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Care and Commitment: Taking the Personal Point of View

by Jeffrey Blustein

Care and Commitment is the best work I have seen come out of the ethics of care vicinity. Rather than claim that care, deontology, and consequentialism are constantly at odds, as some have done, Blustein attempts a three-way dovetail. The dovetail does not always succeed, but Bluestein does delivers many good and fascinating ideas. Bluestein argues that we should value individuals for more than their status, abilities or what they can do for us.

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He covers what caring is and is not. Quoting

Annette Baier, “A [sometimes] reliable sign of caring is the intolerance of ignorance about the current state of what we care about.” Blustein sees caring as being moved to do something that affects the thing we care about.

There are, he points out, advantages in not caring. Not caring protects us from the anxieties and other problems that arise when care is misplaced, excessive or leads to other disasters. Caring in the wrong ways can wreck one’s integrity--not to mention one's character. Yet to not care about much at all, strips life of qualities that are uniquely human. A splendid section covers the depression depression suffered by J.S. Mill when Mill no longer cared about his goals, Blustein explains how we can learn to care more on a metalevel—-caring about caring.<

Blustein argues that we are often mistaken about how much we care and how much we care about a thing compared to other things. We may think we care more about romance than football, but the opposite may be the case, especially if one takes a look at receipts and time spent.

A splendid section discusses Harry Frankfurt’s ideas on wantonness. Non-wantons are often able and willing to think about their own motivations. They are able to select and reject motivations. They can choose desires and they can choose to act in opposition to their desires. They can choose to identify with a desire so that the desire resounds within them. (Change what you want? What a strange concept in the world of “I want what I want and there is no changing my mind.” Heaven forbid that anyone should develop a new interest for reasons other than or in addition to entertainment.)

Wantons, he writes, are unable or unwilling to know their own motivations. They do not care which desires are strongest. They act on whichever desire is strongest. Wantons are limited beings. Various desires compete and take hold of them.

Constantly losing interest, being easily distracted without thinking about the losses caused by being distracted or not thinking where interest should be directed are wanton behaviors. Those who reason and carefully choose their actions and desires but do not do what they believe they should do are not wantons. They are weak-willed.

The section on integrity and self-transformation argues that we should often re-evaluate, find better commitments, and get rid of misplaced guilt. “Keeping my options open” is some times code for making half-hearted efforts toward the options I supposedly committed to. Never doing more than toying with life roles is a disgrace to one’s self. We should make worthy commitments despite uncertainty.

He argues for limited propinquity, meaning paying more attention to situations close to you and not interfering in distant situations you know nothing about. You should, however, interfere in far away situations—my species, my planet, and my universe--when you know what you are doing.

He proposes that major commitments to nearby humans are important for developing identity, integrity and a sense of being valuable and needed. We have better knowledge of what would benefit or harm those closest to us than those farthest from us, no matter how much information is on the Internet. I would add that we have better knowledge of what those closest to us merit also. Some humans can function with zero propinquity--they can treat a stranger 5,000 miles away the same way they treat their siblings--but most of us can not function without close attachments. If zero propinquity were always the rule for all individuals, we would end up with a society of broken down humans.

Those who understand what benefits intimates are better able to understand what benefits strangers. In the proper doses close relationships encourage general compassion and connectedness, which is more than permanent disconnection accomplishes.

—book review article by J.T. Fournier

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