Download The Ethic of Care and the Dialectic of Enlightenment

The Ethic of Care and the Dialectic of Enlightenment
By Areti Giannopoulou
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In my paper I argue that feminist philosophers’ venture to reconceive morality in
terms of the ethic of care amounts to critical theory’s attempt to show the limits of the
Enlightenment’s morality and to ‘enlighten the Enlightenment about itself’ (Adorno
and Horkheimer 1972, p.11-18 cited in Sherratt 2000, p.526) but also it points to a
positive moral vision which introduces a new moral ontology.
Adorno and Horkheimer in the Dialectic of Enlightenment seek to find why the
enlightened subject regressed to a primitive condition of immaturity and barbarism,
why the rationality which is a synonym of the enlightenment did not ensure people’s
maturity and peace but it altered to mythology. Their answer to this question is that
the enlightenment identified scientific system with the truth, it identified thought with
calculation and planning. Science is the means by which people approached nature
and rendered it an object that they subjugated. However, “science is a technical
practice, as far removed from reflective consideration of its own goal as are other
forms of labour under the pressure of the system” ( Adorno and Horkheimer 1972,
p.85). “The system is the form of knowledge which copes most proficiently with facts
and supports the individual most effectively in the mastery of nature. It’s principles
are the principles of self-preservation” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1972, p.83).
Consequently, reason being goal and coordination-oriented becomes instrumental and
deprived of any meaning. It becomes an organ of calculation, of planning, neutral in
regard to ends (Adorno and Horkheimer 1972, p.88) and thus it reverts to unreason, to
“a faultless and insubstantial mode of procedure” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1972,
p.90).
Being scientific system synonymous of knowledge and truth informed all the aspects
of life of modern individual and its basic principle, namely that of self-preservation
became “the most probable source of maxims for human conduct” (Adorno and
Horkheimer 1972, p.90). People use their reasoning as a mere medium in order to
achieve their survival and their thought is the organ of expediency and effectivity.
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Their actions are oriented to serving their natural interests and any moral
consideration that seems incompatible with these interests is discarded as metaphysics
and superstition.
Kant tried to light the other dimension of reason that of universality, of humanism and
to ground morality upon reason, however his attempt proved ‘ephemeral’. Kant
confirms that the scientific system constitutes a form of truth (Adorno and
Horkheimer 1972, p.85) and according to him “in the face of scientific reason moral
forces are no less neutral impulses and modes of behavior than the immoral forces”
(Adorno and Horkheimer 1972, p.86). Therefore, system’s principle of selfpreservation and the neutrality of moral motives signify the prevalence of
instrumental reason, of expediency. Also, the formality of Kantian formula of
universal law can lead to immorality: the universal law detaching the notion of duty
from the notions of ends, purposes and wants, and by just following the principle of
non contradiction and consistency can provide a sanction and a motive for the duties
that a cruel authority may propose (MacIntyre, 1998, p.198). Consequently, moral
reasoning like scientific reasoning does not reflect on ends and thus becomes a
fruitless and formalistic procedure or even worse a justification of immoral acts.
The mastering of nature by the means of science in the interest of self-preservation
did not only entail the ‘objectification of spirit’ but also the alienation of people from
outer nature, from their inner nature and from the others. The exploitation of nature
reveals the cruelty towards themselves and generally towards human life.
Adorno and Horkheimer use the Homeric Odysseus to show the reality of the
repression of the internal nature of modern individuals. Odysseus was the enlightened
subject who sought security and tried to nullify his spontaneity, his natural drives so
as to implement the goal of the return to his homeland and thus his survival. He
controls nature but only at the price of doing violence to his own inner nature, and of
establishing social domination (Connerton 1980, p.69). As the superior of his crew he
has not an immediate contact with his existence but his entity is just a substratum for a
self who commands.
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Enlightened people conquered nature to show to themselves that they are separate
from it, that their ratio expresses their superiority. They deemed that the row nature
opposes their rational quality. However, their effort to escape nature’s determinism
and primitive state resulted in their sinking to barbarism and brutality. People
regarded nature as a hostile power and did not realize that by doing violence to it they
did violence to themselves. They did not see that nature is not something external to
them but that they are an integral part of it. Mastering and oppressing nature, mastered
and oppressed themselves and their fellows. The domination of the one social class
over the other, the objectification of human relationships and the suppression of
women rely exactly on outer nature’s and inner nature’s subjugation for Adorno and
Horkheimer.
