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1 Emotions as Constituents for an Ethic of Care Fabienne Brugère, Paris8 University, LLCP [email protected] Summary : One cannot reflect on the ethics of care without subscribing to an anthropology of vulnerability of both the cared for and the carers. I will argue that vulnerability presupposes a conception of human beings that restores feeling as a motive for action that impregnates ethics. But, can caring be considered as love’s labour (to borrow the title of Eva Feder Kittay’s book)? Love, caring and the construction of emotions produce relations that have to do with the inequality of vulnerability. This inequality means irregularity and instability. Are emotions useful for an ethics of care, especially in very asymmetrical relations as the protection of outsiders of the social world (poor people, migrants, women without rights)? We will explore the theme of desentimentalized emotions as an intelligent orientation in care, particularly if we consider social work. The project of an ethics of care has to do with emotional factors. It engages moral relations which stress the possibility of moral sentiments more than an abstract reason. More precisely, some kinds of emotions are valued in contrast with the dominant rationalist approaches connected to Kantian philosophy. From a care point of view, moral inquiries rooted on reason and rationalistic deductions are considered as deficient and unjustly dominant. Typically, rationalistic moral theories reject egoistic feelings and private interests that means favoritism and prevents universality. What sorts of emotions are appreciated in an ethics of care? Of course, they are emotions with relational capabilities and implicated in interpersonal and institutional contexts (as relations between a parent and child, a patient and a nurse, a disabled person and a dependency worker, a homeless and a social worker etc.). For an ethics of care, it is important to develop relations of caring that respond to the perception of need and express a person’s concern. These contextual moral theories question the philosophical acceptance of universalistic morality. For example, it is easy to recognize an obligation for all parents to care for their children. But it does not mean that all in actual fact relations between parents and children are satisfactory, that all children live in a familial context favorable to their personal development. Obligations have to be combined with relations of caring, with attitudes meeting dependent or vulnerable human beings. In other words borrowed from Carol Gilligan two moral perspectives have to be recognized: the justice perspective which is dominant and a care perspective forgotten by the intellectual tradition and able to constitute an alternative perspective. This last orientation is based on an emotional and empirical approach. As Carol Gilligan writes: “Theoretically, the distinction between justice and care cuts across the familiar division between thinking and feeling, egoism and altruism, theoretical and practical reasoning. It calls attention to

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Emotions as Constituents for an Ethic of Care

Fabienne Brugère, Paris8 University, LLCP

[email protected]

Summary :

One cannot reflect on the ethics of care without subscribing to an anthropology of vulnerability of both the

cared for and the carers. I will argue that vulnerability presupposes a conception of human beings that restores

feeling as a motive for action that impregnates ethics. But, can caring be considered as love’s labour (to borrow

the title of Eva Feder Kittay’s book)? Love, caring and the construction of emotions produce relations that have

to do with the inequality of vulnerability. This inequality means irregularity and instability. Are emotions useful

for an ethics of care, especially in very asymmetrical relations as the protection of outsiders of the social world

(poor people, migrants, women without rights)? We will explore the theme of desentimentalized emotions as

an intelligent orientation in care, particularly if we consider social work.

The project of an ethics of care has to do with emotional factors. It engages moral relations which

stress the possibility of moral sentiments more than an abstract reason. More precisely, some kinds

of emotions are valued in contrast with the dominant rationalist approaches connected to Kantian

philosophy. From a care point of view, moral inquiries rooted on reason and rationalistic deductions

are considered as deficient and unjustly dominant. Typically, rationalistic moral theories reject

egoistic feelings and private interests that means favoritism and prevents universality. What sorts of

emotions are appreciated in an ethics of care? Of course, they are emotions with relational

capabilities and implicated in interpersonal and institutional contexts (as relations between a parent

and child, a patient and a nurse, a disabled person and a dependency worker, a homeless and a social

worker etc.). For an ethics of care, it is important to develop relations of caring that respond to the

perception of need and express a person’s concern.

