Virginia Held

Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory

universal principle as the appropriate source of moral guidance, and both share the view that moral problems are to be solved by the application of such an abstract principle to particular cases. Both share an admiration for the rules of reason to be appealed to in moral contexts, and both denigrate emotional responses to moral issues. Many feminist philosophers have questioned whether the reliance on abstract rules, rather than the adoption of more context-respectfulrules, rather than the adoption of more context-respectful approaches, can possibly be adequate for dealing with moral problems, especially as women experience them.i6 Though Kantians may hold that complex rules can be elaborated for specific contexts, there is nevertheless an assumption in this approach that the more abstract the reasoning applied to a moral problem, the more satisfactory. And Utilitarians suppose that one highly abstract principle, The Principle of Utility, can be applied to every moral problem no matter what the context. A genuinely universal or gender-neutral moral theory would be one which would take account of the experience and concerns of women as fully as it would take account of the experience and concerns of men. When we focus on the experience of women, however, we seem to be able to see a set of moral concerns becoming salient that differs from those of traditional or standard moral theory. Womens experience of moral problems seems to lead us to be especially concerned with actual relationships between embodied persons, and with what these relationships seem to require. Women are often inclined to attend to rather than to dismiss the particularities of the context in which a moral problem arises. And we often pay attention to feelings of empathy and caring to suggest what we ought to do rather than relying as fully as possible on abstract rules of rea-

Rights and goods : justifying social action

Theories of justice, argues Virginia Held, are usually designed for a perfect, hypothetical world. They do not give us guidelines for living in an imperfect world in which the choices and decisions that we must make are seldom clear-cut. Seeking a morality based on actual experience, Held offers a method of inquiry with which to deal with the specific moral problems encountered in daily life. She argues that the division between public and private morality is misleading and shows convincingly that moral judgment should be contextual. She maps out different approaches and positions for various types of issues, including membership in a state, legal decisions, political activities, economic transactions, interpersonal relations, diplomacy, journalism, and determining our obligation to future generations. Issues such as these provide the true test of moral theory, since its success is seen in the willingness of conscientious persons to commit themselves to it by acting on it in their daily lives.

Group Responsibility for Ethnic Conflict

When a group of persons such as a nation orcorporation has a relatively clear structureand set of decision procedures, it is capableof acting and should, it can well be argued, beconsidered morally as well as legallyresponsible. This is not because it is afull-fledged moral person, but becauseassigning responsibility is a human practice,and we have good moral reasons to adopt thepractice of considering such groupsresponsible. From such judgments, however,little follows about the responsibility ofindividual members of such groups; much moreneeds to be ascertained about which officialsor executives are responsible for what beforewe can consider individual members of nationsor corporations responsible.Whether an unorganized group can be morallyresponsible is much less clear, but there havebeen useful discussions in recent years of thepossible responsibility of whites for racism,or males for sexism, and the like. In thisessay I explore arguments for consideringgroups or their members responsible for ethnicconflict. Such groups may lack a clearorganizational structure, but they are notrandom assortments of persons. Groups can andoften should take responsibility for theattitudes and actions of their members, and cansometimes be considered responsible for failingto do so. And persons often can and shouldtake responsibility for the attitudes andactions of the groups of which they aremembers.

Can the Ethics of Care Handle Violence

It may be thought that the ethics of care has developed important insights into the moral values involved in the caring practices of family, friendship, and personal caregiving, but that the ethics of care has little to offer in dealing with violence. The violence of crime, terrorism, war, and violence against women in any context may seem beyond the ethics of care. Skepticism is certainly in order if it is suggested that we can deal with violence simply by caring. Violence seems to call for the harsh arm of law and enforcement, not the soft touch of care. Elsewhere I have discussed how the ethics of care would recommend respect for international law and how it would thus approach issues of military intervention. I will concentrate here on how the ethics of care can contribute guidance in dealing with family violence and in confronting terrorism.

