Abstract
Part IV develops a topic only hinted at in the previous chapters (see Part III, Chap. 7): the relationship between care and justice. An inescapable topic, not just because the reflection on care came about as a critique of the liberal justice theories (Rawls), but also because recently the problem of social justice has forcefully emerged in some social movements in the global scenario (from the ‘Arab Spring’ to the indignados). The women care theorists (from Gilligan to Kittay) propose integrating the paradigm of justice, based on the parameters of an abstract individualism and the subjects’ rationality, independence and equality, with the paradigm of care, based on the values of concreteness, affectivity, interdependence and relationality. This proposal to integrate the two, which one can agree with in general, however risks reproposing and legitimizing a purely formal idea of justice: namely, of neglecting the problem of the motivations that are at the basis of the demand for justice. The thesis is proposed that justice also presupposes sentiments and passions (such as compassion, as Nussbaum suggests, and indignation), which are not exclusive to care or the ethics of care. To stress this aspect is to start from the concrete complaints of individuals and groups against injustice; that is, it is to renounce the perfect model of justice and start from injustice, or rather from the reality of injustice (Sen, Renault). If we are to reflect on the passions first of all we can recognize the different nature of the affective motivations at the basis of the demand for justice and distinguish between legitimate complaints and illegitimate claims (as appears clear in the exemplary distinction between indignation and envy). In second place, we can better understand the motivations presiding over care (such as love), so as to avert the vision of care as pure altruism and assistance. Care of the world presupposes integrating the equivalent logic of justice with the asymmetric logic of care.
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Notes
- 1.
See Part III, Chap. 8, Sect. 8.4.
- 2.
See Lawrence Kohlberg, Essays in Moral Development, 2 vols (New York: Harper and Row, 1981, 1984).
- 3.
See Luc Boltanski, L’Amour et la Justice comme compétences (Paris: Editions Métailié, 1990), part 2.
- 4.
I am evidently alluding to Margalit, Decent Society.
- 5.
See Tronto, Moral Boundaries; Held, Ethics of Care; Kittay, Love’s Labor; Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice.
- 6.
As you will remember, Gilligan illustrates her thesis by deducing it from the different answers given by two children (a boy and a girl) to ‘Heinz’s dilemma’. See Part III, Chap. 8, Sect. 8.4.
- 7.
Carol Gilligan, Janie Ward, Jill McLean Taylor and Betty Bardige, eds., Mapping the Moral Domain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), xviii.
- 8.
See Gilligan, In a Different Voice, 100.
- 9.
Tronto, Moral Boundaries, 117.
- 10.
Ibid., 134.
- 11.
Ibid., 118.
- 12.
Ibid., 147.
- 13.
Ibid., 148.
- 14.
See Rawls, Theory of Justice; Jürgen Habermas, Justification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), partial translation of Erläuterungen zur Diskursethik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991); Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action.
- 15.
Tronto, Moral Boundaries, 152.
- 16.
Ibid., 214, note 68.
- 17.
See Held, Ethics of Care: Personal, Political and Global.
- 18.
In other words, care needs to be removed from the devaluing vision of male and patriarchal thought to propose a post-patriarchal conception which evidently presupposes women’s autonomy and dignity, ibid., 64.
- 19.
‘[…] the ethics of care values emotion rather than rejects it. Not all emotion is valued, of course, but in contrast with the dominant rationalist approaches, such emotions as sympathy, empathy, sensitivity, and responsiveness are seen as the kind of moral emotions that need to be cultivated not only to help in the implementation of the dictates of reason but to better ascertain what morality recommends.’ (Ibid., 10).
- 20.
See ibid., 66: ‘The care that is valued by the ethics of care – and to be justifiable must – include caring for distant others in an interdependent world, and caring that the rights of all are respected and their needs met. It must include caring that the environment in which embodied human beings reside is well cared for.’
- 21.
‘Both are rationalist in their moral epistemologies; both rely on simple, abstract, universal rules; both assume a concept of person that is individualistic and independent; both are theories of right action aimed at recommending rational choices […]. Finally, both are concerned with issues such as justice – through rights and through public policy – though a Kantian foundation may be better and stronger for rights, and a utilitarian one for many issues of public policy.’ (Ibid., 63–64).
