Virginia Held assesses the ethics of care as a promising alternative to the familiar moral theories that serve so inadequately to guide our lives. The ethics of care is only a few decades old, yet it is by now a distinct moral theory or normative approach to the problems we face. It is relevant to global and political matters as well as to the personal relations that can most clearly exemplify care. This book clarifies just what the ethics of (...) care is: what its characteristics are, what it holds, and what it enables us to do. It discusses the feminist roots of this moral approach and why the ethics of care can be a morality with universal appeal. Held examines what we mean by "care," and what a caring person is like. Where other moral theories demand impartiality above all, the ethics of care understands the moral import of our ties to our families and groups. It evaluates such ties, focusing on caring relations rather than simply on the virtues of individuals. The book proposes how such values as justice, equality, and individual rights can "fit together" with such values as care, trust, mutual consideration, and solidarity. In the second part of the book, Held examines the potential of the ethics of care for dealing with social issues. She shows how the ethics of care is more promising than Kantian moral theory and utilitarianism for advice on how expansive, or not, markets should be, and on when other values than market ones should prevail. She connects the ethics of care with the rising interest in civil society, and considers the limits appropriate for the language of rights. Finally, she shows the promise of the ethics of care for dealing with global problems and seeing anew the outlines of international civility. (shrink)

How is feminism changing the way women and men think, feel, and act? Virginia Held explores how feminist theory is changing contemporary views of moral choice. She proposes a comprehensive philosophy of feminist ethics, arguing persuasively for reconceptualizations of the self of relations between the self and others and of images of birth and death, nurturing and violence. Held shows how social, political, and cultural institutions have traditionally been founded upon masculine ideals of morality. She then identifies a distinct (...) feminist morality that moves beyond culturally embedded notions about motherhood and female emotionality. Examining the effects of this alternative moral and ethical system on changing social values, Held discusses its far-reaching implications for altering standards of freedom, democracy, equality, and personal development. Ultimately, she concludes, the culture of feminism could provide a fresh perspective on--even solutions to--contemporary social problems. Feminist Morality makes a vital contribution to the ongoing debate in feminist theory on the importance of motherhood. For philosophers and other readers outside feminist theory, it offers a feminist moral and social critique in clear and accessible terms. (shrink)

Nursing professionalization is both ongoing and global, being significant not only for the nursing workforce but also for patients and healthcare systems. For this reason, it is important to have an in‐depth understanding of this process and the factors that could affect it. This literature review utilizes a welfare state approach to examine macrolevel structural determinants of nursing professionalization, addressing a previously identified gap in this literature, and synthesizes research on the relevance of studying nursing professionalization. The use of a (...) welfare state framework facilitates the understanding that the wider social, economic, and political system exercises significant power over the distribution of resources in a society, providing a glimpse into the complex politics of health and health care. The findings shed light on structural factors outside of nursing, such as country‐level education, health, labor market, and gender policies that could impact the process of professionalization and thus could be utilized to strengthen nursing through facilitating increased professionalization levels. Addressing gender inequalities and other structural determinants of nursing professionalization could contribute to achieving health equity and could benefit health systems through enhanced availability, skill‐level, and sustainability of nursing human resources, improved and efficient access to care, improved patient outcomes, and cost savings. (shrink)

In this book, the author examines the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence systems as they integrate and replace traditional social structures in new sociocognitive-technological environments. She discusses issues related to the integrity of researchers, technologists, and manufacturers as they design, construct, use, and manage artificially intelligent systems; formalisms for reasoning about moral decisions as part of the behavior of artificial autonomous systems such as agents and robots; and design methodologies for social agents based on societal, moral, and legal values. Throughout (...) the book the author discusses related work, conscious of both classical, philosophical treatments of ethical issues and the implications in modern, algorithmic systems, and she combines regular references and footnotes with suggestions for further reading. This short overview is suitable for undergraduate students, in both technical and non-technical courses, and for interested and concerned researchers, practitioners, and citizens. (shrink)

Virginia Held's Feminist Morality defends the idea that it is possible to transform the "public" sphere by remaking it on the model of existing "private" relationships such as families. This paper challenges Held's optimism. It is argued that feminist moral inquiry can aid in transforming the public sphere only by showing just how much the allegedly "private" realms of families and personal relationships are shaped-and often misshapen-by public demands and concerns.

As in science, so in bioethics: if prohibiting conflicts of interest is not feasible, rigorous requirements for disclosure can at least manage them.

