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Challenging care ethics.

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Since the publication of In a Different Voice, the proposal to develop a feminine ethic of care has met with a variety of concerns and objections. One set of concerns is that a feminine ethic of care may unwittingly undermine feminism. These concerns stem, in part, from a belief that the qualities in girls and women that feminine ethics esteems have developed within the context of a sexist culture. Thus, some suspect that women's competency at caring for and serving others is an outgrowth of their subordinate status within modern societies (Sherwin; Moody-Adams), and worry that emphasizing caring as a virtuous feminine quality may simply serve to keep women on the down side of power relationships (Holmes). Susan Moller Okin, for example, cautions that women are often socialized from a very early age into strict gender roles, involving caring for and serving others. This socialization radically limits their future prospects by diminishing women's capacity to choose alternative life plans. We should therefore reject traditional socialization, because it seriously violates the equality of persons basic to liberalism. Others urge women to aspire to assertive-ness, rather than caring, in order to challenge conventional images of women as concerned with serving and pleasing others (Card, 1991). Feminist critics also warn that caring cannot function as an ethic that is complete unto itself. Observing that caring can "be exploited in the service of immoral ends" (Card, 1990, p. 106), Card insists on the need to balance caring with justice and other values. Exclusive attention to caring can also lead to overlooking "the lack of care of women for women" and may preclude "the possibility of our looking at anything but love and friendship in women's emotional responses to one another" (Spellman, p. 216). Finally, excessive focus on caring at the expense of other values can blind us to the critical assessment of the object of caring. As Warren Thomas Reich noted in 2001, care by itself can be easily manipulated, and does not offer tools for analyzing the moral importance of what we care about.

In response, defenders of feminine ethics distinguish between distorted and undistorted forms of caring (Tong, 1998). Distortions of caring include the exploitation, abuse, or neglect of careers. As Tong notes, just because caring can become distorted does not suffice to show that an ethic of care is inherently distorted. Nor does it establish that "every woman's caring actions should be contemptuously dismissed as yet another instance of women's pathological masochism or passivity'; instead care should be preserved and celebrated in its undistorted form: "rescued from the patriarchal structures that would misuse or abuse it" (Tong, 1998, p. 171).

A second family of concerns about a feminine ethic of care relates to the belief that caring for others can lead to neglect of self. The phenomenon of burnout, for example, refers to the situation of parents, nurses, family caregivers, or other individuals who become utterly exhausted by the physical and emotional demands associated with giving care. Especially when care is conceived to be an ethic that is sufficient unto itself, the tendency may be to continue caring at any cost. Attention to other values, such as respect for the rights of the one caring, may be necessary in order to preserve the integrity of the caregiver: Arguing along these lines, Nancy Jecker notes that "if women are seen as having the same possibility men have to create a plan of life that places central importance [in activities other than caregiving] ..., then a duty ... [to care] can potentially stand in the way ofwhat a woman wants to do" (2002, p. 128). The idea here is that individuals presumably prefer to protect, as much as possible, their freedom to choose whether or not to devote themselves to caring (2002). Others suggest that in order to care for others-which is an inherently limited ability-one must first be cared for by other individuals, by communities, and by oneself (Reich, 1991).

A third group of objections to developing a feminine ethic of care holds that the concept of care is not helpful at the social and institutional level. This group of objections may acknowledge that an ethic of care serves well within the limited sphere of personal ethics, but finds care unhelpful outside of this sphere. One form this objection takes is to argue that an ethic of care cannot be formulated in terms of the general rights and principles that are necessary for designing public policies. Proponents of a care ethic sometimes acknowledge this limitation. Thus, Noddings states, "to care is to act not by fixed rule but by affection and regard" (1984, p. 24). Similarly, Patricia Benner and Judith Wrubel maintain that caring is always specific and relational; hence, there exist no "context-free lists of advice" on how to care (p. 3). They reject the idea of formulating ethical theories or rules about caring on the grounds that general guides cannot "capture the embodied, relational, configura-tional, skillful, meaningful, and contextual human issues" that are central to an ethic of care (p. 6). Despite this view, there exist historically important examples of using the vocabulary of general rights and principles to formulate an ethic of care. For example, the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights identifies "motherhood and childhood" as "entitled to special care and assistance," and that organization's Declaration of the Rights of the Child asserts general principles of caring for children, noting that children need "special safeguards and care" on the basis of their "physical and mental immaturity."

Another reason why care may be assumed unworkable at a social or institutional level is that historically, public and private spheres have been distinguished as separate moral domains (Elshtain). During the nineteenth century, for example, the doctrine of separate spheres held that the family constituted a private sphere in which a morality of love and self-sacrifice prevailed; this private domain was distinguished from the public life associated with business and politics, where impersonal norms and self-interested relationships reigned (Nicholson). To the extent that these historical attitudes continue to shape present thinking, they may lead to the mutual exclusivity of care-oriented and justice-oriented approaches. In response to this structural objection, some ethicists have argued that justice and care are compatible forms of moral reasoning (Jecker, 2002).

A final set of objections to a feminine ethic of care does not deny the importance of care, but rather argues that care is not properly interpreted as an ethic that expresses an exclusively feminine form of moral reasoning. Iddo Landau, for example, argues that the significant factors for preferring the use of care or justice ethics are, in fact, not masculinity or femininity, but factors such as education and economic class. Landau concludes that "Justice and care ethics should be seen as the ethics of certain economic classes and levels of education, not of men and women" (p. 57). Defenders of feminine ethics often meet this objection by claiming that their approach has been misunderstood. Thus advocates of feminine ethics may deny that care is an ethic that only women articulate, or an ethic that is valid only within the moral experience of women. According to Noddings, caring is an important ingredient within all human morality, and moral education should teach all people how and why to care. She concludes that "an ethical orientation that arises in female experience need not be confined to women"; to the contrary, "if only women adopt an ethic of caring the present conditions of women's oppression are indeed likely to be maintained" (1990, p. 171). Gilligan and Jane Attanucci also reject the idea that an ethic of care correlates strictly with gender, and instead report that most men and women can reason in accordance with both care and justice. Gilligan's research supports the more modest claim that care is gender-related. That is, although women and men can reason in terms of both care and justice, women are generally more likely to emphasize care while men generally emphasize justice. Thus she states that the so-called different voice she identifies is characterized "not by gender, but by theme," and cautions that its association with gender "is not absolute" and is not a generalization about either sex (p. 2).

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Objections to an Ethic of Care - Medical Ethics - Barnard Health Care

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Since the publication of In a Different Voice, the proposal to develop a feminine ethic of care has met with a variety of concerns and objections. One set of concerns is that a feminine ethic of care may unwittingly undermine feminism.

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Care ethics within personal life.

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FPM Journal

THE LAST WORD

When should you say no?

Fam Pract Manag. 2017 Jul-Aug;24(4):44.

Author disclosure: no relevant financial affiliations disclosed.

Family physicians have the awesome responsibility of providing comprehensive medical care to each member of the family regardless of age, sex, or type of health problem. But does this responsibility include providing health care to your own family and friends?

Many of us have been asked at one time or another by a relative, coworker, or friend for medical advice or treatment, but often we are uncertain about how to handle this type of request. It can be a difficult situation when your sibling asks you to take care of his health condition or a friend asks you to prescribe medication over the weekend when she is unable to reach her physician. Although you may sincerely want to care for them, is it ethical to do so?

Recently, I faced a situation where I had to care for a friend's daughter who was unable to obtain health care because she was uninsured. Although I was able to help her get health care assistance through the state health department, the medical offices that accepted her assistance program were not accepting new patients at the time. She had a health condition that warranted immediate attention, so I decided to see her in my clinic.

A few months later, this patient died due to complications related to her health problem, and I had to inform her parent, who is also my friend. It was difficult not to be emotional with this family, and it made me question whether I should care for friends or family in the future.

Ethics statements by the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, and others warn that the patient-physician relationship can be complicated by pre-existing social and emotional relationships. 1, 2, 3 They recommend that physicians first consider alternative sources of care or referrals to other providers and take care of friends of relatives only if there are no other options. Additionally, physicians should treat patients with whom they have a prior nonprofessional relationship only if they have a short-term, minor problem or an emergent medical condition. In these cases, it is important to set expectations with relatives or friends and make every effort to treat them with the same professional judgment you would use for other patients.

Physicians should also be aware of the pros and cons of caring for friends and family. The physician-friend or physician-relative relationship might benefit patients, for example, by giving them easy access to their physician who may devote extra attention to their health concern. 3 It may also be personally rewarding to the physician to help a friend or family member. On the other hand, the familiar relationship may come with risks, such as failure to take an adequate history, perform a thorough physical examination, provide counseling on sensitive issues, or keep appropriate medical records. 3

The physician-friend or physician-relative relationship is complex. State medical boards or insurance plans may have guidelines governing these relationships. But where there are no concrete rules, physicians must decide for themselves on appropriate boundaries. The key issue is whether you can maintain sound professional judgment, confidentiality, and objectivity. If not, it may be best for you, your loved one, and your relationship if you gently steer the person to another source of care.

About the Author

Dr. Eniola is an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and is an attending physician at Moses Cone Family Medicine Residency Program.

Author disclosure: no relevant financial affiliations disclosed.

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The Ethics of Caring for Friends or Family

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FPM Journal THE LAST WORD When should you say no? Fam Pract Manag. 2017 Jul-Aug;24(4):44. Author disclosure: no relevant financial affiliations disclosed. Family physicians have the awesome responsibility of providing comprehensive medical care to each member of the family regardless of age, sex, or type of health problem.

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Care ethics in a professional enviornment (social work).

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The Ethics of Care
By Frederic G. Reamer, PhD
September 2016

The field of professional ethics (also known as applied or practical ethics) emerged in the early 1970s. This profound development laid the foundation for what is now a rich collection of ethical standards, ethical analysis, and decision-making protocols that are central to professions as diverse as social work, medicine, nursing, dentistry, journalism, law, business, and engineering, among others. Today's students are typically introduced to complex ethical dilemmas they may face during their careers and conceptual frameworks they can use to understand, analyze, and address them.

Professional ethics as we know it today started especially with developments in the health care field, commonly known as bioethics. In the early 1970s, growing awareness of moral challenges related to end-of-life care, genetic engineering and selection, organ transplantation, and futile care paved the way for increasingly ambitious efforts to identify and grapple with ethical challenges. Before these developments, the term "ethics"was associated with philosophical luminaries such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill. The inauguration of bioethics changed the way we think about the role of ethics in our lives and broadened moral philosophy's reach.

One of the hallmarks of those early years in the professional ethics field was widespread effort to link classic moral theory to contemporary ethical challenges faced by practitioners. Much of the professional ethics literature in the 1970s and 1980s applied ethical theories and perspectives (known as normative ethics) with lofty names such as deontology, teleology, and utilitarianism to the real-life ethical puzzles in the professions. Deontology refers to a school of thought associated primarily with Kant, which holds that certain actions are inherently moral, such as being truthful and obeying the law. In social work this implies that practitioners should never lie to clients and should never look the other way and ignore a law (eg, onerous welfare regulations) in order to help a client. In contrast, teleology refers to making ethical decisions based on likely consequences. From this point of view, social workers should take those courses of action that are likely to produce the greatest good, even though this may require shading the truth or ignoring legal requirements (utilitarianism). Deontology and teleology often lead to very different conclusions.

These theoretical perspectives, which tend to encourage a cognitively oriented calculus in order to make ethical decisions, have dominated ethical analysis for centuries. As an alternative, some years ago, especially in the 1980s, a handful of scholars, most notably Carol Gilligan, PhD, Virginia Held, PhD, Eva Feder Kittay, PhD, Nel Noddings, PhD, Sara Ruddick, PhD, and Joan Tronto, PhD, proposed what has become known as the ethics of careperspective. This approach, which has its roots in feminist theory, focuses especially on the human dimensions of ethical dilemmas, especially the implications of ethical decisions for the key relationships among the people involved.
The Ethics of Care - Central Assumptions
Proponents of the ethics of care perspective are concerned that the predominant ethical theories-especially deontology and teleology-are too reliant on universal standards that do not take into consideration the critically important role of human relationships and interdependency.

According to philosophers Richard Burnor, PhD, and Yvonne Raley, PhD, in their work Ethical Choices: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy with Cases, there is evidence of two moral perspectives; men tend to employ the justice perspective, while women more often employ the care perspective. Recent attention to the care perspective has given rise to the ethics of care. In presenting and defending this new approach to ethics, care theorists have rejected the universalism, rationalism, and individualism of traditional theories. Instead of focusing upon the universal rights and obligations of individuals, care theorists have built their theory around relationships. They claim that special responsibilities can arise within particular relationships (particularism) that do not hold universally; they also see certain relation-building emotions as being no less important than reason. Finally, they suggest that even our personal autonomy is partly produced by our relationships.