These contextual moral theories question the philosophical acceptance of universalistic morality. For

example, it is easy to recognize an obligation for all parents to care for their children. But it does not

mean that all in actual fact relations between parents and children are satisfactory, that all children

live in a familial context favorable to their personal development. Obligations have to be combined

with relations of caring, with attitudes meeting dependent or vulnerable human beings. In other

words borrowed from Carol Gilligan two moral perspectives have to be recognized: the justice

perspective which is dominant and a care perspective forgotten by the intellectual tradition and able

to constitute an alternative perspective. This last orientation is based on an emotional and empirical

approach. As Carol Gilligan writes:

“Theoretically, the distinction between justice and care cuts across the familiar division between

thinking and feeling, egoism and altruism, theoretical and practical reasoning. It calls attention to

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the fact that all human relationships, public and private, can be characterized both in terms of

equality and in terms of attachment, and that both inequality and detachment constitute grounds

for moral concern. Since everyone is vulnerable both to oppression and to abandonment, two moral

visions –one of justice and one of care- recur in human experience”1.

This distinction between justice and care is a distinction between thinking and feeling, reason and

emotions. Caring relationships, from Gilligan’s point of view, are constituted “in terms of

attachment”: it implies that the sort of emotional relation constituted between a parent and a child

is a model of care. Attachments provide connections to others and are usually focused toward the

parent figure who brings physical and emotional security. For example, the “good enough mother”2

means a physical and emotional attachment, the early attachment to mother before the attachment

to transitional object ; it is a love between two imperfect people, the mother being capable of an

adaptation to the baby. The good enough mother provides physical care and meets her baby’s need

for emotional warmth and love. She also protects her baby against those parts of her from which

murderous feelings are brought forth when, for example, her baby screams and cries continuously.

By containing her own hateful feelings about her baby in that difficult moments, the good enough

mother facilitates her baby’s feelings and expressions of omnipotence. It is possible because the

mother is able to adapt caring to the baby’s needs until such time as the baby gradually begins to feel

safe enough to relinquish these feelings. At this stage the process of integration can start and the

baby begins to develop a sense of “me” and “not me”. An emotionally unavailable caregiver

endangers this process of formation. What is important is the concept of “dependence”, and for the

baby to follow a way from total dependence to relative dependence, by a gradual process and in

security, in order that the baby can begin to learn to tolerate the frustrations of the world outside of

himself and his mother.

The example of the “good enough mother” gives substance to a dependency that concerns our

needs. A baby is not self-sufficient; he or she is closely connected or linked to those who are useful

for sustaining his or her life. He or she is vulnerable to abandonment.

I should like to argue that the question of vulnerability is very important for an ethics of care

conscious of the importance of emotions or feelings; child’s tie to his or her caregivers implies the

conception of an ego-relatedness where vulnerability and the sphere of emotions are essential. On

1 « Moral Orientation and Moral Development », in Justice and Care, Virginia Held ed., Westview Press, 1995,

p.32.

2 Daniel Winnicott, “Transitional objects and transitional phenomena; a study of the first not-me possession”,

International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1953.

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the one hand, vulnerability presupposes a conception of human beings that restores feeling or

emotional relation as a motive for action that impregnates ethics. But, on the other hand, the

insistence on attachment is not insignificant and has to be discussed. Assembling love, emotion and

the relationship between a mother and her baby often means an association between moral theory

and women, moral theory and family, care and gender.

For Gilligan, the theme of care has to do with the different and erased voice of women that

represents an individuation with a basis for empathy, a capacity to experience another’s needs or

feeling and to take vulnerability into account. Differently, signs of detachment and lacks of concern

are qualified by Gilligan as more male than female. It is important to discuss this gendered

orientation and the connection between women and emotions. I will emphasize the theme of

desentimentalized emotions, of a good distance in caring relationships, a possibility for considering

the model of motherhood in a critical approach (as I wrote in L’éthique du care, 2011)3.

