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An Ethico-Aesthetics of Care: Rethinking Care Theory
Care Ethics and the Problem of Beauty
Steven Steyl
Suppose you are visiting the Louvre on a stormy day. As you meander, the torrential rain outside worsens, and unbeknownst to you, the building’s drainage pipes spring a leak. The museum begins flooding rapidly, and many exhibits are badly damaged before anybody realises what is happening. Wandering alone through the galleries, you quickly find yourself knee deep in rainwater. Looking around, you realise that you are not in any danger, but if you do not intervene, many of the fragile artworks will be damaged beyond repair. You act quickly, rescuing several priceless artworks before you wade towards the exit.
Cases like this present a problem for care ethics. Most of us will intuitively deem it morally “right,” “good,” or “responsible” to rescue beautiful artworks. But how can care ethics, a theory typically associated with human vulnerability, embodiment, and dependency, explain such judgements? In what sense, if any, is the artworks’ “vulnerability” or “needs” ethically relevant? Should care ethicists care about their beauty, or the beauty of anything else, per se? If so, when, if ever, should beauty trump other important goods? This paper offers a (partial) answer to these questions by tethering aesthetic value to the growing care ethical discussion of human flourishing. In Section II, I articulate an account of care ethics according to which there is no “good” understood independently of the interests of living creatures. On such a view, beauty exerts normative force insofar as it is valuable or good for some living thing. I also argue, however, that a full explanation of the above case/intuitions requires more detailed theories of moral deliberation and of the virtues, and I sketch a theory of each in Section III and IV respectively. Section V thus concludes that while questions of aesthetic value are resolvable, a full resolution requires care ethicists to say more on these fronts.
Steven Steyl is Lecturer in Bioethics at the University of Notre Dame Australia’s Schools of Medicine/Philosophy & Theology. His research interests lie mainly in feminist ethical theory, political theory, and queer theory. In 2022, Steven was awarded a John Mawson Award of Merit for collaborative work on indigenous representation and Kaupapa Māori in government. He is currently co-editing a volume titled Care Ethics and Moral Theory (forthcoming).
Care Theory as A Process Moral Aesthetic
Maurice Hamington
The prime experience of care, whether as a giver or receiver, is in and through the body. Even when we engage in care indirectly, as in policy-making, the metaphors we draw upon are embodied, personal, and tangible. Accordingly, if the body is so central to our understanding and delivery of care, care ethics cannot ignore the perceptual and sensory aspects of the human condition. Standard uses of normative moral theory aim to adjudicate ethical dilemmas, emphasizing a universalizing Kantian concern for right and wrong. There is value in such approaches to critically assess motives, rules, and norms. However, a moral theory emanating from the body's lived experience points to a more comprehensive and sensuous approach to ethics, which is ethotically shared with other embodied beings. An ethos of care acknowledges the disposition and actions of care co-created among beings in relationship through embodied and visceral responses to one another and context. Accordingly, this article argues that traditional Western ethical theory is too small of a container for care theory that integrates a relational way of being in the world with morality to posit a moral aesthetic.
A moral aesthetic of care describes cultivated and curated relational sensibilities and habits to appreciate better the needs of others and the work necessary to ameliorate their lives. This paper draws extensively on the pioneering work of James Thompson, who described an aesthetic of care as “a set of values realised in a relational process” (2015). Indeed, care is a relational process that participates in the human journey of becoming rather than describing a utopian moral end state: a process moral aesthetic.
Maurice Hamington is Professor of Philosophy and Affiliate Faculty of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Portland State University. He writes about the theory and application of feminist care ethics. His latest book, Revolutionary Care: Commitment and Ethos (Routledge 2024), argues that we need a care revolution right now, and you can participate. He is the author of Embodied Care (2004) and co-author of Care Ethics and Poetry (2019) with Ce Rosenow. Hamington edited or co-edited Feminism and Hospitality: Care Ethics, Religion, and Spiritual Traditions (2022), Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity (2021), Care Ethics and Political Theory (2015), Applying Care Ethics to Business (2011), Socializing Care (2006), and Gender in the Host/Guest Relationship (2010). He is a Fulbright Specialist who will spend November 2024 in Kyoto working with Japanese feminist care ethicists. mhamington.com
The Fourfold Relation Between Care and Aesthetics
Carlo Leget & Finn Thorbjørn Hansen
The relationship between care and aesthetics is a complex one that can take different forms. Some of these forms are well established, for other forms it is hard to find a language. What connects all these forms is that they have the potential of opening up to a decentered and caring way of flourishing as human beings connected to other beings. In this lecture we will discuss four ways in which care and aesthetics can be related:
1) “Us taking care through beauty” – The aesthetic (art) can be used instrumentally, e.g. an art-therapeutic and socio-educational means/tool for the promotion of physical or mental health. The art therapist functions as “agent” – based on already given scientific theories and (scientific) methods.
2) “Beauty taking care of us” – Art can also be experienced as a healing and quality-of-life-promoting activity in and of itself. In this case, the artwork is the agent, like it is e.g. used in the Scandinavian “Art on Prescription” initiative (Jensen et al., 2017).
3) “Care taking care of us” – “Beautiful moments in caring” (Herholdt-Lomholdt 2018) are those moments when not the professional knowledge or the protocols are leading, but care takes over and tells us what to do. These moments are experienced as moments of beauty and truth by both caregivers and care receivers.
4) “Life taking care of us and revealing its beauty” – In the Japanese everyday aesthetics (“Wabi Sabi”) it is Being/Nature/Zen/Dao that is seen as an agent bringing us to the beauty of life and the sense of wonder and feeling embraced by life.
In this theoretical contribution, we draw on several theoretical sources such as Heidegger (1975), Mitchell (2015), Kotva (2020), Thompson (2022), Saito (2022), Nelson (2024), which adds, we will argue, an existential, Daoist, and Eco-phenomenological perspective to care aesthetics and ethics.
Professor Finn Thorbjørn Hansen is Full Professor of Applied Philosophy and head of the research group TEN (Time, Existence & Nature connectedness), Art, Aesthetics & Health, Department of Communication, University of Aalborg, Denmark. He has been a Visiting Professor at Agder University in Kristiansand, Norway, where he was head of an international research project “Wonder, Silence and Human Flourishing” (Hansen et al, 2023). His research focus and specialty is the phenomenology and ethics of wonder, existential and ethical phenomenology, and “philosophical and phenomenological action research.” He has been heading several external funded research projects in the field of Health Care, Higher Education, Innovation, and research on Artistic Creation. He is the founder of the Danish Society for Philosophical Practice and has written several books on wonder and philosophical counselling practices. https://vbn.aau.dk/en/persons/123561
Professor Carlo Leget is Full Professor of Care Ethics and research director at the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and director of the Center for Loss and Existential Values in Aarhus, Denmark. As chair of the care ethics department, he is responsible for the Master in Care Ethics & Policy at his university, and his research focuses on the intersection of care, meaning and end of life issues. Since 2015 he is a member of the Health Council of the Netherlands and the Care Ethics Research Consortium. https://www.uvh.nl/contact/vind-een-medewerker/carlo-leget
Location
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
Contact info Louis van den Hengel
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