Virginia Held assesses the ethics of care as a promising alternative to the familiar moral theories that serve so inadequately to guide our lives. The ethics of care is only a few decades old, yet it is by now a distinct moral theory or normative approach to the problems we face. It is relevant to global and political matters as well as to the personal relations that can most clearly exemplify care. This book clarifies just what the ethics of (...) care is: what its characteristics are, what it holds, and what it enables us to do. It discusses the feminist roots of this moral approach and why the ethics of care can be a morality with universal appeal. Held examines what we mean by "care," and what a caring person is like. Where other moral theories demand impartiality above all, the ethics of care understands the moral import of our ties to our families and groups. It evaluates such ties, focusing on caring relations rather than simply on the virtues of individuals. The book proposes how such values as justice, equality, and individual rights can "fit together" with such values as care, trust, mutual consideration, and solidarity. In the second part of the book, Held examines the potential of the ethics of care for dealing with social issues. She shows how the ethics of care is more promising than Kantian moral theory and utilitarianism for advice on how expansive, or not, markets should be, and on when other values than market ones should prevail. She connects the ethics of care with the rising interest in civil society, and considers the limits appropriate for the language of rights. Finally, she shows the promise of the ethics of care for dealing with global problems and seeing anew the outlines of international civility. (shrink)

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 persuasively 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. Examining the effects of this alternative moral and ethical system on changing social values, Held discusses its far-reaching implications for altering standards of freedom, democracy, equality, and personal development. Ultimately, she concludes, the culture of feminism could provide a fresh perspective on--even solutions to--contemporary social problems. Feminist Morality makes a vital contribution to the ongoing debate in feminist theory on the importance of motherhood. For philosophers and other readers outside feminist theory, it offers a feminist moral and social critique in clear and accessible terms. (shrink)

In this book, the author examines the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence systems as they integrate and replace traditional social structures in new sociocognitive-technological environments. She discusses issues related to the integrity of researchers, technologists, and manufacturers as they design, construct, use, and manage artificially intelligent systems; formalisms for reasoning about moral decisions as part of the behavior of artificial autonomous systems such as agents and robots; and design methodologies for social agents based on societal, moral, and legal values. Throughout (...) the book the author discusses related work, conscious of both classical, philosophical treatments of ethical issues and the implications in modern, algorithmic systems, and she combines regular references and footnotes with suggestions for further reading. This short overview is suitable for undergraduate students, in both technical and non-technical courses, and for interested and concerned researchers, practitioners, and citizens. (shrink)

Nearly two hundred years ago, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote what is considered to be the first major work of feminist political theory: A Vindication of the Rights of Women . Much has been written about this work, and about Wollstonecraft as the intellectual pioneer of feminism, but the actual substance and coherence of her political thought have been virtually ignored. Virginia Sapiro here provides the first full-length treatment of Wollstonecraft's political theory. Drawing on all of Wollstonecraft's works and treating them (...) thematically rather than sequentially, Sapiro shows that Wollstonecraft's ideas about women's rights, feminism, and gender are elements of a broad and fully developed philosophy, one with significant implications for contemporary democratic and liberal theory. The issues raised speak to many current debates in theory, including those surrounding interpretation of the history of feminism, the relationship between liberalism and republicanism in the development of political philosophy, and the debate over the canon. For political scientists, most of whom know little about Wollstonecraft's thought, Sapiro's book is an excellent, nuanced introduction which will cause a reconsideration of her work and her significance both for her time and for today's concerns. For feminist scholars, Sapiro's book offers a rounded and unconventional analysis of Wollstonecraft's thought. Written with considerable charm and verve, this book will be the starting point for understanding this important writer for years to come. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that social factors are related to health outcomes: much research served to establish correlations between classes of social factors on the one hand and classes of disease on the other hand. However, why and how social factors are an active part in the aetiology of disease development is something that is gaining attention only recently in the health sciences and in the medical humanities. In this paper, we advance the view that, just as bio-markers help trace (...) the causal continuum from exposure to disease development at the biological level, socio-markers ought to be introduced and studied in order to trace the social continuum from exposure to disease development. We explain how socio-markers differ from social indicators and how they can be used in combination with bio-markers in order to reconstruct the mixed mechanisms of health and disease, namely mechanisms in which both biological and social factors have an active causal role. (shrink)

