Ethics and Phenomenology by Wisnewski Jeremy. Sanders Mark & Jeremy Wisnewski

Author:Wisnewski, Jeremy.,Sanders, Mark & Jeremy Wisnewski [Sanders, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780739174869
Publisher: Lexington Books, a division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Care As Bodily Performance

Born out of feminist analysis, care ethics as a distinctive moral category of inquiry is only a quarter of a century old (by comparison the language of virtue ethics is over 2500 years old). Given its infancy, a precise generally accepted definition of care ethics has yet to be established although a number of theorists have made helpful contributions to its understanding. Care ethics is a relational approach to morality predicated on the connected, social nature of human existence that values contextual and affective knowledge. Philosopher Virginia Held offers five features of care ethics: 1. An attention to the needs of others for whom we take responsibility. 2. A respect for emotion in the form of affective knowledge. 3. A valorization of moral particularism. 4. A reconceptualization of the distinction between public and private spheres. 5. An acknowledgement of the interdependence of human beings.31It is Held's fifth point, care ethic's ability to transcend the Enlightenment legacy of liberal individualism, that ultimately finds the most benefit from an interrogation of Merleau-Ponty's work.

What care ethics is not, is a closed system of adjudication. Unlike the moral calculus of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, or the formulations of the categorical imperative by Immanual Kant, or the Decalogue of the Hebrew Scriptures, care ethics offers no clear rubric for determining right action. Care ethicists are not opposed to moral rubrics but they recognize that these are tools or shortcuts and do not constitute a comprehensive understanding of morality as is often believed. As alluded to earlier, in the eschewing of ethical formulas, care strongly resembles Beauvoir's ethics of ambiguity. Beauvoir describes, "Ethics does not furnish recipes any more than do science and art."32 Just as care does not represent a closed system of ethics, the body is not a closed vessel for Merleau-Ponty. The body opens up to the perceptual phenomena of the world in a radically continuous manner that defies traditional divisions between the knower and the known. Merleau-Ponty did not intend to construct an ethical theory as traditionally understood in philosophy. Yet, for Merleau-Ponty, the perceptual body points to embodied wisdom that can contribute to ethical understanding. In particular, Merleau-Ponty consistently employs language of connection such as when he describes the relation of the senses and the sensible as entering "into a sympathetic relation" that mirrors care ethicists attempt to valorize connectivity. The open-ended nature of care ethics and Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of the body make for an intriguing synergy. In Embodied Care, I offered the following definition of care ethics to account for its corporeal dimension: "care denotes an approach to personal and social morality that shifts ethical considerations to context, relationships, and affective knowledge in a manner that can be fully understood only if care's embodied dimension is recognized. Care is committed to the flourishing and growth of individuals yet acknowledges our interconnectedness and interdependence."33 Although this is not a generally accepted definition of care ethics either, it does capture the overlooked embodied dimension of care.

Touch holds an important position in caring, albeit a relatively underexplored one.

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