Sade understood that the instrumental reasoning and immorality are very close to each
other. Juliette loves system and consequence and argues for the self-discipline of the
criminal : “work out your plan a few days beforehand; consider all its consequences;
be attentive to what might assist you…what might betray you, and weight up all these
things with the same callousness you would apply if you were certain to be
discovered” (Sade 1797, pp.319f cited in Adorno and Horkheimer, p.95).
Kant now interweaves morality with rationality and he asserts that only deeds done
out of duty, out of reason are morally worthy and like Sade recommends selfdiscipline and apathy not for the murderer but for the moral agent. Apathy is for him
the presupposition of virtue (Adorno and Horkheimer 1972, p.95). “Virtue, to the
extent that it is founded upon inner freedom, also contains an affirmative
commandment for men, which is to bring all their abilities and inclinations under its
control (i.e., of reason), and therefore under self-control, which prevails over the
negative commandment not to be ruled by one’s emotions and inclinations (the duty
of apathy); because unless reason takes the reins of government into its hand,
emotions and inclinations will be in control” (Kant 1797, p.408 cited in Adorno and
Horkheimer 1972, p.95). Enthusiasm is not helpful. Calmness and decisiveness
empower virtue. “That is the state of health in the moral life; an emotion, on the other
hand, even awakened by the notion of good, is but a transient brilliance succeeded by
languor” (Kant 1797, p.408 cited in Adorno and Horkheimer 1972, p.96). Emotions
and inclinations, according to Kant, stem from nature and not from human reason and
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so they cannot lead us to moral actions. In order to be moral, we should suppress our
emotions and natural inclinations.
Sade’s Clairwil deems compassion womanly and childish; for her it is “nothing less
than a virtue; it is a weakness, born of fear and misfortune, a weakness which must
above all be overcome when one strives to suppress the excessive sensitivity which is
irreconcilable with the maxims of philosophy” (Sade 1797, p.125 cited in Adorno and
Horkheimer 1972, pp.101-102). And for Kant also compassion is a kind of
‘softheartdness’ and is deprived by the ‘dignity of virtue’ ( Kant 1764, p.215f cited in
Adorno and Horkheimer 1972, p.102). Besides Kant believes that women act on
inclination and emotion and consequently their acts are not morally worthy. They are
less rational than men and for them there is ‘nothing of duty, nothing of compulsion,
nothing of obligation’ (Kant 1991, p.81 cited in Saul 2003, p.200).
So, moral and immoral acts presuppose moral apathy, the absence of the emotional
involvement of the agent. And that apathy goes hand in hand with instrumental and
formalistic reason which do not reflect on ends but amount to expediency and rational
consistency respectively. These forms of reason are a kind of a tool that can be at the
service of any interest, of any purpose. Nazism based on instrumental reason, on
reason which is not reflective, is not conscious of itself, so as to establish its
totalitarian order and accomplish its goals. It gave full rein to calculation and abided
by science as such. Its canon was its own brutal efficiency (Adorno and Horkheimer
1972, p.86). And people obeying the principle of self-preservation reconciled with the
totalitarian regime.
Modernity is characterized by the instrumental reason, by the ‘objectification of
spirit’. The absolutization of technology and the unleashed market economy incarnate
the reason and simultaneously denote the collapse of reason. The relations of people
seem ‘bewitched’, that is alienated. To that new mythology stemmed from reason or
the absence of it Adorno and Horkheimer respond with the request for more reason,
not with a return to a natural condition. They believe that the enlightenment in
essence has relinquished its own realization with the abandonment of thought
(Adorno and Horkheimer 1972, p.41). They suggest reflection as the healing for the
formalization of reason appealing thus to spirit, to meaningful thought, to critique.