Denounced by neighbors and scrutinized by demonologists, the early modern French witch also confessed, self-identified as a witch and as the author of horrific deeds. What led her to this point? Despair, solitude, perhaps even physical pain, but most decisively, demonology's two-pronged prosecutorial and truth-seeking confessional apparatus. This book examines the systematic and well-oiled machinery that served to extract, interpret, and disseminate witches' confessions in early modern France. For the demonologist, confession was the only way to find out the truth (...) about the clandestine activities of witches. For the witch, however, trial confessions opened new horizons of selfhood. In this book, Virginia Krause unravels the threads that wove together the demonologist's will to know and the witch's subjectivity. By examining textual and visual evidence, Krause shows how confession not only generated demonological theory but also brought forth a specific kind of self, which we now recognize as the modern subject. (shrink)

The favorable reception that was received for the book Per salvare la democrazia in Italia (Rubbettino, 2019) did not prevent some demanding readers from raising objections to some passages included in part five of the book, containing proposals to improve the functioning of our democratic system. It was therefore decided to take advantage of the period of forced domicile imposed by the pandemic to write this new book, whose primary objective is to clarify the passages in question while explaining the (...) proposed innovative solutions in a simpler manner, starting with the description of his own career path and ending with a suggestion for changing the way of doing politics in Italy. The second objective is to make readers aware of the enormous impact exerted by European legislation on the Italian legal system--Translated from back cover. (shrink)

When feminist philosophers first turned their attention to traditional ethical theory, its almost exclusive emphasis upon justice, rights, abstract rationality, and individual autonomy came under special criticism. Women’s experiences seemed to suggest the need for a focus on care, empathetic relations, and the interdependence of persons.The most influential readings of what has become an extremely lively and fruitful debate are reproduced here along with important new contributions by Alison Jaggar and Sara Ruddick. As this volume testifies, there is no agreement (...) on the important questions about the relationship between justice and care, but the debate has deepened and enriched our understanding in many ways. Justice and Care is a valuable collection of readings—an essential tool for anyone studying the state of feminist thought in particular or ethical theory in general. (shrink)

Virginia Held's Feminist Morality defends the idea that it is possible to transform the "public" sphere by remaking it on the model of existing "private" relationships such as families. This paper challenges Held's optimism. It is argued that feminist moral inquiry can aid in transforming the public sphere only by showing just how much the allegedly "private" realms of families and personal relationships are shaped-and often misshapen-by public demands and concerns.

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. (shrink)

Carol Gilligan has identified two orientations to moral understanding; the dominant justice orientation and the under-valued care orientation. Based on her discernment of a voice of care, Gilligan challenges the adequacy of a deontological liberal framework for moral development and moral theory. This paper examines how the orientations of justice and care are played out in medical ethical theory. Specifically, I question whether the medical moral domain is adequately described by the norms of impartiality, universality, and equality that characterize the (...) liberal ideal. My analysis of justice -oriented medical ethics, focuses on the libertarian theory of H.T. Engelhardt and the contractarian theory of R.M. Veatch. I suggest that in the work of E.D. Pellegrino and D.C. Thomasma we find not only a more authentic representation of medical morality but also a project that is compatible with the care orientation's emphasis on human need and responsiveness to particular others. (shrink)

In Three Guineas, first published in June, 1938 Virginia Woolf set about answering three questions. How should war be prevented? Why does the government not support education for women? Why are women prevented from engaging in professional work? Many at the time saw the matter of how best to prevent war as entirely unconnected with “women’s issues”; Woolf linked together the answers, and connected them too with discussions of such matters as social class, in what has come to be (...) acknowledged as a landmark both of feminist and of anti-war writing. Included in the first and other early editions—and integral to the work—was a series of five photographs of men of high position wearing garments that mark their status . Unlike most editions available today, this facsimile edition includes the illustrations as well as the text of the original. (shrink)

As in science, so in bioethics: if prohibiting conflicts of interest is not feasible, rigorous requirements for disclosure can at least manage them.

