Justice and Care : Development of Ethical Actions in the Modern French Catholic World(<Special Issue>Religion and Ethics)

Abstract

In post-revolutionary French society, both territorial societies and functional corporations were broken up, and the emergence of the proletariat provoked social problems. While the Republicans tried to solve the problems by public assistance or solidarity, the Catholic people resorted to the labor union movement (social Catholicism) for men or traditional charitable works by women. The Lourdes pilgrimage began with this historical background, at first as an attempt to unify the poor in society, but the discoursive tendency of social Catholicism and the factional tendancy of charitable works gradually weakened, eventually forming "the space of appearance" of the sick, where care for others is the priority. In this paper-referring to the argument by Carol Gilligan on the gender bias in ethics, where she aims to rehabilitate an "ethic of care and responsibilities (women's morality)," in contrast to an "ethic of rights and justice (men's morality)"-, we will look at the significance and potentiality of disponibilite, a norm for "yielding one's initiative to others," which arose from practices of caring for the sick through the Lourdes pilgrimage.