LFU:online

Institut für Philosophie Institut für Philosophie

Kanchana Mahadevan Kanchana Mahadevan

602038

SE Ethik II: Care Ethics and Critical Theory

SE 2

5

Block

keine Angabe

Englisch

Week 1 May 25 2023: INTRODUCTION TO THE DIALECTIC OF CARE ETHICS AND CRITICAL THEORY

Week 1 May 26, 2023: CARE ETHICS- FROM SECOND WAVE FEMINISM TO POLITICAL THEORY

Week 2 June 1, 2023: AN OVERVIEW OF CRITICAL THEORY WITH A FOCUS ON JÜRGEN HABERMAS

Week 2 June 2, 2023: CRITICAL THEORY ON CARE ETHICS: HABERMAS ON GILLIGAN, THE NEED FOR CRITIQUE IN NURSING ETHICS

Week 3 June 9, 2023: CARE ETHICS AND ITS CRITIQUE OF CRITICAL THEORY: FEMINIST ANXIETIES TOWARDS CRITICAL THEORY

Week 4 June 15 and June 16, 2023: POSTCOLONIAL ARTICULATIONS OF CARE AND CRITIQUE; RETHINKING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CRITIQUE AND CARE

This session will introduce the key themes in this course that attempts to engage with the philosophical notions of care and critique that are at odds with each other through their affinities. In this endeavour, the course works with key themes and texts in ethics of care, as well as, critical theory to explore their dialectical relationship. A quick look at their meanings and etymologies in the Merriam Webster dictionary reveals care to have a wider range of meanings than critique, while foregrounding their differences: Care as a noun covers a wide ground: nurture, attention, protection, maintenance, responsibility; as a verb it covers a range of actions nurture/protection/attention/maintenance/being responsible, in short looking after in any of these senses. Care also suggests concern/worry/anxiety. These range of meanings suggest that care is an affective term (Care). Critique, on the other hand, is not closely related to the emotive dimension; on the contrary, it emphasizes discursivity, intellectualism and rationality that maintain a distance from affects. Critique is etymologically derived from critica in Latin, or the the evaluation of literature. Critica in turn is rooted in the Greek kritikḗ that has a feminine dimension of kritikós as in "discerning, capable of judging" (Critique).

The complex etymological nuances of care and critique are both reflected and further refined in their philosophical uses by care ethics and critical theory. Care ethics charts an alternate path to established individualist moral thought and practice through an engagement with relationships, contexts, precariousness and dependencies. Care emphasizes sensitivity to the needs of both the self and others by empathizing, responding and attending to them. Being motivated to practice care in specific situations puts care ethics in the sentimentalist tradition as Nel Noddings notes. It, therefore, has an affective and situation sensitive approach, whereby reasoning is rooted in the concrete. Care ethics is critical of both the deontological and utilitarian moral thought. As Sander-Staudt puts it care “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”. Care ethics emerged by developing women’s feminine work in the private sphere in the writings of Carol Gilligan, Sara Ruddick, Eva Kittay, Annette Baier and others. However, Joan Tronto’s work developed care as a political notion.

In contrast, critical theory with its origins in Frankfurt School and roots in Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx focuses on reason. It adopts and reconstructs the Enlightenment ideal of reflection/reflexivity, the Kantian sapere aude and Marx’s critique to offer a normatively grounded inquiry into inegalitarian and authoritarian social and political relationships. The early theorists Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse articulate an immanent critique of society and its reliance on instrumental reason as dystopian. They even suggest a theoretical project of a unifying comprehensive social theory foregrounding the critic. In contrast, later critical theory with its prominent figure of Jürgen Habermas advocates a practical critical turn that takes the participant perspective in dialoguing with diverse social sciences without privileging the position of the critic (Bohman 2005). Habermas’s work also goes beyond the dystopian approach of the early Frankfurt School to offer the utopian insight of communicative reason.

There are evidently many differences between the perspectives of care and critique, given the former’s engagement with dependencies, practice, particularities and affect and the latter with autonomy, theory, abstraction and reason. These tensions will be outlined in this session.

Primary Sources:

Gilligan, Carol 2003 (1982/1993) “Images of Relationship” In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development Cambridge MA & London: Harvard University Press

Habermas, Jürgen 1971 “The Idea of the Theory of Knowledge as Social Theory” Knowledge and Human Interests Boston: Beacon Press

1974 “Between Philosophy and Science: Marxism as Critique” in his Theory of Practice Boston: Beacon Press

Horkheimer, Max 2002 (1972) “Traditional and Critical Theory” Critical Theory: Selected Essays New York: Continuum

Noddings, Nel 1984 “Why Care about Caring?” Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education Berkeley, LA: University of California Press

Secondary Sources:

Bohman, James 2005 “Critical Theory” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/ accessed April 14, 2023 “Care.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/care. Accessed 15 Apr. 2023. “Critique.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/critique. Accessed 15 Apr. 2023

Sander-Staudt, Maureen “Care Ethics” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy ISSN 2161-0002 https://iep.utm.edu/care-ethics/ Accessed April 15, 2023

Urban, Petr & Lizzy Ward 2020

25.05.2023