Embodied Care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Feminist Ethics

by Maurice Hamington

Until now, ethicists have said little about the body, limiting their comments on it to remarks made in passing or, at best, devoting a chapter to the subject. Embodied Care is the first work to argue for the body's centrality to care ethics, doing so by analyzing our corporeality at the phenomenological level. It develops the idea that our bodies are central to our morality, paying particular attention to the ways we come to care for one another.
 
Hamington's argues that human bodies are "built to care"; as a result, embodiment must be recognized as a central factor in moral consideration. He takes the reader on an exciting journey from modern care ethics to Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of the body and then to Jane Addams's social activism and philosophy. The ideas in Embodied Care do not lead to yet another competing theory of morality; rather, they progress through theory and case studies to suggest that no theory of morality can be complete without a full consideration of the body.
 

181 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Regan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hamington argues not for an ethics of care, but that our bodies are built for caring. He takes caring to be "foundation of morality rooted in our body and bodily practices." His contribution to the literature is to bring together phenomenological (via Merleau-Ponty) and American Pragmatism (via Addams) into focus via a feminist lens. We cannot ignore the facts of our bodies in moral decision making. Because we are always embodied, we must have theories that do not abstract away from it, but rather remind of this inescapable fact. This seems an obvious point, but there you have it.

Blame it on Descartes that it took so long. And Kant.