Virtues of autonomy: the Kantian ethics of care

1 Virtues of autonomy : the Kantian ethics of careJohn PaleyMADepartment of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Stirling, Stirling, UKOriginal ArticleAbstractThe ethics of care, adopted in much of the nursing literature, is usuallyframed in opposition to the Kantian ethics of principle. Irrespective ofwhether the ethics of care is grounded in gender, as with Gilligan andNoddings, or inscribed on Heidegger s ontology, as with Benner, Kantremains the philosophical adversary, honouring reason rather thanemotion, universality rather than context, and individual autonomyrather than interdependence. During the past decade, however, a greatdeal of Kantian scholarship including feminist scholarship has ren-dered this series of oppositions questionable, challenging the view thatan ethics of care and Kant s moral law are irreconcilable.

2 This papertherefore re-examines Kant s writings, drawing on recent scholarship,and argues both that they provide the care ethicists with everything theyrequire, and that they offer something beyond an ethics of care, some-thing that repairs the deficits in philosophies of caring. It concludes bysuggesting that a Kantian ethics of care has significant implications forthe construction of nursing : autonomy , care, ethics , Kant, principle. Blackwell Science Ltd 2002 Nursing Philosophy,3, pp. 133 143133 Correspondence: John Paley, Department of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, : 44 (0) 1786 466399; fax: 44 (0) 1786 466344.

3 E-mail: reading KantThe ethics of care was originally formulated in oppo-sition to a kind of moral theory that was regarded asessentially Kantian and, to a considerable extent, thatopposition remains at the centre of current different voice (Gilligan, 1982) belongs towomen, and many writers have seen the ethics of careas a feminist alternative to the ethics of principle,associated with men, and derived largely from anorthodox reading of Kant. Even where the basis for an ethics of care has been switched from genderto something else in the attempt (Benner & Wrubel, 1989) to inscribe caring on the axis of 134 John PaleyHeideggerian ontology Kant has continued to figureas the b te-noire, a dark philosophical adversary hovering in the background.

4 Certainly, Benner is nofriend of Kant, her instincts being thoroughly com-munitarian, and her work characterized by frequentattacks on the misguided Western project of creatingan autonomous self (Benner et al., 1994, p. 248). Soit is safe to say that the ethics of care has usually been regarded as anti- Kantian , and that until rela-tively recently that view would have gone the last 15 years, however, Kantian schol-arship has developed such a radically different read-ing of Kant s ethics that the conventional picture nowlooks far less convincing. It has been argued that anew basis for dialogue with the ethics of care posi-tion may be possible (Munzel, 1999, p.)

5 7); there hasbeen a challenge to the presupposition that the careperspective and the perspective of the moral law are,in fact, mutually exclusive (Nagl-Docekal, 1997, ); and it has been suggested that we have noreason to think that Kantian moral theory lacks anyof the essential ingredients of a morality of care (Sedgwick, 1997, p. 85). women philosophers haveplayed a very significant role in this revisioning of Kant s thought (Herman, 1993; Baron, 1995;Korsgaard, 1996; O Neill, 1989; Shell, 1996; Munzel,1999), and it is worth noting that a number of explic-itly feminist writers have recognized Kant as a po-tential ally (including Grimshaw, 1986; Dillon, 1992;Tronto,1993;Kneller,1997; Nagl-Docekal, 1997; Moen,1997; Koehn, 1998).

6 So the rehabilitation of Kant isnot just a male new reading of Kant reflects the switch from anarrow focus on the Groundworkto an interest in thecritical writings as a whole, especially the Metaphysicsof Morals, the Lectures on Ethicsand the Critique ofJudgement. While the Groundworkseems, at firstsight, to support the traditional view of Kant s ethicsas cold, overly rational and based entirely on anappeal to rules and principles, the other worksdemonstrate that his thinking is far more subtle, andfar more human, than the popular accounts imply. Inparticular, the Doctrine of Virtuereads almost as if itwere an 18thcentury attempt to formulate an ethics ofcaring, and it certainly sketches out a variation on theethics of virtue (Wood, 1999).

7 However, it remainstrue that there are differences between Kant s viewsand those of seminal writers on care ethics (includingGilligan, 1982; Noddings, 1984; Held, 1993; Baier,1994; Meyers, 1994). In this paper, I shall try to teaseout some of these differences, arguing that, in eachcase, the Kantian position holds the advantage. Indoing so, I will cover ground already explored indepth by Herman, Baron, Munzel and the rest; but,to compensate, I will also attempt to indicate some of the implications for , the mythThe powerful myth about Kant runs something likethis. He portrays people as non-social thinking units,individuals who relate to one another only contin-gently, and who do so on the basis of reason ratherthan on the basis of emotion or attachment.

8 Theymake ethical decisions by reference to a moral law,which applies universally, independent of context,and which is apprehended by acts of pure principles that make up the moral law determinethe rightness or wrongness of actions taken as a class,and irrespective of the consequences that a particu-lar action might have. They prescribe duties, bindingon all rational beings just insofar as they are rational,and take no account of the inevitable interdepen-dence that all human communities experience. Theessential condition underlying morality is not the factof relationship between one individual and another,but the individual s own autonomy , guaranteeing thatshe/he is free both to understand the moral law, andalso to act on is an undeniable coldness to this image.

9 If itwere an accurate picture, the care ethicists would becorrect to think of Kantianism as the paradigm caseof the deontological ethics -of-principle they or unfortunately, however, it is not accu-rate, or not completely so. About half of the accountsketched in the previous paragraph is right, but therest is wrong; and even the half that is right is pre-sented in such a way as to create an entirely falseimpression, because many of the things Kant says donot have the implications that have been ascribed tothem. Blackwell Science Ltd 2002 Nursing Philosophy,3, pp. 133 143 Virtues of Autonomy135 Implicit in the account are at least four conceptualoppositions, all of which are familiar from the post-Gilligan debate about the ethics of care and what distinguishes it from Kantian ethics .

10 These are theoppositions between (i) autonomy and interdepend-ence, (ii) universality and context, (iii) deontologyand teleology, and (iv) reason and emotion. In the rest of the paper, I will examine the ways in whichKant s theory diverges from the ethics of care, at leastas it is normally understood, using these oppositionsas a template. At the same time, however, I willemphasize that a fuller account of the Kantian viewgives the caring ethicists everything they want. Thedifference is, it offers something else as well, and Ishall argue that this something else represents is, we should first note, more than one conceptof autonomy .