This seminar is hosted by the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing and The Oxford Martin School, and funded by the John Fell Fund.

Speaker: Professor Andries Baart, Chair Presence of Care, University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Empirical Grounded Ethics of Care: a methodological perspective
The ethics of care is an ethics that is relationally, contextually and situationally constituted. In perceiving, understanding and judging moral goods there cannot be a reliance on extra-relational, general principles − at least not only, perhaps not even slightly. It has to be slowly, conscientiously and attentively investigated: both the sensible (wise) and less sensible practices; both the excellent and the mediocre carer. Mindful of complex dependencies and social loyalties, care practices ought to be reconstructed from the context and from the perspectives of the carers –– what is good, reasonable, proportionate, just or decent care. Only after such a critical empirical inquiry could morally-relevant insights for good care be attained. This presentation aims to explore an empirically grounded ethics and how it can be operationalized – traditionally thought to be a contradictio in terminis.