I. An anthropology of vulnerability and the sphere of emotions

The views of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers as Hutcheson, Hume and Smith imply an account on

moral life problematizing moral sentiments with the role of the concepts of “moral sense” and of

“sympathy”. They call into question the abstract rules of our dominant theories inhabited by the idea

that moral maturity is rational, expressing will or autonomy of human beings. People have real

emotional needs to be attached to something, to someone and it means a moral perspective.

Morality is essential for creating interaction between people, interdependence in conformity with a

model of a decent society different from the liberal one enrooted in individual autonomy and the

figure of a subject of rights. As Annette Baier writes about Gilligan’s In a different Voice, there are

two visions of morality that engage two visions of emotions: “the emphasis in Kantian theories on

rational control of emotions, rather than on cultivating desirable forms of emotion, is challenged by

Gilligan, along with the challenge to the assumption of the centrality of autonomy, or relations

between equals, and of freely chosen relations” 4. What does an emphasis on cultivating desirable

forms of emotion mean? Annette Baier explains it with the role of parents. Parents need to love their

children, not just to control their irritation or their caprice. The unequal infant does not choose its

place in a family (or nation). To assume parental responsibilities implies anything else than power

and control. It is important to care for children with a sort of attention and protection that does not

3 Fabienne Brugère, L’éthique du care, Paris, PUF, 2011.

4 « The Need for More than Justice », in Justice and Care, op. cit., p. 57.

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exclude the importance of emotions. This rethinking of ethical and social bonds combines the

emotional sphere with the preservation of life and the necessity to guarantee needs to everybody

because all human are vulnerable –more or less-.

I should like to insist on this concept of “vulnerability” that invites a subversion of modern

individualism and a new place for the sphere of emotions. One cannot reflect on an ethic of care

without subscribing to an anthropology of vulnerability, the vulnerability of both the cared for and

the carers (in the relational and the physical senses of care) from the fact of their lack of place in

society.

Vulnerability presupposes a conception of the human which rehabilitates feeling or emotion as a

motive for action. More precisely, it gives priority to delicate relationships, part of which may be

beyond our control. Vulnerability prompts thought on dependence, and what that may reveal. It is

the moment when we are formed by relations with others which escape our consciousness. These

relations of dependency, which reveal the vulnerability of a newborn for instance, constitute the

subject in an opaque way.

These relations of dependency indicate a primary opacity of the self. There is a history of this primary

opacity of the self and of the vulnerability it implies. Philosophically, this history of vulnerability could

begin with Rousseau in Emile. Rousseau distinguishes two kinds of dependency, towards other

human beings and toward objects. The first is social, the second natural. The dependency towards

objects is not very important because it does not injure freedom. It is really different from the

dependency towards human beings. If a natural human being does not refer to anything else except

his own needs, a social human being is very dependent. The contract in the Discourse on Inequality

must be understood as a voluntary association which means a hidden servitude.5 Is dependency only

this kind of servitude? Perhaps not. There is another dependency in Emile (book 4) which is more

complicated and can be apprehended through the opacity of the self in formation. This dependency

reveals a kind of dignity which cannot be assimilated to servitude or submission. The example of the

child gives substance to a dependency which concerns our needs. A child is not self-sufficient; he or

she is closely connected (or linked) to those who are useful for the sustaining of his or her life. As a

5Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality ; in French, Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité parmi les

hommes : « Tous coururent au devant de leurs fers croyant assurer leur liberté », second part, Oeuvres

complètes, Paris, Gallimard, Pléiade, 1964, III, p. 177 or Emile IV,GF-Flammarion, Paris, 1966, p. 307 : « Il y a

dans l’état de nature une égalité de fait réelle et indestructible, parce qu’il est impossible dans cet état que la

seule différence d’homme à homme soit assez grande pour rendre l’un dépendant de l’autre. Il y a dans l’état

civil une égalité de droit chimérique et vaine, parce que les moyens destinés à la maintenir servent eux-mêmes

à la détruire, et que la force publique ajoutée au plus fort pour opprimer le faible rompt l’espèce d’équilibre

que la nature avait mis entre eux".