Key themes in the ethics of care include the following: the centrality of caring relationships; the various shared ties of mutuality; the view that caring both establishes and transforms who we are as people; the requirement that genuine caring gives rise to actions that address actual needs; and the fact that as a normative theory, care ethics has important implications for people's relationships, for people as individuals, and for how we might nurture caring values in others.
Implications for Social Work
For good reasons, the ethics of care perspective is compatible with the social work profession's overriding concern about human well-being, relationships, and interdependency. This conceptual framework offers an important adjunct to traditional ethical theories that, at times, can seem formulaic, linear, sterile, and insensitive to the profound emotional consequences of ethical judgments. Consider, for example, a case where a clinical social worker provides counseling services to a 16-year-old adolescent who struggles with depression and anxiety. The teen tells the social worker that she just found out she is pregnant, and implores the social worker to not share this information with her parents.

Using traditional ethical theories, the social worker would consider whether she has a fundamental duty to protect her client's privacy and right to self-determination (a classic deontological view) or whether she should make her decision based on whether she believes telling the parents would or would not produce the best outcome for all involved (a classic teleological and utilitarian view), even if this means violating the client's wishes and trust. These are important, albeit possibly conflicting, considerations, but they do not necessarily factor in the critically important nature of the key relationships in the client's life, including her relationship with her parents and social worker. Viewing this dilemma through the ethics-of-care lens would encourage the social worker to pay very close attention to the ways in which her management of this ethical dilemma would reflect and honor the caring relationship she has with her client, the client's primary relationships, and the impact of the social worker's decisions on her ability to meet her client's needs.

The ethics of care does not produce easy and quick answers to complex ethical dilemmas. It does not substitute for ethical analyses that consider complicated questions about clients' fundamental rights, social workers' fundamental duties, and the consequences of ethical decisions. But, the ethics of care serves to remind us that, as social workers, we must always approach ethical choices with deep awareness of the impact they have on the people we serve and the relationships that are important to them.
- Frederic G. Reamer, PhD, is a professor in the graduate program of the School of Social Work at Rhode Island College. He's the author of many books and articles, and his research has addressed mental health, health care, criminal justice, and professional ethics.

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The Ethics of Care By Frederic G. Reamer, PhD September 2016 The field of professional ethics (also known as applied or practical ethics) emerged in the early 1970s. This profound development laid the foundation for what is now a rich collection of ethical standards, ethical analysis, and decision-making protocols that are central to professions as diverse as social work, medicine, nursing, dentistry, journalism, law, business, and engineering, among others.

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What IS care ethics?

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The moral theory known as " the ethics of care" implies that there is moral significance in the fundamental elements of relationships and dependencies in human life. Normatively, care ethics seeks to maintain relationships by contextualizing and promoting the well-being of care-givers and care-receivers in a network of social relations. Most often defined as a practice or virtue rather than a theory as such, "care" involves maintaining the world of, and meeting the needs of, ourself and others. It builds on the motivation to care for those who are dependent and vulnerable, and it is inspired by both memories of being cared for and the idealizations of self. Following in the sentimentalist tradition of moral theory, care ethics affirms the importance of caring motivation, emotion and the body in moral deliberation, as well as reasoning from particulars. One of the original works of care ethics was Milton Mayeroff's short book, On Caring, but the emergence of care ethics as a distinct moral theory is most often attributed to the works of psychologist Carol Gilligan and philosopher Nel Noddings in the mid-1980s. Both charged traditional moral approaches with male bias, and asserted the "voice of care" as a legitimate alternative to the "justice perspective" of liberal human rights theory. Annette Baier, Virginia Held, Eva Feder Kittay, Sara Ruddick, and Joan Tronto are some of the most influential among many subsequent contributors to care ethics.

Typically contrasted with deontological/Kantian and consequentialist/utilitarian ethics, care ethics is found to have affinities with moral perspectives such as African ethics, Confucian ethics, and others. Critics fault care ethics with being a kind of slave morality, and as having serious shortcomings including essentialism, parochialism, and ambiguity. Although care ethics is not synonymous with feminist ethics, much has been written about care ethics as a feminine and feminist ethic, in relation to motherhood, international relations, and political theory. Care ethics is widely applied to a number of moral issues and ethical fields, including caring for animals and the environment, bioethics, and more recently public policy. Originally conceived as most appropriate to the private and intimate spheres of life, care ethics has branched out as a political theory and social movement aimed at broader understanding of, and public support for, care-giving activities in their breadth and variety.

Table of Contents

1. History and Major Authors

a. Carol Gilligan

While early strains of care ethics can be detected in the writings of feminist philosophers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Catherine and Harriet Beecher, and Charlotte Perkins, it was first most explicitly articulated by Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings in the early 1980s. While a graduate student at Harvard, Gilligan wrote her dissertation outlining a different path of moral development than the one described by Lawrence Kohlberg, her mentor. Kohlberg had posited that moral development progressively moves toward more universalized and principled thinking and had also found that girls, when later included in his studies, scored significantly lower than boys. Gilligan faulted Kohlberg's model of moral development for being gender biased, and reported hearing a "different voice" than the voice of justice presumed in Kohlberg's model. She found that both men and women articulated the voice of care at different times, but noted that the voice of care, without women, would nearly fall out of their studies. Refuting the charge that the moral reasoning of girls and women is immature because of its preoccupation with immediate relations, Gilligan asserted that the "care perspective" was an alternative, but equally legitimate form of moral reasoning obscured by masculine liberal justice traditions focused on autonomy and independence. She characterized this difference as one of theme, however, rather than of gender.

Gilligan articulated these thematic perspectives through the moral reasoning of "Jake" and "Amy", two children in Kohlberg's studies responding to the "Heinz dilemma". In this dilemma, the children are asked whether a man, "Heinz", should have stolen an overpriced drug to save the life of his ill wife. Jake sees the Heinz dilemma as a math problem with people wherein the right to life trumps the right to property, such that all people would reasonably judge that Heinz ought to steal the drug. Amy, on the other hand, disagrees that Heinz should steal the drug, lest he should go to prison and leave his wife in another predicament. She sees the dilemma as a narrative of relations over time, involving fractured relationships that must be mended through communication. Understanding the world as populated with networks of relationships rather than people standing alone, Amy is confident that the druggist would be willing to work with Heinz once the situation was explained. Gilligan posited that men and women often speak different languages that they think are the same, and she sought to correct the tendency to take the male perspective as the prototype for humanity in moral reasoning.

Later, Gilligan vigorously resisted readings of her work that posit care ethics as relating to gender more than theme, and even established the harmony of care and justice ethics (1986), but she never fully abandoned her thesis of an association between women and relational ethics. She further developed the idea of two distinct moral "voices", and their relationship to gender in Mapping the Moral Domain: A Contribution of Women's Thinking to Psychological Theory and Education (Gilligan, Ward, and Taylor, 1988), a collection of essays that traced the predominance of the "justice perspective" within the fields of psychology and education, and the implications of the excluded "care perspective". In Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School, Gilligan and her co-editors argued that the time between the ages of eleven and sixteen is crucial to girls' formation of identity, being the time when girls learn to silence their inner moral intuitions in favor of more rule bound interpretations of moral reasoning (Gilligan, Lyons, and Hamner, 1990, 3). Gilligan found that in adulthood women are encouraged to resolve the crises of adolescence by excluding themselves or others, that is, by being good/responsive, or by being selfish/independent. As a result, women's adolescent voices of resistance become silent, and they experience a dislocation of self, mind, and body, which may be reflected in eating disorders, low leadership aspiration, and self-effacing sexual choices. Gilligan also expanded her ideas in a number of articles and reports (Gilligan, 1979; 1980; 1982; 1987).

b. Nel Noddings

In 1984 Noddings published Caring, in which she developed the idea of care as a feminine ethic, and applied it to the practice of moral education. Starting from the presumption that women "enter the practical domain of moral action...through a different door", she ascribed to feminine ethics a preference for face-to face moral deliberation that occurs in real time, and appreciation of the uniqueness of each caring relationship. Drawing conceptually from a maternal perspective, Noddings understood caring relationships to be basic to human existence and consciousness. She identified two parties in a caring relationship-"one-caring" and the "cared-for"-and affirmed that both parties have some form of obligation to care reciprocally and meet the other morally, although not in the same manner. She characterized caring as an act of "engrossment" whereby the one-caring receives the cared-for on their own terms, resisting projection of the self onto the cared-for, and displacing selfish motives in order to act on the behalf of the cared-for. Noddings located the origin of ethical action in two motives, the human affective response that is a natural caring sentiment, and the memory of being cared-for that gives rise to an ideal self. Noddings rejected universal principles for prescribed action and judgment, arguing that care must always be contextually applied.

Noddings identified two stages of caring, "caring-for" and "caring-about". The former stage refers to actual hands-on application of caring services, and the latter to a state of being whereby one nurtures caring ideas or intentions. She further argued that the scope of caring obligation is limited. This scope of caring is strongest towards others who are capable of reciprocal relationship. The caring obligation is conceived of as moving outward in concentric circles so enlarged care is increasingly characterized by a diminished ability for particularity and contextual judgment, which prompted Noddings to speculate that it is impossible to care-for everyone. She maintained that while the one-caring has an obligation to care-for proximate humans and animals to the extent that they are needy and able to respond to offerings of care, there is a lesser obligation to care for distant others if there is no hope that care will be completed. These claims proved to be highly controversial, and Noddings later revised them somewhat. In her more recent book Starting From Home, Noddings endorsed a stronger obligation to care about distant humans, and affirms caring-about as an important motivational stage for inspiring local and global justice, but continued to hold that it is impossible to care-for all, especially distant others. (See 3a.iv below)

c. Other Influential authors

Although many philosophers have developed care ethics, five authors are especially notable.

i. Annette Baier

Annette Baier observes certain affinities between care ethics and the moral theory of David Hume, whom she dubs the "women's moral theorist." Baier suggests both deny that morality consists in obedience to a universal law, emphasizing rather the importance of cultivating virtuous sentimental character traits, including gentleness, agreeability, compassion, sympathy, and good temperedness (1987, 42). Baier specially underscores trust, a basic relation between particular persons, as the fundamental concept of morality, and notes its obfuscation within theories premised on abstract and autonomous agents. She recommends carving out room for the development of moral emotions and harmonizing the ideals of care and justice.

ii. Virginia Held

Virginia Held is the editor and author of many books pertaining to care ethics. In much of her work she seeks to move beyond ideals of liberal justice, arguing that they are not as much flawed as limited, and examines how social relations might be different when modeled after mothering persons and children. Premised on a fundamental non-contractual human need for care, Held construes care as the most basic moral value. In Feminist Morality (1993), Held explores the transformative power of creating new kinds of social persons, and the potentially distinct culture and politics of a society that sees as "its most important task the flourishing of children and the creation of human relationships". Shedescribes feminist ethics as committed to actual experience, with an emphasis on reason and emotion, literal rather than hypothetical persons, embodiment, actual dialogue, and contextual, lived methodologies. In The Ethics of Care (2006), Held demonstrates the relevance of care ethics to political, social and global questions. Conceptualizing care as a cluster of practices and values, she describes a caring person as one who has appropriate motivations to care for others and who participates adeptly in effective caring practices. She argues for limiting both market provisions for care and the need for legalistic thinking in ethics, asserting that care ethics has superior resources for dealing with the power and violence that imbues all relations, including those on the global level. Specifically, she recommends a view of a globally interdependent civil society increasingly dependent upon an array of caring NGOs for solving problems. She notes: "The small societies of family and friendship embedded in larger societies are formed by caring relations... A globalization of caring relations would help enable people of different states and cultures to live in peace, to respect each others' rights, to care together for their environments, and to improve the lives of their children"(168). Ultimately, she argues that rights based moral theories presume a background of social connection, and that when fore-grounded, care ethics can help to create communities that promote healthy social relations, rather than the near boundless pursuit of self-interest.

iii. Eva Feder Kittay

Eva Feder Kittay is another prominent care ethicist. Her book, Women and Moral Theory (1987), co-edited with Diana T. Meyers, is one the most significant anthologies in care ethics to date. In this work they map conceptual territory inspired by Gilligan's work, both critically and supportively, by exploring major philosophical themes such as self and autonomy, ethical principles and universality, feminist moral theory, and women and politics.In Love's Labor (1999), Kittay develops a dependency based account of equality rooted in the activity of caring for the seriously disabled. Kittay holds that the principles in egalitarian theories of justice, such as those of John Rawls, depend upon more fundamental principles and practices of care, and that without supplementation such theories undermine themselves (108). Kittay observes that in practice some women have been able to leave behind traditional care-giving roles only because other women have filled them, but she resists the essentialist association between women and care by speaking of "dependency workers" and "dependency relations". She argues that equality for dependency workers and the unavoidably dependent will only be achieved through conceptual and institutional reform. Employing expanded ideals of fairness and reciprocity that take interdependence as basic, Kittay poses a third principle for Rawls' theory of justice: "To each according to his or her need, from each to his or her capacity for care, and such support from social institutions as to make available resources and opportunities to those providing care" (113). She more precisely calls for the public provision of Doulas, paid professional care-workers who care for care-givers, and uses the principle of Doula to justify welfare for all care-givers, akin to worker's compensation or unemployment benefits.

iv. Sara Ruddick

Held identifies Sara Ruddick as the original pioneer of the theory of care ethics, citing Ruddick's 1980 article "Maternal Thinking" as the first articulation of a distinctly feminine approach to ethics. In this article, and in her later book of the same title (1989), Ruddick uses care ethical methodology to theorize from the lived experience of mothering, rendering a unique approach to moral reasoning and a ground for a feminist politics of peace. Ruddick explains how the practices of "maternal persons" (who may be men or women), exhibit cognitive capacities or conceptions of virtue with larger moral relevance. Ruddick's analysis, which forges strong associations between care ethics and motherhood, has been both well-received and controversial (see Section 6, below).

v. Joan Tronto

Joan Tronto is most known for exploring the intersections of care ethics, feminist theory, and political science. She sanctions a feminist care ethic designed to thwart the accretion of power to the existing powerful, and to increase value for activities that legitimize shared power. She identifies moral boundaries that have served to privatize the implications of care ethics, and highlights the political dynamics of care relations which describe, for example, the tendency of women and other minorities to perform care work in ways that benefit the social elite. She expands the phases of care to include "caring about", "taking care of" (assuming responsibility for care), "care-giving" (the direct meeting of need), and "care-receiving". She coins the phrase "privileged irresponsibility" to describe the phenomenon that allows the most advantaged in society to purchase caring services, delegate the work of care-giving, and avoid responsibility for the adequacy of hands-on care. (See Sections 2 and 8 below).

