Transcript From the Rational to the Relational

From the Rational to the Relational:
an exploration of an ethic of care
Irene Stevens (SIRCC)
Laura Steckley (GSSW)
Mark Smith (University of
Edinburgh)
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
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
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.’
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)
Some consequences

Bureaucratisation

Managerialism

Professionalisation

‘What works’ and ‘Best value’ agendas
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)
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
What is feminism?

Feminism…encourages 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
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 men’s experience stands
for all of human experience.
Reframing questions…making 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.
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).”
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
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).”
Tronto’s Identified Boundaries
Disconnect



The political from the moral
Moral thought from moral action
The rational from the sentimental
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.
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)

Can’t deal with difference/ambiguity yet… ‘human
reality is messy and ambiguous’ (Bauman 1993)

Totalising
Problems with universal ethics(2)

‘treating science as an Aladdin’s 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)
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 often…we now know that a nonambivalent 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
The call to care





Am I my Brother’s 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
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
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)
Practising an ethic of care

‘getting oneself to attend to the reality of individual
other persons…while not allowing one’s 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)
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, deregulation 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)
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.’
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…”
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 one’s hands, better to be in solidarity with the
unhappiness of the other than indifferent’ (Bauman
2000)
Act justly, love tenderly, walk humbly