Care and personhood

A reflection on recent episodes of the podcast

(image from the Open University course 'Communication and relationships in health and social care', 2004)

Reflecting on the first four episodes of the Careful Thinking podcast, I’ve noticed a number of common thematic threads emerging, as well as some intriguing differences, among the guests I’ve interviewed so far. One area in which similarities and differences have become apparent concerns the ways in which the personhood of the receiver of care is conceptualised.

In Episode 3, for example, Nigel Rapport espouses a Levinasian individualism which emphasises the absolute unknowability of the other and the need to respect their ‘personal preserve’, which in some circumstances might mean withholding rather than providing care. By contrast, Xavier Symons’ writing on dementia care and the virtue of hospitality, discussed in Episode 2, draws on the Christian personalism of Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), in which the human person is viewed as ‘a good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love’ (Love and Responsibility). I’ve always been a little squeamish about the use of the word ‘love’ in this definition – preferring to reword it in my head as ‘towards whom the only proper response is care’. However, I note that Nigel Rapport is unafraid to use the word ‘love’ in his own, decidedly secular writing about care, for example in the title of his book Cosmopolitan Love and Individuality: Ethical Engagement Beyond Culture, which we discussed at length in the podcast episode. Personalism was also, of course, a key part of the philosophical toolkit of Edith Stein, whose relationship to care ethics I discussed with Petr Urban in Episode 4.

It seems to me that the key difference between a Levinasian individualist and a Christian personalist perspective on care is that the former is based on a respect for the radical otherness of the one cared for, while the latter is motivated by an identification of similarity – a recognition that the one in need of care is a human being like oneself, with rights and needs similar to one’s own. However, there is probably more that unites than divides the two perspectives: both share an implicit sense of the absolute value of the individual and therefore their being deserving of care.

As for what this valuing of the personhood of those cared for might look like in practice, there are similarities between Xavier Symons’ advocacy of ‘mutuality’ in care for those experiencing dementia, in which the person on the receiving end of care is able actively to give back something to the one caring for them, and the relational care described by Mary Larkin and Manik Deepak Gopinath in the very first episode of the podcast. In relational care, as I understand it, the agency of the care receiver, and in particular their capacity to contribute their own knowledge and experience to the care relationship, enriching the care giver, is prioritised. At the same time this approach is at pains to view the one cared for as a whole person, embedded in existing relationships and social contexts, which they are encouraged to bring with them into the care setting, rather than being seen as simply a bundle of needs. (The mutuality of care is nicely captured in the header image for this post, taken from an Open University course on ‘Communication and relationships in health and social care’ whose development I led some years ago: who is the carer and who the cared for, who is giving and who is receiving, in this interaction?)

A final thought for now on the question of personhood and care. I was surprised by Petr Urban’s claim, in his article on ‘Care Ethics and the Feminist Personalism of Edith Stein’, that, while Stein’s ‘ethical personalism…revolves around the idea that the value of the human person is the most precious of values’, ‘only a few care ethicists would embrace this view’. Petr goes on to explain that care ethicists have sought to develop ‘a ‘broader understanding of caring’ which includes ‘not only human persons, but also our environment’ in a ‘complex, life-sustaining web’. However, surely, in the final analysis, care requires something like the personalist valuing of the human person at its normative core? If, for care ethicists, ‘the value of the human person’ is not the most precious of values, then what is?

I’m sure these are questions that will continue to be in explored in future episodes of the podcast. And I’m hoping that, if and when this Substack acquires a few more readers (remember: it’s free to subscribe!), others will contribute to this debate in the comments section.