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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 April 2018
Moral questions surrounding suffering tend to focus on obligations to relieve others’ suffering. In this paper, I focus on the overlooked question of what sufferers morally owe to themselves, arguing that they have the duty to self-care. I discuss agents who have been shaped by moral luck to contribute to their own suffering and canvass the ways in which this damages their moral agency. I contend that these agents have a duty to care for themselves by protecting and expanding their agency, which involves precluding further destruction of agency and ensuring the continued ability to self-care.
I wish to thank Daniel Silvermint, Paul Bloomfield, and Lewis Gordon for their guidance in the development of this paper. I thank Larisa Svirsky and L.R. Lovestone for reading drafts and offering comments and encouragement, and audiences at the Society for Analytical Feminism, Midwest SWIP, and Oregon State University for helpful feedback. Generous support from the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute enabled me to complete this paper.
2 See, for instance, Mayerfeld, Jamie, Suffering and Moral Responsibility (Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.
3 Tessman, Lisa, Burdened Virtues: Virtue Ethics for Liberatory Struggles (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 13Google Scholar.
4 Op. cit. note 3, 14.
5 This is not to say that behaviors like these are only ever caused by external forces like abuse.
6 Card, Claudia, The Unnatural Lottery: Character and Moral Luck (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 22Google Scholar.
7 A relevant issue is the degree of moral responsibility and blameworthiness shared by the sufferer and the agents that influenced her, such as her parents or oppressors, and the degree to which victim-blaming may be appropriate. I leave these issues to the side here, but for related discussions of victim-blaming and responsibility, see Wendell, Susan, ‘Oppression and Victimization; Choice and Responsibility’, Hypatia 5 (1999), 15–46Google Scholar, Superson, Anita M., ‘Right-Wing Women: Causes, Choices, and Blaming the Victim’, Journal of Social Philosophy 24 (1993), 40–61Google Scholar, and Chapter 3 of Hay, Carol, Kantianism, Liberalism, and Feminism: Resisting Oppression (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2013)Google Scholar.
8 Op. cit. note 6, 25–27.
9 Op. cit. note 6, 29.
10 Op. cit. note 6, 27–28. Tessman complicates Card's view by arguing that moral damage to one's character can sometimes be ‘irreversible’ (29), and if it cannot be changed, one has to reckon with acting ethically as a ‘conflicted self’ (22). This conflict can be severe enough to complicate or even prevent one's taking responsibility for oneself (or developing integrity, as Card describes it) since one may not ‘fully stand behind such a self’ (20). Op. cit. note 3.
11 Wendell, Susan, ‘Oppression and Victimization; Choice and Responsibility’, Hypatia 5 (1999), 15–46Google Scholar.
12 Op. cit. note 11, 30.
13 I understand ‘suffering’ here as a pervasive and persistent painful psychological state that is typically experienced in response to some unwanted state or event, such as the grief experienced in response to the death of a loved one.
14 Depression, for instance, compromises motivation and self-regulation. See Brinkmann, Kerstin, and Franzen, Jessica, ‘Depression and self-regulation: A motivational analysis and insights from effort-related cardiovascular reactivity,’ in Gendolla, T.H.E. et al. (eds), Handbook of Biobehavioral Approaches to Self-Regulation (New York: Springer, 2015), 333–347Google Scholar.
15 Barky, Sandra Lee, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (London: Routledge, 1990), 23Google Scholar.
16 Yoshino, Kenji, Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 1997), 54Google Scholar.
17 Op. cit. note 11.
18 Op. cit. note 11.
19 I thank two anonymous referees for encouraging me to explain this point.
20 Op. cit. note 3.
21 A third interpretation of the question is: why or how do duties to self arise generally? This issue is unfortunately outside the scope of this paper.
22 See, for instance, de Beauvoir, Simone, The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. Frechtman, Bernard (Citadel Press, 1948)Google Scholar.
23 Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness, trans. Barnes, Hazel E. (Washington Square Press, 1943)Google Scholar.
24 As Sartre understands it, the human condition consists in ‘all the limitations which a priori define man's fundamental situation in the universe. His historical situations are variable: man may be born a slave in a pagan society, or may be a feudal baron, or a proletarian. But what never vary are the necessities of being in the world, of having to labor and to die there. These limitations…are nothing if man does not…freely determine himself and his existence in relation to them’ (303, final emphasis added.) Sartre, Jean-Paul, ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’, trans. Mairet, P.. Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre (ed.) Kaufman, W. (Meridian Publishing Company, 1946), 287–311Google Scholar.
25 I thank Daniel Silvermint for this suggestion.
26 I'm assuming that self-regarding duties (in general) do exist. See Hill, Thomas E. Jr., ‘Servility and Self-Respect’, The Monist 57 (1973), 87–104Google Scholar.
27 Superson, Anita M., ‘Right-Wing Women: Causes, Choices, and Blaming the Victim’, Journal of Social Philosophy 24 (1993), 55Google Scholar.
28 Op. cit. note 27, 56.
29 Hay argues that Superson's argument lends support to the idea that what duties an agent has is a normative decision, subject to considerations of what would be fair or unfair to hold an agent morally responsible for give her circumstances. The same assumption is in play in the objection discussed above. See Hay, Carol, ‘Whether to Ignore Them and Spin: Moral Obligations to Resist Sexual Harassment’, Hypatia 20 (2005), 94–108Google Scholar.
