2006 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
An ethical study of the complementary relation between care, responsibility, and justice
| Project/Area Number |
16520030
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Philosophy/Ethics
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| Research Institution | Kansai University |
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Principal Investigator |
SHINAGAWA Tetsuhiko Kansai University, Faculty of Letters, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (90226134)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2004 – 2006
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| Keywords | care / responsibility / justice / ethics / future generation / critic of the modern / liberalism / life |
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| Research Abstract |
This research, whose title is "An ethical study of the complementary relation between care, responsibility, and justice", focuses upon "ethic of care" initiated by Carol Gilligan and "the principle of responsibility" advocated by Hans Jonas. It contrasted the former with the ethical theories founded upon justice and rights, to which Gilligan opposed "ethic of care" and the latter with discourse ethics, which is also one of the ethics of justice. Thus it investigated the relation between care, responsibility, and justice. The novelty of it consists in its approach that it dealt with these theories under the one standpoint of the contrast with ethic of justice, although they have so far been discussed separately because of the difference of their territories : ethic of care has been tackled mainly in the Anglo-American political philosophy, while Jonas' principle of responsibility has been reviewed mainly as metaphysics or nature philosophy in Germany. This approach enabled us to discove
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r the common feature of these ethical theories : while the ethical theories based right and justice suppose human beings as equal and autonomous, ethic of care and the plinciple of responsibility depict human relation as including asymmetry of power and claim the ethics founded on care or responsibility to cope with it. Therefore, both of them find the paradigm for ethics in the relation to children and future generations. They are keen of frailty of life and vulnerability of bodies. In opposite to Kantian theory, a representative of the modern orthodox ethical theories, e.g. ethics of justice, they claim that we should respect not only human beings as noumenon but also as phenomenon. Furthermore, our research succeeds in setting out clearly the levels of arguments in the justice/ care debate such as normative-, founding-, and meta-level. As for Jonas, our research furthers the interpretation about the reason why he committed to metaphysics under the anti-metaphysical trend of modern thought. These achievements are obtained only under our approach contrasting these theories to ethic of justice. Less
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