Beyond Critique and Polemic: Public Debate On and Offline as a Test for the Ethics of Care

Year 2023, Issue: 17, 61 - 78, 31.12.2023

Ali Özgür Gürsoy

https://doi.org/10.32739/uskudarsbd.9.17.132

Abstract

This article investigates the state of public communication on and offline as a test case for the viability of care ethics to deal with the fundamental disagreements that characterize our communicative interactions. The argument proceeds in four steps. First, I adumbrate two styles of argumentation that I link with two influential modern ethical theories, the critical-deontological and the polemical-utilitarian. I claim that restricting ourselves to these four terms imprisons us to oscillations between two apparently incompatible frameworks that picture public communication either in normative terms or in terms of power politics. Second, I claim that care ethics offers promising conceptual and normative resources to overcome these oscillations between critique and polemic. Third, I show how this is the case because of the unique way in which care ethics seeks to overcome the opposition between dependence and independence by reconfiguring the standard picture of the separation between morality and politics. Finally, I claim that the real limitation of care ethics is not to be found in its lack of universalizable norms or precise standards, but rather in its insufficient questioning of the extent to which disagreement as dissensus might characterize contemporary politics.

Keywords

Care Ethics, Critique, Polemic, Public Communication, Dissensus

Eleştiri ve Polemiğin Ötesinde: Çevrimiçi ve Dışı Kamusal Tartışmalar Üzerinden Bakım Etiğinin Sınırlarının Sorgulanması

Abstract

Bu makale günümüzde çevrimiçi ve dışı kamusal iletişimin bakım etiğine dair sunduğu sınırları incelemektedir. Makalenin argümanı dört aşamadan oluşmaktadır. İlk olarak iki argümansal stil—kritik ve polemik— modernitede etkili olmuş iki etik teorisiyle ilişkilendirilmekte ve kendimizi bu terimlerin kurduğu kuramsal çerçeveye sıkıştırmanın oluşturduğu kavramsal salınımlar gösterilmektedir. İkinci olarak, bakım etiğinin bu salınımları aşmakta ümit verici kaynaklara sahip olduğu iddia edilmektedir. Üçüncü olarak, bu kaynakların merkezinde bakım etiğinin bağımlılık ve bağımsızlık arasındaki zıtlığı yeniden düşünmemizi sağlayan ve ahlak ile siyaset arasındaki sınırları sorgulayan argümanları konumlandırılmaktadır. Son olarak, bakım etiğinin karşılaştığı en önemli sınırın, genellikle iddia edildiğinin aksine evrensel normlar veya kesin standartlar sunamaması değil, günümüz siyasası yaşamını tanımlayan dissensus olarak anlaşmazlığı yeterince sorgulamaması olduğu iddia edilmektedir.

Keywords

Bakım etiği, Kritik, Polemik, Kamusal İletişim, Dissensus

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