Nearly two hundred years ago, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote what is considered to be the first major work of feminist political theory: A Vindication of the Rights of Women . Much has been written about this work, and about Wollstonecraft as the intellectual pioneer of feminism, but the actual substance and coherence of her political thought have been virtually ignored. Virginia Sapiro here provides the first full-length treatment of Wollstonecraft's political theory. Drawing on all of Wollstonecraft's works and treating them (...) thematically rather than sequentially, Sapiro shows that Wollstonecraft's ideas about women's rights, feminism, and gender are elements of a broad and fully developed philosophy, one with significant implications for contemporary democratic and liberal theory. The issues raised speak to many current debates in theory, including those surrounding interpretation of the history of feminism, the relationship between liberalism and republicanism in the development of political philosophy, and the debate over the canon. For political scientists, most of whom know little about Wollstonecraft's thought, Sapiro's book is an excellent, nuanced introduction which will cause a reconsideration of her work and her significance both for her time and for today's concerns. For feminist scholars, Sapiro's book offers a rounded and unconventional analysis of Wollstonecraft's thought. Written with considerable charm and verve, this book will be the starting point for understanding this important writer for years to come. (shrink)

Two studies investigated the development of infants' visual preferences for the human body shape. In Study 1, infants of 12,15 and 18 months were tested in a standard preferential looking experiment, in which they were shown paired line drawings of typical and scrambled bodies. Results indicated that the 18-month-olds had a reliable preference for the scrambled body shapes over typical body shapes, while the younger infants did not show differential responding. In Study 2, 12- and 18-month-olds were tested with the (...) same procedure, except that the typical and scrambled body stimuli were photographic images. The results of Study 2 again indicated that only the 18-month-olds had a reliable preference for the scrambled body shapes. This finding contrasts sharply with infants' precocious preferences for human faces, suggesting that infants' learning about human faces and human bodies follow different developmental trajectories. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Analyzing Montaigne's triptych painting, “Of the Education of Children,” reveals a series of ever-morphing, Dorian Gray–like canvases that depict metaphor mutations through which Montaigne defined education by distinguishing between schooling a child into a learned man and educating him into an able, active, and gentle person. Montaigne used metaphor and metaphor clusters to image key points in his educational philosophy, advanced his argument by intertwining, transmuting, and inverting metaphors, and thereby drew and vividly painted his philosophy of how to educate (...) a person from cradle to coffin. Because the etymology and pronunciation of “essay” (from the French essai) support Montaigne's imaging and exploiting of this genre's creative potential, Virginia Worley begins by considering the term's etymology before positioning her analysis of Montaigne's work within metaphor research. She then examines the metaphors Montaigne used to paint the triptych word painting that embodies his philosophy of education: the meaning and value of educating in and for the art of living well. (shrink)

When feminist philosophers first turned their attention to traditional ethical theory, its almost exclusive emphasis upon justice, rights, abstract rationality, and individual autonomy came under special criticism. Women’s experiences seemed to suggest the need for a focus on care, empathetic relations, and the interdependence of persons.The most influential readings of what has become an extremely lively and fruitful debate are reproduced here along with important new contributions by Alison Jaggar and Sara Ruddick. As this volume testifies, there is no agreement (...) on the important questions about the relationship between justice and care, but the debate has deepened and enriched our understanding in many ways. Justice and Care is a valuable collection of readings—an essential tool for anyone studying the state of feminist thought in particular or ethical theory in general. (shrink)

Open-uterine surgery to repair spina bifida, or ‘fetal surgery of open neural tube defects,’ has generated questions throughout its history—and continues to do so in a variety of contexts. As clinical ethics consultants who worked (Mark J. Bliton) and trained (Virginia L. Bartlett) at Vanderbilt University—where the first successful cases of open-uterine repair of spina bifida were carried out—we lived with these questions for nearly two decades. We worked with clinicians as they were developing and offering the procedure, with (...) researchers in refining and studying the procedure, and with pregnant women and their partners as they considered whether to undergo the procedure. From this experience in the early studies at Vanderbilt, we learned that pregnant women and their partners approach the clinical uncertainty of such a risky procedure with a curious and unique combination of practicality, self-reflection, fear, and overwhelming hope. These early experiences were a major contributing factor to the inclusion of an ethics-focused interview in the informed consent process for the Management of Myelomeningocele Study (MOMS) trial study design. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that social factors are related to health outcomes: much research served to establish correlations between classes of social factors on the one hand and classes of disease on the other hand. However, why and how social factors are an active part in the aetiology of disease development is something that is gaining attention only recently in the health sciences and in the medical humanities. In this paper, we advance the view that, just as bio-markers help trace (...) the causal continuum from exposure to disease development at the biological level, socio-markers ought to be introduced and studied in order to trace the social continuum from exposure to disease development. We explain how socio-markers differ from social indicators and how they can be used in combination with bio-markers in order to reconstruct the mixed mechanisms of health and disease, namely mechanisms in which both biological and social factors have an active causal role. (shrink)