A modern form of narrative, comic books are used to communicate, discuss, and critique issues in business ethics and social issues in management. A description of comic books as a legitimate medium is followed by a discussion of the pedagogical uses of comic books and assessment techniques. The strengths of the pedagogy include crossing cultural barriers, understanding the complexity of individual decision-making and organizational influences, and the universality of dilemmas and values. We provide an initial source for educators on the (...) topics, comic books, plotlines, and other commentary for consideration of use in the classroom from high school to graduate business ethics and social issues in management courses. (shrink)

This article introduces the findings of a socioeducative investigation on media discourses of four argentine newspapers, in the 1993-2011 period. The objective was to analyze the characteristics of the discoursive practices of the risk- taking behaviors and juvenile suicide in the school space. The results increase our empirical knowledge to think the representations on school.

In the last few decades, the ethics of care as a feminist ethic has given rise to extensive literature, and has affected moral inquiries in many areas. It offers a distinctive challenge to the dominant moral theories: Kantian moral theory, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics. This chapter outlines the distinctive features and promising possibilities of the ethics of care, and the criticisms that have been made against it. It then examines the ethics of care’s recognition of human dependency and of the (...) importance of responding to needs; its interpretation of the roles of emotion and reason in moral understanding; and its critique of liberal individualism and development of a conception of the person as relational. The ethics of care contrasts care with justice, tries to integrate them, and reconceptualizes public and private life and morality. (shrink)

El presente texto se propone analizar la paradójica y compleja coyuntura en la cual la experiencia de una enfermedad zoonótica, que nos confrontó con un recordatorio amargo de nuestra inextricable e inescindible interdependencia con otros distantes, diferentes e interconectados modos de vida, ha propiciado también la re-producción de una economía afectiva centrada en el miedo y la inmunidad, y articulada en torno a un sentido “familiarista” y “humano, demasiado humano” de la responsabilidad que supone vivir y morir con otrxs. La (...) perspectiva que guiará este análisis será aquella que, en el marco del “giro afectivo”, pone el foco en el modo en que las políticas afectivas se entrelazan con marcos perceptuales, al tiempo que son factores activos en los modos en que construimos –o no- redes de sostén y responsabilidad compartida. (shrink)

MAPEDZAHAMA V, RUDGE T, WEST S and PERRON A. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 153–164 [Epub ahead of print]Black nurse in white space? Rethinking the in/visibility of race within the Australian nursing workplaceThis article presents an analysis of data from a critical qualitative study with 14 skilled black African migrant nurses, which document their experiences of nurse‐to‐nurse racism and racial prejudice in Australian nursing workplaces. Racism generally and nurse‐to‐nurse racism specifically, continues to be under‐researched in explorations of these workplaces; when racism (...) is researched, the focus is nurse‐to‐patient racism and racial prejudice. Similarly, research on the experiences of migrant nurses from a variety of ethnicities in Australia has tended to neglect their experiences of the social dynamics of the workplace, thus reinforcing their racialisation. When racialised, the migrant nurse becomes ‘the problem’ through a focus on English language competency and ensuing communication barriers. This paper applies Essed’s framework of ‘everyday racism’ to theorise narratives of racism by black African migrant nurses in Australia. In so doing, it not only brings to the fore silenced discussions of nurse‐to‐nurse racism in Australia, but also exposes the subtle, mundane nature of contemporary racism. For this reason, while the data we present must be read within their context, that is, the Australian nursing workplace, it has significance for advancing a critical analysis of racialised minority groups’ experiences of racism within seemingly ‘race‐less’ nursing workplaces internationally. (shrink)

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up.

