Hostname: page-component-6898cfcb55-kwdml Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-11T06:33:17.611Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Will to Care: Performance, Expectation, and Imagination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Maurice Hamington
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article addresses the world's contemporary crisis of care, despite the abundance of information about distant others, by exploring motivations for caring and the role of imagination. The ethical significance of caring is found in performance. Applying Victor Vroom's expectancy theory, caring performances are viewed as extensions of rational expectations regarding the efficacy of actions. The imagination creates these positive or negative expectations regarding the ability to effectively care. William James's notion of the will to believe offers a unique twist on rational expectations in that he regards humans as having the capacity to work within uncertainty to take decisive action. Applying this idea to caring performance is, this article argues that people can have the will to care, beyond strict rational calculations or limits of social norms. Historically, caring has been associated with the imagination's ability to empathize, but the will to care offers another role for the imagination in envisioning effective action. Given the significance of the imagination for ethical behavior, this article explores the implications for cultivating care in terms of what educating for care might look like. The work of feminist care ethicists, particularly Nel Noddings, is discussed, and contemporary case examples of caring performances are investigated.

Information

Type
OPEN ISSUE CONTENT
Information
Hypatia , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , Summer 2010, pp. 675 - 695
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2006. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Baier, Annette. 1987. Hume, the women's moral theorist? In Women and moral theory, ed. Kittay, Eva Feder and Meyers, Diana T.Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Bandura, Albert. 2002. Reflexive empathy: On predicting more than has ever been observed. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (1): 24–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blumenfeld, Laura. 2002. Revenge: A story of hope. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1999. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cook, Kathy. 2005. Jimmy's escape to freedom. The Reader's Digest (February), http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/2005/02/jimmy_escape_freedom.html (accessed December 4, 2009).Google Scholar
Darwall, Stephen. 1998. Empathy, sympathy, care. Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 89 (2/3): 261–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gale, Richard. 1999. William James and the willfulness of belief. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59 (1): 71–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 2000. Creating a caring society. Contemporary Sociology 29 (1): 84–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamington, Maurice. 2004a. Embodiment, care ethics, and the same‐sex marriage controversy. In Same‐sex marriage: The moral and legal debate, ed. Baird, Robert M. and Rosebaum, Stuart E.New York: Prometheus Books, pp. 217–28.Google Scholar
Hamington, Maurice. 2004b. Embodied care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, and feminist ethics. Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Held, Virginia. 2006. The ethics of care: Personal, political, and global. New York: Oxford.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Martin L. 2000. Empathy and moral development: Implications for caring and justice. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hreljac, Ryan. 2009. Ryan's Well foundation.http://www.ryanswell.ca/story/index.html (accessed December 4, 2009).Google Scholar
Hume, David. 1739/1978. Treatise of human nature. 2nd ed. ed. Selby‐Bigge, A.New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ickes, William. 1997. Empathic accuracy. New York: The Guilford Press.Google Scholar
James, William. 1897/1956a. Great men and their environment. In The will to believe and other essays in popular philosophy. New York: Dover Publications, pp. 216–54.Google Scholar
James, William. 1897/1956b. The will to believe. In The will to believe and other essays in popular philosophy. New York: Dover Publications, pp. 1–31.Google Scholar
James, William. 1899/1958. Talks to teachers: On psychology and to students on some of life's ideals. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.Google Scholar
Johnson, Mark. 1993. Moral imagination: Implications of cognitive science for ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1963. Ethics. In Lectures on Ethics, Trans. Louis Infield. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, pp. 71–253.Google Scholar
Kruks, Sonia. 2001. Retrieving experience: Subjectivity and recognition in feminist politics. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Louderback‐Wood, Kerry. 2005. Jehovah's Witnesses, blood transfusions, and the tort of misrepresentation. Journal of Church and State 47 (4): 783–822.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lugones, Maria A. 2003. Pilgrimages, peregrinajes: Theorizing coalition against multiple oppressions. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Martin, Jane Roland. 1992. The schoolhome: Rethinking schools for changing families. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Mayeroff, Milton. 1971. On caring. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Mead, George Herbert. 1932/2002. The philosophy of the present. New York: Prometheus Books.Google Scholar
Mortenson, Greg, and Relin, David Oliver. 2006. Three cups of tea. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Noddings, Nel. 1984. Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Noddings, Nel. 2002. Starting at home: Caring and social policy. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Noddings, Nel. 2007. Philosophy and education. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha. 1995. Poetic justice: The literary imagination and public life. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Oliner, Pearl M., and Oliner, Samuel P. 1995. Toward a caring society: Ideas into action. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.Google Scholar
Preston, Stephanie D., and De Waal, Frans B. M. 2002. Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (1): 1–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. 1978. Chaos and context: A study in William James. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Slote, Michael. 2007. The ethics of care and empathy. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, Nancy. 2000. Empathy. American Philosophical Quarterly 37 (1): 65–78.Google Scholar
Stueber, Karsten R. 2006. Rediscovering empathy: Agency, folk psychology, and the human sciences. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tarver, Erin C. 2007. Particulars, practices, and pragmatic feminism: Breaking rules and rulings with William James. Journal of Speculative Philosophy 21 (4): 275–90.Google Scholar
Tronto, Joan. 1993. Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Vroom, Victor H. 1964. Work and motivation. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar