In the process of raising her children, what mother hasn’t weighed the importance of child-rearing against the value of community volunteerism? Every mother has to decide how much emphasis she wishes to place on family versus the needs of society. Julia Driver strikes a philosophical balance between the choices in her article “Consequentialism and Feminist Ethics.”

Traditional theories such as the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill have been criticized for being too abstract to reflect the concerns of women. The Principle of Utility is supposed to apply to every moral problem but women’s moral problems involve actual relationships and their requirements.

While partiality to friends seems to wander from a traditional point of view, it is imperative for some important relationships. Caring is partial by its nature and a requisite of morality. Women do not view themselves in isolation; isolation is a male domain. Women commonly pay more attention to their children than to humanity in general.

Family

Consequentialism does not balk at accounting for some partial norms, unlike utilitarianism. However, consequentialism requires people to maximize the good which becomes a never-ending project while the personal ones are neglected.

Virginia Woolf’s “benevolent ideal “the angel of the house” sacrificed herself every day so that she could be unselfish and meet the demands of others. If a parent worries about whether she should take her child to the Hands-on Museum over the weekend instead of volunteering at the local soup kitchen, the “angel of the house” ethic morphs into the territory of the “angel of the world.” A woman must choose not only how much she wishes to adhere to the paradigms, but which one will be her moral compass.

Contract theory, an offshoot of utilitarianism, is impartial. There is room for it in the family structure. A parent who has her child sign a new driver’s contract which, in essence, requires the teenager to call her parents to drive her home from a party if she is intoxicated with no questions asked, is using contract theory in the home.

Friends

In order to control her intentions, a woman may devote herself to intellectual contemplation. Aristotle encouraged men to pursue this ideal. This alternative is not necessarily social.

Contemplative activity can be self-sufficient, leading to the kind of self-sufficiency Kant advocated when he exhorted people to place a limitation of intimacy in friendship in order to not become involved to the point of being socially intrusive. Control of a person’s happiness is more susceptible to chance the more friends and relatives one has.

Women are left with a choice: keep family and friends at bay in order to make room for personal intellectual growth or be happy in domestic relationships and friendships. In order to have relationships, women must avoid the angel of the world syndrome as well as an absorption in intellectual pursuits.

Utilitarianism calls on the individual to select the action which maximizes the good and pursue it. A consequentialist weighs possible outcomes to an action. The right action is not always the best action. If someone chooses to visit his spouse from whom he is geographically separated instead of giving the money required for the plane fare to charity, is he doing the right thing or the least benevolent thing?

However, if he is partial to his wife, it can lead to greater happiness. In the same manner, a family, too, is happier for the amount of attention a partial mother showers on it.

Universal benevolence by definition recognizes those in need. As Harriet Taylor wrote to her destined-to-be husband, John Stuart Mill, religion and superstition “must be superseded by morality deriving its power from sympathies and benevolence and its reward from the approbation of those we respect” (quoted in Sumner 1974, 515). Entering into what was to be a childless marriage to John Stuart Mill, already a mother from her previous one, she would have also known the rewards of love and trust from those who depended on her.

Reference and Work Cited:

Driver, Julia. 2005. Consequentialism and Feminist Ethics. Hypatia 20 (4): 183-99.

Sumner, Wayne. 1974. More light on the later Mill. Philosophical Review 83 (4): 504-27.