O tema geral do presente artigo trata da antropologia histórica encontrada em “The Authoritarian Personality” e fundamentada em “Dialética do Esclarecimento”. Especificamente, abordaremos a conceituação que compreende as movimentações pulsionais enquanto natureza interna, fundamento da concepção da antropologia aqui debatida. Com isso, ao falarmos de antropologia e de natureza, não estamos nos referindo a concepções imutáveis e “biologizantes”, mas a noções históricas e contextuais. Para tanto, iremos nos voltar à “Ideia de história natural” adorniana, precisamente à dialética entre história e (...) natureza. No texto, Adorno trata de dois movimentos de tal dialética: uma concepção de Lukács, para quem elementos da história se tornam naturalizados enquanto segundo natureza, o que pode ser exemplificado com o esquematismo hollywoodiano promovido pela indústria cultural; o segundo movimento, sob influência de Walter Benjamin, trata da transitoriedade histórica da natureza, quando resquícios arcaicos reprimidos pelo sentido histórico dominante ressurgem, tornando-se possibilidade de outra orientação histórica. Este debate se mostra importante justamente porque se encontra no cerne da relação entre economia-política/sociologia e psicanálise, os domínios teóricos mais relevantes para a primeira geração da Teoria Crítica. Por mais que pensemos que há uma antropologia implícita para Horkheimer e Adorno – que enxergariam o ser humano enquanto naturalmente agressivo e destruidor –, o nosso intuito é mostrar que, se a antropologia e a natureza são históricas, o ser humano age a partir da pulsão de morte justamente porque o meio social que o forma é ele mesmo dominador, violento, reificado e alienante. (shrink)

We explored the comprehension of the informed consent in 77 cancer patients previously enrolled in randomised phase II or phase III clinical trials, between March and July 2011, at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milano. We asked participants to complete an ad hoc questionnaire and analysed their answers. Sixty-two per cent of the patients understood the purpose and nature of the trial they were participating in; 44% understood the study procedures and 40% correctly listed at least one of the (...) major risks or complications related to their participation in the trial. We identified three factors associated with comprehension of the informed consent: age, education and type of tumour/investigator team. We suggest several possible improvements of how to obtain informed consent that will increase patient awareness, as well as the validity and effectiveness of the clinical trials. (shrink)

This essay attempts to work out how justice and care and their related concerns fit together. I suggest that as a basic moral value, care should be the wider moral framework into which justice should be fitted.

Traditional Informed Consent is becoming increasingly inadequate, especially in the context of research biobanks. How much information is needed by patients for their consent to be truly informed? How does the quality of the information they receive match up to the quality of the information they ought to receive? How can information be conveyed fairly about future, non-predictable lines of research? To circumvent these difficulties, some scholars have proposed that current consent guidelines should be reassessed, with trust being used as (...) a guiding principle instead of information. Here, we analyse one of these proposals, based on a Participation Pact, which is already being offered to patients at the Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, a comprehensive cancer hospital in Milan, Italy. (shrink)

There are many different forms and interpretations of rewilding: the concept and its practice vary from country to country, with distinct interpretations according to its geographical location. Despite the term rewilding having been present in the lexicon for three decades, the concept of rewilding in England has experienced a prolonged developmental stage. This paper argues that a unique form of English rewilding is now emerging, which is distinct from rewilding in other parts of the world. Compared to other locations rewilding (...) in England operates at smaller spatial scales; its ambitions to increase biodiversity, restore ecosystem functioning and increase natural autonomy are somewhat curtailed; it involves higher levels of human intervention; and, perhaps most tellingly of all, it goes by another name – ‘wilding’, ‘wild’ or ‘wilder’ with little mention of the much-maligned prefix ‘re’. This conclusion has been developed following a comparative case study of two English ‘rewilding’ sites (the Avalon Marshes and Wild Ennerdale) involving 49 semi-structured interviews: twelve expert interviews and nineteen and eighteen stakeholder/practitioner interviews at the Avalon Mashes and Wild Ennerdale respectively. (shrink)

A modern form of narrative, comic books, are used to communicate, discuss, and critique issues in business and society. A description of comic books as a legitimate medium is followed by a discussion of the pedagogical uses of comic books. The strengths of the pedagogy include crossing cultural barriers, understanding the complexity of individual decision-making and organizational influences, and the universality of dilemmas and values. We provide an initial source for educators on the topics, comic books, plotlines, and other commentary (...) for consideration of use in the classroom from high school to graduate business ethics courses. (shrink)