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Feminists’ ethics embodies that request for enlightening the enlightenment about
itself, since constitutes a reflection on morality and on dominant modern
conceptualization of morality. In essence, feminist philosophers extend Adorno and
Horkheimer’s critique on enlightenment’s morality. Starting from the work In a
Different Voice of the psychologist Carol Gilligan in which Gilligan (1982) contends
that women have a different moral reasoning from men, a different ethic, which is
contextualised and based on emotions, they wanted to cast light on that marginalized
aspect of morality. Women’s ethic, according to Gilligan, is characterized by the
predicate of care and it relies on feelings, on responsibility and on the concern for
maintaining ongoing relations. It is an ethic that pertains to the private sphere, the
sphere where the rules of nature, feeling and natural inclinations obtain as Kant would
say. However, that inclusion of emotions does not necessarily entail that moral
decisions are aligned to what emotions dictate but rather indicates that women as
moral agents realize themselves as embedded in the moral situations that make a
demand on them and they try to understand every single element of these situations:
people narratives and interpretations, needs, feelings, facial expressions, gestures.
On the other hand, Gilligan states, men when face a moral dilemma tend to apply
abstract principles so as to solve it, prioritise their autonomy and they do not involve
themselves emotionally in the whole moral situation since they prefer to be distant,
‘objective’ observers. That moral reasoning which Gilligan names ‘the ethic of
justice’ is considered to be an expression of the dominant deontological moral
theories for feminist ethicists. These theories, they assert, focus on reason as the
source of impartial moral judgments, of formal principles and universalisable rules.
Emotions, for them, lead to partiality and relativism, so we should rule out sentiments
when we need to make moral decisions. Morality, as Kant says, calls for ‘apathy’, for
ostracizing ‘pathological feeling’ which precedes the thought of law, it is contingent
and belongs to realm of nature and thus cannot play any part in the formulation of the
Categorical Imperative (Okin 1989, p.232).
Moral subjects in modern liberal theory are independent and mutually disinterested.
They are autonomous since they are moral, namely can legislate, can construct moral
laws and act on these laws using their reason and pursuit their interests and life5
projects. They do not interfere with the others’ plans but also do not contribute to the
others’ well-being. They are prior to their attachments, self-interested and selfsufficient. The moral principles that regulate their living together are derived from the
concern for their own interests. Rawlsian subjects need the veil of ignorance in order
to form the principles of distributive justice; otherwise I think they possibly would not
be able to legislate fair rules for all. Since they do not conceive themselves as part of a
corpus, as enmeshed in a complex network of relations crucial for the existence of
each one, they need to appeal to their self-interest so as to create abstract principles
applicable to alike circumstances.
Therefore, feminist philosophers criticize the dominant conception of morality as an
absolute point of view from which arise abstract, objective moral rules that lead to
just and right moral judgements and well-ordered societies, because in effect it
amounts to a kind of a moral positivism which neglects and suppresses people’s inner
nature, emotions and inclinations identifying them with irrationality. According to
Sevenhuijsen “Abstract universal reasoning can only be achieved by imposing a strict
separation between body and mind, and passion and reason. The body and the
emotions stand for that which diverts one from a distanced judgement. They
continually threaten to draw the moral agent back into sphere of particularist selfinterest, which would stand in the way of a generalizable judgement. Embodiment and
affectivity are thus better excluded from the domain of morality, because they are so
easily associated with feminity” (Sevenhuijsen1998, p.48). The liberal moral idiom
rests on a universal, uniform, masculine prototypical human being, on the logic of
identity which turns difference into otherness and deviance, and devalues it
(Sevenhuijsen 1998, p.46). It ignores the differences of people and the situatedness of
moral dilemmas and does not thematize the power and domination that penetrate
human relationships (Sevenhuijsen, 1998). In addition it points to alienated persons
and alienated relations.
Feminists however, do not stay in a critique of the modern conceptualization of
morality but they suggest a different aspect of morality that of care. By care they
mean a value, a motive and a practice oriented to the meeting of needs of others. Care
according to Sevenhuijsen is “an ability and willingness to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ needs and
to take responsibility for these needs to be met” (Sevenhuijsen 1998, p.83 cited in
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Held 2005b, p.5). Also, for Tronto and Fischer care is an activity that includes
“everything that we do to maintain, continue and repair our ‘world’ so that we can
live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, ourselves and our
environment; all of which we seek to interweave in a complex life-sustaining web”
(Tronto 1993, p.103).