- 22.
Ibid., 62.
- 23.
See for example Noddings, Caring.
- 24.
See ibid., 67.
- 25.
Ibid., 15.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
‘We need new images for the relations between justice and care, rejecting the impulse toward reductionism’ (ibid., 73).
- 28.
Ibid., 17.
- 29.
Ibid., 69.
- 30.
Ibid., 71.
- 31.
See Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights (Malden: Polity Press, 2002).
- 32.
Fiona Robinson, Globalizing Care: Ethics, Feminist Theory, and International Affairs (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999), 7.
- 33.
Here Held is referring in particular to John Keane, Global Civil Society? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
- 34.
I would like to immediately specify that I will follow Nussbaum and use ‘emotion’ and ‘passion’ as equivalent terms. On the other hand, however, I want to underline the distinction between these two concepts and the concept of ‘moral sentiment’: while emotion and passion indicate an affective dimension that is ambivalent insofar as it can have both a positive and negative acceptation, when speaking of moral sentiment, as we will see, a positive acceptation is always assumed.
- 35.
See Marta Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice.
- 36.
See Marta Nussbaum, Women and Human Development. The Capabilities Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
- 37.
Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 70.
- 38.
Eva Kittay, Love’s Labor (London: Routledge, 1999), preface, xiii.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
Ibid., Introduction, 1.
- 41.
See Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 14ff.
- 42.
See ibid., part 1, chap. 8, 89ff.
- 43.
Ibid., part 7, 408.
- 44.
Ibid., 409. The presence of a moral component in Rawls’s theory, which distinguishes it for example from rational choice theory, is also underlined by Sen: ‘[…] Rawls makes another basic contribution in pointing to “the moral powers” that people have, related to their “capacity for a sense of justice” and “for a conception of the good”.’ (Idea of Justice, 63).
- 45.
Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 91.
- 46.
Ibid., 89.
- 47.
Ibid., 273.
- 48.
Ibid., 324.
- 49.
‘Why focus only on the more extreme dependency? Dependency is found not only in the case of a young child who is dependent on a mothering person. A boss is dependent on his or her secretary. Urban populations are dependent on agricultural communities. Persons on farms are dependent on electrical workers. Professors are dependent on janitors, and janitors are dependent on engineers. And so on. We are all interdependent. My point is that interdependence begins with dependence […].’ (Kittay, Love’s Labor, Preface, xii).
- 50.
Ibid., 25.
- 51.
Ibid.
- 52.
See Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, chap. 1, section vii.
- 53.
See further § 3.
- 54.
Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, 300.
- 55.
Ibid., 302.
- 56.
Ibid., 336.
- 57.
Ibid., 319 and also 405: ‘So it [the capabilities approach] adopts a thoroughly anti-Stoic picture of the world, according to which human beings are both dignified and needy, and in which dignity and neediness interact in complex ways.’
- 58.
Ibid., 342ff.
- 59.
Ibid., 310.
- 60.
Ibid., 404–5.
- 61.
Ibid., 399.
- 62.
Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 1990).
- 63.
Ibid., 89.
- 64.
Ibid., 88–89.
- 65.
See Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, 426ff.
- 66.
Ibid., 399.
- 67.
See Luc Boltanski, Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Originally published as La souffrance à distance (Paris: Editions Métailié, 1993).
- 68.
Boltanski, Distant Suffering, xv–xvi, 12.
- 69.
In this connection see the strong perplexities expressed by Susan Sontag: ‘But if we consider what emotions would be desirable, it seems too simple to elect sympathy. The imaginary proximity to the suffering inflicted on others that is granted by images suggests a link between the far-away sufferers – seen close-up on the television screen – and the privileged viewer that is simply untrue, that is yet one more mystification of our real relations to power. So far as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence. To that extent, it can be (for all our good intentions) an impertinent – if not an inappropriate – response.’ (Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 102).
- 70.
Peter Sloterdijk, Rage and Time.
- 71.
See Michael Walzer, “Politics and Passion,” in Politics and Passion. Toward a More Egalitarian Liberalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
- 72.
See Sen, Idea of Justice.
- 73.
Ibid., 410.
- 74.
