The Confucian Concept of Jen and the Feminist Ethics of Care: A Comparative Study

Hypatia ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenyang Li

This article compares Confucian ethics of Jen and feminist ethics of care. It attempts to show that they share philosophically significant common grounds. Its findings affirm the view that care-orientation in ethics is not a characteristic peculiar to one sex. It also shows that care-orientation is not peculiar to subordinated social groups. Arguing that the oppression of women is not an essential element of Confucian ethics, the author indicates the Confucianism and feminism are compatible.

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 275-294
Author(s):  
Ann A. Pang-White

In recent discussion on comparative ethics, extensive scholarship has been devoted to a comparative study of Confucian ren 仁(often translated as humaneness or benevolence) and feminist ethics of care, while such cross-cultural study on the Daoist concept of ci 慈 (customarily translated as compassion) and its intersection with care ethics has been lacking. This paper explores the reasons and concludes that Daoists do care. However, their conception of care goes beyond the Confucian ren and pure care ethics or even counter-opposes them so as to bring forward the true meaning of care. Daoist care is a powerful tool in our approach to ecology.


Sociology ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 003803852097559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Insa Koch ◽  
Mark Fransham ◽  
Sarah Cant ◽  
Jill Ebrey ◽  
Luna Glucksberg ◽  
...  

This article examines how intensifying inequality in the UK plays out at a local level, in order to bring out the varied ways polarisation takes place ‘on the ground’. It brings a community analysis buttressed by quantitative framing to the study of economic, spatial and relational polarisation in four towns in the UK. We distinguish differing dynamics of ‘elite-based’ polarisation (in Oxford and Tunbridge Wells) and ‘poverty-based’ polarisation (in Margate and Oldham). Yet there are also common features. Across the towns, marginalised communities express a sense of local belonging. But tensions between social groups also remain strong and all towns are marked by a weak or ‘squeezed middle’. We argue that the weakness of intermediary institutions, including but not limited to the ‘missing middle’, and capable of bridging gaps between various social groups, provides a major insight into both the obstacles to, and potential solutions for, re-politicising inequality today.


Author(s):  
Fiona Robinson

This chapter builds a picture of a critical, feminist ethics of care as a feminist practical ethics for international relations. It focuses on care ethics as a moral framework for addressing the challenges of humanitarianism—in a manner that foregrounds human needs while not depoliticizing or taking for granted the category of “human.” A care ethics approach furthers the transformative aims of feminism, while refusing to cast “women-and-children” as vulnerable victims in need of protection. The ethics of care also offers a substantive focus for policy and practice around diverse and competing needs for care. Far from confining women to their roles as carers, this approach exposes patterns of gender inequality in care practices, while retaining a focus on the contribution of the voice and labour of care—in multiple and diverse forms—for all social groups and communities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-36
Author(s):  
Houda Houbeish

Ethics are the driving force of the humanitarian field, a domain that has been governed by general and universal ethical principles. Researchers have largely focused on studying the organizational commitment to these principles, paying less attention to the role-specific ethics of this field. Moreover, researchers who consider the humanitarian field from a media studies lens have often focused on media representation, while questions about communication as practice are sidelined. In this paper, I approach humanitarian ethics with a particular focus on role morality and communication practices. With a particular focus on the role of a humanitarian communications specialist, I argue, in this paper, that the feminist ethics of care is a useful ethical framework that can guide communication specialists to better practices when they are in the field of operation. I also answer the following research questions: What are the main ethical principles that humanitarian communication specialists are expected to observe as humanitarians? Why are these principles insufficient? How might feminist ethics of care fill the gap left by current humanitarian principles and what would be the added value of this framework for practicing humanitarian communication? To answer, I ground my approach in an experiential understanding built from my personal experience as a humanitarian communications specialist. Second, I offer a literature review to highlight the common ground between humanitarian ethics and the feminist ethics of care and the added value of the feminist ethics of care why applied by humanitarian communication specialists. Third, I provide some examples of communications practices that may follow the feminist ethics of care model.  


Semiotica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (227) ◽  
pp. 341-347
Author(s):  
Rocco Gangle

AbstractA review of Inna Semetsky’s The Edusemiotics of Images: Essays on the Art-Science of Tarot with reference to Peircean semiotics, Deleuze’s philosophy of difference and the feminist ethics of care.


Hypatia ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lijun Yuan

This comparative study of the ethics of care and the Confucian concept of jen argue against two assumptions made by Chenyang Li in his own study of these two traditions. Against him, I argue that a “feminine” morality is not adequate to address human equality, and that care-orientated theories like jen and care seem incompatible with the feminist commitment to oppose the subjection of women.


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