2. Definitions of Care

Because it depends upon contextual considerations, care is notoriously difficult to define. As Ruddick points out, at least three distinct but overlapping meanings of care have emerged in recent decades-an ethic defined in opposition to justice, a kind of labor, and a particular relationship (1998, 4). However, in care ethical literature, 'care' is most often defined as a practice, value, disposition, or virtue, and is frequently portrayed as an overlapping set of concepts. For example, Held notes that care is a form of labor, but also an ideal that guides normative judgment and action, and she characterizes care as "clusters" of practices and values (2006, 36, 40). One of the most popular definitions of care, offered by Tronto and Bernice Fischer, construes care as "a species of activity that includes everything we do to maintain, contain, and repair our 'world' so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, ourselves, and our environment". This definition posits care fundamentally as a practice, but Tronto further identifies four sub-elements of care that can be understood simultaneously as stages, virtuous dispositions, or goals. These sub-elements are: (1) attentiveness, a proclivity to become aware of need; (2) responsibility, a willingness to respond and take care of need; (3) competence, the skill of providing good and successful care; and (4) responsiveness, consideration of the position of others as they see it and recognition of the potential for abuse in care (1994, 126-136). Tronto's definition is praised for how it admits to cultural variation and extends care beyond family and domestic spheres, but it is also criticized for being overly broad, counting nearly every human activity as care.

Other definitions of care provide more precise delineations. Diemut Bubeck narrows the definitional scope of care by emphasizing personal interaction and dependency. She describes care as an emotional state, activity, or both, that is functional, and specifically involves "the meeting of needs of one person by another where face-to-face interaction between care and cared for is a crucial element of overall activity, and where the need is of such a nature that it cannot possibly be met by the person in need herself" (129). Bubeck thus distinguishes care from "service", by stipulating that "care" involves meeting the needs for others who cannot meet their needs themselves, whereas "service" involves meeting the needs of individuals who are capable of self-care. She also holds that one cannot care for oneself, and that care does not require any emotional attachment. While some care ethicists accept that care need not always have an emotional component, Bubeck's definitional exclusion of self-care is rejected by other care ethicists who stress additional aspects of care.

For example, both Maurice Hamington and Daniel Engster make room for self-care in their definitions of care, but focus more precisely on special bodily features and end goals of care (Hamington, 2004; Engster, 2007). Hamington focuses on embodiment, stating that: "care denotes an approach to personal and social morality that shifts ethical considerations to context, relationships, and affective knowledge in a manner that can only be fully understood if care's embodied dimension is recognized. Care is committed to flourishing and growth of individuals, yet acknowledges our interconnectedness and interdependence" (2004, 3). Engster develops a "basic needs" approach to care, defining care as a practice that includes "everything we do to help individuals to meet their vital biological needs, develop or maintain their basic capabilities, and avoid or alleviate unnecessary or unwanted pain and suffering, so that they can survive, develop, and function in society" (2007, 28). Although care is often unpaid, interpersonal, and emotional work, Engster's definition does not exclude paid work or self-care, nor require the presence of affection or other emotion (32). Although these definitions emphasize care as a practice, not all moral theorists maintain this view of.

Alternatively, care is understood as a virtue or motive. James Rachels, Raja Halwani, and Margaret McLaren have argued for categorizing care ethics as a species of virtue ethics, with care as a central virtue (Rachels, 1999; McLaren, 2001; Halwani, 2003). The idea that that care is best understood as virtuous motives or communicative skills is endorsed by Michael Slote who equates care with a kind of motivational attitude of empathy, and by Selma Sevenhuijsen, who defines care as "styles of situated moral reasoning" that involves listening and responding to others on their own terms." (Slote, 2007; Sevenhuijsen, 1998, 85).

Some ethicists prefer to understand care as a practice more fundamental than a virtue or motive because doing so resists the tendency to romanticize care as a sentiment or dispositional trait, and reveals the breadth of caring activities as globally intertwined with virtually all aspects of life. As feminist ethicists, Kittay and Held like to understand care as a practice and value rather than as a virtue because it risks "losing site of it as work" (Held, 2006, 35). Held refutes that care is best understood as a disposition such as compassion or benevolence, but defines "care" as "more a characterization of a social relation than the description of an individual disposition."

Overall, care continues to be an essentially contested concept, containing ambiguities that Peta Bowden, finds advantageous, revealing "the complexity and diversity of the ethical possibilities of care"(1997, 183).

3. Criticisms

A number of criticisms have been launched against care ethics, including that it is: a) a slave morality; b) empirically flawed; c) theoretically indistinct; d) parochial, e) essentialist, and f) ambiguous.

a. Care Ethics as a Slave Morality

One of the earliest objections was that care ethics is a kind of slave morality valorizing the oppression of women (Puka, 1990; Card, 1990; Davion, 1993). The concept of slave morality comes from the philosopher Frederick Nietzsche, who held that oppressed peoples tend to develop moral theories that reaffirm subservient traits as virtues. Following this tradition, the charge that care ethics is a slave morality interprets the different voice of care as emerging from patriarchal traditions characterized by rigidly enforced sexual divisions of labor. This critique issues caution against uncritically valorizing caring practices and inclinations because women who predominantly perform the work of care often do so to their own economic and political disadvantage. To the extent that care ethics encourages care without further inquiring as to who is caring for whom, and whether these relationships are just, it provides an unsatisfactory base for a fully libratory ethic. This objection further implies that the voice of care may not be an authentic or empowering expression, but a product of false consciousness that equates moral maturity with self-sacrifice and self-effacement.

b. Care Ethics as Empirically Flawed

Critics also question the empirical accuracy and validity of Gilligan's studies. Gilligan has been faulted for basing her conclusions on too narrow a sample, and for drawing from overly homogenous groups such as students at elite colleges and women considering abortion (thereby excluding women who would not view abortion as morally permissible). It is argued that wider samples yield more diverse results and complicate the picture of dual and gendered moral perspectives (Haan, 1976; Brabeck, 1983). For instance, Vanessa Siddle Walker and John Snarey surmise that resolution of the Heinz dilemma shifts if Heinz is identified as Black, because in the United States African-American males are disproportionately likely to be arrested for crime, and less likely to have their cases dismissed without stringent penalties (Walker and Snarey, 2004). Sandra Harding observes certain similarities between care ethics and African moralities, noting that care ethics has affinities with many other moral traditions (Harding, 1987). Sarah Lucia Hoagland identifies care as the heart of lesbian connection, but also cautions against the dangers of assuming that all care relations are ideally maternalistic (Hoagland, 1988). Thus, even if some women identify with care ethics, it is unclear whether this is a general quality of women, whether moral development is distinctly and dualistically gendered, and whether the voice of care is the only alternative moral voice. However, authors like Marilyn Friedman maintain that even if it cannot be shown that care is a distinctly female moral orientation, it is plausibly understood as a symbolically feminine approach (Friedman, 1987).

c. Care Ethics as Theoretically Indistinct

Along similar lines some critics object that care ethics is not a highly distinct moral theory, and that it rightly incorporates liberal concepts such as autonomy, equality, and justice. Some defenders of utilitarianism and deontology argue that the concerns highlighted by care ethics have been, or could be, readily addressed by existing theories (Nagl-Docekal, 1997; Ma, 2002). Others suggest that care ethics merely reduces to virtue ethics with care being one of many virtues (Rachels, 1999; Slote, 1998a; 1998b; McLaren, 2001, Halwani, 2003). Although a number of care ethicists explore the possible overlap between care ethics and other moral theories, the distinctiveness of the ethic is defended by some current advocates of care ethics, who contend that the focus on social power, identity, relationship, and interdependency are unique aspects of the theory (Sander-Staudt, 2006). Most care ethicists make room for justice concerns and for critically scrutinizing alternatives amongst justice perspectives. In some cases, care ethicists understand the perspectives of care and justice as mutual supplements to one another. Other theorists underscore the strategic potential for construing care as a right in liberal societies that place a high rhetorical value on human rights. Yet others explore the benefits of integrating care ethics with less liberal traditions of justice, such as Marxism (Bubeck, 1995).

d. Care Ethics as Parochial

Another set of criticisms center around the concern that care ethics obscures larger social dynamics and is overly parochial. These critiques aim at Noddings' original assertion that care givers have primary obligations to proximate others over distant others (Tronto, 1995, 111-112; Robinson, 1999, 31). Critics worry that this stance privileges elite care-givers by excusing them from attending to significant differences in international standards of living and their causes. Critics also express a concern that without a broader sense of justice, care ethics may allow for cronyism and favoritism toward one's family and friends (Friedman, 2006; Tronto, 2006). Noddings now affirms an explicit theme of justice in care ethics that resists arbitrary favoritism, and that extends to public and international domains. Yet she upholds the primacy of the domestic sphere as the originator and nurturer of justice, in the sense that the best social policies are identified, modeled, and sustained by practices in the "best families". Other care ethicists refine Noddings' claim by emphasizing the practical and moral connections between proximate and distant relations, by affirming a principle of care for the most vulnerable on a global level, and by explicitly weaving a political component into care theory.

e. Care Ethics as Essentialist

The objection that care ethics is essentialist stems from the more general essentialist critique made by Elizabeth Spelman (1988). Following this argument, early versions of care ethics have been faulted for failing to explore the ways in which women (and others) differ from one another, and for thereby offering a uniform picture of moral development that reinforces sex stereotypes (Tronto, 1994). Critics challenge tendencies in care ethics to theorize care based on a dyadic model of a (care-giving) mother and a (care-receiving) child, on the grounds that it overly romanticizes motherhood and does not adequately represent the vast experiences of individuals (Hoagland, 1991). The charge of essentialism in care ethics highlights ways in which women and men are differently implicated in chains of care depending on variables of class, race, age, and more. Essentialism in care ethics is problematic not only because it is conceptually facile, but also because of its political implications for social justice. For example, in the United States women of color and white women are differently situated in terms of who is more likely to give and receive care, and of what degree and quality, because the least paid care workers predominantly continue to be women of color. Likewise, lesbian and heterosexual women are differently situated in being able to claim the benefits and burdens of marriage, and are not equally presumed to be fit as care-givers. Contemporary feminist care ethicists attempt to avoid essentialism by employing several strategies, including: more thoroughly illuminating the practices of care on multiple levels and from various perspectives; situating caring practices in place and time; construing care as the symbolic rather than actual voice of women; exploring the potential of care as a gender neutral activity; and being consistently mindful of perspective and privilege in the activity of moral theorizing.

f. Care Ethics as Ambiguous

Because it eschews abstract principles and decisional procedures, care ethics is often accused of being unduly ambiguous, and for failing to offer concrete guidance for ethical action (Rachels, 1999). Some care ethicists find the non-principled nature of care ethics to be overstated, noting that because a care perspective may eschew some principles does not mean that it eschews all principles entirely (Held, 1995). Principles that could be regarded as central to care ethics might pertain to the origin and basic need of care relations, the evaluation of claims of need, the obligation to care, and the scope of care distribution. On principle, it would seem, a care ethic guides the moral agent to recognize relational interdependency, care for the self and others, cultivate the skills of attention, response, respect, and completion, and maintain just and caring relationships. However, while theorists define care ethics as a theory derived from actual practices, they simultaneously resist subjectivism and moral relativism.

4. Feminine and Feminist Ethics

Because of its association with women, care ethics is often construed as a feminine ethic. Indeed, care ethics, feminine ethics, and feminist ethics are often treated as synonymous. But although they overlap, these are discrete fields in that although care ethics connotes feminine traits, not all feminine and feminist ethics are care ethics, and the necessary connection between care ethics and femininity has been subject to rigorous challenge. The idea that there may be a distinctly woman-oriented, or a feminine approach to ethics, can be traced far back in history. Attempts to legitimate this approach gained momentum in the 18 th and 19 th centuries, fueled by some suffragettes, who argued that granting voting rights to (white) women would lead to moral social improvements. Central assumptions of feminine ethics are that women are similar enough to share a common perspective, rooted in the biological capacity and expectation of motherhood, and that characteristically feminine traits include compassion, empathy, nurturance, and kindness.

