The Ethics of Care and Empathy

by Michael Slote

Eminent moral philosopher Michael Slote argues that care ethics presents an important challenge to other ethical traditions and that a philosophically developed care ethics should, and can, offer its own comprehensive view of the whole of morality. Taking inspiration from British moral sentimentalism and drawing on recent psychological literature on empathy, he shows that the use of that notion allows care ethics to develop its own sentimentalist account of respect, autonomy, social justice, and deontology. Furthermore, he argues that care ethics gives a more persuasive account of these topics than theories offered by contemporary Kantian liberalism. The most philosophically rich and challenging exploration of the theory and practice of care to date, The Ethics of Care and Empathy also shows the manifold connections that can be drawn between philosophical issues and leading ideas in the fields of psychology, education, and women's studies.

Genres: Philosophy

Hardcover

First published January 6, 2007

Reviews

[Regan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Care Ethics developed in the 1980s largely in response to Carol Gilligan's groundbreaking work on moral development in children "In a Different Voice." She found that there were two distinct moral attitudes which roughly conformed to sex/gender. In moral decision making young girls tended to emphasize context and connection and caring, while boys exhibited a universal "rule-based" justice perspective. While there has been much speculation on the so-called naturalness of this division (it is probably the case that the distinction has more to do with gendered socialization than with any natural fact about boys/girls), Gilligan's work was seminal insofar as it introduced Care as a viable moral attitude(and even a corrective) to the Justice perspective.

In the wake of her work, many feminists and moral philosophers worked on developing a more robust theory of Care Ethics. While many philosophers hoped that Care Ethics could supplement and augment Justice-based ethics, and worked to that end, Michael Slote argues instead that Care Ethics should (and more importantly CAN) stand alone.

He argues that the Justice perspective (which can roughly be mapped onto Kantianism/liberalism) ultimately fails as a theory because it insufficiently values love and interpersonal relationships. According to Slote this insufficiency is reason to discard the Justice perspective altogether.

There are many interesting and novel arguments in this very economical and readable book. I'll just note some of the key features of his thinking. First, Slote is a moral sentimentalist (like Hume), which means that he believes that feelings and emotions (not reason) play a major role in our moral thinking. Second, he thinks that we can (and should) develop a theory of moral action based on one particular emotion: empathy. Roughly an action can be determined to be morally good insofar as it demonstrates a motivation of empathetic care/concern for an another (he leaves open that his care could be extended to non-humans animals, and objects, even property).

Slote uses current psychological studies on the development of the capacity for empathy in children to develop an account of how we might inculcate and grow our capacity for empathy, and create a more empathic citizenry. I found it surprising that Slote is the first Care Ethicist to develop a rigorous theory of empathy, mostly because the concept seems so obviously crucial to any C.E. account. (How did others miss it??)

Many objections to care ethics stem from its inherent partiality, and seeming inability to address distant others. Slote concedes that it is a partialist account, but denies that we cannot develop empathic concern for distant groups (oppressed minorities, the poverty of the Third World, etc). He believes that care ethics can even function as a model for political (not just private) communities.

Some of his most interesting philosophical work centers on the claim that an empathy based care ethics can give more intuitive (and nuanced) answers to moral dilemmas than a utilitarian and the deontologist can. He spends several chapters demonstrating that a non-rational (sentimentalist) ethics can still produce many of the same answers a deontologist might, while not being (in essence) an emotionless robot.

I actually find myself sympathetic to a sentimentalist account, since I believe with Hume that reason is not motivational. Slote leaves a space for reason in his account, but it is not a very large space. I'm hesitant to agree with Slote that a vigilant criticality (required by other sentimentalists like Martha Nussbaum) is undesirable. He believes criticality attenuates feelings of love and empathy, and thus should be curbed. I understand the concern, but I worry that a sentimentalist account that isn't properly critical would be woefully at risk of reproducing and reinforcing the problems it purports to solve.

