Question

In the paragraph below, Virginia Held summarizes her view on the ethics of care. Do you think her suggestion for applying the ethics of care to a global context is feasible? How could those ethics of care show practical results? Please explain your answer in details.

"It is caring relations rather than what persons do as individuals that exemplify the values of caring. The small societies of family and friendship are formed by caring relations. More attenuated but still evident caring relations between more distant people enable them to trust each other enough to form political entities and to accept each other as fellow citizens of states. A globalization of caring relations would help to enable people of different states and cultures to live in peace, to respect each other’s rights, to care together for their environments, and to improve their lives so that all their children might have hopeful futures" (Held, p. 153).

Answer 1

Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily. You may elaborate the answer based on personal views or your classwork if necessary.

(Answer) The hypothesis that Virginia presents in this piece is an alluring view to achieving world peace indeed. She talks about how accomplishments in relationships with family and friends are more important than individual success. She says that this feeling of mutual care should form an ethical code to establish the same caring relationships between people within the same nation or state. Furthermore, she says that if this code is universally applied, the ethics of care would be a norm throughout the world and give rise to peace, respect and a hopeful future.

However, this idea might not be entirely feasible on a global scale. The boundaries of nations are divided not only by lines but, also by a mired mess of political misunderstandings. Even countries that are not in a state of war with each other, might want to put their individual country first, as opposed to investing in caring relationships with other nations.

Generally, communities place their own beliefs to be higher than others. Similarly, countries place their economic and cultural environments to be better than those of other nations. This inculcates a certain attitude that makes these individual nations self-serving. This is why her idea might not be entirely feasible.

The only way that her ethics of care would have a practical application would be with the aspect of trade and exchange of benefits. Considering that her ethics of care entails a relationship between nations based on caring for each other, it would be practical if nations were to follow a “quid pro quo” method. This means that nations could exchange resources that they might have in abundance to a country in need. This could be a two-way exchange where both countries have their needs fulfilled through mutual exchange of resources. The beneficiaries in this political relationship might even end up nurturing such ties that entail profit. Eventually, scenes of political turmoil might decrease. Perhaps, even the care of ethics might be eventually established.