But once it is acknowledged that women are diverse, and that some men exhibit equally strong tendencies to care, it is not readily apparent that care ethics is solely or uniquely feminine. Many women, in actuality and in myth, in both contemporary and past times, do not exhibit care. Other factors of social identity, such as ethnicity and class, have also been found to correlate with care thinking. Nonetheless, care has pervasively been assumed to be a symbolically feminine trait and perspective, and many women resonate with a care perspective. What differentiates feminine and feminist care ethics turns on the extent to which there is critical inquiry into the empirical and symbolic association between women and care, and concern for the power-related implications of this association. Alison Jaggar characterizes a feminist ethic as one which exposes masculine and other biases in moral theory, understands individual actions in the context of social practices, illuminates differences between women, provides guidance for private, public, and international issues, and treats the experiences of women respectfully, but not uncritically (Jaggar, 1991).

While most theorists agree that it is mistaken to view care ethics as a "woman's morality", the best way to understand its relation to sex and gender is disputed. Slote develops a strictly gender neutral theory of care on the grounds that care ethics can be traced to the work of male as well as female philosophers. Engster endorses a "minimally feminist theory of care" that is largely gender neutral because he defines care as meeting needs that are more generally human. Although he acknowledges that women are disadvantaged in current caring distributions and are often socialized to value self-effacing care, his theory is feminist only in seeking to assure that the basic needs of women and girls are met and their capabilities developed.

In contrast, Held, Kittay, and Tronto draft more robust overlaps between care and feminist theory, retaining yet challenging the gender-laden associations of care with language like "mothering persons" or "dependency workers". While cautious of the associations between care and femininity, they find it useful to tap the resources of the lived and embodied experiences of women, a common one which is the capacity to birth children. They tend to define care as a practice partially in order to stay mindful of the ongoing empirical (if misguided) associations between care and women, that must inform utopian visions of care as a gender-neutral activity and virtue. Complicating things further, individuals who are sexed as women may nonetheless gain social privilege when they exhibit certain perceived traits of the male gender, such as being unencumbered and competitive, suggesting that it is potentially as important to revalue feminine traits and activities, as it is to stress the gender-neutral potential of care ethics.

As it currently stands, care ethicists agree that women are positioned differently than men in relation to caring practices, but there is no clear consensus about the best way to theorize sex and gender in care ethics.

5. Relation to Other Theories

Care ethics originally developed as an alternative to the moral theories of Kantian deontology and Utilitarianism consequentialism, but it is thought to have affinities with numerous other moral theories, such as African ethics, David Hume's sentimentalism, Aristotelian virtue ethics, the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, Levinasian ethics, and Confucianism. The most pre-dominant of these comparisons has been between care ethics and virtue ethics, to the extent that care ethics is sometimes categorized as a form of virtue ethics, with care being a central virtue. The identification of caring virtues fuels the tendency to classify care ethics as a virtue ethic, although this system of classification is not universally endorsed.

Some theorists move to integrate care and virtue ethics for strategic reasons. Slote seeks to form an alliance against traditional "masculine" moral theories like Kantianism, utilitarianism, and social contract theory (Slote, 1998). He argues that, in so doing, care ethics receives a way of treating our obligations to people we don't know, without having to supplement it with more problematic theories of justice. McLaren posits that virtue theory provides a normative framework which care ethics lacks (McLaren, 2001). The perceived flaw in care ethics for both authors is a neglect of justice standards in how care is distributed and practiced, and a relegation of care to the private realm, which exacerbates the isolation and individualization of the burdens of care already prevalent in liberal societies. McLaren contends that virtue theory provides care ethics both with a standard of appropriateness and a normative framework: "The standard of appropriateness is the mean-a virtue is always the mean between two extremes...The normative framework stems from the definition of virtue as that which promotes human flourishing" (2001, 105). Feminist critics, however, resist this assimilation on the grounds that it may dilute the unique focus of care ethics (Held, 2006; Sander-Staudt, 2006). They are optimistic that feminist versions of care ethics can address the above concerns of justice, and doubt that virtue ethics provides the best normative framework.

Similar debates surround the comparison between care ethics and Confucianism. Philosophers note a number of similarities between care ethics and Confucian ethics, not least that both theories are often characterized as virtue ethics (Li, 1994, 2000; Lai Tao, 2000). Additional similarities are that both theories emphasize relationship as fundamental to being, eschew general principles, highlight the parent-child relation as paramount, view moral responses as properly graduated, and identify emotions such as empathy, compassion, and sensitivity as prerequisites for moral response. The most common comparison is between the concepts of care and the Confucian concept of jen/ren. Ren is often translated as love of humanity, or enlargement. Several authors argue that there is enough overlap between the concepts of care and ren to judge that care ethics and Confucian ethics are remarkably similar and compatible systems of thought (Li, 1994; Rosemont, 1997).

However, some philosophers object that it is better to view care ethics as distinct from Confucian ethics, because of their potentially incompatible aspects. Feminist care ethicists charge that a feminist care ethic is not compatible with the way Confucianism subordinates women. Ranjoo Seodu Herr locates the incompatibility as between the Confucian significance of li, or formal standards of ritual, and a feminist care ethics' resistance to subjugation (2003). For similar reasons, Lijun Yuan doubts that Confucian ethics can ever be acceptable to contemporary feminists, despite its similarity to care ethics. Daniel Star categorizes Confucian ethics as a virtue ethic, and distinguishes virtue ethics and care ethics as involving different biases in moral perception (2002). According to Star, care ethics differs from Confucian ethics in not needing to be bound with any particular tradition, in downgrading the importance of principles (versus merely noting that principles may be revised or suspended), and in rejecting hierarchical, role-based categories of relationship in favor of contextual and particular responses.

There are also refutations of the belief that care ethics is conceptually incompatible with the justice perspectives of Kantian deontology and liberal human rights theory. Care ethicists dispute the inference that because care and justice have evolved as distinct practices and ideals, that they are incompatible. Some deny that Kantianism is as staunchly principled and rationalistic as often portrayed, and affirm that care ethics is compatible with Kantian deontology because it relies upon a universal injunction to care, and requires a principle of caring obligation. An adaptation of the Kantian categorical imperative can be used to ground the obligation to care in the universal necessity of care, and the inconsistency of willing a world without intent to care. Other theorists compare the compatibility between care ethics and concepts of central importance to a Kantian liberal tradition. Thus, Grace Clement argues that an ideal of individual autonomy is required by normative ideals of care, in the sense that care-givers ideally consent to and retain some degree of autonomy in caring relations, and also ideally foster the autonomy of care-receivers (Clement, 1996). Mona Harrington explores the significance of the liberal ideal of equality to care ethics by tracing how women's inequality is linked to the low social valuing and provision of care work (Harrington, 2000). Other ways that Kantianism is thought to benefit care ethics is by serving as a supplementary check to caring practice, (denouncing caring relations that use others as mere means), and by providing a rhetorical vehicle for establishing care as a right.

6. Maternalism

As a theory rooted in practices of care, care ethics emerged in large part from analyses of the reasoning and activities associated with mothering. Although some critics caution against the tendency to construe all care relations in terms of a mother-child dyad, Ruddick and Held use a maternal perspective to expand care ethics as a moral and political theory. In particular, Ruddick argues that "maternal practice" yields specific kinds of thinking and supports a principled resistance to violence. Ruddick notes that while some mothers support violence and war, they should not because of how it threatens the goals and substance of care. Defining a mother as "a person who takes responsibility for children's lives and for whom providing child care is a significant part of his or her working life", Ruddick stipulates that both men and women can be mothers (40). She identifies the following metaphysical attitudes, cognitive capacities, and virtues associated with mothering: preservative love (work of protection with cheerfulness and humility), fostering growth (sponsoring or nurturing a child's unfolding), and training for social acceptability (a process of socialization that requires conscience and a struggle for authenticity). Because children are subject to, but defy social expectations, the powers of mothers are limited by the "gaze of the others". Loving attention helps mothers to perceive their children and themselves honestly so as to foster growth without retreating to fantasy or incurring loss of the self.

Expanding on the significance of the bodily experience of pregnancy and birth, Ruddick reasons that mothers should oppose a sharp division between masculinity and femininity as untrue to children's sexual identities. In so doing, mothers should challenge the rigid division of male and female aspects characteristic of military ideology because it threatens the hope and promise of birth. Ruddick creates a feminist account of maternal care ethics that is rooted in the vulnerability, promise, and power of human bodies, and that by resisting cheery denial, can transform the symbols of motherhood into political speech.

But however useful the paradigm for mothering has been to care ethics, many find it to be a limited and problematic framework. Some critics reject Ruddick's suggestion that mothering is logically peaceful, noting that mothering may demand violent protectiveness and fierce response. Although Ruddick acknowledges that many mothers support military endeavors and undermine peace movements, some critics are unconvinced that warfare is always illogical and universally contrary to maternal practice. Despite Ruddick's recognition of violence in mothering, others object that a motherhood paradigm offers a too narrowly dyadic and romantic paradigm, and that this approach mistakenly implies that characteristics of a mother-child relationship are universal worldly qualities of relationship. For these reasons, some care ethicists, even when in agreement over the significance of the mother-child relationship, have sought to expand the scope of care ethics by exploring other paradigms of care work, such as friendship and citizenship.

7. International Relations

Care ethics was initially viewed as having little to say about international relations. With an emphasis on known persons and particular selves, care ethics did not seem to be a moral theory suited to guide relations with distant or hostile others. Fiona Robinson challenges this idea, however, by developing a critical ethics of care that attends to the relations of dependency and vulnerability that exist on a global scale (Robinson, 1999). Robinson's analysis expands the sentiment of care to address the inequalities within current international relations by promoting a care ethic that is responsive and attentive to the difference of others, without presuming universal homogeneity. She argues that universal principles of right and wrong typically fail to generate moral responses that alleviate the suffering of real people. But she is optimistic that a feminist phenomenological version of care ethics can do so by exploring the actual nature, conditions, and possibilities of global relations. She finds that the preoccupation with the nation state in cosmopolitanism and communitarianism, and the enforced global primacy of liberal values such as autonomy, independence, self-determination, and others, has led to a 'culture of neglect'. This culture is girded by a systemic devaluing of interdependence, relatedness, and positive interaction with distant others. A critical ethic of care understands the global order not as emerging from a unified or homogeneous humanity, but from structures that exploit differences to exclude, marginalize and dominate. While Robinson doubts the possibility of "a more caring world" where poverty and suffering are entirely eliminated, she finds that a critical care ethic may offer an alternative mode of response that can motivate global care.

Likewise, Held is hopeful that care ethics can be used to transform international relations between states, by noticing cultural constructs of masculinity in state behaviors, and by calling for cooperative values to replace hierarchy and domination based on gender, class, race and ethnicity (Held, 2006). Care ethicists continue to explore how care ethics can be applied to international relations in the context of the global need for care and in the international supply and demand for care that is served by migrant populations of women.

8. Political Theory

As a political theory, care ethics examines questions of social justice, including the distribution of social benefits and burdens, legislation, governance, and claims of entitlement. One of the earliest explorations of the implications of care ethics for feminist political theory was in Seyla Behabib's article "The Generalized and the Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Feminist Theory" (Benhabib, 1986). Here, Benhabib traces a basic dichotomy in political and moral theory drawn between the public and private realms. Whereas the former is thought to be the realm of justice, the social and historical, and generalized others, the latter is thought to be the realm of the good life, the natural and atemporal, and concrete others. The former is captured by the favored metaphor of social contract theory and the "state of nature", wherein men roam as adults, alone, independent, and free from the ties of birth by women. Benhabib traces this metaphor, internalized by the male ego, within the political philosophies of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and John Rawls, and the moral theories of Immanuel Kant and Lawrence Kohlberg. She argues that under this conception, human interdependency, difference, and questions about private life become irrelevant to politics.

The earliest substantial account of care as a political philosophy is offered by Tronto, who identifies the traditional boundary between ethics and politics as one of three boundaries which serves to stymie the political efficacy of a woman's care ethic, (the other two being the boundary between the particular and abstract/impersonal moral observer, and the boundary between public and private life) (Tronto, 1993). Together, these boundaries obscure how care as a political concept illuminates the interdependency of human beings, and how care could stimulate democratic and pluralistic politics in the United States by extending a platform to the politically disenfranchised. Following Tronto, a number of feminist care ethicists explore the implications of care ethics for a variety of political concepts, including Bubeck who adapts Marxist arguments to establish the social necessity and current exploitation of the work of care; Sevenhuijsen who reformulates citizenship to be more inclusive of caring need and care work; and Kittay who develops a dependency based concept of equality (Bubeck, 1995; Sevenhuijsen, 1998; Kittay, 1999). Other authors examine the relevance of care ethics to the political issues of welfare policy, restorative justice, political agency, and global business.

