A Care Ethical Justification for an Interest Theory of Human Rights

ABSTRACT

Care ethics is often criticized for being incapable of outlining what responsibilities we have to persons beyond our personal relations, especially toward distant others. This criticism centres on care theorists’ claim that the concerns of morality emerge between people, generated through our relations of interdependent care: it is difficult to see how moral duties can be applied to those with whom we do not forge a relationship. In this article, I respond to this criticism by outlining a care ethical justification for an interest theory of human rights. This theory will argue that the demands of global justice include various positive actions that aim toward ensuring the conditions for good caring relations to flourish, which in turn protect and promote the vital interests of all persons. In doing so, I aim to concurrently advance the sparse work on human rights within the care literature, systematizing the ideas of care theorists such as Daniel Engster, Virginia Held, and Fiona Robinson.

KEYWORDS:

• Care ethics
• climate change
• global justice
• human rights
• value

Acknowledgments

I primarily thank Richard Vernon and Charles Jones for their continual guidance, patience, and feedback on several drafts of this paper. I am also grateful to Elizabeth Brown for her insightful critiques of care ethics’ application to human rights, alongside an anonymous reviewer whose comments strengthened the latter part of this paper. Finally, I appreciate Western University for supporting this research through the Dr. Elizabeth Riddell-Dixon Graduate Scholarship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The reader may think of other values in the care literature. For instance: competence (Tronto, 1993); empathy (Held, 2006); forgiveness (Walker, 2006); hope (Walker, 2006); respect (Joan Tronto, 2013); sensitivity (Held, 2006); solidarity (Joan Tronto, 2013); and taking responsibility (Tronto, 1993). This paper does not consider these other values because either: 1) they subsume into one of the four principal values abovementioned, or; 2) they are not intrinsic moral considerations of care. Cheerfulness, competence, forgiveness, and gratitude are better understood as referring to the attitudes and abilities of the carer and the cared-for as part of the value of responsiveness. Empathy and sensitivity are necessary components for attentiveness and responsiveness, and so subsume into them. Respect also subsumes into attentiveness and responsiveness: if we are not attentive or responsive to the cared-for’s need to not be degraded or demeaned through caring practices, then the values of attentiveness and responsiveness are undermined. Hope is an emotion rather than a value, though it is an important factor for generating trustworthiness. Solidarity refers to the social union that results through the responsibilities shared through our relations – it is therefore a type of mutual concern (the broader concept that covers personal and non-personal relations). Taking responsibility is the manifestation of undertaking what responsibilities our relations generate – not necessarily a value in itself, but certainly a practice that can serve to reinforce the four principal values.

2. Note, then, that by ‘justice’ care theorists are only engaging with liberal theories of justice. Indeed, since Gilligan’s (1982) significant work In A Different Voice, ‘justice’ has been the chosen shorthand for these normative features. Of course, there are theories of justice that do not emphasize liberal normative features. Those theories are not considered here.

3. I do not claim here that Engster is correct in saying this. I only mean to set up the rationale Engster gives for offering a new justification of interest theories of human rights.

4. Here, I am adapting Collins’ arguments to the issue of environmentally displaced persons.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas E. Randall

Thomas E. Randall is a research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group and an independent scholar working on care ethics and political theory. His work has been published in Res Publica (2019), Hypatia (2019), Feminist Philosophy Quarterly (2018), and Between the Species (2018).