[Evaggelia Nikolaou · Rating 4 out of 5]

''In the first place, if we really assume that women are more empathic than men, then we probably have to assume that men are, on average, more adept than women at making and following rules or universal principles. So if our main theoretical choice in ethics is between Liberalism and care ethics, then we may be unable to avoid saying that one sex/gender is superior to the other. The question would then be: Which theory, Liberalism or care ethics, gives a better account of ethical phenomena? And the way one answered that question would determine which gender was superior.''

[Lily Ruban · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In the first place, the overall difference in empathic tendencies between men and women might be due largely to differences in the way men and women have been raised, socialized, or educated. If empathy is primarily shaped by practices of child-rearing and socialization, then different practices could lead to men becoming much more empathic than they are, on the whole, nowadays. In particular, if we adopted a care-ethical approach to our social practices and institutions, we could encourage/educate everyone to be empathically caring in relation to others, and male displays of emotion, nurturing, and altruism generally wouldn’t be devalued or looked down on (by males) in the way they tend to be at present.19 (In the past 40 years, society has already moved in this direction to a considerable extent.) These changes would presumably lead men to be much more empathic and caring (and more involved, for example, in child-rearing) than they are, on the whole, at present. But would they, could they, entirely close the ‘morality gap’ that (according to care ethics) exists between men and women?

Quite possibly not. A good deal of the evidence concerning the greater empathic tendencies of girls and women derives from studies indicating that having, at various stages, higher levels of testosterone makes boys and men more aggressive and less socially perceptive and empathic than girls and women. (Aggressiveness and empathic openness to the needs/feelings of others do seem like contrary character traits.) There is a large and growing literature on this subject,20 and it seems to give us reason to hold that there will inevitably be differences in men’s and women’s empathicness, even if we do all we can to change social practices and attitudes in accordance with care-ethical (or any other) moral ideals or standards. An advocate of care ethics (along the lines of the present book) would then, presumably, have to agree/admit that, in the sphere of morality, women are basically superior to men, and we can ask once again: Is this something men can or could find acceptable? More parti- cularly, could a man reasonably and willingly admit that, for reasons having to do with (their higher levels of) testosterone, men are fundamentally and on the whole less morally capable than women? "

[Brian Hull · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is reason to believe that compassion is a better starting point than empathy for moving one from concern to engaging in acts of care.

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main argument of the book is that care ethics is a viable approach to the political as well as the personal, and that a moral outlook rooted in care ethics cannot be integrated with the masculinist principle of justice, because the latter necessitates a lack of empathy.

Once this has been articulated, most of the rest of the book is mired in philosophical tinkering (at least to me as a layman). Not as revolutionary or exciting as billed (is it wrong to suspect that Carol Gilligan's glowing praise might be because he endorses her ideas whole heartedly without ever really challenging or modifying them?). I found the stuff on the posited gender split between care and justice particularly feeble (and something Gilligan deals with much more elegantly), perhaps because Slote never acknowledges or interrogates his own place in this supposed split, as a passionate male advocate for care.

[Hall's Bookshop · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slote's intervention is to point to empathy as a way of resolving or unifying a number of threads within the ethics of care, and consequently it addresses both general and specific issues raised by care ethics in ways that will also be important and useful for people looking from the outside in, as it were. I confess that I won't be abandoning my own preference for virtue ethics, but I nonetheless found the experiment interesting. His test cases, focusing on our moral intuitions, I found persuasive, even if I did not share the intution in every case (or where I may have shared the intuition, I felt that relevant objections could be made).

As ever, Slote writes in a very readable style, willing to engage closely with arguments without allowing the technicalities get in the way.

[Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slote's intervention is to point to empathy as a way of resolving or unifying a number of threads within the ethics of care, and consequently it addresses both general and specific issues raised by care ethics in ways that will also be important and useful for people looking from the outside in, as it were. I confess that I won't be abandoning my own preference for virtue ethics, but I nonetheless found the experiment interesting. His test cases, focusing on our moral intuitions, I found persuasive, even if I did not share the intution in every case (or where I may have shared the intuition, I felt that relevant objections could be made).

As ever, Slote writes in a very readable style, willing to engage closely with arguments without allowing the technicalities get in the way.