A Mind of Care Responding Ethically to COVID-19
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LAURA HELLSTEN A mind of care Responding ethically to COVID-19 DOI: https://doi.org/10.30664/ar.91843 Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) his article approaches issues arising out of matter and ethics, as well as post- being in the middle of the first wave of the humanist views on agency. However, COVID-19 pandemic in Finland in March T adopting these views had never ‘mat- 2020, both from the point of view of the lived experience of caring for people in our conference tered’ as they did now. In essence, this setting, and through analysing the statements way of perceiving the world had been and actions of the Finnish government from the transformed overnight from being my point of view of an Ethics of Care. It argues that preferred way of reasoning to being an ethics of care approach is better equipped at dealing with thinking about and understanding one of the few narrative frameworks complex life situations such as the spread of the left that could make sense of the world pandemic than what the standardised taxonomy order that all of us now need to deal approaches offer. It further states that an ethics with. of care not only provides concepts and frame- works that help people grapple with challenging situations in an ethical manner, it also enables us In this article, I will explore how what has to imagine how hospitality and solidarity can be been called the standardised taxonomy envisioned anew. (mainly pertaining to deontology and utili- tarianism, from now on ST) of moral rea- Returning from Helsinki, on Thursday soning and ethical thinking falls short of 12 March 2020, I receive first a letter addressing the challenges that governments, from my university stating that confer- people and communities are facing due ences, such as our NSU Winter Sym- to the COVID-19 pandemic. I commence posium, will not be arranged in the with my own experience at the start of the coming months. Later that same day, I pandemic, relating it to the framework of receive a second letter, telling me that an ethics of care while comparing it to ST one of the participants of the just-fin- ways of reasoning. In the second part of the ished conference may have become article, I expand these reflections from the sick with the COVID-19 virus infec- micro to the macro level by analysing the tion. These simultaneous events made statements made at the press conferences of my head spin and escalated emotional the Finnish government given between 12 and mental processes that thus far March and 15 April 2020.1 In my analysis, had played mainly theoretical roles in my thinking and being. I have long 1 The framework is entirely determined by embraced entangled theories of space, the deadline of this particular article and Approaching Religion • Vol. 10, No. 2 • November 2020 141 I will follow up on the earlier arguments, The micro experience of COVID-19 provocatively presented in 2014 by Ruth in an ethics of care framework Groenhout, that only virtue ethics and an When struck with the insight that COVID- ethics of care are the forms of ethical rea- 19 was no longer a flu-like sickness severely soning – found in standardised textbooks affecting mainly elderly, unhealthy males in of morals and ethics in the Western soci- a faraway country, but rather a new reality ety today – that can adequately deal with that I had to deal with, it activated within the complexities of the world (Groenhout me something that had been lying latent.4 2014: 489–94).2 After presenting the prob- Receiving the news that one of the people lems created by ST in the first part of this I had shared time and space with might be article, I will in the second part, show how sick and might have infected others while the situation appears in a new light when being in Finland, prompted me as one of the analytical lens of an ethics of care is the leaders of the Winter Symposium to applied to the material gathered from the take action. Before taking action, however, press conferences. Finally, I will provide a I needed to sort out what the appropriate short description of what has been made measures to take were and in which order visible by applying the lens of an ethics of they should be considered – a common care paradigm to the materials that have ethical dilemma. been presented. Answering both the ques- Approaching this situation from what tion of what has been made visible through Groenhout has named the ST of ethical sys- the use of this lens and what the current tems, it may appear as a classical concern challenges will be, if the avowed aim of the with individuals and their choices. These government of ‘caring for the vulnerable are two of three markers for how the ST and persons in risk’3 is to be fulfilled for all stipulates ethical dilemmas in a problem- individuals in Finnish society. atic manner (Groenhout 2014: 489). The ST system would perceive me as an agent and that the task needed is to decide the right or best options for me to do, deter- should later be expanded, with a more com- mined from either a precisely calculated prehensive analysis of the whole pandemic period. consequence analysis, or with some ideal- 2 Groenhout does not argue that these are ised and universal goal in mind (ibid. pp. the only theories that could deal with the 489–93). The agency that needs focusing complexities of the world, only that few on in this situation, however, is primarily textbooks deal with other examples. She suggests that, for example, Confucian ethics the virus. I am not claiming – even though could be used for the same aim, however, my viewpoint is informed by post-human- it is often wrongfully presented as a form ist thought – that the virus has the same of virtue ethics due to the distorted view of kind of agency as humans have.5 Rather, I ethical reasoning created by the ST. am referring to a situation where people fail 3 The government declared ‘Haluamme suo- jata ikääntyneitä ja riskiryhmiin kuuluvia’ to see some degree of agency in the virus (‘We want to protect people of advanced age and those that are part of a risk group’, Pekonen, GPC 16.3.2020). The emphasis 4 Esa Saarinen speaks in his lectures about on elderly people and people in vulnerable ‘Ajattelun, ajattelun, ajattelu’ (‘The thought positions has continued throughout the of thinking about thinking’; Saarinen 2020). period analysed which I will return to fur- 5 I thank the anonymous reviewer for point- ther on. ing out this somewhat unclear statement. Approaching Religion • Vol. 10, No. 2 • November 2020 142 and perceive the problem as one that can sort of situation has been described theor- be controlled and manipulated as soon as etically as ‘agential’ or ‘vibrant’ materialism we have the right ‘facts’ in our hands. This, (Barad 2007; Bennett 2010). These forms of I claim, would lead to a situation where we materialism are said to ‘…consciously offer make ‘bad’ judgements for ourselves and alternatives to perspectives that assume a our communities.6 radical distinction between human agents What increases the complexity of the and nonhuman passive objects’ (Rowe situation further is the fact that COVID- 2017: 277–8). To make sense of the situ- 19 spreads not only through human inter- ation I was faced with, I needed to be able action, but also through animal-to-ani- to imagine my world in a way akin to the mal interaction, as well as via animals, by entangled networks of intra-active force the virus ‘hosting’ organic matter such as relations that earlier had been described cells (Sahlgren 2020), droplets spreading to me by Karen Barad concerning quan- through the air, or by landing on non-living tum physics and brittlestars (Barad 2007: matter such as door knobs and textiles.7 This 60–3, 66, 375). Neither the autonomous, rational self that stands behind the Kantian 6 The distinction between ‘bad’ and ‘good’ notion of universal principles, nor the self- judgement in the situation of the pandemic sufficient agent that will actualise his/her is well made by Camilla Kronqvist (2020). self-realisation by determining the conse- 7 By the time of writing this article, scientists quences of all their doings in the manner still do not know exactly how and what may spread the virus in human interac- described by consequentialist ethics, are tion. However, what is clear is that at the capable of grasping the world within which onset, COVID-19 spread from animals COVID-19 is active (Groenhout 2014: 489; to humans. ‘Coronaviruses are envel- Pettersen 2008: 57–9). Instead, what is oped, positive-sense, single-stranded RNA called for, to be able to ‘track’ the agency of viruses, capable of rapid mutation and recombination. They are classified into COVID-19, is a worldview that can envi- alpha coronaviruses and betacoronaviruses, sion the intricate ways that not only I, as a which both have their gene source from human, but matter itself, took part in the bats and are mainly found in mammals ongoing, open-ended articulation of the such as bats, rodents, civets, and humans; and gamma coronaviruses and deltacorona- world (Barad 2007: 343). For this, my pre- viruses, which both have their gene source vious theoretical engagements with femi- from birds and are mainly found in birds’ nist and new materialist thinking had pre- (Fuk-Woo Chan et al.