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child, he or she does not know his or her social rank or place. The opacity of the self resides in an

incapacity to occupy a place because the child is too weak. The opacity is a mark of a primary

vulnerability. Rousseau writes about Emile as a child. Firstly, a child must feel his or her weakness but

must not suffer from it. Secondly, he or she is only subordinated to others as a result of his needs and

because they see more than he does what is useful for him. Thirdly, he must depend on others but

he must not obey.

The question of needs symbolizes the dependency of children and, not at all their submission,

but their interdependence; this means that dependency is structured through an aim: the

development of the child. This is how we can introduce an ethics of care: caring (taking care of a

child) has a limit: what is good for the child. But, dependency is complex and linked to a context in an

interdependent social world. We can characterize the world of care with this interdependence. Yet,

what does interdependence mean? It means an irregular or unstable world which has to do with

emotions and with the definition of love (for Rousseau, this is the kind of game we can elaborate

between self-love - amour propre - and love of others).

Caring can be considered as love’s labour (to borrow the title of a book by Eva Feder Kittay: Love’s

Labor). Love, and more generally the sphere of emotions, have to be associated with an ethic of care.

Love, caring and the construction of emotions produce relations which have to do with the inequality

of vulnerability. This inequality means irregularity, instability as well. What explains all these figures

of uncertainty is that the sphere of emotions takes place in a context or a situation: emotions have

to do with accidents. Normally, emotions are considered as intimate, unchosen and between

unequals. They produce problems of contradiction and conflict. When Adam Smith writes The Theory

of Moral Sentiments, he notices “the irregularity of sentiments” as a truth but it is not a fault. On the

contrary, it induces action :

“Nature, however, when she implanted the seeds of this irregularity in the human breast, seems, as

upon all other occasions, to have intended the happiness and perfection of the species”.6

“Nor is that irregularity of sentiments altogether without its utility, by which the merit of an

unsuccessful attempt to serve, and much more that of mere good inclinations and kind wishes,

appears to be imperfect. Man was made for action, and to promote by the exertion of his faculties

6Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Raphael and Macfie ed., Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, 1984, p.

105.

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such changes in the external circumstances both of himself and others, as may seem most favourable

to the happiness of all”.7

The irregularity of sentiments or emotions is not a danger for human beings; it constitutes a part of

the happiness of the species. More precisely, it is useful to engage individuals in all kinds of action.

An action means changes in the external circumstances. If the emotional sphere is irregular, it implies

that this sphere is plastic (that is to say, capable of changes to attain an aim).

So, to think about a world of care is to consider this sphere as philosophically important with

Rousseau in Emile, with Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It is attack on the pretensions of

reason. It can be read as an attempt to transgress the philosophical boundary between reason and

emotions. For Annette Baier, it is an attack on the whole patriarchal, theological tradition and on its

claims about the relative authority of various human voices. As Annette Baier writes, it is a

“debunking enterprise”.8 There is the same kind of enterprise with the ethics of care in order to

move the philosophical boundary between reason and emotion, to break the association between

reason and a masculine voice, between sentiments and a feminine voice. The ethical project consists

in a critical analysis of Kantian moral philosophies (such as John Rawls’s Theory of Justice). Such

philosophies forget that it is impossible to reduce sentiments or emotions to irrationality. They are

susceptible of a complex elaboration which takes place in a context, in an understanding of changes

in external circumstances. But, do they guarantee caring?

We can draw a comparison. In the same way as the moral sentiments arguments of the Scottish

Enlightenment thinkers represent the “losing” side in moral thinking in the eighteenth century (with

the triumph of a Kantian and universalistic morality), caring represents a minority morality too

(which is not rooted in the impartiality of reason and in an abstract theory of justice). We can add

that caring has no value in our societies structured by capitalism and liberalism. Joan Tronto analyses

what she calls “marginalizing Care” or “Care as Weakness”. The point of view about caring does not

principally engage the conception of an emotional sphere (which has been reduced to a construct to

separate men and women, public space and privacy). The analysis is about care as a work. Care work

is devalued but care is also devalued conceptually through a connection with privacy, with emotion,

and with the needy. Since our society treats public accomplishment, rationality, and autonomy as

worthy qualities, care is devalued insofar as it embodies their opposites.9 Whether we consider care

7Ibid., p. 105-106.

