For a general theory of “care”

Joan Tronto’s book, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for An Ethic of Carepublished in 1993, translated into French under the title, A vulnerable world, for a care policyrepresents a convincing attempt to develop a theory of care. The term “ care »Is particularly difficult to translate into French because it designates both what is concern and care ; It includes both the attention concerned to others which supposes an arrangement, an attitude or a feeling and the care practices which make the care A matter of activity and work. Joan Tronto’s philosophical challenge returns, beyond these division between provision and activity, to propose a global definition of care who designates: “ A generic activity that understands everything we do to maintain, perpetuate and repair our “ world », So that we can live there as well as possible. This world understands our bodies, ourselves and our environment, all elements that we seek to link to a complex network, in support of life (P. 143). This very broad definition of care – which brings together a certain number of attitudes, the ability to take responsibility, the work of the care and satisfaction of needs – in fact a central and essential activity of human life: there is a kind of universality of care which can thus characterize the type of relationship that should be had with a being, a natural element or an object provided that it recognizes its belonging to a vulnerable world. However, precisely, how to understand the reference to the vulnerability highly put in front by the choice of the title of the French translation unlike the original text ? Human vulnerability is the fact of all life, the anthropological incompleteness by which, during our lives, we pass, to degrees variable by phases of dependence and independence, autonomy and vulnerability (p. 181-182). In other words, we are not only of the subjects of rights that the injunction to autonomy and impartiality transforms into equal individuals doomed to relations of reciprocity. We are more really and more concretely interdependent beings, from relational sides, involved in different situations and often asymmetrical links.

The ethics of care

Even more, for Tronto, and in accordance with an entire ethical current born in the 1980s with the emblematic book of Carol Gilligan, A different voiceTHE care is rooted in so particular situations that it comes to characterize an ethical behavior indifferent to the abstract rules of a corrective morality and close to a care activity, frequently assigned to women, anxious to maintain relationships and not hurt anyone. The vulnerable being is therefore made of links and ties that make him dependent on others, the care or attention they can give him as he is in need. Such problems imply a concrete relationship to the contemporary world, a diagnosis of situations: “ Assuming the difference, granting each of the humans their dignity and their rights, taking charge of real material iniquities, protecting the environment of the planet (P. 17). If there are many uses of careit is in the perspective of a philosophy concerned with the circumstances and the smallest sensitive variations. The ethics of care It is then worth as a moral rooted in sensitivity against traditional morals, of Kantian inspiration, forged in the use of a practical rational and universal subject. Ethical reflection is part of ordinary lives responsible for affects, singular stories and complex relationships to others while morality is on the side of an abstraction which holds in a whole formulated by precepts. Morality simplifies driving by subspearing it under principles. Joan Tronto evokes this sharing when she undertakes, in the second part of the book, to analyze the difference in the eighteenth century between universalist morals and moral feelings. While the first refers to this autonomous sphere of morality constituted by Kant, the second conceptualized by Hutcheson, Hume and Smith allow to defend an influence of the society in which individuals live a game of reason and sympathy which recalls how much feelings are a founding place of human activities.

For a critical theory of care

But the originality of the book is not only based on this ambition to provide a general theory of careit also lies in the deployment of a critical theory which denounces and exhibits the mechanisms by which, in our societies, made a marginalization of the marginalization of caremainly from its practices and people who invest in it. Thus, we must think of an ideological context of care. It is symptomatic that the more the care departs from the care (on the doctor’s model who supports a patient) and cares about private or local concerns (like the nursing assistant who cleanses a patient), the more abandoned by the powerful (p. 158-159). For example, making the history of cleaning tasks linked to bodily functions, central elements of care devoted to the most dependent (small children, elderly people, etc.), is to recall that these tasks were mainly devoted to women – but not to all women -, to people of color, to the working classes. THE care is the subject of social sharing according to gender, race and class. It can then become the object of poorly remunerated work (work of dominated or weak in the service of powerful) and little considered even when it constitutes an essential cog in the operation of the market company. While care concerns a large part of our everyday life, we do not recognize the value and do not give this dimension the attention it deserves.

This systematic devaluation of care is rooted in a constant association with the private sphere, affectivity and proximity ; THE care is thus naturalized and its recognition as difficult, denied work. The absence of a unified understanding of the care whose most visible sign is the fragmentation of its activities. How, therefore, grasp its structurally central place in social life ? Tronto proposes to respond to this problem by affirmation of a political dimension of care. Redefine the care It is to denounce a process of marginalization of its activities. More fundamentally, Joan Tronto recommends rethinking the relationship between morality and politics, even more, to move the borders of morality. Indeed, the liberal ideology of Kantian tradition taken up by John Rawls, which makes the autonomous individual a moral value and the masterful figure of abstract equality, hides an unequal distribution of power, resources and social distinctions. To question the borders of morality is therefore to question the moral value of liberal individualism and to propose to develop a new political ethics which is something other than a moral foundation of politics.

What is a good care ?

Consequently, Joan Tronto embarks on a reflection on the good care. It releases four necessary phases. The first defined as Caring About consists in this provision that is attention as recognition of a need. The second, TAKING CARE OFdesignates care, assuming responsibility. With the third, lunny is highlighted the actual work of care and its competence. Finally, a good care Go through the receiptthe beneficiary’s response capacity. Attention, responsibility, competence and response capacity constitute an ethical grammar of the act of care (p. 147-150).

Tronto’s book can then be understood not only as an ambitious reflection on questions of solicitude and care but, more internally to the American intellectual debate, as an inflection in relation to other ethics of care. First of all, unlike Gilligan’s founding book, it is a question of getting out of the defense of a morality of women – a minority morality of solicitude and care – which Gilligan proposes to enhance in the name of his ability to treat dilemmas or moral conflicts, also in office of his great contextual plasticity. For Tronto, the purpose is to propose a political and social approach to the carewhich involves taking service activities and all institutions that take care of the great vital or social vulnerability seriously. Consequently, the reflection on the care is informed by a social and political approach, radically denaturalizing, non -romantic, which also shows the violence of assignment to care and power games in such relationships. “” CARE IS BURDEN », A task or a burden ; It is therefore necessary to escape a strictly sentimental position which would make the mother-child relationship and mothering-essentially dyadic relationship-the model of the ethics of the ethics of the ethics of the ethics of care.

Finally, Tronto’s book is the bet of a philosophical foundation of the activities of care and a political program that could reform a personal service economy ; The world of care cannot dissolve in a neoliberal adaptation to the strict rules of market profitability. At the time of the hospital reform in France, questioning of the public education service, the book of Tronto resonates with its news ; He is doing care A fundamental activity for human nature while showing how the perspectives of solicitude and care can be integrated into the requirement of equality carried by justice in a democratic society (for example, a theory of justice is necessary to discern the most urgent needs, the greatest vulnerabilities). With the caredemocracy is discovered a sensitive content.