Our aim in this chapter is to introduce the reader to the contexts of a moral and political theory of care by telling a less common version of the story about care ethics. There are numerous stories about care ethics that differ from each other depending on what the person who tells the story foregrounds, which plots and connections she decides to include or leave aside. The localisation of the beginning of the story plays an important role as it often determines the plot line and the style of the narration. One of the main stories about care ethics is that it began in moral psychology with Carol Gilligan (1982), then it slowly made its way into the realm of theorising about the social and political, and became engaged in the debates in political theory only in the 1990s (cf. Pettersen 2008; Molinier et al. 2009; Hamington and Miller 2006a; Koggel and Orme 2010; Dingler 2016; Timmerman et al. 2019). This is why numerous authors (cf. Hankivsky 2004, 2014; Engster and Hamington 2015b; Vosman 2016) draw a distinction between two (or three) generations of care ethics arguing that the first generation focused mainly on one-to-one personal relationships, whereas the second generation shifted attention to the social and political dimensions of care. As our story demonstrates, the birth of care ethics against the background of second-wave feminism precedes the famous work of Gilligan (1982) and is not confined to the narrow view of care as a private dyadic relation and womenâs activity. The social and political dimension of care was a focus of care ethics from the outset (Ruddick 1980) and received the explicit attention of care ethicists as early as about the mid-1980s (Ruddick, Tronto, Held). Moreover , most of the recent developments and applications of a political theory of careâespecially in the field of public policy and public ethicsâthat occurred over the past two decades were clearly prefigured in the seminal works of the 1990s (e.g. Tronto 1993; Sevenhuijsen 1998; Kittay 1999). This is why we want to suggest moving beyond the schematism of the widely spread categorisation of care ethicsâ generations and rethinking the complex development of care ethics with a special focus on the prominent role of a political concept of care.
Maternal Thought Transformed by Feminist Consciousness
Our story begins in 1980, two years before the term âan ethic of careâ would appear in Carol Gilliganâs widely celebrated book In a Different Voice. In 1980, an American philosopher Sara Ruddick published her essay âMaternal Thinkingâ.1 Let us be clear about two things from the outset. First, our reading of this essay which we provide on the following pages does not primarily aim at historical and textual adequacy. Our aim is to reveal several motifs of the essay that we consider as most relevant to our story. Some of them are to be found only in the footnotes of the essay, some are even in tension with other motifs and arguments of the same essay. Second, as we locate the beginning of the story of care ethics in Ruddickâs early reflections on maternal practice and thought, we do not by any means want to foreground motherhood as the moral and political ideal of care ethics, let alone equate care ethics with the concept of âwomenâs moralityâ.2
Ruddick (1980) conceives of âmaternal thinkingâ as a distinctive style of reflecting, judging and feeling which is guided by distinctive goals and interests of âmaternal practiceâ. Though Ruddick links the concept of maternal practice primarily to the activity of taking care of and raising a child , she concedes that maternal thinking expresses itself âin various kinds of working and caring with othersâ (Ruddick 1980, 346). Maternal practice that gives rise to maternal thinking, Ruddick argues, is a response to three basic interests or demands of a child, namely for preservation, growth and acceptability. What style of reflecting, judging and feeling corresponds to a practice governed by these interests? First, it is important to note that Ruddick makes a distinction between degenerative and non-degenerative forms of maternal practice which correspond to degenerative and non-degenerative forms of maternal thought. Ruddick characterises these through typical attitudes, values and capacities of the actor of the respective form of maternal practice. In Ruddickâs view, the actor of the non-generative form of maternal practice would typically feature attentive love, humility, understanding, respect for the other, sense of complexity and reality, the capacity to change along with the changing reality, to explore, create and insist upon oneâs own values and to see and name the existing forms of oppression and domination. In contrast, the actor of the degenerative form of maternal practice is characterised by rigid and excessive control over the other, self-refusal, uncritical acceptance of the values of the dominant culture or obedienceâa sense of wanting to âbe goodâ in the âeyesâ of the dominant culture and society (Ruddick 1980, 354f.).
What motivates Ruddickâs focus on maternal practice and thinking? Ruddick insists that the practice of âworking and caring with othersâ and the corresponding thought plays a crucial role in human life. Her point is that although this practice and activity forms the core of human existence it has historically been marginalised and devalued and its description suffered from sentimentalisation and romanticisation. Thus, Ruddickâs aim is to provide an adequate description of this practice and thought, point out its distinctiveness and explain its value and potential as an important source of an alternative moral, social and political theory.
An attentive reading of âMaternal Thinkingâ reveals that its author is well aware of the fact that the description of maternal practice and thinking, as well as the description of any other form of human practice and corresponding rationality, is inevitably bound to the position and situation of the one who is describing. This position is determined by a given historical, cultural, social and political context, which in Ruddickâs case is the context of the âheterosexual nuclear familyâ within the âmiddle-class, white, Protestant, capitalist, patriarchal Americaâ of the second half of the twentieth century (Ruddick 1980, 347). Ruddickâs awareness of the necessary particularity and limitation of her description of maternal practice and thought is clearly demonstrated by the following statement: âI am dependent on others, morally as well as intellectually, for the st...