8 Annette Baier, Moral Prejudices, Harvard University Press, 1994, p. 80

9Joan Tronto, Moral Boundaries, Rouledge, 1993, p. 117.

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as a work or as a disposition, it is always devalued. Thus, care can be portrayed as a marginal aspect

of our society. If care is invisible, it is because it is misunderstood for several reasons.

II. Gender inequalities

Of course, the invisibility of care has to do with gender differences and with the role of emotions.

On the one hand, many of the thinkers who have written about care describe it only as an attitude

or disposition. For example, Nel Noddings formulates an ethic of caring which combines two feelings

or emotions: the sentiment of natural caring and the remembrance of the first in response.10 But, the

universality she invokes is puzzling: “The caring attitude that lies at the heart of all ethical behaviour

is universal. As a mother…”. For Noddings, there is no criticism of naturalism. She could not agree

with the idea that motherhood is a socially constructed institution regularly used to legitimize

women’s oppression.

On the other hand, in addition to care being associated with the emotional as opposed to the

rational, care is also devalued in its meaning through its related association with the private sphere.

Care is usually conceived of in our culture as, ideally, a private concern which has to do with women

as mothers and female sentiments. Women are expected to care for those who live under their roof.

It is because care has been elaborated in a private sphere with the force of feelings that it cannot be

recognized. So, there is a distribution of care which maintains the privilege of people who have the

opportunity simply to ignore certain forms of care: a certain ignorance serves to prevent the

relatively privileged from noticing the needs of others. We can talk about an ideological context of

care. Caring about, and taking care of, are the duties of the powerful. Care-giving and care-receiving

are left to the less powerful, women, poor people, migrant workers, ethnic minorities. There are

arenas, of course, where men of relatively high prestige “care”. It is symptomatic to notice that every

time a doctor is taking care of a patient, there are also nurses, orderlies, and lab technicians which

are the actual providers of hands-on care.11 When care has to do with the body or is involved in

private or local concerns it is given up by powerful people. So Tronto writes:

10

“Caring”, in Justice and care, op. cit., p. 9.

11Tronto, Moral Boundaries, op. cit., p. 115.

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“Out of this association of “taking care of” with masculinity, “caring about” also becomes gendered,

raced, and classed: men and people of greater privilege take care of; they care about public and

broader issues”.12

How can an area of care be recognized when it comprises a variety of unrecognized

activities? Carol Gilligan’s book, In a Different Voice,13 is instructive here because it raises the

issue of “care” and women’s silenced voices. According to Gilligan, moral questioning is

rooted in the observation of gender inequality: women do not approach moral problems the

same way men do, and their voices are made vulnerable in the name of defending a rational

morality that considers itself free from divisions when in fact it excludes from the domain of

moral action everything resembling empathy with the other, or worse, responsibility with

respect to the vulnerability or needs of others. Women’s voices are no different from men’s,

but masculine domination has made them inaudible by creating a correlation between moral

feelings, the private or family arena, and a supposed feminine nature (particularly in the 18th

century, when the conception of the public sphere was tied to contracts and excluded any

dependent persons—primarily women, but also slaves, domestic servants, and poor

laborers). Gilligan calls for once again valuing women’s voices to establish equality between

two moralities: one referencing subjects of rights capable of distancing themselves from

their activities, which Gilligan calls an ethic of justice based on the ideal of a neutral public

sphere; and one referencing subjects of need who must be “taken care of,” which requires

subjects acting in favor of others and an ethic of responsibility. Of course, such an ethic—of

responsibility or “care”—must vindicate the forgotten experiences of women, which have

been poorly evaluated in masculine moral psychologies (such as those of Kohlberg, cited by

