Conceptualización del control de convencionalidad

To say that ethical judgments could, in principle, be accepted by anyone raises a question that has been the subject of much discussion in the past decade: is ethics gendered? It has long been thought that there are differences in the way males and females approach ethics. For most of history, women's nature has been seen as more inclined to what we might call the domestic virtues, and less suited to a broad perspective. Thus in Emile, Rousseau summarizes a woman's duties as: 'the obe- dience and fidelity which she owes to her husband, the tend- erness and care due to her children'.5 Men, but not women,

should understand and participate in civic affairs and politics, because 'a woman's reason is practical . . . The search for abstract and speculative truth, for principles and axioms of science, for all that tends to wide generalisation, is beyond a woman's grasp'.6 Hegel took a similar view: women's ethical

judgment was limited to the customary ethical life of home and family; the world of affairs, of civil society and of the more abstract realm of universal morality was for men. Freud brought this tradition into the present century, saying that women 'show less sense of justice than men' and 'are more often influenced in their judgments by feelings of affection or hostility'.7

Since Mary Wollstonecraft wrote her pioneering A Vindi- cation of the Rights of Woman in 1792, there has been a strand of feminist thought that argues strongly, against Rousseau

208 H o w a r e we to l i v e ? T h e n a t u r e o f e t h i c s 209

and those who think in his mould, that there are no distinc- tively male or female virtues: ethics is universal. A quite dis- tinct strand of feminist thought, however, came to the fore in the early days of the struggle for women's suffrage. In advo- cating votes for women, some feminists argued that women do have a distinctive approach to many ethical and political issues, and that it is precisely for this reason that their influ- ence should be more strongly felt in politics. It is male ambi- tion and aggression, this argument ran, that is responsible for the follies of war, with all the suffering that this brings. Women, on the other hand, were said to be more nurturing and more caring. In Women and Labour, published in 1911, Olive Schreiner suggested that having experienced pregnancy, childbirth and the rearing of children, women will view the 'waste' of life in war differently from men.8

Such views became unpopular in the seventies, during the resurgence of the modern feminist movement, when any talk of natural or innate psychological differences between the sexes was ideologically suspect. More recently, however, some fem- inists have revived the idea that women see ethics differently from men. Much of the impetus for this change has come from Carol Gilligan's study, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development . Gilligan reacted against the work of the Harvard psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, who spent his working life studying the moral development of children. He did this by asking children what they would do in a number of moral dilemmas, and grading their level of moral development by the answers they give. In one dilemma, a man called Heinz has a wife who will die unless she can get a drug that he cannot afford. The druggist refuses to give the drug to Heinz. Should Heinz steal the drug in order to save his wife? Jake, an eleven-year-old boy, answers that Heinz should steal the drug, and then face the consequences. Jake, according to Kohlberg, thus shows his understanding of social

rules and his ability to rank principles about respect for prop- erty, and respect for human life. On the other hand Amy, a girl of the same age as Jake, focuses more on the relationship between Heinz and his wife, and also criticizes the druggist for not helping someone who is dying. She suggests that Heinz should persist in trying to talk to the druggist, to see if they can come up with a solution to the problem. Kohlberg regards the boy's answer as indicative of a higher stage of moral devel- opment, because it considers the problem at a more abstract level, and refers to a system of rules and principles. Gilligan points out that Amy sees the moral universe in less abstract, more personal terms, emphasizing relationships and responsi- bilities between people. This may be different from the way in which Jake sees morality, but it is not therefore inferior or at a lower stage of development.9

In Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education, Nel Noddings defends a view in some respects like that of Gilligan. She argues that women are less inclined than men to see ethics in terms of abstract rules and principles. Women, Noddings thinks, are more likely to respond directly to spe- cific situations on the basis of an attitude of caring. For women, the relationships in which they are involved are central to their perception of the situation. At one point Noddings develops this view into a criticism of my own argument that we should extend the basic moral principle of equal consider- ation of interests to all beings who have interests, that is, to all sentient creatures. This is, in Noddings's view, an example of an abstract and distinctively male attitude to ethics; the feminine approach she espouses would not lead us to have duties to all animals, but rather to particular ones, such as our companion animals, with whom we are in some kind of relationship. On this basis Noddings rejects my view that where we have adequate alternatives to eating animal flesh, we should be vegetarians. Noddings refers approvingly to the

