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

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary lists fourteen definitions of care, and Webster’s New World Thesaurus lists over one hundred synonyms for the various forms of the word care. 2. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy fails to make any reference to care ethics (Blackburn , Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy). 3. Reich, Encyclopedia of Bioethics, 328. 4. Noddings, Starting at Home, 11. 5. Koehn, Rethinking Feminist Ethics, 23. 6. Clement, Care, Autonomy, and Justice, 11. 7. Koehn, Rethinking Feminist Ethics, 26. 8. Fisher and Tronto, “Toward a Feminist Theory,” 40. 9. Tronto, Moral Boundaries, 127. 10. Bowden, Caring, 183. Chapter 1: The Landscape of Current Care Discourse 1. Douglass, My Bondage, 160. 2. Ibid., 150. 3. Cynthia Willet explicitly argues that care ethics fosters subjugation, using the writings of Frederick Douglass as an example.Willet contends that sentimentality,a forerunner of modern ideas about care, employs a rhetoric that facilitates unequal power dynamics, a “slave morality” (Maternal Ethics and Other Slave Moralities, 135). Similarly, Bernard Boxill supports Willet’s thesis by arguing that Douglass believed slave violence, which aroused the slaveholders’ fear of personal danger, and not empathy or care, was potent moral suasion in favor of abolition; see Boxill, “Fear and Shame,” 721. 4. Douglass, Narrative, 23. 5. Foner, Life and Writings, 47–50. 07.notes.149-166/Hamington 4/7/04, 8:22 AM 149 6. Sundquist, Frederick Douglass, 5. 7. Ibid. 8. Tronto, Moral Boundaries, 177. 9. Garrison, Preface, 5. 10. Meyer, Introduction, xv. 11. There is some indication that as Douglass matured as a writer, he recognized the importance of garnering care from his readers. Harold K. Bush Jr. argues that in Douglass ’s subsequent revisions of his autobiographies he employs language such as “my dear readers” in an attempt to frame himself as “a voice seeking consensus and communion” (American Declarations, 46). 12. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 58. 13. The theoretical arc of chapters 2 through 4 will develop the notion of habit more fully, but note here that I am defining habit broadly to include the dynamic practices of the body that have epistemological and ethical significance. 14. Feminists are all too familiar with the marginalizing impact of reductionist characterizations . Those interested in care should be considered no differently than are consequentialists or those with deontological allegiances whose views differ widely from those of their colleagues. 15. In his later work Kohlberg identifies a “soft” stage 7 that reflects religious and “cosmic ” thinking but is not strictly ethical (Levine, Kohlberg, and Hewer, “Current Formulation ,” 95–96). 16. Gilligan, In a Different Voice, 19. 17. Blum, “Gilligan and Kohlberg,” 50–53. 18. In response to Gilligan, Kohlberg (“Synopses and Detailed Replies,” 341) originally attempted to demonstrate how care fits within his model, describing care as a duty that arises out of special obligations to family, friends, and group members. Kohlberg’s later work avoided the consideration of care altogether: “[Critics] have failed to appreciate that Kohlberg’s primary concern has been with the study of justice reasoning per se, and not with all those factors which, in addition to justice, comprise the moral domain. (Levine, Kohlberg, and Hewer, “Current Formulation,” 99). 19. This dilemma was devised by Kohlberg,whom I quote here (“Stage and Sequence,” 379), and later administered by Gilligan (In a Different Voice, 25–32). 20. Colby, Kohlberg, Gibbs, Candee, Assessing Moral Stages, 82. 21. Qtd. in Gilligan, In a Different Voice, 29. 22. Ibid., 32. 23. Those who are critical of Gilligan’s work on care can be placed in three broad categories . The first consists of those who interpret Gilligan as offering a gendered system of morality where women favor care and men favor justice. These critics dispute Gilligan ’s empirical evidence and methodology; see, for example, Larrabee, “Checking the Data,” 143–99; Pollitt, “Are Women Morally Superior?” 799–808; and Walker, “Sex Differences ,” 667–91.The second category of criticism finds the notion of care to be less than empowering for women; see,for example,Holmes,“Call to Heal Medicine,” 1–6; MoodyAdams , “Gender,” 195–212; O’Neill, “Justice, Gender, and International Boundaries,” 55; and Sherwin, No Longer Patient. The third category includes those who have difficulty finding a compelling social theory in care; see, for example, Barry, Justice as Impartiality. 150 Notes to Pages 10–16 07.notes.149-166/Hamington 4/7/04, 8:22 AM 150 Because...