The most comprehensive articulation of care ethics as a political theory is given by Engster, who defends a need based account of moral obligation (Engster, 2007). Engster's "minimal capability theory" is formed around two major premises-that all human beings are dependent upon others to develop their basic capabilities, and that in receiving care, individuals tacitly and logically become obliged to care for others. Engster understands care as a set of practices normatively informed by three virtues: attention, responsiveness, and respect. Defining care as everything we do to satisfy vital biological needs, develop and sustain basic capabilities, and avoid unnecessary suffering, Engster applies these goals to domestic politics, economic justice, international relations, and culture. Engster holds governments and businesses responsible for offering economic provisions in times of sickness, disability, frail old age, bad luck, and reversal of fortune, for providing protection, health care, and clean environments, and for upholding the basic rights of individuals. He calls for businesses to balance caring and commodity production by making work and care more compatible, although he surmises that the goals of care need not fully subordinate economic ends such as profitability.

According to Engster, care as a political theory has universal application because conditions of dependency are ubiquitous, but care need not be practiced by all groups in the same way, and has no necessary affinities with any particular political system, including Marxism and liberalism. Governments ought to primarily care for their own populations, but should also help the citizens of other nations living under abusive or neglectful regimes, within reasonable limits. International humanitarian interventions are more obligatory than military given the risk of physical harm, and the virtues of care can help the international community avoid dangers associated with humanitarian assistance. With specific reference to cultural practices in the U.S., Engster recommends a number of policy changes to education, employment, and the media.

9. Caring for Animals

While Gilligan was relatively silent about the moral status of animals in care ethics, Noddings made it clear that humans have moral obligations only to animals which are proximate, open to caring completion, and capable of reciprocity. On these grounds she surmises that while the one-caring has a moral obligation to care for a stray cat that shows up at the door and to safely transport spiders out of the house, one is under no obligation to care for a stray rat or to become a vegetarian. She further rejects Peter Singer's claim that it is specieist to favor humans over animals. Other care ethicists, however, such as Rita Manning, point out differences in our obligations to care for companion, domesticated, and wild animals based upon "carefully listening to the creatures who are with you in [a] concrete situation" (Manning, 1992; 1996).

The application of care ethics to the moral status of animals has been most thoroughly explored by Carol Adams and Josephine Donovan (Adams and Donovan 1996; 2007). Expanding on Adams' original analysis of the sexual politics of meat (Adams, 1990), they maintain that a feminist care tradition offers a superior foundation for animal ethics. They specifically question whether rights theory is an adequate framework for an animal defense ethic because of its rationalist roots and individualist ontology, its tendency to extend rights to animals based on human traits, its devaluing of emotion and the body, and its preference for abstract, formal, and quantifiable rules. Alternatively, they argue that a feminist care ethic is a preferable foundation for grounding moral obligations to animals because its relational ontology acknowledges love and empathy as major bases for human-animal connections, and its contextual flexibility allows for a more nuanced consideration of animals across a continuum of difference.

Engster similarly argues that the human obligation to care for non-human animals is limited by the degree to which non-human animals are dependent upon humans (Engster, 2006). Because an obligation to care is rooted in dependency, humans do not have moral obligations to care for animals that are not dependent upon humans. However, an obligation to care for animals is established when humans make them dependent by providing food or shelter. Engster surmises that neither veganism nor vegetarianism are required providing that animals live happy, mature lives, and are humanely slaughtered, but also acknowledges that the vast majority of animals live under atrocious conditions that care ethics renounces.

Empirical studies suggest interesting differences between the way that men and women think about the moral status of animals, most notably, that women are more strongly opposed to animal research and meat eating, and report being more willing to sacrifice for these causes, than men (Eldridge and Gluck, 1996). While feminist care ethicists are careful not to take such empirical correlations as an automatic endorsement of these views, eco-feminists like Marti Kheel explicate the connection between feminism, animal advocacy, environmental ethics, and holistic health movements (Kheel, 2008). Developing a more stringent obligation to care for animals, Kheel posits the uniqueness of all animals, and broadens the scope of the moral obligation of care to include all individual beings as well as larger collectives, noting that the majority of philosophies addressing animal welfare adopt masculine approaches founded on abstract rules, rational principles, and generalized perspectives.

10. Applied Care Ethics

In addition to the above topics, care ethics has been applied to a number of timely ethical debates, including reproductive technology, homosexuality and gay marriage, capital punishment, political agency, hospice care, and HIV treatment, as well as aspects of popular culture, such as the music of U-2 and The Sopranos. It increasingly informs moral analysis of the professions, such as education, medicine, nursing, and business, spurring new topics and modes of inquiry. It is used to provide moral assessment in other ethical fields, such as bioethics, business ethics, and environmental ethics. Perhaps because medicine is a profession that explicitly involves care for others, care ethics was quickly adopted in bioethics as a means for assessing relational and embodied aspects of medical practices and policies. As well as abortion, both Susan Sherwin and Rosemary Tong consider how feminist ethics, including an ethic of care, provides new insights into contraception and sterilization, artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization, surrogacy, and gene therapy. Care ethics is also applied by other authors to organ transplantation, the care of high risk patients, artificial womb technologies, advanced directives, and the ideal relationships between medical practitioners and patients.

11. Care Movements

There are a rising number of social movements organized around the concerns highlighted in care ethics. In 2000, Deborah Stone called for a national care movement in the U.S. to draw attention to the need for social programs of care such as universal health care, pre-school education, care for the elderly, improved foster care, and adequate wages for care-givers. In 2006, Hamington and Dorothy Miller compiled a number of essays concerning the theoretical understanding and application of care ethics to public life, including issues of welfare, same-sex marriage, restorative justice, corporate globalization, and the 21 st century mother's movement (Hamington and Miller, 2006). A number of formal political organizations of care exist, most of them on the internet, which variously center around themes of motherhood, fatherhood, health care, care as a profession, infant welfare, the woman's movement, gay and lesbian rights, disability, and elder care. These organizations work to disseminate information, organize care advocates on key social issues, and form voting blocks. Of those focused around mothering, one of the most prominent is MomsRising.org, organized by Joan Blades, one of the original founders of MoveOn.org, and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner. Others include: The Mothers Movement Online, Mothers Ought to Have Equal Rights, the National Association of Mothers' Centers, and Mothers and More. Judith Stadtman Tucker notes that problems with some mother's movements include an overly exclusive focus on the interests of white, middle class care-givers, and an occasional lack of serious-mindedness, but she is also hopeful that care movements organized around motherhood can forge cultural transitions, including shorter work weeks, universal health care unhitched from employment, care leave policies, and increased levels of care work performed by men and states (Tucker, 2001).

12. References and Further Reading

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Adams, C. and Donovan, J. The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Baier, Annette. "Hume: The Woman's Moral Theorist?" in Women and Moral Theory, Kittay, Eva Feder, and Meyers, Diana (ed.s). U.S.A.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1987.

Baier, Annette. Moral Prejudices: Essays on Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.

Benhabib, Seyla. "The Generalized and Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Moral Theory", in Praxis International (1986) 38-60.

Blades, Joan and Rowe-Finkbeiner, Kristin. The Motherhood Manifesto: What America's Moms Want and What to do about It. New York, NY: Nation Books, 2006.

Bowden, Peta. "An 'Ethics of Care' in Clinical Settings: Encompassing 'Feminine" and "Feminist" Perspectives." Nursing Philosophy 1.1 (2001): 36-49.

Bowden, Peta. Caring: Gender Sensitive Ethics. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997.

Brabeck, Mary. "Moral Judgment: Theory and Research on Differences between males and Females" Developmental Review 3 (1983) 274-91.

Bubeck, Diemut. Care, Gender and Justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.

Card, Claudia. "Caring and Evil." Hypatia 5.1 (1990) 101-8.

Clement, Grace. Care, Autonomy and Justice: Feminism and the Ethic of Care. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996.

Davion, Victoria. "Autonomy, Integrity, and Care" Social Theory and Practice 19.2 (1993) 161-82.

Donovan, Josephine and Adams, Carol, ed. Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals. New York, NY: Continuum Press, 1996.

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Engster, Daniel. The Heart of Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

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Held, Virginia. "Feminist Moral Inquiry and the Feminist Future" in V. Held (ed.) Justice and Care. Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 2006: 153-176.

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Kheel, Marti. Nature Ethics. New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008.

Kittay, Eva Feder and Myers, Diana T., ed. Women and Moral Theory. U.S.A.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987.

Kittay, Eva Feder. Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency. New York, NY: Routledge, 1999.

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Sander-Staudt, Maureen. "The Unhappy Marriage of Care Ethics and Virtue Ethics." Hypatia 21.4 (2006): 21-40.

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Walker, Vanessa Siddle and Snarey, John, ed. Race-Ing Moral Formation: African American Perspectives on Care and Justice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2004.

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Author Information

Maureen Sander-Staudt
Email: Maureen.Sander-Staudt@asu.edu
Arizona State University
U. S. A.

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The moral theory known as " the ethics of care" implies that there is moral significance in the fundamental elements of relationships and dependencies in human life. Normatively, care ethics seeks to maintain relationships by contextualizing and promoting the well-being of care-givers and care-receivers in a network of social relations.

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Responsibility in relation to care ethics.

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Introduction

Care ethics emphasizes responsibility as a key element for caring practices (Gilligan 1982; Noddings 1984; Tronto 1993, 2013; Held 2006; Walker 2007; Kohlen 2009; Van Heijst 2011; Heier 2016; Van Nistelrooij 2015; Visse et al. 2015; Visse and Abma 2018). If responsibility is not taken or accepted, caring does not occur. Responsibilities to care are however taken by certain groups of people, for else nobody and nothing would be taken care of. Despite the lack of political and ethical attention for this everyday practice, our society would not exist without care. Margaret Walker and Joan Tronto especially clarify how social and political practices are practices in which these responsibilities are unequally distributed. Walker ( 2007) argues that people collectively express what they consider valuable in the way that social practices of responsibility are constructed; simultaneously these means of expression construct practices of responsibility by reproducing or shifting the terms of recognition (p. 10). People learn about their own identity, their relationships and the socially recognized values "through practices of responsibility in which they assign, accept or deflect responsibilities" (p. 10). What people do, collectively, in a moral sense, is constrained and made intelligible by the collective ideas about individual and social responsibilities. For instance, and drawing upon Van Heijst ( 2005, 2011), even though there may not be an official obligation for women to quit their job or cut back hours in order to take care of their children, cultural expectations for them to do so are persisting. Tronto ( 1993, 2013) problematizes the distribution of responsibilities, as this division tends to "privilege those who are excused by not needing to provide care; thus the privileged avoid responding directly to the actual processes of care and the meeting of basic needs" ( 1993, p. 121; cf. 2013, Chap. 2). In these views, responsibility is about having the task to respond to a need; this task can be explicitly assigned, e.g. to professionals, or implicitly expected from certain groups of people due to cultural patterns and hierarchical structures of power and status in society. And many people accept them, otherwise no society could exist and no people survive.

However, looking at responsibility as something that one 'has', as something that can be determined and delineated, and distributed among people, may also be problematic in a certain way. Even though the care ethical analyses have stressed that responsibilities cannot be looked upon apart from the social practice and political context in which they are distributed among people, we believe that this context may also cover the ambivalence of the immediate experience of responsibility. If responsibilities are primarily viewed as matters of social distribution in which power is also involved, other aspects of responsibility are left aside. Tronto ( 1993, 2013) has already shown that such a distributive view of responsibilities tends to make them personal, which is a way to marginalize and contain caring practices. Her analysis uncovers the harmful effects of such an individualizing and apolitical view and underpins her plea for a democratic account of care, making care a collective responsibility. We concur with her critique on this personalized view of responsibility as it creates inequalities and puts too much pressure upon certain individuals to meet their responsibilities and execute their caring task. In this paper, we also concur with the care ethical political-ethical analysis of power in which many care ethicists (Tronto 1993, 2013; Kittay 1999; Hankivsky 2004; Walker 2007; Held 2015; Visse et al. 2015) argue for care to be given its proper role in morality and politics. However, these pleas mainly focus upon the agents that respond to the need of care. If we truly aim to understand why care requires responsibility, we need to analyze not only how care is organized and performed in society, but we need to think through how a caring responsibility is literally a response to something else. We need to analyze how the caregiver as an agent is also a passive recipient of a need, a call for help, that can be overwhelming. This part of caring practices requires a phenomenological view of responsibility. Therefore, we turn to French phenomenologist Jean-Luc Marion's view on responsibility.

Our purpose is to decrease the pressure upon individual caregivers' responsibility by presenting an analysis of the phenomenon of responsibility. In order to do so, in Part A of this paper we briefly present the current body of literature on responsibility in the interdisciplinary field of care ethics. In Part B we present Jean Luc Marion's phenomenological view of givenness using his analysis of Caravaggio's painting The Calling of St. Matthew, followed by his analysis and redefinition of responsibility. In Part C, we will connect Marion's view on responsibility with the current paradigms in care ethics on responsibility. In Part D, we will further explore the paradigms by an analysis of the vignette above and explore what his view has to offer for care ethical dimensions of the caring relationship.