Gilligan). But above all, it must transform gender relationships and eliminate the inequalities

that lead to socially positioning men and women to the detriment of the activities involving

concern for others that women perform. In short, a feminist ethic is needed to democratize

society and promote equality between voices, which would shift the barriers (too hastily

erected in the name of a normalizing rational identity of individuals) between reason and

feeling, public and private, moral and political. Such an ethic must make women aware of

the need to leave behind the imposed, conventional goodness of “care” as self-sacrifice in

12

Ibid.

13 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice, Harvard University Press, 1982.

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favor of a relational morality that combines concern for the self and concern for others,

while being aware, of course, of situations and chains of vulnerability (between caregivers

and recipients, women, the poor, migrants, etc.).

Restoring equality in the area of care thus means considering vulnerability within the

framework of an ethic that, instead of expressing the moral weakness of women, expresses

a relational maturity, a sense of collective responsibility (with regard to all forms of need);

an ethic that, having deconstructed gender inequalities, could be applied to humankind and

enable us to relate to others in a way that reflects a concrete, rather than a generalized,

other.14 This involves accepting a particularist, as opposed to a universalist, morality, or even

calling for an “interactive” universality that recognizes the plurality of human lifestyles.

This relational maturity is a way for women to experiment a new sort of caring attitude.

Women have to abandon a typical feminine attitude: the self-sacrifice which means a

concern for others and no concern for the self. The deconstruction of gender inequalities

supposes that women (against the history of women) establish a distance with others, a sort

of limitation or control of their empathy, being capable of distancing themselves from their

activities of care, improving de-sentimentalized emotions.

III. From gender inequalities to the conception of a Social Care Work

Let us consider that “caring” for the vulnerable constitutes an interpersonal accompaniment

and should be developed in social policies concerning non-autonomous individuals.

However, it cannot be developed without respecting some form of the capacity to act, be or

say. Treating vulnerability does not mean losing sight of the care recipient’s ability to be

productive: assistance must not be confused with charity. Moreover, in the area of gender

inequality, one could say that the naturalization movement, which linked the future of

women to emotions and solicitude within the family sphere (I wrote a book entitled Le sexe

de la sollicitude, 2008), was replaced with the need for a certain number of women to

consider care as work and take poorly paid, invisible jobs that turn their dependence (so

decried by Simone de Beauvoir) into exploitation in precarious jobs. How do the vulnerable

14

See Seyla Benhabib, “The Generalized and the Concrete Other,” in Feminism as Critique, Benhabib and

Cornell, eds., Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1986, p. 77-95.

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themselves relate to the more vulnerable when inequalities are intensified far from the

centers of power?

Stressing the struggle against inequalities, (gender inequalities) means to argue that caring

relations are not only interpersonal relations. “Vulnerability” and “feelings” or emotions are

not merely given properties of individuals. More precisely, vulnerability, needs, as well as

emotions and affects cannot be condemned to silence: they conceive “concrete” others as

Seyla Benhabib writes. But “concrete” others or a more integrated vision of ourselves do not

exclude the conception of a Welfare State and both social and political relationships. If

relationships have an affective or emotional constitution, it does not mean that caring

relations are only interpersonal.

For Paul Ricoeur, in a book entitled Soi-même comme un autre, (Oneself as Another), to

consider the other as one considers oneself involves a notion of living-well which cannot

limit itself to interpersonal relationships but extends to institutions, and to the need for

them to be just.15 Ethics is always both social and political. Furthermore, when it occupies

itself with the care of others and human vulnerability, it cannot but extend itself into the

establishment of as just as possible a historical community. Institutions must play their part

in producing a care society in which vulnerability may be shared and responsibility

collectively assumed in the face of different forms of dependence.