Due to the prevalent influence of legal trends in driving ethical homogenization and persistent decoupling between ethical substance and symbolism in today’s organizations, scholars are calling for a renewed interest in the structural makeup of ethical codes. This article explores the disclosure trends and examines the contents of codes of ethics in the context of Canadian publicly listed acquirers. Relying on the analysis of codes’ public availability, structure, purpose, and promoted values, four clusters of behavior are identified. Although many firms (...) avoid the public disclosure of their codes, the results indicate that code of ethics’ patterns in sample firms are not driven merely by regulatory forces but increasingly shaped by aspirations for building a sustainable values-based corporation. The reported differences across clusters demonstrate that many companies in Canada overcome isomorphic pressures by displaying some originality in the writing of their codes. While symbolism in codes of ethics’ design and adoption prevails in publicly listed acquiring firms, the study provides evidence of an emerging trend of substantial commitment to social responsibilities. (shrink)

This essay attempts to work out how justice and care and their related concerns fit together. I suggest that as a basic moral value, care should be the wider moral framework into which justice should be fitted.

I explore some new directions—suggested by feminism—for medical ethics and for philosophical ethics generally. Moral philosophers need to confront two issues. The first is deciding which moral issues merit attention. Questions which incorporate the perspectives of women need to be posed—e. g., about the unequal treatment of women in health care, about the roles of physician and nurse, and about relationship issues other than power struggles. “Crisis issues” currently dominate medical ethics, to the neglect of what I call “housekeeping issues.” (...) The second issue is how philosophical moral debates are conducted, especially how ulterior motives influence our beliefs and arguments. Both what we select—and neglect—to study as well as the “games” we play may be sending a message as loud as the words we do speak on ethics. (shrink)

In A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf considers with energy and wit the implications of the historical exclusion of women from education and from economic independence. In A Room of One's Own, she examines the work of past women writers, and looks ahead to a time when women's creativity will not be hampered by poverty, or by oppression. In Three Guineas, however, Woolf argues that women's historical exclusion offers them the chance to form a political (...) and cultural identity which could challenge the drive towards fascism and war. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

. Morality is often dismissed as irrelevant in what is seen as the global anarchy of rival states each pursuing its national interest. When morality is invoked, it is usually the morality of justice with its associated moral conceptions of individual rights, equality, and universal law. In the area of moral theory, an alternative moral approach, the ethics of care, has been developed in recent years. It is beginning to influence how some see their global responsibilities.

In the last few decades, the ethics of care as a feminist ethic has given rise to extensive literature, and has affected moral inquiries in many areas. It offers a distinctive challenge to the dominant moral theories: Kantian moral theory, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics. This chapter outlines the distinctive features and promising possibilities of the ethics of care, and the criticisms that have been made against it. It then examines the ethics of care’s recognition of human dependency and of the (...) importance of responding to needs; its interpretation of the roles of emotion and reason in moral understanding; and its critique of liberal individualism and development of a conception of the person as relational. The ethics of care contrasts care with justice, tries to integrate them, and reconceptualizes public and private life and morality. (shrink)

Theories of justice, argues Virginia Held, are usually designed for a perfect, hypothetical world. They do not give us guidelines for living in an imperfect world in which the choices and decisions that we must make are seldom clear-cut. Seeking a morality based on actual experience, Held offers a method of inquiry with which to deal with the specific moral problems encountered in daily life. She argues that the division between public and private morality is misleading and shows convincingly (...) that moral judgment should be contextual. She maps out different approaches and positions for various types of issues, including membership in a state, legal decisions, political activities, economic transactions, interpersonal relations, diplomacy, journalism, and determining our obligation to future generations. Issues such as these provide the true test of moral theory, since its success is seen in the willingness of conscientious persons to commit themselves to it by acting on it in their daily lives. (shrink)

Traditional Informed Consent is becoming increasingly inadequate, especially in the context of research biobanks. How much information is needed by patients for their consent to be truly informed? How does the quality of the information they receive match up to the quality of the information they ought to receive? How can information be conveyed fairly about future, non-predictable lines of research? To circumvent these difficulties, some scholars have proposed that current consent guidelines should be reassessed, with trust being used as (...) a guiding principle instead of information. Here, we analyse one of these proposals, based on a Participation Pact, which is already being offered to patients at the Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, a comprehensive cancer hospital in Milan, Italy. (shrink)

Bruno and Arora (2018) present a range of important ethical issues emerging from the development of procedures for uterine transplant (UT). They approach those issues by drawing on parallels to oth...

