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Care and Commitment: Taking the Personal Point of View
by
Jeffrey Blustein
Care and Commitment is the best
work to come out of the ethics of care vicinity. Rather than claim care,
deontology, and consequentialism are constantly at odds, as some do, Blustein
attempts a three-way dovetail. The dovetail does not always succeed, but Bluestein delivers many good and fascinating ideas, arguing that we should value individuals for more than their status, talents or what they can do for us.
The author covers what caring is
and is not. Quoth 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 arising when care is
misplaced, excessive or leads to other disasters. Caring in the wrong ways
wrecks integrity--not to mention character. Yet to not care, strips life of uniquely human qualities. A splendid section covers the 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 claims 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 we take a look at receipts and time spent.
A splendid section discusses Harry
Frankfurt’s ideas on wantonness. Non-wantons often
think about their motivations, selecting and rejecting motivations.
They choose desires and can choose to act in opposition to their
desires. They can 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 impulse or entertainment.)
Wantons, he writes, are unable or unwilling to
know their motivations, not caring which desires are strongest. They
act on whichever desire is strongest. Wantons are limited. 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 sometimes code for making
halfhearted efforts toward the options I supposedly committed to. Never doing
more than toying with life roles is a disgrace to myself. We should make worthy
commitments despite uncertainty.
Bluestein argues for limited propinquity
(meaning paying more attention to situations close to us and not interfering in distant situations we know nothing about). We should, however, interfere in far away situations—my species, my planet, and my universe--when we know what we 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 flows through the Internet. (We have better knowledge
of what treatment those closest to us deserve 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 cannot function without close attachments. If zero
propinquity were always the rule for all individuals, we would end up with a society of broken down individuals.
Those who understand what
benefits intimates are, allegedly, better able to understand what benefits strangers. In proper doses close relationships may encourage general compassion and
connectedness--more than permanent disconnection accomplishes.
This is a complex work with dense text, not for the faint of mind. The sections on wantonness and the importance of caring are terrific. Recommended. 273p (C) 1991
—book review article by J.T. Fournier, last updated July 26, 2009
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