30 I am indebted to an anonymous referee for pushing me on this objection.
31 One may object that I have not done enough to motivate the importance of agency in the first place. Though I don't have space to develop the argument here, I suspect that justification for the moral importance of protecting and promoting agency can be grounded in an expansion of Jean Hampton's notion of respecting one's own moral worth. That is, protecting and promoting one's agency is morally important since the capacity for moral agency is a component of moral worth (as agency bears on, for instance, respect for one's capacity of self-authorship). Respecting one's moral worth thus involves, among other things, giving due consideration for one's agency, protecting it when necessary and promoting it when possible. See Hampton, Jean, ‘Selflessness and the Loss of Self’, Social Philosophy and Policy 10 (1993), 135–165Google Scholar.
32 Hay makes the same point about autonomy under oppression. Hay, Carol, ‘The Obligation to Resist Oppression’, Journal of Social Philosophy 42 (2011), 21–45Google Scholar.
33 Kittay, Eva Feder, ‘The Ethics of Care, Dependence, and Disability’, Ratio Juris, 24 (2011), 54Google Scholar; Kittay, Eva Feder Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency (New York: Routledge, 1999), 29–30Google Scholar.
34 Tessman, Lisa, Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 230Google Scholar.
35 See Bubeck, Diemut Grace, ‘Justice and The Labor of Care’, in Kittay, Eva Feder and Feder, Ellen K. (eds), The Subject of Care: Feminist Perspectives on Dependency (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002)Google Scholar, 163, for one definition of caring as an activity.
36 Op. cit. note 31.
37 Pettersen, Tove, ‘The Ethics of Care: Normative Structures and Empirical Implications’, Health Care Analysis, 19 (2011), 55–57Google Scholar.
38 Op. cit. note 33 (1999), 25.
39 Op. cit. note 34, 233.
40 Op. cit. note 34, 251.
41 Silvermint, Daniel, ‘Resistance and Well-Being’, The Journal of Political Philosophy 21 (2013), 405–425Google Scholar.
42 Op. cit. note 41.
43 Op. cit., note 41, 423.
44 Op. cit., note 32.
45 Hay, Carol, Kantianism, Liberalism, and Feminism: Resisting Oppression (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2013), 72–78Google Scholar.
46 Op. cit. note 45.
47 Op. cit. note 45, 135–154.
48 Op. cit. note 45.
49 Op. cit. note 45, 144.
50 Op. cit. note 45, 146.
51 Op. cit. note 45, 141. Hay does note that one can avoid internal resistance because of self-deception, so she does not think that internal resistance is impervious to the damage wrought by oppression. But her discussion focuses on what counts as a legitimate avoidance of internal resistance, not the building of this resistance.
52 I think it plausible that every agent has a general duty to self-care, though I won't argue for it here. Rather than claiming the duty to self-care in cases of complicit suffering is a special case of a general duty, I hold that the burdens and needs of complicit sufferers gives rise to this specific duty.
53 In that same vein, duties to self are of course not the only duties that arise in cases of complicit suffering. Others have duties to help sufferers, including helping them achieve their self-regarding duties. The focus here on what complicit sufferers owe themselves is one aspect of the moral situation that will fit alongside other obligations and responsibilities surrounding these cases. As it has been an underappreciated aspect, I will focus exclusively on it here, but this should not be taken to imply these duties exist in isolation, both from other duties and other agents.
54 I wish to thank an anonymous referee for pushing me to clarify this point.
55 Additionally, holding oneself responsible for a duty under conditions of burdened agency can itself be agency expanding, akin to the exercise of an atrophied yet still functioning muscle. In this case, this effect is more pronounced since the duty itself calls for directed focus on building up that ‘muscle’. Hay makes a related point that holding less than fully autonomous agents responsible for upholding obligations can increase their autonomy, and that there may be moral or political motivations for doing so. Op. cit. note 29, 99.
56 Richmond, K., Geiger, E., & Reed, C., ‘The Personal is Political: A Feminist and Trauma-Informed Therapeutic Approach to Working with a Survivor of Sexual Assault’, Clinical Case Studies 12 (2013), 443–456Google Scholar.
57 One instance of a crisis plan is the Wellness Recovery Action Plan. Mental Health Recovery. 1995–2016. WRAP. http://mentalhealthrecovery.com/wrap-is/ (accessed May 3, 2017).
58 I thank an anonymous referee for encouraging me to incorporate these viewpoints.
59 Organizing Upgrade. 2012. Self-Care, Organization, and Movement Building. http://www.organizingupgrade.com/index.php/modules-menu/community-care/item/766-self-care-organizational-care-and-movement-building (accessed May 3, 2017).
60 See, for instance: Ravishly. 2017. For Black Women, Self-Care is a Radical Act. http://www.ravishly.com/2015/03/06/radical-act-self-care-black-women-feminism (accessed June 25, 2017); Bitch Media. 2015. Audre Lorde Thought of Self-Care as an ‘Act of Political Warfare’. https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/audre-lorde-thought-self-care-act-political-warfare (accessed June 25 2017); The Feminist Wire. 2016. Subversive Self-Care: Centering Black Women's Wellness. http://thefeministwire.com/2012/11/subversive-self-care-centering-black-womens-wellness (accessed May 3, 2017); ColorLines. 2015. 4 Self-Care Resources for Days When the World is Terrible. https://www.colorlines.com/articles/4-self-care-resources-days-when-world-terrible (accessed May 3, 2017).
61 Lorde, Audre, ‘Sexism: an American Disease in Blackface’ in I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde (eds) Byrd, Rudolph P., Cole, Johnnetta Betsch, & Guy-Sheftall, Beverly, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 44–50. 46Google Scholar.