Part A: Care ethical accounts of responsibility

In care ethical theory several insights have proven to be critical touchstones for ethics, such as relationality, affectivity, contextuality and practices (Leget et al. 2017). With regard to a central concept like responsibility (Tronto 1993; Walker 2007), care ethics has emphasized the concreteness of responsibilities (Tronto 1993), the responsibility that emerges through dependency in prior relationships or situatedness (Kittay 1999), and as distributed in social practices (Walker 2007). The emphasis has been put on the responsibilities that are accepted or deflected by the caregiver, as a response to another person's need or concern (Tronto 1993). A further scrutiny of dependency as the source for moral obligation, not only by the directly involved caregivers, but also by multiple others and society as a whole in support of caregivers, has been the lifework of Kittay (e.g. 1999, 2011). She has pointed out that a person giving care to extremely dependent persons (she uses the term dependency worker) needs to be transparant when giving care, so that the needs and interests of the dependent can be leading (Kittay 1999, p. 52). She argues that the caregiver in this situation needs to suspend her own plans and projects and be led by altruism (p. 52). However, the focal point of her analysis is still the caregiver's and society's moral agency, on what they are obligated to do.

Responsibility within care ethics not only co-determines the performance of good caregivers, as a characteristic of their involvement with another person's need or concern and of their caring response, it is problematic too. For it may lead to a boundless commitment to others that is harmful to the caregiver's self. This double-sided view is recognizable in how many professional caregivers discuss their responsibility as both defining and delineating their obligations in their role as caregivers. In this role a continuous search for taking and limiting responsibility takes place and professionals tend to warn each other especially for exceeding their limits (e.g. in familiar expressions like: "This is not your responsibility", or "You should not exceed your responsibilities", or "You should not take your responsibilities home with you").

Part of the problems with responsibility has to do with care ethics' roots in feminism. Feminist analyses point out that responsibility is never entirely a moral individual's free choice. This leads care ethicists to acknowledge how caring tasks and responsibilities are unequally distributed and assigned (e.g. Walker 2007; Tronto 1993, 2013), how they arise in existing relationships (Kittay 1999), how social practices establish positions of 'privileged irresponsibility' and 'caring passes' on the one hand and marginalized positions of those involved in caring responsibilities on the other (Tronto 1993, 2013), how this distribution of responsibilities is connected to social and cultural ideas and ideals of freedom, success, privilege and autonomy as opposed to bondage, failure, subservience and dependency (Tronto 1993, 2013; Van Heijst 2011), and how they are always in the literal sense a response to a need or concern of somebody one meets, in whatever setting. So care ethics does not overestimate the caregiver's agency but always considers it as bound up with social practices, cultural patterns, and ethos. A caregiver is never considered to be an entirely self-deliberating, self-determining, contract-signing, alternatives-weighing, and freely choosing person in care ethics. Rather caregivers appear as people finding themselves in a position in which others, they themselves, and also the socio-political context expect them to have and take responsibility, as a result of socio-political, personal, affective, contextual, and ethical factors. Their position is determined not only by their own contingency (the time, place, and web of relations in which they were born and raised), but also by their participation in collective practices within the family, school, work place, and by socio-political determinants like their age, gender, ethnicity, class, which co-determine their social status and power(less) position.

Nevertheless, there are nuances in how passivity is incorporated in care ethical views of the moral agent. In general, more politically oriented care theorists stress the powerless position of caregivers and their passivity in the sort or amount of caring responsibilities assigned to them (Walker 2007; Tronto 1993, 2013). They stress the need for empowerment of those involved in care, thereby emphasizing caregivers' agency in political and moral respect (Tronto 1993, 2013; Engster and Hamington 2015; Held 2015). Walker ( 2007) has argued that whenever we shift our attention from the idea of 'vulnerability-in-principle' as a shared human condition in which actual dependency is an abstract possibility, in order to turn to real-life 'dependency-in-fact' (p. 90), we come to acknowledge that some people are concretely and acutely dependent upon others, and others are not. This distinction founds Walker's proposal that a geography of responsibilities should be at the heart of ethics, since 'tracking the lines of responsibility' uncovers the social distribution of actual responsibilities and 'who gets to do what to whom and who is supposed to do what for whom' (p. 16).

In the same vein, Tronto ( 1993) considers the concrete caring practice of responding to needs as connected to its socio-political context. Caring is an ongoing practice that starts with the identification of a need, which entails that one 'cares about' something. This identification requires attentiveness, but if one leaves it at that, care does not come about. The caring practice needs to evolve into 'taking care of', that is the assumption that something needs to be done that requires the self to become involved. Therefore responsibility needs to be assumed with regard to a need:

Taking care of [...] involves assuming some responsibility for the identified need and determining how to respond to it. Rather than simply focusing on the need of the other person, taking care of involves the recognition that one can act to address these unmet needs. [...] Taking care of involves notions of agency and responsibility in the caring process (Tronto 1993, p. 106).

The emphasis here is on the caregiver as moral agent, actively involving herself in the process of addressing a need, as the heart of responsibility. It would be naive, however, to think of the moral agent as lacking the political context of power. For those who are involved in caring, are often those lacking privileges and power. Hence the key problem of a moral theory of care often is not the problem of moral motivation, but rather to reflect upon the ongoing practices of care in which they are enmeshed and look honestly at how sacrifices are unequally distributed and how caregivers' situation and position are often not improved by the caring practices in which they are enmeshed (p. 141). Inequality is a real societal problem that is revealed when we look at the political context of care. Accepting caring responsibilities, then, may lead to further marginalization and loss of power.

Other care ethicists pay more attention to the passivity and responsiveness that is required of the caregivers by caring practices themselves (Noddings 1984; Kittay 1999; Van Heijst 2011). They strongly reject a view of care as a commodity or a practice that can be controlled. Instead they advocate a view of caring as an unpredictable relational practice of attuning to another unique human being in which the caregiver needs to let go of a pre-determined responsibility (Van Heijst 2011). Noddings ( 1984) describes caring as acting 'from the position of one-caring' (8), being led 'not by fixed rule but by affection and regard [...] varied rather than rule-bound [...] with special regard for the particular person in a concrete situation' (24). Others also acknowledge the unpredictable nature of caring practices and promote a view that centres moral learning as a practice of reflection on how responsibilities are distributed (Visse and Abma 2018). Even though no care ethicist argues for a complete lack of self-determination by the caregiver, many argue that care involves a form of temporary self-abandonment and being-led by the care receiver, whether it is called transparancy and altruism (Kittay 1999), engrossment and motivational displacement (Noddings 1984, 2002, 2015), or self-sacrifice (Van Nistelrooij 2015).

Van Heijst ( 2011) developed yet another stance on responsibility, and her view is called upon here for two reasons. First, she explicitly specifies her view to the professional caregiver's responsibility and takes institutional settings into account. And second, her view of responsibility describes the responding character of responsibility that we explore in this contribution. She positions the specific professional caregiver's responsibility at the crossroad of the professional's skill of knowing how to help and of being able to transform a situation of need, on the one hand, and their proximity to patients and clients who need them, on the other (p. 177). She develops a multi-layered idea of professional responsibility in which ability and moral obligation go hand in hand, since knowing how to help entails that you should. What is more, she includes the ways in which responsibility is ascribed to persons, making them feel responsible, which is also connected to professionals having consciously taken the position as a healthcare professional in the nearness of patients and clients. Thereby they are simultaneously held responsible by others and feeling responsible themselves (p. 177). Her analysis leads her to conclude that on a fundamental level of human neediness, all human beings are dependent upon each other for their mere survival, but also for being able to lead a meaningful life (p. 145). This is a fundamental human equal neediness that we share as human beings and should be recognized as communality. Yet on the level of the concrete situatedness people are unequally dependent because there is an evident inequality of need (p. 144). "Evident asymmetry characterizes care situations and that should not be hidden." (pp. 144-145) Hence Van Heijst concludes to a double structure of neediness: one on the surface, of evident unequal needs, and one on a deeper level, of equal neediness as humans. This double structure of neediness leads Van Heijst to conclude that a mixture of feelings, cognition and mediating institutional and professional regulations is required for professional responsibility:

[P]rofessionals need feelings, reasoning and an institutional context of regulations that modifies and facilitates their taking moral responsibility. The head is a complementary guide to the heart, and ideas of institutional obligation help to do what professionals believe is best (Van Heijst 2011, pp. 196-197).

In each of these positions a mediated form of responsibility takes centre stage. Each care practitioner is formed by the position of one-caring (Noddings), practices (Walker), the socio-political context (Tronto), relations of dependency (Kittay), and the institutional context of health care (Van Heijst), in which the caregiver has formed and internalized ideas, ideals, expectations, norms, and regulations. Yet this practitioner also has the freedom to make moral decisions, to answer to or ignore moral appeals. Responsibility still appears as moral task, as something one has or has not, and can decide about. This thought fits perfectly with the idea that freedom is required for morality, for without freedom (e.g. when coerced) one cannot be held responsible. But it also acknowledges givenness: that the caregiver is called upon, that a need is there that needs to be responded to. This aspect can be enriched by Marion's phenomenology, as we will argue in the next section. From a phenomenological stance, however, the subject does not decide, but receives much more than one could ever imagine ( 2002, p. 309).

Part B: Marion's phenomenology of responsibility as givenness

When Marion looks at responsibility in Being Given ( 2002), this is what he sees (pp. 282-296). First there is a call. Like in Caravaggio's painting The Calling of St Matthew that is on the book's cover, one cannot see a caller or the call itself but only Matthew, making the silent gesture of the left hand pointing to his chest, indicating the question 'Me?'. With this gesture the only thing that is visible is the reception of a call by Matthew. This picture says a lot about responsibility according to Marion (and as will be clear to those readers familiar with Emmanuel Levinas' work, Marion's view draws upon Levinas' work in important ways). It shows 'in silence a call that is invisible' (283), as the call comes from the outside of the subject, but also from outside the subject's horizon. In the picture there is only a light shining upon Matthew from outside the picture's frame. This 'coming from the outside' to Marion means that the call is not preceded by expectation or by a 'hearing' capability, since that would be a metaphysically set horizon of a subject able to receive. Such a presupposed horizon of ability limits the possibilities for phenomena to appear: only what is visible to the eye, what is audible to the ear, etc. can count as a phenomenon. By opposing such a limitation, Marion positions himself as a phenomenologist who aims to radicalize Husserlian phenomenology. For Husserl the appearing of phenomena still happens to a consciousness, i.e. intentionality. Marion concurs with other phenomenologists who have criticized Husserl for this centrality of (human) intentionality and who stress the fact that not everything can be grasped by consciousness. In fact, as long as we can determine the conditions for what appears, phenomena cannot appear as they are. Therefore Marion argues:

Appearing must thus remove itself from (if not always contradict) the imperial rule of the a priori conditions of knowledge by requiring that what appears force its entry onto the scene of the world, advancing in person without a stuntman, double, or any other representative standing in for it (Marion 2002, p. 69).

With this rich imagery Marion aims to show how already grasped reality, through experiences, mastered knowledge and gathered images, may reduce the possibility of phenomena to appear and to be received. Radicalizing the phenomenological openness requires the breaking through of our horizon and the entrance of a call from the outside (c.f. the light coming from outside the painting's frame).

What is more, this light in the painting may in itself be open to many interpretations, but for Matthew its meaning seems immediately obvious (Marion 2002, p. 285): it calls him and catches him in surprise by the look of his face. Some of the persons next to him seem to recognize that something is happening here, pointing at him too, others look up in wonder and the light shines on their faces too, still others do not notice what is going on. In a quite literal sense Matthew is depicted here as a screen on which the light shines, making it visible. Matthew looks up and nonverbally asks: 'Me?' This is his response and this response makes him visible as the one to whom has been given, the one who Marion renames as gifted (p. 287).

The appearance of the phenomenon of the call, underpinned by Caravaggio's painting, is deconstructed by Marion as distinguishable aspects that precede responsibility. First there is the invisible call (p. 283). This call can be regarded as a manifestation in itself and by itself that lends itself to its reception (p. 287). But the call itself is not a visible signal; rather it remains indistinct and outside the picture's frame, outside any subjective horizon of hearing and seeing. We can only see the call in the second 'stage', i.e. its manifestation in which it becomes visible in Matthew's figure that makes the call visible, which Marion calls the responsal (pp. 287-288, emphasis in text).

By admitting itself to be the target of the call, therefore by responding with the simple interrogative "Me?" the gifted opens a field for manifestation by lending itself to its reception and the retention of its impact (p. 287).

