The Public Dimension of Care: Towards a Public Ethics of Care

As essentially social beings, we humans are fragile and dependent on what is outside ourselves—others, institutions and sustained and sustainable environments—. Vulnerability acquires for us a social role (not a mere contingency or a subjective disposition) and hence the positive social obligations arise to minimize instability and its differential distribution, to demand basic support (food, shelter, work, healthcare, education, mobility, expression) and to reduce avoidable damage. We are a social species, with reciprocal links (rights and duties), built on the interdependence; not a group of solitary individuals whose mutual obligations are limited to not invading other people’s space. Care-related obligations by the (social) state come into play here, as in the case of healthcare systems. These can be characterized as “due cares” (due actions) because the action is an expected event within a social context of values and guidelines. In that context, the omission that causes or enables harm, as in exclusion from healthcare, qualifies as an “undue inaction”. In the criminal legal sense, the idea of “nonfeasance” refers to bringing about a result by not avoiding it, by violating a special duty, which equates with its causation—the prototypical example is the crime of failing to assist. Here the question not only of intentional omission but of neglect and abandonment comes into play. One example is the exclusion from healthcare and drugs of wide sectors of the Spanish population, not only undocumented migrants but also poor and unemployed people. The State is shamelessly neglecting important segments of the population, and causing harm—especially to the most vulnerable—by an ethically reprehensible omission of care. This case illustrates the need for defining what we have called “a public ethics of care” combining public ethics obligations with the responsibilities of care—since the ethics of care shapes government.