210 H o w a r e w e t o l i v e ? T h e n a t u r e o f e t h i c s 2 1 1

reluctance one might feel for eating a named farmyard animal like Daisy the cow, but thinks our obligations not to eat animals go no further.10

Here I think Noddings goes astray, not only in her specific ethical judgments, but also in her characterization of a fem- inist approach to ethics. I cannot prove Gilligan and Nod- dings wrong when they claim that women are less inclined to think in terms of abstract ethical rules and principles than men, though the basis on which they make this claim is flimsy, and it is ironic that they should come close to agreeing with Rousseau's clearly sexist view that women do not reason abstractly." Other feminists take a different stance. Alison Jaggar, for instance, has argued that 'feminist ethics' does not need to be 'feminine ethics'; she also rejects biological deter- minism, emphasizing that not all women are feminists, while some men are.12 In any case, when it comes to how one lives,

women do not limit their ethical concerns to those with whom they have some relationship. On the contrary, there is evi- dence to suggest that women are, if anything, more universal in their ethical concern than men, and readier to take a long- term view. The popular Canadian environmentalist and broadcaster David Suzuki notes, in his book Inventing the Future, that in his experience 'women are disproportionately repre- sented in the environmental movement'. The same is true of the animal liberation movement. From the nineteenth century until the present day, women have clearly outnumbered men in groups trying to stop the exploitation of animals. Recently at the local animal liberation group with which I work, we decided to check the sex ratio of its membership. To our surprise, we found that over 80 percent of our members are female. Curious about this, I wrote to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a Washington, DC-based organization that has more members than any other group pursuing the goal of equal consideration for animals. They told me that

they had discovered a similar preponderance of women when they last examined their list of supporters.13

Suzuki explains the large number of women in the environ- mental movement by reference to the fact that women have been excluded from much of the power structure in our soci- ety, and so have less at stake in the status quo than men. This means, Suzuki thinks, that they can see through our social myths with greater clarity than men. There may be some- thing in this, but to be involved in the environmental move- ment one also needs a concern for the long-term care of the planet and the species who live on it. Similarly, people are drawn to the animal liberation movement very largely because they care about the suffering of animals. Is it possible that, on the whole, women do care more strongly than men about the suffering of others? Are they, perhaps, the more ethical gender? All such generalizations will certainly have excep- tions, and should be treated with caution, but I suspect that there is some truth in this one. Unlike mainstream party politics, success in campaigns for animals offers little in the way of career prospects, and does not bring benefits for the campaigners, beyond their knowledge that they have helped to reduce the suffering of other beings. Although other expla- nations are certainly possible, the predominance of women in the environmental and animal movements therefore suggests a greater readiness to work for larger goals, and not just to help oneself or one's own kind. Interestingly, Carol Gilligan quotes from a woman who expresses exactly this commitment to a universal ethic:

I have a very strong sense of being responsible to the world, that I can't just live for my enjoyment, but just the fact of being in the world gives me an obligation to do what I can to make the world a better place to live in, no matter how small a scale that may be on.1 4

212 How a r e w e t o l i v e ?

In earlier chapters of this book I have stressed the impor- tance of family, kin and reciprocal relationships. In the previ- ous section of this chapter I have referred to the importance of a broader perspective, too, and I shall develop that idea in the next chapter; but that broader perspective must be able to recognize the central place that personal relationships have in human ethical life. The generalized concern for the entire world expressed in the last quotation is exactly what the world needs if it is to overcome its problems. The next question is: if someone is choosing how to live, and doesn't already have that sense of responsibility to the world, are there good reasons why he or she should take on so universal an ethical commitment?

Jesus and Kant: Two views on why we ought