Terrorism, Rights, and Political Goals

I will not venture to suggest exactly what factor or combination of factors may be necessary to turn political violence into terrorism, but perhaps when either the intention to spread fear or the intention to harm non-combatants is primary, this is sufficient.1

Morality, care, and international law

Whether we should respect international law is in dispute. In the United States, international law is dismissed by the left as merely promoting the interests of powerful states. It is attacked by the right as irrelevant and an interference with the interests and mission of the United States. And it follows from the arguments of many liberals that in the absence of world government the world is in a Hobbesian state of nature and international law inapplicable. This article reviews the thinking of Kant, Locke, and Rawls, among others and shows how arguments against respect for international law can be answered. It questions arguments based on the analogy between states and individuals, and between international law as it has developed and law based on an ideal social contract between individuals. It then turns to the ethics of care, a recent addition to moral theory, and examines its major characteristics and recommendations. It considers how the ethics of care would view international law and the guidance this moral approach could provide for international relations. The article shows how the ethics of care is compatible with various current trends, and how thinking about globalization and greater international interdependence would benefit from greater attention to it. The article argues that the ethics of care would clearly support respect for international law as it has developed, but that it would even more strongly support addressing current problems in ways that would, in the longer term, make appeals to law and its enforcements ever less necessary.

Rights and the Presumption of Care

Carl Wellman has done much to clarify our thinking on rights. He helps us understand how, exactly, “Carl has a right to X” should be analyzed, and to see the different kinds of rights there are, such as institutional, especially legal, rights, and moral, including individual and corporate, rights. His topology is surely useful, though it can be challenged. And his arguments for the clarification that can be achieved by employing the Hohfeldian model of claims, liberties, powers, and immunities for the rights in question can benefit all of us who deal with moral issues.

Ethnic Conflict and the Ethics of Care

I will consider in this paper problems of ethnic conflict and violence, the inadequacies of much contemporary political and moral theory in dealing with these problems, and the greater suitability of Peter French’s work for conceptualizing and handling various issues involved. I will conclude with a discussion of the newly developed moral theory of the ethics of care, its greater promise for understanding ethnic conflict, and its compatibility with many of French’s concerns.

Book ReviewsMarilyn Friedman, .Autonomy, Gender, Politics.New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. ix+248.

Autonomy is a liberal value par excellence. As is well recognized by now, those for whom it was developed for most of its history did not include women, nonwhites, or colonized people. This raises the question of whether the major problem with autonomy is to reinterpret the boundaries of its applicability so that it can embrace such excluded groups or whether autonomy itself needs reevaluation. If, for instance, autonomy is associated with independence and self-sufficiency, the “self-made man” of popular iconography, that is hardly an ideal that should be sought by everyone. Who would care for children, cultivate friendships or social solidarity, or involve themselves with those in need? Marilyn Friedman shows effectively how the concept of autonomy assuredly need not be tied to the popular images of rugged individualism. One can autonomously choose to be a person who recognizes the fundamental interdependence of human beings in societies and who is deeply involved with the concerns of others. “There are cultural supports for economic competition, ruthless aggression, and selfish indifference to others,” she notes (43). Although the ideal of autonomy does not preclude these, it does not call for them. Rather, “autonomy requires exploring what one cares deeply about and striving to act accordingly” (43). Friedman characterizes autonomy in more detail as follows: “Autonomy is . . . self-determination. . . . For choices and actions to be autonomous, the choosing and acting self as the particular self she is must play a role in determining them” (4). The acts must partly result from her own wants and values, reflectively reaffirmed even in the face of some obstacles (13) and be “relatively unimpeded by conditions such as coercion, deception, and manipulation” (14). Autonomy is a matter of degree. Autonomy, to Friedman, “does not require humanly impossible self-creation” (8). “It is a concept about a certain sort of humanly possible causation” (8). It “occurs so long as a whole self . . . plays a role in partly determining her own behavior” (8). There can certainly be problems with deciding how much of “a” role and how minimal the “partly” can be for the behavior to still count as autonomous, but since to Friedman there are degrees of autonomy, these are problems we must live with. She argues, against various critics, for a content-neutral conception of autonomy, and on this view, “avoiding or abandoning close personal relationships is in no sense required by autonomy. Nor is it for any reason a better way for any individual to strive for autonomy” (103). Friedman’s intention in this book is to revise liberalism, not reject it (76), and she argues that autonomy ought to be seen as a core value for women and other previously excluded groups as well as for the privileged of autonomy’s history. Without addressing any of the recent literature attacking or defending com-

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How is feminism changing the way women and men think, feel and act? Virginia Held explores how feminist theory is changing contemporary views of moral choice. She proposes a comprehensive philosophy of feminist ethics, arguing for reconceptualizations of the self; of relations between the self and others; and of images of birth and death, nurturing and violence. Held shows how social, political and cultural institutions have traditionally been founded upon masculine ideals of morality. She then identifies a distinct feminist morality that moves beyond culturally embedded notions about motherhood and female emotionality, and she discusses its far-reaching implications for altering many contemporary social problems, including standards of freedom, democracy, equality, and personal development.