Merits that consist of his vision of justice as equity, acknowledgement of individuals’ moral faculties, capacity to have a sense of justice, and the priority he gives to freedom (Ibid., 62ff.).
- 75.
On social choice theory, see ibid., 94ff.
- 76.
Ibid., 398.
- 77.
In this connection Sen calls up the traditional distinction in Indian jurisprudence between an arrangement-focused (niti) and a realization-focused (nyanya) view of justice, ibid., 20.
- 78.
Ibid., 6.
- 79.
Ibid., Preface, vii.
- 80.
In this case too, Sen favours reference to Adam Smith and the British tradition (see ibid., 49ff.).
- 81.
Ibid., 414.
- 82.
Ibid.
- 83.
‘As Adam Smith noted, we do have many different motivations, taking us well beyond the single-minded pursuit of our interest. There is nothing contrary to reason in our willingness to do things that are not entirely self-serving. Some of these motivations, like “humanity, justice, generosity and public spirit”, may even be very productive for society, as Smith noted.’ (Ibid., 191).
- 84.
Ibid., 389.
- 85.
Ibid., 50.
- 86.
Ibid., 390–92.
- 87.
‘If one tries to remove the misery of others only because – and only to the extent that – it affects one’s own welfare, this does not signify a departure from self-love as the only accepted reason for action. But if one is committed, say, to doing what can be done to remove the misery of others – whether or not one’s own welfare is affected by it, and not merely to the extent to which one’s own welfare is so influenced – then that is a clear departure from self-interested behaviour.’ (Ibid., 189).
- 88.
See Renault, L’expérience de l’injustice.
- 89.
Renault denounces the absence, both in Rawls and Habermas – by the latter see above all Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), originally published as Faktizität und Geltung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993) – of a diagnostic analysis of the situations that generate injustice. As a consequence, this results in a static conception of justice that leaves out the pathologies of the social and prevents justice from being seen as a dynamic for transforming injustice.
- 90.
See Honneth, Struggle for Recognition.
- 91.
By proposing the concept of ‘experience of injustice’ as what in itself sums up all forms of injustice (whether they originate from distribution or identity), Renault intends to go beyond the contrast between ‘redistribution’ and ‘recognition’ that has long driven the debate between Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser (on which see Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?).
- 92.
Renault, L’expérience de l’injustice, 126.
- 93.
‘The experience of social injustice can be interpreted as the experience of a denial of socially instituted recognition.’(Ibid., 49, own translation).
- 94.
See ibid., chaps. 4 and 5.
- 95.
Ibid., 34, own translation.
- 96.
See ibid, chap. 6.
- 97.
Ibid., 35.
- 98.
I will restrict myself to pointing out that one of the most interesting aspects of Renault’s analysis is taking liability for the invisible forms of injustice and the social and psychic suffering of those who have no voice nor awareness of injustice. I will not dwell on it here, however, since what I am interested in is underlining the importance of the ‘sentiment of injustice’.
- 99.
While pointing out the lack of this aspect in Honneth, Marcus Ohlström states: ‘The need to critically assess our value-structures is, we may conclude, at least partly a theoretical or pre-political need. That is to say that the task of a proper theory of justice cannot be only to outline the moral grammar of social conflicts and then let these conflicts be played out by the actors themselves. A proper theory of justice must go beyond this – it must be able to guide political practice and to point forward, towards the right and away from the wrong, regardless of the beliefs held true in society, by dominant groups or by others.’ (“Experiences and Justice: On the Limits of Recognition,” Iris, no. 3 (2011): 209).
- 100.
See Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Genealogy of Morals,” in The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals (New York: Anchor Books, 1956). Originally published as Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887).
- 101.
See Friedrich Von Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982).
- 102.
See Helmut Schoeck, Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour (London: Secker and Warburg, 1969). Originally published as Der Neid: Eine Theorie der Gesellschaft (Munich: Karl Alber, 1966).
- 103.
See Rawls, Theory of Justice.
- 104.
‘[…] for reasons both of simplicity and moral theory, I have assumed an absence of envy and a lack of knowledge of the special psychologies. Nevertheless these inclinations do exist and in some way they must be reckoned with.’ (Ibid., 530).
- 105.
