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Need, Care and Obligation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2017

Sarah Clark Miller
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Extract

All humans experience needs. At times needs cut deep, inhibiting persons' abilities to act as agents in the world, to live in distinctly human ways, or to achieve life goals of significance to them. In considering such potentialities, several questions arise: Are any needs morally important, meaning that they operate as morally relevant details of a situation? What is the correct moral stance to take with regard to situations of need? Are moral agents ever required to tend to others' well-being by meeting their needs? What justification or foundation, if any, can be given for requiring moral agents to respond to others' needs?

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Papers
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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 57 , December 2005 , pp. 137 - 160
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Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2005

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References

1 I would like to thank Soran Reader for her very helpful comments on this article.

2 As a variety of philosophers have it, the scope or extent of our obligation to help others runs the gamut between two extreme positions: the minimal libertarian position that we must only respect the rights of others, leaving charity as optional, not mandatory, and a maximal position like that of Peter Singer's, through which we are required to give to the needy until we are diminished to their level of need. Thomas Hill identifies these two extreme positions in ‘Meeting Needs and Doing Favors’. See Hill, T. Jr., Human Welfare and Moral Worth: Kantian Perspectives (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), 201–243Google Scholar. The Singer position (a consequentialist one) can be famously found in his earlier piece, ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, No. 1 (Spring 1972), 229–43Google Scholar. Singer has somewhat modified his position in more recent work. See Singer, P., One World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

3 Gilligan, C., In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).Google Scholar See also Gilligan, C., ‘Moral Orientation and Moral Development’ in Women and Moral Theory, ed. Kittay, E. F. and Meyers, D. T. (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987), 19–33.Google Scholar To understand the theoretical framework that Gilligan was arguing against, see Kohlberg, L., The Philosophy of Moral Development: Moral Stages and the Idea of Justice (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981)Google Scholar.

4 Noddings, N., Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).Google Scholar

5 Cf. S. Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989). In this work, Ruddick draws upon women's maternal experience to articulate new ethical and political insights about peace.

6 Walker, M. U., ‘Moral Understandings: Alternative ‘Epistemology’ for a Feminist Ethics’ in Justice and Care: Essential Readings in Feminist Ethics, ed. Held, V. (Boulder: Westview, 1995), 139.Google Scholar

7 Analysis of the role of the emotions and reconceptualization of the public/private split serve as two further examples of significant themes in care ethics.

8 Benhabib, S., ‘The Generalized and The Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Moral Theory’ in Women and Moral Theory, ed. Kittay, E. F. and Meyers, D. T. (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1987), 163.Google Scholar Emphasis in the original.

9 Ibid., 164.

10 Alison Jaggar, drawing on a comment from Sara Ruddick, comments that beyond responding to needs, ‘participants in caring relations also strive to delight and empower each other’. Jaggar, A., ‘Caring as a Feminist Practice of Moral Reason’ in Justice and Care: Essential Readings in Feminist Ethics, ed. Held, Virginia (Boulder: Westview, 1995), 180.Google Scholar

11 I employ this term rather than ‘true needs’ (1) to avoid confusion, as ‘true needs’ are multiply defined in the literature and (2) because ‘constitutive’ better captures the dual sense I am trying to convey of a certain set of needs that have the power to establish agency as well as being essential for agency.

12 Instrumental needs are required for ends other than (1) avoiding harm or (2) cultivating, maintaining or restoring agency.

13 Tronto, J., Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (New York: Routledge, 1993), 120.Google Scholar

14 Bubeck, D. E., Care, Gender and Justice (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a broader definition of care, see Ibid., 102–105.

15 Bubeck notes that ‘the important point is that certain kinds of communication in themselves constitute care … whether such communication is immediate or mediate’ (Ibid., 129).

16 For a perspective on caring for non-human entities, see Warren, M. A., Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

17 Op. cit. note 13, 105.

18 Op. cit. note 6, 140.

19 For an interesting discussion of care and oppression, see Card, C., ‘Gender and Moral Luck’ in Justice and Care: Essential Readings in Feminist Ethics, ed. Held, Virginia (Boulder: Westview, 1995), 79–98Google Scholar.

20 This line of critique is captured in a general objection against Kantian ethics that charges it does not allow adequate room for the moral significance of the emotions. For a general description of a feminist take on this issue, see Held, V., ‘Introduction’ in Justice and Care: Essential Readings in Feminist Ethics, ed. Held, V.. (Boulder: Westview, 1995), 1–3Google Scholar and Held, V., ‘Feminist Ethical Theory’ in Conduct and Character, ed. Timmons, M.. 4th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2002), 237–243Google Scholar.

21 Inherent in the turn to Kant is the recognition that feminist ethicists have been hasty in their condemnation of Kant. Despite feminist ethicists’ caricature of Kantian moral philosophy as a rule-bound, overly-individualistic, unreasonably autonomous perspective of empty formalism with no bearing on actual moral situations in the real world, a rigorous approach behooves one to return to the source where answers may be found. (In conjunction with this charge, it is notable that the common feminist interpretation of Kantian autonomy has remarkably little to do with what Kant actually wrote on the subject, inasmuch as it borrows rather heavily from a developmental psychological perspective. This is not to say that such an approach is uninteresting, but only to point out that it promulgates a common misreading of Kant.) In this case, the return is to Kant's duty of beneficence, to see, in conjunction with a detailed and thorough reading, what answers lie therein.

