为什么关系无法为关怀伦理学奠基?——基于诺丁斯与斯洛特之争而展开的讨论

Why Relationship Could not Ground Care Ethics?——Some Discussions Based on the Dispute between Noddings and Slote

自上世纪末起,伦理学界一直没能就"关怀伦理学的基础始于关系还是美德"这一论题达成共识。相关讨论演化出两个立场:关系理论与美德理论。诺丁斯为前者的主要倡导者,而后者则以斯洛特为代表。在系列文本中,诺丁斯逐渐完善了自己的观点,从激进版本的关系理论转向温和版本的关系理论。斯洛特多次撰文批评诺丁斯,却始终没能彻底驳倒关系理论。然而关系理论是存在问题的,它无法回避由"忍辱负重的特工"和"理想的被关怀者"构成的双重两难。因此,关系无法为关怀伦理学奠基。

Since the end of the last century,ethicists still have not reached a consensus on"the basis of care ethics is relationship or virtue".Among all the competing theories,there are two standpoints should be given attention to,namely the relationship approach and the virtue approach.Nel Noddings is the main advocate of the former one,while the latter is represented by Michael Slote.Noddings uses a huge number of theoretical works to modify her ideas which could be described as the process of development from radical relationship theory to moderate relationship theory.Slote criticizes Noddings’s approach harshly from the perspective of virtue ethics theory,but to be honest,he fails to refute the relationship theory thoroughly.In this article,we propose a dual-dilemma which is constituted by"the secret agent dilemma"and"the ideal cared-for dilemma"for Noddings’s approach.From our point of view,even if the relationship theory could face"the secret agent dilemma"to some extent,it still could not escape from"the ideal cared-for dilemma".Thus,relationship theory could not ground care ethics and we have sufficient reasons to refuse such an approach.