Alisa Carse

Georgetown University, Philosophy, Faculty Member

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Papers by Alisa Carse

The 'voice of care': implications for bioethical education

Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 1991

This paper examines the &#39;justice&#39; and &#39;care&#39; orientations in ethi... more This paper examines the &#39;justice&#39; and &#39;care&#39; orientations in ethical theory as characterized in Carol Gilligan&#39;s research on moral development and the philosophical work it has inspired. Focus is placed on challenges to the justice orientation--in particular, to the construal of impartiality as the mark of the moral point of view, to the conception of moral judgment as essentially principle-driven and dispassionate, and to models of moral responsibility emphasizing norms of formal equality and reciprocity. Suggestions are made about the implications of these challenges, and of the care orientation in ethics, for the ethical theory taught, the issues addressed, and the skills and sensitivities encouraged through bioethical education.

Ann J. Cahill, Rethinking rape. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001, ISBN 0801487188

Hypatia Reviews Online

Her teaching and research are centered in moral theory, social and political philosophy, moral ps... more

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Papers Presented at a Conference on Reasonable Partiality, (Amsterdam, October 2003) || Front Matter

Forgiving Grave Wrongs

Forgiveness in Perspective

Harnessing the Promise of Moral Distress: A Call for Re-Orientation

Despite over three decades of research into the sources and costs of what has become an " epidemi... more Despite over three decades of research into the sources and costs of what has become an " epidemic " of moral distress among healthcare professionals, spanning many clinical disciplines and roles, there has been little significant progress in effectively addressing moral distress. We believe the persistent sense of frustration , helplessness, and despair still dominating the clinical moral distress narrative signals a need for reorientation in the way moral distress is understood and worked with. Most fundamentally, moral distress reveals moral investment and energy. It is the troubled call of conscience, an expression of fidelity to moral commitments seen as imperiled or compromised. It is crucial that we find ways to empower clinicians in heeding this call—to support clinicians' moral agency and voice, foster their moral resilience, and facilitate their ability to contribute to needed reform within the organizations and systems in which they work. These objectives must inform creative expansion in the design of strategies for addressing moral distress in the day-today of clinical practice. We include suggestions about promising directions such strategies might take in the hope of spurring further innovation within clinical environments.

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Moral Distress and Moral Disempowerment

Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, 2013

Moral distress can consist in anxiety or concern about one&amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s capacity to ... more Moral distress can consist in anxiety or concern about one&amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s capacity to meet challenges to one&amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s integrity; it can also consist in the sense that one has failed to meet these challenges, betraying fundamental moral values or commitments. When the sense of moral failure is compounded by feelings of frustration or impotence, of being constrained or impeded in one&amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s ability to act as one believes one ought, one experiences moral disempowerment. Drawing on narratives of moral distress emerging from work in the clinical context, this essay explores a distinction between cases in which moral distress does, and does not, center around the experience of moral disempowerment. When moral distress is tied to moral disempowerment, the acute personal toll is joined with broader moral costs, for effective moral agency is stymied. If we are to support individuals&amp;amp;amp;amp;#39; resilience and effectiveness in working constructively with moral distress, we need to understand and redress the social, systemic, and institutional factors contributing to moral disempowerment.

"The Moral Contours of Empathy"

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 8: 169–195, 2005.

Morally contoured empathy is a form of “reasonable partiality” essential to the healthy care of d... more Morally contoured empathy is a form of “reasonable partiality” essential to the healthy care of dependents. It is critical as an epistemic aid in determining proper moral responsiveness; it is also, within certain richly normative roles and relationships, itself a cru- cial constitutive mode of moral connection. Yet the achievement of empathy is no easy feat. Patterns of incuriosity imperil connection, impeding empathic engagement; inappropriate “empathic” engagement, on the other hand, can result in self-effacement. Impartial moral principles and constraints offer at best meager protection against these perils, and hence serve poorly in securing morally contoured empathy. More nuanced and practical guidance should be sought in normatively substantive conceptions of our roles and relationships and their defining moral stakes. These, joined with more abstract moral tools, can facilitate rich, narratively textured interpretations of morality’s demands. While the content of our norma- tive conceptions must be continually debated, engaging in this debate is vital to the achieve- ment of proper empathy, and thus to effective, respectful, morally healthy care of dependents.