22 This question is found in a section entitled, ‘On the Duty of Love to Other Human Beings.’

23 Kant, I., Die Metaphysik der Sitten (1797,1, Kants gesammelte Schriften, herausgegeben von der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften (formerly Koniglichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 6. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Translated as The Metaphysics of Morals. Gregor, M. J. (trans.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).Google ScholarDie Metaphysik der Sitten will be cited as MS, with the volume and page number from the Prussian Academy edition followed by the page number from the English translation.

24 Kant cautions that a wide duty should not be understood as allowance to make exceptions to the maxim of actions, but rather only to limit one maxim of a duty by another.

25 On the topic of Menschenliebe, Kant writes, ‘die Menschenliebe (Philanthropic) muβ, weil sie hier als praktisch, mithin nicht als Liebe des Wohlgefallens an Menschen gedacht wird, im tätigen Wohlwollen gesetzt werden und betrifft also die Maxime der Handlungen.’ Kant here notes that love of others that is practical is active benevolence, or beneficence, and has to do with the maxim of actions.

26 At the core of this explanation is the notion that within the spectrum of kinds of agency considered by Kant, not only rational beings, but also finite rational beings exist. Indeed, Kant's practical philosophy pertains not simply to humans, but to ‘finite rational beings as such’, though human beings are one kind of finite rational beings to which Kant frequently refers.

27 Kant, I., Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785)Google Scholar, Kants gesammelte Schriften, herausgegeben von der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften (formerly Königlichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften), vol. 8. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter)Google Scholar. Translated as Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals Ellington, J. W. (trans.) (Cambridge: Hackett, 1981)Google Scholar. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten will be cited as G, with volume and page number from the Prussian Academy edition followed by the page number from the English translation.

28 One objection that might be raised at this point concerns the charge that featuring the finitude of finite rational beings treads on the territory of anthropology, which, in the midst of a metaphysics of morals, is not advisable. As Kant notes in the Introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals, ‘a metaphysics of morals cannot be based upon anthropology but can still be applied to it’ (MS 6: 217; 10). A metaphysics of morals cannot look to empirical conditions and details of human life in establishing itself; it cannot be derived from anthropology. Onora O'Neill, however, explains that ‘although moral philosophy can abstract from anthropology, it cannot abstract from finitude. For the concept of duty is central to morality, and is defined in terms of [what Kant calls] “a good will exposed, however, to certain subjective limitations and obstacles” (G, IV, 397)’. O'Neill, O., Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant's Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 71.Google Scholar These subjective limitations and obstacles are part and parcel of finitude. Indeed, the duty of beneficence must not (and perhaps cannot) be established for non-finite rational beings, as without needs produced by finitude, they would not have occasion to care for one another and therefore there would be no reason for an obligation establishing such care. Human beings, however, are not only rational beings, but also finite beings. As such, the situation of their dependence and need means that obligations are necessary for them. Obligations arise in the face of human imperfection. Whereas non-finite rational beings could will that nonbeneficence be made a universal law, finite rational beings, because of the subjective limits of their willing, cannot do the same.

29 Wood, A., Kant's Ethical Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 A maxim of actions, can here be understood in conjunction with O'Neill's depiction of maxims as that which ‘can … be interpreted as the fundamental principles which guide actions, policies and practices’ O'Neill, O., Faces of Hunger: An Essay on Poverty, Development and Justice (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1986), 132Google Scholar.

31 Cf. Ebbinghaus, J., ‘Interpretation and Misinterpretation of the Categorical Imperative’, Philosophical Quarterly 4 (1954): 97–108Google Scholar and Kittay, E. F., Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency (New York: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar.

32 O'Neill, O., ‘Rights, Obligations and Needs’, Logos 6 (1985), 39.Google Scholar

33 It is important to note, however, that I cannot promote any end that another selects for him or herself. I can only promote another's lawful end. It is not morally permissible for individuals to encourage others in ends that are destructive to them.

34 In caregiving scenarios, situations of incapacitation do arise in which the one in need is not capable of determining what his or her ends and happiness should be. Such cases, however, are not my current focus.

35 Groenhout, R. E., Connected Lives: Human Nature and an Ethics of Care (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).Google Scholar

36 Op. cit. note 31.

37 Tronto, J., ‘Women and Caring: What Can Feminists Learn About Morality from Caring?’ in Gender/Body/Knowledge, ed. Jaggar, A. M. and Bordo, S. R. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 172–187Google Scholar.

38 Op. cit. note 13, 106–8 and 137–41.

39 See Herman, B., ‘The Practice of Moral Judgment’ in The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 73–93Google Scholar.

40 My discussion here is indebted to Lawrence Blum's work. See Blum, L., ‘Gilligan and Kohlberg: Implications for Moral Theory’, Ethics 98, No. 3 (04, 1988), 472–91Google Scholar and Blum, L., ‘Moral Perception and Particularity’, Ethics 101, no. 4 (07 1991), 701–25Google Scholar.

41 Ibid., Blum 1991, 709.

42 Ibid., 710–11.

43 Ibid., 714.

44 Nel Noddings discusses attention to the other and generally how one learns to care. See op. cit. note 4 and Noddings, N., Starting at Home: Caring and Social Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)Google Scholar. In addition, see Ruddick op. cit. note 5 for discussions of attentiveness.

45 Op. cit. note 39. Further exploration of Herman's formulation in conjunction with the duty to care would be an interesting project to pursue.

46 Tronto comments, ‘Even if the perception of a need is correct, how the care-givers choose to meet the need can cause new problems’ (op. cit. note 13, 108).

47 Ignatieff, M., The Needs of Strangers (London: Chatto & Windus, 1984)Google Scholar, 16.

48 Op. cit. note 31.