Caring Actions

Steyl, Steven

doi:10.1017/hyp.2020.12

Cited by 18 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…And Noddings is not alone in defending a view like this. Kittay too sees care as necessarily successful” (Steyl 2020b, 290; emphasis in original). He notes that “Success criteria also serve certain discursive ends.…”

Section: Implications For Care Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Failures to meet needs certainly represent some sort of disvalue, but that is not always the sort of moral value that ethicists usually attribute to actions. (Steyl 2020b, 291; emphasis in original)Whether or not a care ethics should include a success criterion, 31 it remains the case that if the cared-for's needs are not met, then there is the opportunity for improving care. However, is Steyl right to distinguish, as he has, between the (moral) evaluation of caring actions and their description?…”

Section: Implications For Care Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We ought to prefer accounts of care that make a distinction between success and failure within their concept(s) of care, instead of exporting failure to some other moral concept that is not the ethic's keystone moral concept. (Steyl 2020b, 291–92; emphasis in original)My worry is that using “success” at all with “care” takes the ethic toward a binary I have been at pains to argue against throughout this article. It is preferable for a care ethics to include degrees of care rather than care or not.…”

Section: Implications For Care Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implications For Care Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Degrees of Care: Success, Recognition, and Completion

Bennett

2023

Hypatia

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Care ethics has attracted much scholarly attention since its inception in the 1980s. As befits a moral theory, which is how it is frequently perceived, those working in the field have increasingly sought to clarify and make robust elements central to the project. This article hopes to offer a small but important contribution to this iterative process. I make a case for resisting what is characterized as the recognition claim found in the work of Joan Tronto, Nel Noddings, and Eva Feder Kittay. This is the claim that for an action to be caring it is necessarily recognized as such by whomever is being cared for. I explicate the arguments pertaining to this issue in these authors’ writings and conclude that not only do the arguments fall short of showing the necessity for including this aspect in an ethics of care, but I make preliminary arguments as to the implications for resisting the inclusion of the recognition claim. The thrust of these suggestions is that care ethics is a better moral theory when it admits to degrees of care rather than taking a binary view.

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Section: Implications For Care Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implications For Care Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implications For Care Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implications For Care Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Degrees of Care: Success, Recognition, and Completion

Bennett

2023

Hypatia

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“…While Steyl's own proposal is tied to his argument for a virtue ethical basis for care theory, several of his clarifications are helpful for care theorists of any stripe. For instance, his distinction between mere care and good care, following the intuition that an action may count as caring without being exemplary, cuts through the field's frequent ambiguity around descriptive and normative claims (Steyl, 2020, p. 287). Steyl keeps care as a descriptive act‐type, which is then subject to a number of valuations.…”

Section: The Metaethical Critiquementioning

confidence: 99%

From care ethics to pluralist care theory: The state of the field

Gary

2022

Philosophy Compass

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In a moment where needs for care are acute and their provision precarious, feminist care ethics has gained new relevance as a framework for understanding and responding to necessary interdependence. This article reviews and evaluates two long‐standing critiques of care ethics in light of this recent research. First, I assess what I call the pluralist feminist critique, or the dispute over the ability of care ethics to address the needs and histories of a range of marginalized subjects. I identify two forms of this critique: the first disputes the biased starting points shaping the development of the theory, and the second concerns the weaponization of care in support of domination. Although these critiques are well‐established, I draw attention to recent responses that move care theory in generative directions. I argue that the pluralist feminist critique demands both self‐critical transformation in dialog with other feminist schools of thought and a robust account of care ethics' normative authority. I then take up critiques those levied by mainstream ethicists concerned with care theory's adequacy as an ethical approach. I show that recent work on normative authority, conceptual uniqueness, and the grounding of responsibility must be engaged before care theory can be dismissed as “under‐theorized.” In articulating these two sets of critiques and evaluating recent rebuttals to them, I argue for a pluralist feminist theory of care within which strands informed by varying philosophical schools and methods can coexist.

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Care as a Thick Ethical Concept

Chadha-Sridhar

2023

Res Publica

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Philosophers who study care—most often, care ethicists—are involved in an ongoing discussion about the concept of care. Despite the significant progress made in this discussion, certain conflicting images of care seem to persist in the literature. On one hand, as feminist theorists across disciplines have highlighted, care is a complex social practice that is mired in inequality and injustice. The deeply gendered nature of caring and the unequal division of care-work creates and cements structural inequalities. On the other hand, care is also thought of as a moral value or an ideal. The ethics of care—a moral theory with decidedly feminist roots—is predicated on the idea that caring is somehow morally valuable. A discrepancy thus arises: care is a social practice that compounds injustices. But it is also a moral value. What is it about care that makes it malleable to such variations? To pick out this complexity and capture the conceptual nuances at play, this paper suggests that we frame the concept of care as a thick ethical concept. I will first demonstrate why this framing is helpful. Then, I will provide accounts of the descriptive and evaluative elements of the concept of care. I hope to show that it is through a thick conceptual framing that we can make sense of care—both as a complex social practice and an important moral value in the worlds that we inhabit.

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Caring Actions

Cited by 18 publications

References 42 publications

Degrees of Care: Success, Recognition, and Completion

Degrees of Care: Success, Recognition, and Completion

From care ethics to pluralist care theory: The state of the field

Care as a Thick Ethical Concept

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