In fact, even if ethics of care proclaim that we are all more or less vulnerable, it still stands

that care supposes concrete asymmetrical relations, a difference between the carer and the

cared-for which is a knot of problems for a "philosophy of equality". Paul Ricoeur states the

need for institutions in this framework of relations and practices. Institutions allow us to

break free from dyadic relations that are initially asymmetrical. They must make "the search

for equality through inequality" inevitable 16 through recognition of the value of the other.

Now, this recognition cannot be carried by a relation which is not guaranteed by the

presence of institutions. Relating to another supposes being able to view them as another

self, which implies a plurality of human relations and a common world that cannot be

reduced to dialogic relations.

15

Paul Ricoeur, Soi-même comme un autre, Paris, Seuil, 1990, p.211.

16 Paul Ricoeur, Soi-même comme un autre, op.cit.,p.225.

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The institution defines a common power to the anonymous that are also the vulnerable.

From this point of view the definition of the institution must be broad. According to Ricoeur,

by institution we must mean: "the structure of living-together of a historical community –

people, nation, region, etc. a structure that cannot be reduced to interpersonal relations and

yet they are linked to them".17 Good-living is not limited to interpersonal relations. It must

be extended to the level of institutions that determine a concrete or historic living-together

through which the demand for equality can be made. How is it possible to introduce care in

the level of institutions with the idea to act for concrete others? How is it possible to

maintain what care implies: empathy and concern for others, but in a professional or

institutional way? The point is necessary a reconsideration of the sphere of feelings,

emotions or affects, and expresses the possibility to render them more professional; it

means a sort of desentimentalized attitude. The emotional sphere has to be combined with

responsibility, strong communication skills, etc. The caring attitude is not only constituted by

solicitude, compassion or altruism.

To conclude, I will consider what Dublin Institute of Technology (Social Sciences and Law DIT

School) explains about social care work, constituting a very clever difference between “social

workers” and “social care workers” with the following problem: what is social care?

"Social care workers plan and provide professional individual or group care to clients with

personal and social needs. Client groups are varied and include children and adolescents in

residential care; young people in detention schools; people with intellectual or physical

disabilities; people who are homeless; people with alcohol/drug dependency; families in the

community; or older people. Social care workers strive to support, protect, guide and

advocate on behalf of clients. Social care work is based on interpersonal relationships

which require empathy, strong communication skills, self-awareness and an ability to use

critical reflection. Teamwork and interdisciplinary work are also important in social care

practice.

The core principles underpinning social care work are similar to those of other helping

professions, and they include respect for the dignity of clients; social justice; and

17

Paul Ricoeur, Soi-même comme un autre, op.cit., p. 227.

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empowerment of clients to achieve their full potential.

Social care practice differs from social work practice in that it uses shared life-space

opportunities to meet the physical, social and emotional needs of clients. Social care work

uses strengths-based, needs-led approaches to mediate clients’ presenting problems”18.

It means that social care workers meet people’s needs in an environment or a context and

they use their emotions (empathy, for example) in a professional way, associated with other

qualities. In that way, there is a sort of neutralization from empathy, a professionalization of

emotions that is a distance from the emotional sphere (altruism, compassion in difficult

circumstances). Maturity (calm professionals), trustworthiness and reliability are important.

Emotions are constituent for an ethics of care. But they have to be combined and associated

with other qualities.

This association of emotions with other qualities is fundamental because a social care

worker work in a direct person-to-person capacity. He has to protect the other and himself

against the abuses of an emotional sphere (which would become sentimental). It is different

for a social worker:

“A social care practitioner will typically work in a direct person-to-person capacity with

clients. He or she will seek to provide a caring, stable environment in which various social,

educational and relationship interventions can take place in the day-to-day living space of

the client. The social worker's role, on the other hand, is to manage the 'case', for example

by arranging the residential child care placement in which a child is placed, co-ordinating

case review meetings, negotiating the termination of a placement and responding to child

protection concerns in a given area”19.

18

http://www.dit.ie/study/undergraduate/programmes/dt571/

19 http://www.dit.ie/study/undergraduate/programmes/dt571/

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