(2003). Ethical and Professional Demands for Forensic Mental Health Professionals in the Post-Atkins Era. Ethics & Behavior: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 3-9.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 123-126 [Access article in PDF] Beyond the Usual Alternatives? Buddhist and Christian Approaches to Other Religions Virginia Straus Boston Research Center for the 21st Century In regard to the three commonly accepted attitudes toward other religions—exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist—Terry C. Muck presents an extremely persuasive critique of the existing paradigm. He objects to the ideological stereotyping "The Paradigm" promotes. He proposes that we make (...) a shift in the use of The Paradigm: Instead of labeling people and their points of view, it would identify modes of thinking about certain beliefs and practices, without negative connotations. He calls this a shift to an instrumental or functional use of The Paradigm. His cost/benefit analysis of this shift attributes to the benefit side of the ledger the following advantages: less name-calling, more engagement with the substantive ideas being presented, new openings for dialogue among Christians formerly separated from each other by negative use of The Paradigm, and possible resonance with the logic of non-Western traditions.As I read these ideas I recalled a recent paper written by Miriam Levering, who, with no knowledge of Muck's novel and irreverent approach to The Paradigm, wrote about Buddhist thinking, answering Muck's question about whether his idea resonates with non-Western traditions. Levering presents a fascinating description and analysis of the position taken by certain Chinese Buddhist teachers and two contemporary Buddhist leaders, Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama. She says Buddhists, when making judgments about religions, tend to divide them into three parts: teachings, practices, and realization. In regard to teachings, she says Buddhists use discernment to evaluate other teachings. As Levering describes the use of discernment, she cites three modes of thinking that resonate rather well with Muck's instrumental approach. She says Buddhists distinguish among three kinds of teachings:Teachings that are wrong, unskillful, and do not lead to liberation (that is, they take an exclusivist position on a particular doctrine);Teachings that, while partial or shallow, can lead people to make progress on the path to liberation (an inclusivist position); andFully liberative teachings (a pluralist position). [End Page 123]In regard to practices, Levering indicates that the Buddhists she has studied do not apply discernment to practices. They all appear to take a pluralist position at all times on all practices, whether old, new, or yet to be invented. Although she does not say so, I am sure she would agree that this is not true of all Buddhist traditions. Pure Land, Nichiren Buddhists, and others have specific practices to which they are exclusively committed. In Levering's discussion of the third dimension of religions—the one she terms "realization"—she finds the Buddhist view to be primarily inclusivist rather than pluralist.With this in mind, I would like to raise two questions that may provide a helpful starting point for discussion. First, how does the recent scholarship aimed at developing a fourth alternative relate to this paper?Muck, with his justifiably jaundiced view of the use to which The Paradigm has been put, shares the dissatisfaction with the existing paradigm that has motivated this recent scholarly work. Yet he claims to be "skeptical that simply expanding The Paradigm by adding new forms would really get us anywhere." I wonder if he is not too quick to write off this promising work. In fact, I think this scholarship would help those searching for a fourth way (Levering included) and further refine the reflections they make on the pluralist position and also would suggest a fourth alternative mode of thinking to be used in the instrumental way Muck suggests.Specifically, I am thinking of James Fredericks's work on what he calls comparative theology, which he considers a process or practice rather than a theory. In essence, he, like Muck, is shifting to an instrumental use. By emphasizing the comparative approach, Fredericks hopes to understand a religion 1 on its own terms without glossing over differences as in the pluralist approach. Another thinker on this subject, James Wiggins, would substitute the term... (shrink)

There are different kinds of terrorism as there are of war. It is unpersuasive to make the deliberate targeting of civilians a defining feature of terrorism, and states as well as non-state groups can engage in terrorism. In a democracy, voters responsible for a government’s unjustifiable policies are not necessarily innocent, while conscripts are legitimate targets. Rather than being uniquely atrocious, terrorism most resembles small war. It is not always or necessarily more morally unjustifiable than war. All war should be (...) avoided, but some war is more unjustifiable than other war. Comparable judgments should be made about terrorism. It is appropriate to compare civilians killed by those seeking political change and those using violence to prevent such change. Sometimes the debate should focus on the justifiability or lack of it of the aims sought. While violence should always be used as little as possible, those in power are responsible for making other means than violence effective in achieving justifiable political change. When considering the likely causes of violence, one that has received inadequate attention is humiliation. Humiliation is not the same as shame. Causing humiliation can and should be avoided. (shrink)