“On his deathbed, your father asks you to promise him that when he dies, you will spread his ashes over a football stadium’s grounds. He has been a life-long supporter of the team and you know how much it’ll mean to him so you promise you will do so. He dies a happy man and leaves you $10,000 in his will. However, when you try to scatter his ashes, it turns out it will cost you $10,000 to do so. Do you keep your promise?”
Moral Agency is defined as the ability to carry out an action which is desired. I would keep my promise to my father and be a moral agent as I would be following my desire to complete my father’s dying wish. His wish is completely subsidised by the will he has left me so there is no economic cost behind performing his wish. People are inherently social and should be compassionate for one another so, by following this principle of human nature, you should keep your promises to one another. We are altruistic and should stick by our promises – you lose nothing by following what you had promised so there is no reason not to!
In addition to this, the action we would be performing by fulfilling our father’s dying wish would be respecting the moral law: we would be following the self-imposed moral motive (according to our rational self) to scatter his ashes as this is upholding the virtue of honour. We are acting on a genuine moral motive as we are staying true to our word and upholding an altruistic and honourable personality. This shows that the act of fulfilling our dad’s dying wish is a good act so we should perform it.
It is difficult to look at this action objectively as the death of a loved one would cause emotion to cloud your judgement but if we simplify this situation down into ‘You have no rabbit but your friend gives you his rabbit. You have a deal with your friend that you will give the rabbit back to him at the end of the week. Do you give it back to him?’ You never owned the rabbit so when you give it back, you are not losing anything and you are keeping your promise.
It’s the same with this scenario: the money was never yours until your father died but you are simply now the carrier of this money who should follow the deal with your dad and give the money to the football stadium. The thing that you promised your father you would do always entailed two aspects: pay for the service and sprinkle his ashes so when you promised to undertake it, you made a commitment to pay for it too (even if you did not know about this).
“At a local barbecue, your vegan neighbour takes a big bowlful of your pork, bean and bacon hot-pot. Not knowing what it is, she really enjoys it: “This is the best food that I have had since I moved to New York! Can I have the recipe?” She is already halfway through her bowl. Do you stop her and tell her what she is eating?”
We have to follow our understanding of Ethics of Care in this circumstance – we have moral rules that are malleable as moral reasoning is a “process of deliberation and appropriate feeling developing out of our capacity to care”. Our vegan neighbour is someone that we have entered into a relationship with so you must oblige by social norms and compassion: you must tell her that what she is eating is not vegan for the following two reasons:
Firstly, Ethics of Care has an emphasis on responding appropriately to particular individuals in our relationships and heavily asserts the importance of emotion. We have to understand individuals for who they are (if we care for them) and make decisions based on our desire to sustain and preserve relationships. To sustain your relationship, you must not risk it: you have to tell her that she is not eating vegan food because if she does find out in the future, your relationship is at stake as there would be a lack of mutual trust. Your moral decisions should appeal to the dynamic of the people involved in the relationships so you must tell your friend as she believes in Veganism, she is a Vegan and holds those values so if you compromise her values, you are not appealing to the dynamic she holds in the relationship.
Secondly, you must tell her that she is eating meat to follow the most fundamental Maxim of all – if suffering can be relieved, it should be relieved. People who have not eaten meat for a very long time can suffer very violent reactions when consuming meat in heavy quantities. Your neighbour is halfway through a large bowl of pork and bacon so this has the potential to cause a violent reaction. Your duty, as the Ethics of Care dictates it, is to follow the fundamental Maxim and protect her from the pain in the future. Using this Maxim, you can insert an ought argument: if suffering can be relieved, it should be relieved so you ought to tell your neighbour that she is consuming something that is potentially harmful to her.