First of all, I am very sorry that you had to go through this as a family and hope everybody is OK now.
That being said, this is one of the most thought-provoking Substack posts I have ever read. I do agree with your inclination to say, at face value throwing away the onions was not right, although it was right in your context—as I think your situation was definitely not the same as not having any other responsibilities and throwing away the onions anyway (in that case it would be wrong to send them to trash both at face value and in the individual context).
The first line of thought I had when I read this was (I read your other post on values too): Maybe what is morally good is what is in the interest of the individual (so in this way what is morally good is always to be contextualized in relation to the person’s interests).
Well, that is a big claim and I don’t think I want to argue that way. I can think of million things that might be in an individual’s best interest that are just not morally good (lying in court when accused of a crime in order to avoid a life-sentence, for example).
Maybe instead of saying morally good and the individual interest conflict, one might argue that there are certain individual interests that justify deviation from morally good (in this case it is not simply the morally good thing anymore-lex specials derogat legi generali ☺️).
So, what might differentiate your case from lying in court might be something like this: In your case, your throwing away the onions justifies deviation from the morally good, whereas in the second case of lying, it doesn’t. Then, what is it that might justify such a deviation? I think that is something like the moral good that personal interest is trying to serve. You didn’t throw away the onions just because you were lazy. You cared for yourself and your sister. Then I think the decision you made was that these acts of care referred to a higher moral value behind them, when compared to not throwing away the onions. It must be this higher moral value that justifies the contextualized approach and the conflict is resolved by reference to a outweighing moral reason. At least this is my first instinct ☺️
Love this! Very thoughtful! This is making me think more about the relationship between care ethics and the theory of prudential value that I ascribe to. Like some ethical theories are very closely connected with theories of well-being (the first example that comes to mind is utilitarianism and hedonism). So I will have to think about care ethics and its relationship with well-being some more... Thank you!!
First of all, I am very sorry that you had to go through this as a family and hope everybody is OK now.
That being said, this is one of the most thought-provoking Substack posts I have ever read. I do agree with your inclination to say, at face value throwing away the onions was not right, although it was right in your context—as I think your situation was definitely not the same as not having any other responsibilities and throwing away the onions anyway (in that case it would be wrong to send them to trash both at face value and in the individual context).
The first line of thought I had when I read this was (I read your other post on values too): Maybe what is morally good is what is in the interest of the individual (so in this way what is morally good is always to be contextualized in relation to the person’s interests).
Well, that is a big claim and I don’t think I want to argue that way. I can think of million things that might be in an individual’s best interest that are just not morally good (lying in court when accused of a crime in order to avoid a life-sentence, for example).
Maybe instead of saying morally good and the individual interest conflict, one might argue that there are certain individual interests that justify deviation from morally good (in this case it is not simply the morally good thing anymore-lex specials derogat legi generali ☺️).
So, what might differentiate your case from lying in court might be something like this: In your case, your throwing away the onions justifies deviation from the morally good, whereas in the second case of lying, it doesn’t. Then, what is it that might justify such a deviation? I think that is something like the moral good that personal interest is trying to serve. You didn’t throw away the onions just because you were lazy. You cared for yourself and your sister. Then I think the decision you made was that these acts of care referred to a higher moral value behind them, when compared to not throwing away the onions. It must be this higher moral value that justifies the contextualized approach and the conflict is resolved by reference to a outweighing moral reason. At least this is my first instinct ☺️
Love this! Very thoughtful! This is making me think more about the relationship between care ethics and the theory of prudential value that I ascribe to. Like some ethical theories are very closely connected with theories of well-being (the first example that comes to mind is utilitarianism and hedonism). So I will have to think about care ethics and its relationship with well-being some more... Thank you!!
Thank you for this lovely homage to care ethics and an absolute tear-jerker of a post