The responsal is the first response of the gifted, but 'nothing like an optional act, an arbitrary choice, or a chance' (p. 288), for the call is not pulled into a subject's horizon but rather the gifted (the one to whom has been given) lets the call speak, lets the call phenomenalize (p. 288). Here the gifted is like a prism, a screen, on which the phenomenon becomes visible, and like the prism or the screen, the gifted has nothing to say about what becomes visible (p. 288). And third, after that, there may (or may not be) a belayed response. This third 'stage' leading to responsibility is the belated response that is the transforming effect upon the gifted. The reconceptualizations of the subject and of responsibility are intertwined, as the following quotation shows:

All the determinations by which the phenomenon gives itself and shows itself starting from itself to the point of exerting a call [...] are concentrated and transcribed for the gifted in the responsibility that he suffers from them. The pertinent question is not deciding if the gifted is first responsible toward the Other (Levinas) or rather in debt to itself (Heidegger), but understanding that these two modes of responsibility flow from its originary function of having to respond in the face of the phenomenon as such, that is to say, such as it gives itself (Marion 2002, pp. 293-294).

Here we find his redefinition of responsibility. It is a 'having to respond' that should not be understood as a will that decides about seeing or hearing. Such an understanding would be a metaphysical idea of the will that is opposed by Marion (p. 305). The subject in his view does not decide, but the given (phenomenon) humbles the gifted (p. 305), as the gifted receives much more than one could ever imagine (p. 309). And since responsibility is a matter of (involuntarily) receiving the given (i.e. the phenomenon), this moment is not preceded by any vision or reason. Rather, the gifted 'suffers from having to respond in the face of the phenomenon', Marion states (p. 294), and this suffering consists in the opening of a space that has been unforeseen and unimagined and is therefore filled with fright (p. 306):

Here opens a space of indecision that cannot be imagined without fright: the decision in favor of staging the given as a phenomenon, therefore also that in favor of the reason of things, can be made only without vision or reason since it makes them possible. The responsal decides with nothing other than itself alone (p. 306).

In Marion's rich linguistic terms, relating to grammar: the subject is not in the nominative, nor in the accusative (like with Levinas). Rather, the subject is in the dative: he or she is 'the gifted', i.e. the "unto whom/which" (p. 249), or the one to whom has been given. Here we see the passivity of responsibility in its extreme version: the given gives itself and the gifted receives the self as gifted at the same time (p. 308). Hence the self has the chance to see the self in an overwhelming new space that has come to existence by the shattering of one's previous horizons. Through givenness the self has been given the chance to cross one of the greatest divides that he can cross: his indifference (p. 308).

Concluding this first presentation of Marion's redefinition of responsibility as radical givenness, we argue that this radical phenomenology offers a profound view of responsibility's passive aspect that is not lacking in care ethics, but has been underexposed. In what follows we aim to discern between the various views of responsibility and see what Marion's thoughts may add.

Part C: Four paradigms for thinking responsibility

When we explore the various conceptualizations and meanings that have been given to responsibility, we may disclose beforehand the four paradigms that will emerge from this exploration (see Table. ). The first two paradigms draw upon an analysis and argumentation by care ethicists Eva Feder Kittay ( 1999) and Margaret Urban Walker ( 2007), the third paradigm draws upon Walker as well, but places it in a socio-political context that involves moral learning (Landeweer 2018; Visse et al. 2012). The fourth paradigm entails Marion's view of givenness (Table ).

Table 1

Voluntaristic moral obligations

Vulnerability-responsive moral obligations

Expressive-collaborative moral obligations

Radical givenness

Paradigm: the promise

Paradigm: the other's vulnerability to my actions

Paradigm: social routines and expectations (effected through identities and relations)

Paradigm: involuntarily having to respond to a call entering my ear

Moral basis = the obligation that I assume when I give my word

Moral basis = the needs of another

Moral basis = individually and socially practiced normative expectations

Moral basis: the appearance of a phenomenon

Obligation =
- To whomsoever I made a promise
- Self-assumed, free choice
- I must fulfill my promise

Obligation =
- Arises out of the relationship between one in need and one who is situated to meet the need
- Is situational: when I am in the special position vis-à-vis the other to meet the needs

Obligation =
- Arises out of the social negotiation process between people in practices who undergo those same practices

No pre-existing or arising obligation
Responsibility is a response to a call; the call is nothing more and nothing less than the given opportunity to abandon of indifference

Problems
1. Ignores non-voluntary obligations in existing relations
2. Presupposes a society of equally situated and empowered individuals

Problems
1. Presupposes a 'pragmatic ought' that ignores coercion
2. Ignores how someone comes to be in a position where another is vulnerable to one's actions

Problems
1. Not everyone has the means to participate in negotiations (be 'at the table')
2. Not everyone has negotiation 'skills' and to relate to/resist the powerful normative social practices
3. Assignment of responsibilities is based on implicit assumptions

Problems
Ignores existing power structures, cultural and structural mediation, and bonds of the flesh

View of the subject
- Detached, autonomous agent

View of the subject
- Permeable, dependent, relational subject

View of the subject
- Participant in socio-political and relational practices
- Participant in asymmetric relationships (power)

View of the subject
- Amoral or premoral recipient
- The gifted
- Decentered subject

The first paradigm considers responsibility as something that has been accepted freely, like in a promise (Kittay 1999), that can be determined from a moral standpoint outside practices (Tronto 1993; Van Nistelrooij et al. 2014), and fits within a theoretical-juridical view of morality (Walker 2007). The underlying anthropological assumption is that all moral agents are equal as individuals with equal rights ('individual-based equality', Kittay 1999) and that moral questions therefore centre around which rights I have as an individual and what rights others may assert. The emphasis is on the moral agent as a free, unconnected, detached individual, who is both capable of and in the position to voluntarily and autonomously assuming an obligation (or not). Kittay draws upon Robert Goodin's work Protecting the Vulnerable ( 1985) when she calls this the voluntaristic model and contrasts it to the vulnerability model (Kittay 1999, pp. 54-55). In this voluntaristic model a moral obligation is not only voluntarily assumed, the obligation is also limited in two ways, viz. to the one to whom the promise is made and to the promise's content, hence to do that (and only that) which I promised (p. 55). This model becomes even more clear when one looks at what is left out by these restrictions: the agent acting according to this model does not owe anything to others (a person, a group of persons, nor society as a whole) that he has not committed himself to. No pre-existing relationship or community like a family or a community leads to a moral obligation that can be forced upon him or her without allowing the freedom of the agent to decide about it by making a well-considered deliberation on interests, values, norms and aims. The only foundation that is shared with others is the expectation that anyone who incurs an obligation freely by making a promise, honors such a promise (p. 55).

The second paradigm is rooted in a different understanding of what it means to be human, of morality, and of moral epistemology. This paradigm takes into account social practices in which power is always a determining factor. This paradigm first of all acknowledges connections: everybody is equal, because everybody has come to be somebody because somebody else has taken care of ('mothered') him or her, as expressed by Kittay in her famous quote: 'We are all- equally-some mother's child' (Kittay 1999, p. 25, emphasis in text). Hence we are equal as human beings because of our connectedness ('connection-based equality', Kittay 1999, p. 66). Moral questions are intertwined with this connectedness, since we find ourselves in a network of relations in which concrete responsibilities are distributed, accepted and deflected through social practices (Walker 2007).

These responsibilities are central issues in the moral questions that are asked in this paradigm: what are my responsibilities and normative expectations towards others and what are those of others towards me? Kittay profoundly analyses these questions when she considers the moral nature of dependency relations (Kittay 1999, pp. 49-73). Since in this paradigm vulnerability and dependency are acknowledged as characteristics of the human condition, moral obligations arise in existing relationships and in situations in which the moral agent is in the position to help (Kittay 1999, p. 55). On the one hand power can be discovered in these practices, as some can demand of others to fulfil their responsible tasks. On the other hand, power also serves as a 'lens' through which we can look at these practices, asking ourselves how some come to be in the position in which they have to care for others, even if this is at the cost of their own self-interest or wellbeing (Tronto 1993; Kittay 1999; Walker 2007). These questions ask for a socio-political view of care, that Kittay develops by assigning responsibilities and moral obligations not only to the ones giving care, but also to those receiving care and to society as a whole. The latter two have to take into account that caregivers are vulnerable too. This makes care recipients-to the best of their abilities-obliged to avoid damage for those taking care. And since the caregivers' vulnerability results from their suspended interests, the affective bond, and their concern for the charge's wellbeing, social support is needed too, so that care does not become a liability to one's own wellbeing (Kittay 1999, pp. 65-66).

To conclude with regard to the second paradigm, responsibilities are rooted in the human condition of vulnerability. And since we all share this vulnerability, society as a whole depends upon some to take care of all of us. Therefore care is not limited to interpersonal and temporary caring relationships, but these should be nested within broader caring relations that embrace the needs of each, and as such care as a practice is the foundation of our society. Or to put it in Kittay's own words:

For the dependency worker to meet her responsibilities to another, it must be the responsibility of the larger social order to provide a structure whereby she, too, may be treated as a mother's child ( 1999, p. 70).

The third paradigm draws upon Walker's collaborative-expressive view on responsibility practices. Basic is the idea that morality is not disconnected from social practices: in an interplay of social practices and one's participation, one gains 'moral understandings' (Walker 2007) on one's identity, relations and the values that are shared socially. In social practices some identities (characterized by gender, class or ethnicity) have necessarily and ideologically been linked to servitude or care (Walker 2007, pp. 153-176), and even if the ideological foundation of these necessary identities is no longer valid nowadays, the connected cultural expectations have not disappeared (Van Heijst 2005, p. 305). As a result, moral agents are consistently confronted with social environments that expect them to either take or refrain from certain responsibilities, and deviations from these patterns of responsibilities are characterized by a tension between social context and individual decisions.

Walker's view of morality as collectively expressed has been placed in the context of a socio-political learning process (Landeweer 2018; Visse et al. 2012). Responsibilities are 'negotiated' through a mutual learning process of people where they aim to understand what matters to them, why it matters and what their underlying commitments are (Visse and Abma 2018). People find themselves in practices of 'mutually allotting, assuming or deflecting responsibilities' (ibid, p. 67). They continuously attune, interpret and anticipate responsibilities, either consciously or implicitly, and are subject to power asymmetries while 'negotiating' on their perspectives. In this view on responsibility, moral expectations are not fixed and context free, but fluid, intertwined with place, time, the stage of their practice, identities and the nature and quality of relationships. Despite the meticulous attention for facilitating conditions for learning and negotiation (Visse et al. 2015; Landeweer et al. 2010), the problem with this view is that the subject is still assumed as an agent, able to articulate or 'capture' what matters in particular practices through thorough research.

Furthermore, in all these three paradigms, moral agents appear as subjects who can reject their assigned responsibilities-even if they are subjected to a social, cultural and political context which leaves them little room for critical reflection upon their social and moral position. In these models, however, little attention is paid to the pre-reflexive realms of experience. These three paradigms can be labeled as 'ontic' ways of looking at responsibilities. Epistemologically, we can 'know' responsibility practices by analysis of what occurs in the reality 'out there', like geographers mapping responsibilities. A different, phenomenological view on perception and thinking about responsibilities would be attentive to our pre-reflexive, implicit dimensions of experience. This is what the fourth paradigm is grounded upon. It draws upon Marion's phenomenological view that has been illustrated at the start of our analysis. In comparison to the previous paradigms, his view sheds light on a different, ontological dimension and introduces the 'givenness' of responsibility. Both in the voluntaristic and in the vulnerability-responsive paradigm, the focus of attention is on the moral agent. Whether one assumes or rejects responsibilities; whether one has been assigned or coerced into the responsible position for answering to the needs of others; or whether one's responsibilities result from the interplay of powerful normative social practices and negotiation, responsibilities are primarily taken as something one owns and has to do. Differing from these paradigms, the focus of Marion's analysis draws our attention to the passive side. Here the moral agent first of all is not a moral agent, but an amoral or premoral recipient of a sign, a signal, an insight, a call, or whatever forceful sight or sound it is that forces itself upon the self. This self is the gifted, who is not an agent yet. In other words: the relationality of the self is stressed to the point where one is no longer 'one', but always secondary to phenomena, to what arises, and to an invisible call. For first there is a phenomenon that appears rather than a subject that thinks, sees, and hears. As we saw, Marion is especially interested in opening the horizon that in much philosophy is set by this ego of the Cartesian cogito. This ego of consciousness, awareness and (Husserlian) intentionality still has a containing effect on phenomena, preventing the appearance of phenomena that cannot be grasped, take us by surprise, are beyond our imagination and exceed intelligence.

However, phenomenology and such language (horizon, appearance of phenomena, surprise, exceeding intelligence) may be strange to ethicists. We are aware that we need to construct an argumentative connection between ethics and this radical phenomenology. We believe that our view of responsibility gains by including this passively receiving aspect as it puts the subject into perspective in two ways. First, the subject is no longer the centre of responsibility but understood through what has been given, and this understanding decreases the burdensome centrality of a caregiver's position. The decrease consists in the self's shift that is illustrated by Marion in linguistic terms: a shift from the first person's perspective (nominative) to the third person's perspective (dative), meaning that responsibility starts elsewhere, not foreseen, unexpected, and is received as affect. As such it invites, it gives the possibility to respond to a call, to abandon indifference, to enter a commitment to a need. Second, Marion's view offers the possibility of an increased understanding of the caregiver's situation, since it suspends the normative and thereby allows for a non-judgmental look. Through the de-centring of the subject and allowing for phenomena to appear from a non-normative stance, a more complex reality of caring practices can be understood. Especially with regard to a concept like responsibility, that is so often referred to in an individualizing normative sense ('you should have taken the responsibility to...') this seems appropriate. It helps to refrain from simplification and blame.