Ibid., 531.
- 106.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy – for example in Le sacrifice et l’envie (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1992) – criticizes Rawls for having reduced the individuals protagonist of the cooperation pact to evanescent ectoplasms, lacking in all those very emotional dimensions; and Slavoj Žižek denounces the paradox intrinsic to the idea of just society: ‘But what Rawls doesn’t see is how such a society would create conditions for an uncontrolled explosion of ressentiment: in it, I would know that my lower status is fully “justified” and would thus be deprived of the ploy of excusing my failure as the result of social justice.’ (Violence (London: Profile Books, 2008), 75).
- 107.
Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, 208.
- 108.
When there is justice, Nietzsche says, ‘the eye is trained to view the deed ever more impersonally – even the eye of the offended person’. (Ibid.).
- 109.
René Descartes, “The Passions of the Soul,” in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), § 182. Originally published as Les passions de l’âme (1649).
- 110.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), II, 7, 1108 b1–7.
- 111.
See Sloterdijk, Rage and Time.
- 112.
See Elena Pulcini, Invidia. La passione triste (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011).
- 113.
Aristotle, The ‘Art’ of Rhetoric, ed. G. P. Goold, vol. XXII in Aristotle in Twenty-Three Volumes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975 MCMLXXV), II, 2.
- 114.
On rage, see Remo Bodei, Ira. La passione furente (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010); in particular chap. 5, ‘Giusta ira’.
- 115.
Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, 394.
- 116.
See Stéphane Hessel, Time for Outrage, pamphlet. Originally published as Indignez-vous!, Indigène éditions, December 2010. Here the French ‘indignation’ has been translated as ‘outrage’, a term also used by Sen at times. However, it has been preferred to render ‘indignazione’ with ‘indignation’ since this is the term found in the classic authors.
- 117.
Sen, Idea of Justice, 389–90.
- 118.
Ibid., 46.
- 119.
‘A sense of injustice could serve as a signal that moves us, but a signal does demand critical examination, and there has to be some scrutiny of the soundness of a conclusion based mainly on signals. Adam Smith’s conviction of the importance of moral sentiments did not stop him from seeking a “theory of moral sentiments”, nor from insisting that a sense of wrongdoing be critically examined […]’. (Ibid., viii and 44 ff).
- 120.
Ibid., 402–3.
- 121.
Here I would like to stress that indignation is not exclusive to those who are subject to injustice, but can also concern those who see injustice and rebel against situations considered, and felt, to be intolerable.
- 122.
Gilligan, In a Different Voice, 98.
- 123.
See Sandra Laugier, “Le sujet du care: vulnerabilité et expression ordinaire,” in Qu’est-ce que le care?, ed. Laugier, Patricia Paperman, and Pascale Molinier (Paris: Payot, 2009), 159–200, own translation.
- 124.
Ibid., own translation.
- 125.
Ricoeur, ‘Love and Justice’, 199. It needs pointing out that the model of justice that Ricoeur refers to is essentially Rawls’s model of distributive justice, whose limits Ricoeur underlines. But even if we consider a different idea of justice, such as the one I have tried to suggest here, which sets value by the passions at its base – the distinction between equivalence and superabundance remains valid all the same.
- 126.
Ibid., 197.
- 127.
On the distinction between justice/equivalence and love (agape)/gift, also see the important analyses by Luc Boltanski in L’amour et la justice.
- 128.
See Caillé, Critique de la raison utilitaire; Caillé, Anthropologie philosophique du don; Godbout, World of the Gift. See Part I, Chap. 3, Sect. 3.1.
- 129.
The expression is evidently taken from the book by Agnes Heller, Beyond Justice (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), which proposes to ‘complete’ the abstract ideal of justice through the concept of ‘good life’. Heller proposes an interesting and original acceptation of this concept, since she sees ‘righteousness’ – owing to which one prefers to suffer injustice rather than commit it – as a fundamental element of good life (see in particular chap. 6). However, in my opinion it would also be legitimate to propose – among the fundamental components of the good life – the perspective of care that I have tried to outline.
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Pulcini, E. (2013). Care and Justice: The Perspective of the Passions. In: Care of the World. Studies in Global Justice, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4482-0_10
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