Care theorists speak about a new moral ontology according to which people are not
isolated and self-sufficient but interdependent, interrelated and vulnerable. The
interplay with the others, the intersubjective communication defines them in the sense
of playing a part in the formation of their individuality. Individuals are not separate
but inevitably connected with others, since they need their care, their help. The values
of attentiveness and responsiveness to needs constitute the core of caring, which is “a
source of self-realization and a satisfying and pleasurable activity”(Sevenhuijsen
1998, p. 58). Caring attitude does not arise from a firm, formal reasoning but from the
realization of our vulnerability, finiteness, interconnection, from our spontaneity, our
sentiments of sympathy and benevolence and from our cultural values.
Moral reflection in the ethic of care relies on ‘attentive reasoning’ which involves the
moral reasoner in the caring situation and asks for contextualized judgments. That
does not mean that these judgments should be partial and parochial or that they entail
a self-sacrificing attitude in part of the care-giver since caring raises issues of justice
like the equal distribution of care, the limits of care and the sharing of costs and
benefits.
The ethic of care is not confined or should not be confined for care theorists to the
private sphere but it should be applied to the public sphere; welfare, healthcare,
education should be seen under the lens of the ethic of care. To try to assure Tronto
says “that all people are adequately cared for is not a utopian question, but one which
immediately suggests answers about employment policies, non-discrimination,
equalizing expenditures for schools, providing adequate access to health care and so
forth” (Tronto 1996, p.143 cited in Held 2005b, p.88). Care is suggested as a tool of
critical analysis that reveals inequities, oppression and exploitation and as a criterion
for checking the consequences of capitalistic development in terms of the adequacy
and quality of care in society (Tronto, 1996). In addition, the values of attentiveness,
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empathy and responsiveness to needs should be part of a social and political ethos that
should pervade state’s structures and institutions and citizens’ mentality and behavior.
That ethos resembles Aristotelian ‘politike philia’, civic friendship, which was a
significant virtue of the Athenian citizen. Politike philia refers to the political
embodiment of the sentiment of love and to the conscious commitment to the wellbeing of the others, with whom we feel interconnected. That commitment and the
actual contribution to others’ well-being lead to the moral fulfillment for care
ethicists.
Conceiving thus care as a social and political value we can restructure our society.
Giving priority to meeting the needs of citizens, to fostering the interrelatedness of
people, encouraging them to engage in relationships of mutual concern and caring, we
achieve to build a society with high cohesion and solidarity. People being informed
with an ethic of care and understanding their responsibility to others can enter a
fruitful dialogue, since they comprehend others’ positions, others’ needs and interests.
Of course people’s interests make strong demands on them, however if they do not
see themselves as isolated individuals who are threatened by others but as
interconnected persons with interconnected needs and interests they can value
dialogue’s usefulness. The dialogue can be a helpful medium for arriving at decisions
to the interest of all participants. In a caring society people identify with others and
rely on cooperation and public deliberation in order to organize and facilitate their
common life. According to Held, “care has the capacity to shape new persons with
ever more advanced understandings of culture and society, morality and ever more
advanced ability to live well and cooperatively with others’ (Held 2005, p.4).
In conclusion, I think care theorists come to rehabilitate human reason as the
foundation of morality by casting light to its double nature, the rational and the
emotional one underscoring thus its affinity with utopia. By suggesting care as a
political ideal they reflect on objectified, alienated human relationships in modern
capitalistic societies and challenge the morality of homo-economicus who positions
the personal interest at the heart of its agency. Also, they question the work ethic and
the unleashed market as opposed to caring ethos and the quality of life and as
generators of inequality, domination and alienation. Reflecting on the dominant
conception of morality they want to show its limits and in parallel see the premises of
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justice, autonomy, equality and rights in the ethic of care perspective seeking in my
view to revitalize them, to make them more compelling and more qualitatively
implemented. Feminist care theorists do not mean just to value women’s moral voicebesides they do not believe that the ethic of care belongs to women but it is a
forgotten and devalued aspect of human morality- and to improve their symbolic and
material status but they aim at a transformation of social and political institutions and
of citizens’ behavior in line of a caring habitus striving thus for more enlightenment.
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Please do not cite without permission from the author.
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