Rachels, Chapter 12: Feminism and the Ethics of Care
- Definition of Feminism:
- A commitment to ending the subordination/domination/oppression of
women
- Is the subordination ongoing? What counts as subordination?
- Are there psychological (not physical) differences between men and
women?
- Do men and women think differently?
- Yes answer usually been used to subjugate women to men
- Aristotle: Women not as rational as men, so naturally ruled by men
- Kant: Women lack civil personality and should have no voice in
public life
- Rousseau: They possess different virtues, neither better than the
others; but it turns out that men's virtues fit them for leadership and
women's for home and hearth.
- Feminism's answer to question of whether men and women think differently:
- No unified answer to question of possible psychological
differences between women
- Feminist disagree among themselves
- Women's movement of 60's and 70's rejected psychological differences
- Supposed difference a mere stereotype: Men rational, women
emotional
- If see such differences, this is only because women have been
conditioned by an oppressive system to behave in "feminine" ways.
- Recent feminist thinkers suggested women/men do think differently
- And women's typical way of thinking is not inferior, but in some ways better
- Nancy Chodorow table of differences
- Female style of thinking has insights missed in more male-dominated
areas.
- By attending to distinctive female approach, new insights can be
gained and progress made in areas that were stalled
- Ethics is good example (feminist ethics)
- Feminist Ethics Chart
- Famous Harvard education psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg has a scale of
moral development that suggests women are less morally developed than
men
- The scale put a focus on relationships and keeping loyalty and trust
with people (typical of women) on a lower level than the typical male
approach of appealing to universal ethical principles
- Heinz drug stealing story to show how girls and boys think differently and
girls end up lower on this scale (161-163)
- Jake thinks like typical male, conflict life/property solved by logic
- An ethic of principle
- Male way of thinking abstracts away from details that give
each situation its special flavor
- Men's moral theories: impersonal duty, contracts,
harmonization of competing interests, and calculation of costs
and benefits.
- Amy responds in a typically female fashion to personal aspects of
situation
- Ethic of caring
- Intimacy, caring, and personal relationships
- Women don't like to abstract away from detail of situation
- Basic moral orientation is caring for others, taking care of
others in a personal way, not general concern for all humanity
- Sensitivity to the needs of others
- Include the points of view of the other in one's deliberation
- Amy couldn't just reject the druggist's point of view
- Overriding concern with relationship and responsibility
- Feminist ethics argues for a feminist point of view in ethics and rejects idea
of an ethic of care is lower
- Caring, empathy, feeling with others, being sensitive to each other's
feelings, may all be better guides to what morality requires in actual
contexts than applying abstract rules of reason, rational calculation
- At least they are necessary components of an adequate morality
- Rachels view: The two sexes don't inhabit different moral universes
- Even if do think differently about ethics, difference can't be very
great, rather difference in emphasis
- Also some men prefer caring perspective and some women prefer an ethic
of principle
- Still, it could be that in general, women tend to the former and men the latter.
- How account for this general difference between men and women (if there is
such)?
- Nurture: Women think differently because of social role to which
assigned.
- Been assigned to home and hearth
- Values of care could be part of this psychological conditioning
- Nature: Since women are child-bearers, women's nature as mothers
makes them natural care-givers
- The come equipped by nature with required (care giving) skills
- Evolutionary Psychology: Major features of human psychological life are
products of natural selection
- Have these features (emotions and behavioral tendencies) as allowed
ancestors to survive and reproduce in past
- Darwin's struggle for existence: get as many copies of one's genes as
possible in next generation
- Men can father hundreds of children, women only one baby each nine
months
- Men reproductive strategy to impregnate as many females as possible,
investing only as much energy as necessary to insure offspring
survives
- Women invest heavily in each child and choose males partners who
will stay around and make similar investment
- Explains why men more promiscuous than women
- Explains why women are more attracted than men to values of
nuclear family
- Perhaps explains the care ethics of women
Implications of ethics of care as opposed to ethics of principle for three
issues:
- Family and Friends
- Ethic of duty/principle ill-suited to life among family and friends: acting only
out of duty toward them leads to being a bad friend or parent
- Strict impartiality doesn't work with family and friends and it is
antagonistic to values of love and friendship
- Ethic of care doesn't take obligation as fundamental nor does it require
impartiality promote interests of everyone.
- Moral life a network of relationships with specific other people, and
involves caring for them
- Ethic of care confirms the priority we give to our family and friends.
- Helping disadvantaged children
- Suggests that ethics of principle (e.g., utilitarianism and Kantiansim) requires this and ethic of care based
on close personal relations says we don't have to help
- Rachels criticizes exclusive concern with personal relations
- Making personal relationships the whole of ethics seems as
wrong-headed as ignoring them altogether
- Ethical life includes both caring personal relations and benevolent
concern for people generally
- Ethics of care should be a supplement to, rather than replacement of
traditional moral theories.
- Animals
- Feminist ethics:
- Appeals to feeling and intuition, rather than principle
- Involves an individual relationship between one who cares and
one who is cared for
- The cared for must be able to participate in the
relationship and respond
- We do have such a relation with pets, and so have obligations to them
- No such feelings or relations to cows and so no obligation to them,
(says Nel Noddings a feminist ethicist)
- Rachels response: If there is a role for principles, then even cows get in the
moral arena
Transition to virtue ethics
- Feminists believe that modern moral philosophy incorporates a male bias
- Concerns for private life-where women traditionally dominate-are
almost wholly absent.
- Morality does not involve bargaining and calculating, but loving and
caring
- This involves being a certain kind of person
- Thus, feminist ethics is a subset of virtue ethics
- Virtue ethics versus theories of obligation (Utilitarianism/Kantianism)
- Being a certain kind of person (virtue ethics) versus doing one's duty
(theories of obligation)
- Virtue theory: Being a moral person is having certain traits of character
(virtues); e.g., being kind, generous, courageous, just
- Does well with both public and private life
- For public life need virtues of beneficence and justice
- For private life virtues of love and caring
- Theories of obligation: impartial duty, moral agent listens to reasons