Michael Slote

The Justice of Caring

Carol Gilligans In a Different Voice , which appeared in 1982, argued that men tend to conceive morality in terms of rights, justice, and autonomy, whereas women more frequently think in terms of caring, responsibility, and interrelation with others. At about the same time, Nel Noddings in Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education sought to articulate and defend in its own right a “feminine” morality centered specifically around the ideal of caring (for people one knows). Since then, there has been a heated debate about the reality of the distinction Gilligan drew and about its potential implications for ethical theory. Discussions of the morality of caring have questioned, in particular, whether any such morality can really provide a total framework for moral thought and action. For in order to deal with our obligations to people we are not acquainted with and address large-scale issues of social morality, any morality of caring seems to require supplementation by typically “masculine” thinking in terms of rights and justice, with the result that caring turns out to be but one part of morality, rather than anything women, or more enlightened men, could find attractive as a total and self-sufficient way of approaching ethical issues.

From enlightenment to receptivity : rethinking our values

Introduction PART I -- BEYOND ENLIGHTENMENT Foreword to Part I Chapter 1 -- Empathy and Objectivity Chapter 2 -- Epistemology and Emotion Chapter 3 -- Caring and Enlightenment Chapter 4 -- How Important Is Morality? Chapter 5 -- The Impossibility of Perfection Chapter 6 -- A New Picture PART II -- RECEPTIVITY Foreword to Part II Chapter 7 -- Receptivity to Life Chapter 8 -- Green Thinking Chapter 9 -- From Enlightenment to Receptivity Chapter 10 -- The Virtue of Receptivity Conclusion

Sentimentalist Virtue and Moral Judgement: Outline of a Project

Ethical rationalism has recently dominated the philosophical landscape, but sentimentalist forms of normative ethics (such as the ethics of caring) and of metaethics (such as Blackburns projectivism and various ideal–observer and response–dependent views) have also been prominent. But none of this has been systematic in the manner of Hume and Hutcheson. Hume based both ethics and metaethics in his notion of sympathy, but the project sketched here focuses rather on the (related) notion of empathy. I argue that empathy is essential to the development of morally required caring about others and also to deontological limits or restrictions on self–concern and other–concern. But empathy also plays a grounding role in moral judgement. Moral approval and disapproval can be non–circularly understood as empathic reflections of the concern or lack of concern that agents show towards other people; and moral utterances can plausibly be seen not as projections, expressions, or descriptions of sentiment but as “objective” and “non–relative” judgements whose reference and content are fixed by sentiments of approval and disapproval.

Driver's Virtues

Julia Drivers Uneasy Virtue offers a theory of virtue and the virtues without being an instance of virtue ethics. It presents a consequentialist challenge to recent virtue ethics, but its positive views – and especially its interesting examples – have great significance in their own right. Drivers defence of ‘virtues of ignorance’ has force despite all the challenges to it that have been mounted over the years. But there are also examples differing from those Driver has mentioned that favour the idea of such virtues. Perhaps certain virtues of religious faith and the virtue necessary for dealing as best one can with moral dilemmas both require ignorance. However, some of the examples Driver does discuss raise the question whether virtue status is based solely on consequences, rather than perhaps having (in addition) a motivational component.

Moral self-cultivation East and West: A critique

Abstract Moral Self-Cultivation plays an important, even a central role, in the Confucian philosophical tradition, but philosophers in the West, most notably Aristotle and Kant, also hold that moral self-cultivation or self-shaping is possible and morally imperative. This paper argues that these traditions are psychologically unrealistic in what they say about the possibilities of moral self-cultivation. We cannot shape ourselves in the substantial and overall ways that Confucianism, Aristotle, and Kant say we can, and our best psychological data on moral education and development indicate strongly that these phenomena depend crucially on the intervention of others and, more generally, on external factors individuals don’t control.

A sentimentalist theory of the mind

Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: Epistemology and Emotion Chapter 2: Belief in Action Chapter 3: The Emotional Unity of the Self Chapter 4: Egoism and Emotion Chapter 5: Empiricism and the Roots of Morality Chapter 6: Mind and Love Conclusion Appendix Index

Education and human values : reconciling talent with an ethics of care

Introduction 1. Education and Creativity 2. Care Ethics vs. Other Approaches 3. Sentimentalist Moral Education 4. Sentimentalist Rational Education 5. What Kind of Country? Conclusion

The Virtue in Self-Interest

As a motive, self-interest is constituted by a certain kind of concern for oneself; but we also use the term “self-interest” to refer to the object of such a motive, to the well-being or good life sought by a self-interested agent. In this essay, I want to concentrate on self-interest in the latter sense and say something about how self-interest or well-being relates to virtue. One reason to be interested in this relationship stems from our concern to know whether virtue pays, i.e., is in the moral agents self-interest, a question which Plato notably asks in the Republic and which has been of concern to moral philosophers ever since. But the importance for ethics of notions like virtue and self-interest is hardly exhausted by their role in the debate over whether virtue pays; indeed, any large-scale ethical theory will presumably have something to say about how these major notions relate, so we have reason to want to understand this relationship independent of the particular desire to show that morality or virtue is in the self-interest of the (virtuous) agent. It will be a background assumption of this essay that some ways of connecting virtue and well-being/self-interest redound to the advantage of the larger theories that incorporate them. If, in particular, we believe in the bona fides of ethical theory, then unifying power is a desideratum in ethics and it stands in favor of utilitarianism (and Epicureanism) that it offers us a way of unifying our understanding of virtue and well-being. To be sure, that advantage may to some extent or ultimately be undercut if unification leads to counterintuitive ethical consequences.

Philosophical tasks : an introduction to some aims and methods in recent philosophy

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Sentimentalist Practical Reason and Self-Sacrifice

ABSTRACT For obvious reasons sentimentalists have been hesitant to offer accounts of moral reasons for action: the whole idea at least initially smacks of rationalist notions of morality. But the sentimentalist can seek to reduce practical to sentimentalist considerations and that is what the present paper attempts to do. Prudential reasons can be identified with the normal emotional/motivational responses people feel in situations that threaten them or offer them opportunities to attain what they need. And in the most basic cases altruistic/moral reasons involve the empathic transfer of one person’s prudential reasons and emotions to another person or persons who can help them. Practical/moral reasons for self-sacrifice also depend on empathic transfer and can vary in strength with the strength of the transfer.