• Boys and Men
• Overriding focus on creating and maintaining
  boundaries
• Separation
• Use of universals and reason to resolve moral
  quandaries.

• Girls and Women
• Overriding focus on creating and maintaining
  connection
• Relational order
• Use of context, particulars and feeling in
  resolving moral quandaries.

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Feminist conceptions of moral problems

• Are contextual and narrative
• Arise from conflicting responsibilities
• Are grounded in relationships
• Deeply concerned with the activity of care
• Relationship then requires a kind of courage
  and emotional stamina which has long been a
  strength of women, insufficiently noted and
  valued (Gilligan, 1982, p.xix).

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Casting a feminist light on managerialism

• Based upon
• Distance
• Control
• Rules for decision-making (e.g. risk assessment,
  cost-benefit analysis)
• Regulation
• Monitoring
• Assessment
• Performance

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Moral Boundaries

• Within current moral boundaries, any account
  of morality that draws upon emotion, daily life
  and political circumstance will necessarily seem
  corrupted by non-rational and idiosyncratic
  incursions within this world (Tronto, 1993,
  p.10).

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Trontos Identified Boundaries

• Disconnect
• The political from the moral
• Moral thought from moral action
• The rational from the sentimental

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Phases of Caring

• Caring about
• Taking care of
• Care-giving
• Care-receiving
• Both at micro and macro levels, an ethic of
  care can cast light on problems of power and
  difference, and help in overcoming characteristic
  dilemmas related to care.

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Problems with universal ethics(1)

• a totality of rules, norms, principles, equally
  applicable to everyone and to every rational
  thinking person. (Moss and Petrie 2002)
• Cant deal with difference/ambiguity yet human
  reality is messy and ambiguous (Bauman 1993)
• Totalising

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Problems with universal ethics(2)

• treating science as an Aladdins lamp which
  could be overexploited with impunity, and which
  could be counted on to solve all social problems
  without itself giving rise to any. (Ferrier in
  Davie 1991 p.82)
• Nazi Germany is the legitimate heir to the
  Enlightenment (Gray)

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Postmodern ethics

• Ethics as construct of history and culture
  (Foucault)
• The foolproof - universal and unshakably founded
  - ethical code will never be found having singed
  our fingers once too oftenwe now know that a
  non-ambivalent morality, an ethics that is
  universal and objectively founded is a
  practical impossibility perhaps also an
  oxymoron..(Bauman 1993)
• Critique of postmodern ethics - reduced to mere
  aesthetics
• Critique confuses ethics for morality
• Re-personalising ethics

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The call to care

• Am I my Brothers Keeper?
• Hutcheson, Smith moral sentiment
• Logstrup the unspoken command to care
• Maier from care to caring care - our moments
  of glory, our Camelots
• Levinas Ethics as first philosophy - I care
  before I think

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Levinas

• The autonomous, rational, subject grasps,
  assimilates and makes the other into the same
• Threatens alterity with totalitarianism of the
  same
• Alterity is transcendent/unknowable
• an ethic of an encounter/an ethic of
  responsibility
• The face - the face before me summons me
• Le face a face sans intermediare
• Responsibility is infinite
• No reciprocity
• Freedom comes from affirmation of other, not self
• Heteronomy rather than autonomy

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The difference between universal and care ethics

• The ethics of care is concerned with
  responsibilities and relationships rather than
  rules and rights it is bound to concrete
  situations, rather than being formal and
  abstract and it is a moral activity rather than
  a set of principles to be followed.
  (Sevenhuisjen 1999 in Moss and Petrie 2002)

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Practising an ethic of care

• getting oneself to attend to the reality of
  individual other personswhile not allowing ones
  own needs, bias, fantasies (conscious and
  unconscious), and desires regarding the other
  persons to get in the way of appreciating his or
  her particular needs or situation(Blum 1994)
• Ethical and moral comportment evolves and unfolds
  within the context of relationship and is created
  within relationship (Ricks and Bellefeuille 2003)

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Ethics and social work (1)

• Am I my brothers keeper? (Bauman 2000)
• moral assessment has been replaced by the
  procedural execution of rules
• new capitalism calls for individualism,
  instrumental rationality, flexibility, short-term
  engagement, de-regulation and the dissolution of
  established relationships and practices, caring
  relationships are predicated on an expressive
  rather than instrumental relationship to others
  (based on) trust, commitment over time and a
  degree of predictability (Brannan and Moss 2003)

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Ethics and social work (2)

• the daily practice of social work
• (is made) ever more distant from its original
  ethical impulse the objects of care turned more
  and more into the specimens of legal categories
  and the process of effacing the face endemic to
  all bureaucracy, (is) set in motion.

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Ethics and social work (3)

• When procedural execution takes over from moral
  assessment as the guide to job performance, one
  of the most conspicuous and seminal consequences
  is the urge to make the rules more precise and
  less ambiguous that they are, to taper the range
  of possible interpretations..
• For the ethical world, however, ambivalence and
  uncertainty are its daily bread and cannot be
  stamped out without destroying the moral
  substance of responsibility

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Conclusion

• We are not moral thanks to society (we are only
  ethical and law-abiding thanks to it) we live in
  society, we are society, thanks to being moral
  (Bauman 1993)
• There is nothing reasonable about taking
  responsibility, about caring and being moral.
  Morality has only itself to support it it is
  better to care than to wash ones hands, better
  to be in solidarity with the unhappiness of the
  other than indifferent (Bauman 2000)
• Act justly, love tenderly, walk humbly