My son got so anxious in school for others not being up to speed on the work (nightmares) and then somatically rebelled by Thursday he got so tired he would be sick. This went on for years. THEN he reacted and became a bully. Only now is he aware of his path and regrets. He is in a good relationship with a person who cares about him but also for herself.
She makes a lot of sense, however, the democracy she is describing would seem to include some force that is going to stop men from competing with one another for women. In other words, there is no hierarchy of winners / losers; priests / laymen; men / women. What would this force be?
It would have been interesting to hear what 4 'dislikes' (downthumbs) did not appreciate. C Gilligan's books have become the main stay of my thinking and healing.
well im listening to this for ethics class and I can copy and paste what irks me about Gilligan so far (albeit it can be taken with a grain of salt since I've read just a bit and heard an hour's worth of lecture) It seems ironic to me that although Carol Gilligan is making the case that “feminine intuition” and male “emotional stoicism” are by and large socially constructed or introduced to us by our environment and not possibly something that are at least, in part, innate in our evolutionary psychology and yet at the same time she seems to go about contrasting Kant and Kohlberg in perhaps the most predictable manner from an evolutionary psychologist standpoint, by making moral philosophy all about your relational ties to those around you. It is predictable because a cursory look at how our human ancestors have generally evolved, in mostly patriarchal societies, shows that women were typically social architects that managed the support network and relationships of the family unit, while men who had to look out for threats from other men might have a sort of natural distrust for his fellow man. And it’s possible that these patterns are still latent in our psychology today because of biology. I also cannot really bring myself to agree with her that what we live in today in America is truly a patriarchy or that the male is inherently privileged in all spheres, enough to be higher in some sort of objective hierarchy. She states this presupposition as though it is an empirical fact. It is specifically because of some of the ways in which men are not privileged and suffer certain gender-specific hardships, that I think America is not exactly a patriarchy. And it also seems to be painting with too broad a brush. Family units can be patriarchal or matriarchal or egalitarian, and given that we have such a vast array of different cultures in the states that will follow various family paradigms, it seems unfair to gloss over that variance and label it all as patriarchy. But this is the usual contention I have with most modern feminists. Though I find myself thinking “so what” when Gilligan mentions how interpersonal relationships ought to be considered for a more, what she calls “mature” moral philosophy (because I did not previously see how that was necessarily excluded by Kantian ethics or Utilitarian ethics) I will agree with her that as moral agents we are encumbered by these relationships. But she seems to think this can help ground morality whereas I think it can make it much murkier. I’m always going to be more partial to my partner than to a stranger, because we are bonded and I am loyal to him even when he makes mistakes. But there may come a dilemma where I might help him with something and neglect someone else when in fact, objectively, someone else was in far more need of my help than my partner. Is that ethical? I’m not sure how Gilligan answers these questions or creates a springboard to tackle such questions if she just wants interpersonal relationships to be more integral to moral philosophy. Secondly, I can at least agree with her that emotion is too often regarded as an enemy of reason and that perhaps integrating them will create a more robust moral philosophy. We may admire characters in fiction or on TV that use cold reason, like Sherlock Holmes. But as Sherlock Holmes once said on the BBC version of the series, “it takes Sherlock Holmes to find your killer; it takes Dr. Watson to save your life.” The reason why Watson and Sherlock’s dynamic works so well is because they are a representation of that synergy between emotion and logic. “At the same time Gilligan's view avoids the individual subjectivism and relativism which is often seen as the only alternative to a view such as Kohlberg's; for Gilligan sees the notions of care and responsibility as providing nonsubjective standards by which appropriateness of response can be appraised in the particular case. It is a standard which allows one to say that a certain thing was the appropriate action for a particular individual to take, but not necessarily that it was the 'right' action for anyone in that situation.” This quote from Blum’s essay on Gilligan highlights my issue with Gilligan in that she seems to use flowery language to try to work around philosophical contradictions or loopholes without necessarily addressing them. From my view, saying something was “appropriate” but not necessarily “right” is just a politician’s answer and also I do not agree that “care” and “responsibility” can be considered nonsubjective at all. They are probably some of the most subjective categories since everyone has a different capacity for care and responsibility and everyone has different ideas of what you are responsible for.
Possibly the ineffectual nature of the speech, and reading from the papers with some monotony. Awkward pauses for laughs. It's a difficult watch/listen for the laymen.
I would have given my eye teeth to hear the Q&A on this lecture. I am passing this link to many people, the ones who are resisting reading "In A Different Voice". I am a lone voice in my professional sector and recently experienced the rabid feelings against the Ethics of Care from an influential male member of a neophyte union we are trying to form. And these are psychotherapists and counselors!!!! Yes, the question to be held firmly remains "Why is Ethics of Care so marginalised?" That very pushing into the sidelines reveals much about the struggle ahead.
It occurs to me that while we may want girls and boys to be raised more alike than they have been, that there is still a role for biology. The males are supposed to compete for the females. Can civilization or socialization override that? Take the example of the boys on the football team competing for the attention of the cheerleaders and vice versa. Now, I suppose you could open up both sports to both sexes. But the great majority of the football players are still going to be male and the majority of cheerleaders will still be female. (In other sports, I admit, it would be different.)
