Abstract
In this chapter, I will develop a dialectical approach based on autonomy and trust. Every human being's moral identity is characterized by carings, and carings play a decisive role in realizing both trust and autonomy. I will show that moral adultism can be overcome only if the child's carings, rather than the more ambivalent concepts of needs and interests, direct the caregiver's behaviour.
I believe that autonomy is both important normatively and fundamental conceptually. Neither of these precludes the possibility that other concepts are both important and fundamental.
Gerald Dworkin 1988, p. 32
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Notes
- 1.
For example, in the context of personal relationships, individual autonomy and relational connections are unified oppositions. The two tendencies form a functional opposition in that the total autonomy of parties precludes their relational connection, just as total connections between parties precludes their individual autonomy (Baxter and Montgomery 1996, p. 9).
- 2.
Yet, maybe such a trauma will eventually teach her to do so.
- 3.
Similarly, Rawls and Nussbaum hold such a view and, thus, exclude children qua children from moral agency, as Macleod (2010) criticizes in an analysis of the capabilities approach.
- 4.
In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, for example, moral agency is discussed as part of the entry on moral responsibility. Eshleman, Andrew, “Moral Responsibility”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/moral-responsibility/.
- 5.
For Gareth Matthews, even young children can fulfill the minimum requirement for genuine agency which is “the capacity to perform actions that are either morally good or morally bad”. Matthews, Gareth, “The Philosophy of Childhood”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/childhood/. However, moral agency may comprise more than performing certain acts.
- 6.
McLeod and Carolyn, “Trust”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/trust/.
- 7.
- 8.
See also John Holt’s appraisal of the concept of child innocence: “But by the innocence of children we mean something more—their hopefulness, trustfulness, confidence, their feeling that the world is open to them, that life has many possibilities, that what they don’t know they can find out, what they can’t do they can learn to do. These are qualities valuable in everyone” (Holt 1974, p. 90).
- 9.
Some might add also “strategic trust” to the list, i.e., trusting someone in a way that motivates or even induces her to comply. However, I think that strategic ‘trust’ in the very sense of the word ‘strategic’ is not trust, at all, but a kind of manipulation.
- 10.
See Jesper Juul’s critical evaluation of educational methods in child rearing (Juul 2011).
- 11.
Hansson and Kihlbom et al. discuss more cases of how physical examinations may invade the privacy of children (Hansson and Kihlbom et al. 2009).
- 12.
However, the idea of patient self-determination in medical care can be traced back to 19th-century German legal debates (Maehle 2009).
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Wiesemann, C. (2016). The Dialectic of Trust and Autonomy. In: Moral Equality, Bioethics, and the Child. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, vol 67. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32402-9_7
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