Hence Marion's reconceptualization of responsibility must not be understood in a moral sense. A subject is more than a moral person and responsibility is also something that Marion aims to disconnect from morality first and analyse in a phenomenological way. So Marion's work is that of a radical phenomenologist who deliberately disconnects phenomena and the self from ethics. Therefore, his phenomenology is focused upon phenomena appearing as themselves, which he strongly emphasizes, rather than on 'how they are experienced' or 'how they are performed'. To give an example: in an article on love and charity (Marion 1994) he expressly stipulates that these phenomena should not be 'devaluated'-as he calls it-by making them objects of 'making or doing': 'making love' and 'doing charity' are expressions that 'prostitute' and 'betray' the phenomena 'love' and 'charity' as phenomena (ibid, p. 168). In other words: it must be possible to look at 'love' and at 'charity' as appearing phenomena in themselves, to discover what occurs, other than a tool, act or aim of an agent. In the same vein we claim that responsibility as phenomenon can be understood as the ongoing appearance of a call for responsibility; and refrain from any objectification (prostitution, betrayal) of responsibility by connecting it to verbs like 'accepting, assuming, deflecting', which in turn presuppose a subject, and a subject's horizon.

Part D: Connecting the paradigms with the vignette

From the point of view offered by the voluntaristic model (paradigm 1), the nurse's responsibility for the shoes is non-existing, and her actions are best characterized as something supererogatory. She never explicitly promised or implicitly committed herself in any way to take care of the shoes. Perhaps the nurse's hospital (like probably many if not all hospitals in and outside the Netherlands) has explicitly rejected any responsibility or liability for patients' belongings. So her search for the shoes, the arrangements she makes, let alone the time she gives to the patient in his distress, are at most morally admirable, but in no way her responsibility.

From the point of view of Kittay's vulnerability-responsive model (paradigm 2), the nurse was rightly affected by the patient's vulnerability for travelling without shoes. She was not only present when the disappearance of the shoes was discovered, she was also in the best position to do something about it. She had knowledge of the previously transferred patient and she had access to his personal information. Hence her position allowed and required her to take adequate action. However, Kittay's model extends the moral obligation. It is not only about the action owed by the best situated actor, but it requires a caregiver (or dependency worker in her vocabulary) to become transparant and responsive to the charge's concern, since this-and primarily and exclusively this-should be leading in care. So the nurse may be acting responsibly, her response is not responsive since it at first lacks openness for the 'real' problem. As a parallel to Kittay's story of caregiving to her daughter ('Not my way, Sesha. Your way. Slowly.' Kittay 1999, pp. 157-161), giving care is not about doing things the way that the caregiver wants, feels urged, is obliged, is pressed or prescribed to do. Rather, giving care is about giving oneself over to the other. In this story, Sesha's caregiver Peggy tries very hard to do walking exercises with Sesha, Kittay's daughter with severe mental retardation and cerebral palsy. But these efforts are in vain, since Sesha appears to be completely occupied with something else. Sesha's eyes are fixed on the falling leaves in Central Park (p. 157). This is what 'vulnerability-responsiveness' is all about: one needs to know what the charge is (most) concerned with. And care needs to be attuned to that, therefore the caregiver as a caregiver is required to be altruistic, i.e. be transparant to the charge's needs, and not have them blocked or refracted by one's own needs (p. 52).

To fully understand the assignment of responsibilities in the case from Walker's perspective (paradigm 3), we would search for more information on past experiences and routines of the nurse and the patient and his wife and daughter, as Walker assumes that personal identities and their histories are constitutive for the assignment and acceptance of responsibilities. Previously we argued that the nurse could have acted responsibly, but she was not responsive to the real problem (the man having to leave without shoes). However, what expectation was beyond the man's crying? Before the nurse can accept responsibility, we should-in line with the 'vulnerability-responsive' model-be open to what the other's (moral) needs are. Her response, to cover his legs with a blanket, focused on a social solution, because the man experienced a lack of decorum and didn't want to be seen on his socks by other people. But we may wonder if this was merely a social issue. Maybe he didn't want to walk on socks for himself, to protect his personal dignity. Next, maybe his need for a 'proper' entrance into his new home could have been responded toward in other ways as well. At this point, we don't know. In order to fully understand the case example from Walker's perspective, we would need to contextualize the case example ('thicken' it with narrative) in order to fully understand the practice of responsibility that unfolded in this particular care. We would, for example, also inform about how the nurse and the patient got to know each other, how their relationship looked like and what routines developed between them (as compared to other caring relationships in this setting) during the time the patient was hospitalized. We would reconstruct the case by including the dialogue between the nurse and man. Next, we would be open to learn about the socio-political context of the residential home: this could relate to the way the nurse responded to the patients' need and whether and how she usually accepts responsibility for the patient's needs. Thus, this paradigm would be interested in the context and historicity of their relationship, as well as any possible opposing factors outside the context of their relationship (e.g. institutional policies).

Now if we turn to Marion's radical phenomenology (paradigm 4) we can see that when the nurse becomes aware of the patient's actual need, she becomes a different kind of agent. She expresses this very well herself. She says that her arrangements have not comforted the patient, but have rather deepened his sorrow and sadness. When asked 'what did you do next', she literally says: 'Nothing, I couldn't do magic and let the shoes appear, could I?' And when the researcher asks again: 'So what did you do next?' she speaks of her reception (first) and consequent response to the patient's concern. She sits down with him, makes physical contact (taking his hand), expresses how she was affected by the sadness that she received from him ('[I] said that I regretted it so much that he was sad') and this response has the effect that he quiets down. And then there is also a practical solution: the covering of the feet with a blanket. What we see here, is a nurse first trying to take care of a problem. As soon as the shoes appear to be missing, she starts acting. When she thinks that she has arranged an adequate solution, and therefore has answered to her responsibility, she appears to be wrong. When asked what she did when meeting the patient's disappointment, she says: 'nothing'. But what she is actually left with after this moment, is the reception of the man's call. Now his need 'enters' her, causing her to open up, to abandon her active mode, and become responsive. She turns into a 'passive' receiver and thus makes herself a 'vessel' of the responsibility that can live through her and her relationship with the man and others, even though activities are involved (sitting down, taking his hand, expressing regret). This passivity consists in her reception of his emotions, of his bodily presence, of everything that is contained in that particular situation. Even though at the start of the vignette, she had received his practical need for his shoes which prompted her into action, here she receives in a different mode. Her receptivity is no longer on the practical level of 'correcting mistakes' and trying to accomplish good care for this patient, but rather on the level of what it means for this patient. What it means to him is expressed and seeks a receiver, lends itself to be listened to, to affect another, inviting an affective rather than an active response. This call is not so much a call expressed by the man verbally. Instead, it is a call that is pre-reflexive, beyond our knowing, grounded in the being of that situation itself.

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Me? The invisible call of responsibility and its promise for care ethics: a phenomenological view

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Care ethics emphasizes responsibility as a key element for caring practices (Gilligan 1982; Noddings 1984; Tronto 1993, 2013; Held 2006; Walker 2007; Kohlen 2009; Van Heijst 2011; Heier 2016; Van Nistelrooij 2015; Visse et al. 2015; Visse and Abma 2018). If responsibility is not taken or accepted, caring does not occur.

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"The Obligations of the Wealthy and Successful"

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"The Obligations of the Wealthy and Successful"

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The argument that no billionaire is ethical.

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Pictured left to right: Billionaires Michael Bloomberg ($60 billion), Jeff Bezos ($119.9 billion), and Mark Zuckerberg ($68.8 billion). Net worths valued as of March 2, 2020 via Forbes.com. Photos courtesy of Tribune News Service

"What would you do with $5 billion?" That's a question one of my professors posed as an icebreaker during roll call.

Some students answered they would buy an island. Some said they would invest, some listed the lavish items they would purchase. Some claimed they would donate a portion to charity or research.

However, many people fail to realize how much $1 billion really is. If you spend $10,000 a day, it would take you 274 years to spend it. If you made $80,000 a year, it would take you 12,500 years to become a billionaire. Why would one person need such a massive amount of money?

Personally, I think that there's no such thing as an ethical billionaire. Becoming a billionaire means exploiting the labor of the masses.

Take Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, for example. His current net worth is a cool $119.9 billion. Although Bezos' base salary is a modest $81,840 and his total compensation (which includes security and benefits) is $1,681,840, the majority of his wealth comes from the 16 percent stake in Amazon that he owns. The company is valued to be over $1 trillion as of January 2020.

Is it ethical for Bezos to be worth nearly $120 billion, when Amazon warehouse employees make $15 an hour and skip bathroom breaks to avoid being fired by machines monitoring their productivity? Is it ethical when employees have to give back some of their meager income in taxes, but the company as a whole paid no federal taxes in 2018?

Was it ethical for Steve Jobs to be worth $10.2 billion, while his factory employees in China were living in such devastating conditions that they had suicide nets outside their dormitory windows?

Is it ethical for anyone to have that massive amount of money, while there are people dying because they can't afford the life saving medications or health care that they need?

You can argue that some billionaires donate a portion of their wealth to philanthropic causes, and that should be enough. Let me remind you that last year, Bezos donated a whopping $98.5 million to charities across the U.S. helping the homeless - a mere .082 percent of his net worth. That's 2,814.286 times the salary of a warehouse employee.

Bezos also bought the most expensive house in Los Angeles: a $165 million purchase, only .138% percent of his net worth. For even more comparison, I made about $10,000 working part-time last year at Fresno State. A purchase that's .138 percent of my income would be $13.80. With that kind of money, I could buy a double quarter pounder with cheese combo meal from McDonald's, not a whole house in one of the most expensive cities in California.

Sure, you might argue that trickle-down economics will bring the money back to the working class and be good for the economy. But in reality, instead of all of that money going toward the cost of labor, to paying employees fair wages and benefits, it goes straight to those who are already wealthy: the CEOs and owners.

Billionaires hoard the wealth created by other people, yet people continue to support and defend billionaires.

Eat the rich.

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There's no such thing as an ethical billionaire - The Collegian

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"What would you do with $5 billion?" That's a question one of my professors posed as an icebreaker during roll call. Some students answered they would buy an island. Some said they would invest, some listed the lavish items they would purchase. Some claimed they would donate a portion to charity or research.

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"The Obligations of the Wealthy and Successful"

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"The Obligations of the Wealthy and Successful"

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Is wealth ethical?

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In 2017, approximately 5% percent of the world lived on less than 5.50 USD a day. This reality exists while the top one percent of households own 43 percent of all personal wealth. Hence, the question arises: is it ethical to be rich while millions suffer in poverty?

When analysed at the individual level, the answer to this question is not always apparent. Some may say it depends on the way the money was earned, while others will say it depends on that person's efforts to give back to society. Thus, the problem is either with individual wealth, or the way that society is structured to disregard the basic human rights of the poor. Either way, if the wealthy can overindulge themselves while others struggle to survive, morality is askew.

The reality is that approximately 9 million people die of hunger each year, and this number can double because of COVID-19. There are a few basic needs human beings require to ensure their survival and respect for their inherent human dignity however, greed and selfishness seem to be central components of many modern-day societies. Many place the value of money above the value of other human beings and their contribution to accumulating that wealth. Of course, this is not applicable to all wealthy individuals, but the existence of the incredibly wealthy helps to reveal the problem within our societies. More emphasis should be placed on your obligation to assist others. Our societies begin to deteriorate when individuals cannot see beyond their own good fortune.

Increasing taxation or implementing progressive taxes is seen as stifling entrepreneurship and freedom, so there is often not enough redistribution of income. These interventions are crucial in addressing poverty throughout the world. Furthermore, it should be recognised that economic growth would increase if individuals were able to satisfy their basic needs. If more people have the income needed to sustain themselves, then countries will flourish from their consumption of goods and an influx of human ingenuity.

Studies have shown that increased income causes happiness to rise with the poor, but after basic needs are satisfied, happiness is not greatly affected if at all. It suffices to say that we would be a happier world if we seriously addressed the problem of income inequality. With the prevalence of international media, you can no longer live in isolation from global issues. Indeed, it goes beyond throwing money at the problem, and starts at the basic need to value human life and what is necessary for it to thrive. When that value exists, no expense is too high.

Thus, the cost to end poverty is $175 billion per year for 20 years. Though this may seem like a hefty sum, it is only 1% of the total income of the richest countries in the world.The cost seems even more reasonable when compared to the total world income of Therefore, it is not unethical to be rich, but it is unethical to do nothing about the poor. $70 trillion dollars per year.

Published: April 5, 2021
Written by Teddy-Ann Quamina, a WYA North America intern
[1] Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2015).

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In 2017, approximately 5% percent of the world lived on less than 5.50 USD a day. This reality exists while the top one percent of households own 43 percent of all personal wealth. Hence, the question arises: is it ethical to be rich while millions suffer in poverty?