My son got so anxious in school for others not being up to speed on the work (nightmares) and then somatically rebelled by Thursday he got so tired he would be sick. This went on for years. THEN he reacted and became a bully. Only now is he aware of his path and regrets. He is in a good relationship with a person who cares about him but also for herself.
She makes a lot of sense, however, the democracy she is describing would seem to include some force that is going to stop men from competing with one another for women. In other words, there is no hierarchy of winners / losers; priests / laymen; men / women. What would this force be?
It would have been interesting to hear what 4 'dislikes' (downthumbs) did not appreciate. C Gilligan's books have become the main stay of my thinking and healing.
well im listening to this for ethics class and I can copy and paste what irks me about Gilligan so far (albeit it can be taken with a grain of salt since I've read just a bit and heard an hour's worth of lecture)
It seems ironic to me that although Carol Gilligan is making the case that “feminine intuition” and male “emotional stoicism” are by and large socially constructed or introduced to us by our environment and not possibly something that are at least, in part, innate in our evolutionary psychology and yet at the same time she seems to go about contrasting Kant and Kohlberg in perhaps the most predictable manner from an evolutionary psychologist standpoint, by making moral philosophy all about your relational ties to those around you. It is predictable because a cursory look at how our human ancestors have generally evolved, in mostly patriarchal societies, shows that women were typically social architects that managed the support network and relationships of the family unit, while men who had to look out for threats from other men might have a sort of natural distrust for his fellow man. And it’s possible that these patterns are still latent in our psychology today because of biology. I also cannot really bring myself to agree with her that what we live in today in America is truly a patriarchy or that the male is inherently privileged in all spheres, enough to be higher in some sort of objective hierarchy. She states this presupposition as though it is an empirical fact. It is specifically because of some of the ways in which men are not privileged and suffer certain gender-specific hardships, that I think America is not exactly a patriarchy. And it also seems to be painting with too broad a brush. Family units can be patriarchal or matriarchal or egalitarian, and given that we have such a vast array of different cultures in the states that will follow various family paradigms, it seems unfair to gloss over that variance and label it all as patriarchy. But this is the usual contention I have with most modern feminists.
Though I find myself thinking “so what” when Gilligan mentions how interpersonal relationships ought to be considered for a more, what she calls “mature” moral philosophy (because I did not previously see how that was necessarily excluded by Kantian ethics or Utilitarian ethics) I will agree with her that as moral agents we are encumbered by these relationships. But she seems to think this can help ground morality whereas I think it can make it much murkier. I’m always going to be more partial to my partner than to a stranger, because we are bonded and I am loyal to him even when he makes mistakes. But there may come a dilemma where I might help him with something and neglect someone else when in fact, objectively, someone else was in far more need of my help than my partner. Is that ethical? I’m not sure how Gilligan answers these questions or creates a springboard to tackle such questions if she just wants interpersonal relationships to be more integral to moral philosophy. Secondly, I can at least agree with her that emotion is too often regarded as an enemy of reason and that perhaps integrating them will create a more robust moral philosophy. We may admire characters in fiction or on TV that use cold reason, like Sherlock Holmes. But as Sherlock Holmes once said on the BBC version of the series, “it takes Sherlock Holmes to find your killer; it takes Dr. Watson to save your life.” The reason why Watson and Sherlock’s dynamic works so well is because they are a representation of that synergy between emotion and logic.
“At the same time Gilligan's view avoids the individual subjectivism and relativism which is often seen as the only alternative to a view such as Kohlberg's; for Gilligan sees the notions of care and responsibility as providing nonsubjective standards by which appropriateness of response can be appraised in the particular case. It is a standard which allows one to say that a certain thing was the appropriate action for a particular individual to take, but not necessarily that it was the 'right' action for anyone in that situation.” This quote from Blum’s essay on Gilligan highlights my issue with Gilligan in that she seems to use flowery language to try to work around philosophical contradictions or loopholes without necessarily addressing them. From my view, saying something was “appropriate” but not necessarily “right” is just a politician’s answer and also I do not agree that “care” and “responsibility” can be considered nonsubjective at all. They are probably some of the most subjective categories since everyone has a different capacity for care and responsibility and everyone has different ideas of what you are responsible for.
Possibly the ineffectual nature of the speech, and reading from the papers with some monotony. Awkward pauses for laughs. It's a difficult watch/listen for the laymen.
I would have given my eye teeth to hear the Q&A on this lecture. I am passing this link to many people, the ones who are resisting reading "In A Different Voice". I am a lone voice in my professional sector and recently experienced the rabid feelings against the Ethics of Care from an influential male member of a neophyte union we are trying to form. And these are psychotherapists and counselors!!!! Yes, the question to be held firmly remains "Why is Ethics of Care so marginalised?" That very pushing into the sidelines reveals much about the struggle ahead.
It occurs to me that while we may want girls and boys to be raised more alike than they have been, that there is still a role for biology. The males are supposed to compete for the females. Can civilization or socialization override that? Take the example of the boys on the football team competing for the attention of the cheerleaders and vice versa. Now, I suppose you could open up both sports to both sexes. But the great majority of the football players are still going to be male and the majority of cheerleaders will still be female. (In other sports, I admit, it would be different.)
Thanks