Care and Filial Piety as burdened virtues

Care ethicists have long called for a shift from an individualist society to a more communitarian one. Only this, they argue, will ensure the vulnerable among us are taken care of and their caregivers protected from exploitation. Even if care ethics is right that the ideal society is a communitarian one, however, it does not follow that just any communitarian society is ideal. Notably, many East Asian societies influenced by Confucianism live out two key care ethical ideals, namely a recognition of the self as fundamentally relational and an acceptance that unchosen relationships can nonetheless generate obligations. Despite this, however, caregivers in the East face their own challenges and examining the challenges these real life communitarian societies face with can be instructive for developing care ethics’ ideal of a fully supportive society. In this paper, I examine care and filial piety the west and the east, showing how they can each be burdened virtues for caregivers in their respective societies. Ultimately, I argue that the fact that these parallel analyses can be made despite western and eastern societies’ opposite focuses on individualism and?communitarianism shows that communitarianism itself cannot be the full solution. A host of other safeguards need to be further developed, such that filial piety in the?East?and?care in the?West?may be?unqualifiedly?virtues?in their cultural contexts.

Sara Chan, University of Scranton, will deliver this lecture at 5pm, Monday the 8th of June. The event is free and open to everyone, no registration is required. This lecture is part of our Trinity series, see the other talks below.

Sara Chan is an Assistant Professor at the University of Scranton. Her research interests lie in ethics, social epistemology and the philosophy of religion. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame, where she was the recipient of two graduate fellowships. Prior to that, she graduated from the University of Oxford with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and the University of St. Andrews with a master’s degree in philosophy and psychology. She publishes on the philosophy of disability and has spoken at conferences across the world.

Upcoming events in this series

Matthew Minerd, Seminary of Ss. Cyril and Methodius, Pittsburgh,
4pm, Tuesday 16 June: ‘Ens Morale: The Scholastic Metaphysics of Morals’

Venue: Blackfriars Hall - St Giles Oxford, OX1 3LY United Kingdom Array ( [lat] => 51.756248 [lng] => -1.259881 )

Contact:
Aquinas Institute
aquinas@bfriars.ox.ac.uk