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Forgiving Grave Wrongs

Christopher Allers and Marieke Smit, eds. Putting Forgiveness in Perspective. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press, 2011: 43-65

We introduce what we call the Emergent Model of forgiving, which is a process-based relational mo... more We introduce what we call the Emergent Model of forgiving, which is a process-based relational model conceptualising forgiving as moral and normative repair in the wake of grave wrongs. In cases of grave wrongs, which shatter the victim's life, the Classical Model of transactional forgiveness falls short of illuminating how genuine forgiveness can be achieved. In a climate of persistent threat and distrust, expressions of remorse, rituals and gestures of apology, and acts of reparation are unable to secure the moral confidence and trust required for moral repair, much less for forgiveness. Without the rudiments of a shared moral world -a world in which, at the very least, the survivor's violation can be collectively recognized as a violation, and her moral status and authority collectively acknowledged and respected -expressions of remorse, gestures and rituals of apology, or promises of compensation have no authority as meaningful communicative acts with reparative significance. Accordingly, we argue that repair in the wake of traumatic violence involves 'world-building,' which supports the ability of survivors to move from despair to hope, from radical and disabling distrust to trust and engagement, and thus from impotence to effective agency. Our Emergent Model treats forgiveness as a slowly developing outcome of a series of changes in a person's relationship to the trauma and its aftermath, in which moral agency is regained. We argue that forgiveness after grave wrongs and world-shattering harm, when it occurs, emerges from other phenomena, such as cohabitation within a community, gestures of reconciliation, working on shared projects, the developing of trust. On this view, forgiveness is an emergent phenomenon; it entails taking and exercising normative power -coming to claim one's own moral authority in relation to oneself, one's assailant, and one's community. The processes that ultimately constitute forgiving are part and parcel of normative repair more broadly construed.

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Vulnerability, Agency, and Human Flourishing

In Carol Taylor and Robert Dell'Oro, Eds., Health and Human Flourishing. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2006.

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Trust as Robustly Moral

Philosophic Exchange, 2010

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Rehabilitating Care

by Alisa Carse and Hilde Nelson

Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 1996

The feminist ethic of care has often been criticized for its inability to address four problems--... more The feminist ethic of care has often been criticized for its inability to address four problems--the problem of exploitation as it threatens care givers, the problem of sustaining care-giver integrity, the dangers of conceiving the mother-child dyad normatively as a paradigm for human relationships, and the problem of security social justice on a broad scale among relative strangers. We argue that there are resources within the ethic of care for addressing each of these problems, and we sketch strategies for developing the ethic more fully.

Pornography's Many Meanings: A Reply to C. M. Concepcion

Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 1999

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Pornography: An Uncivil Liberty?

Hypatia 10 (1995): 155-182

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The Liberal Individual: A Metaphysical or Moral Embarrassment?

Noûs, 1994

Impartial Principle and Moral Context: Securing a Place for the Particular in Ethical Theory

Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 1998

This essay critically assesses two strategies of accommodation used by defenders of impartialism ... more This essay critically assesses two strategies of accommodation used by defenders of impartialism in ethics to argue that the care orientation represents no genuine challenge to impartialist theoretical paradigms. One strategy focuses on impartiality as a constraint on moral deliberation, the other as a constraint on moral justification. While highlighting respects in which the commitment to impartiality is more consonant with the care orientation than many advocates of care have acknowledged, this essay attempts to clarify crucial ways in which each accommodationist strategy fails, thus locating some of the more important contributions and challenges the care orientation offers to moral theory.

Particularismo calificado y virtud asociativa: énfasis de una tendencia reciente en ética

Rev Chil Urol, 1997

Alisa Carse

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