Individualism And Collectivism And In Love's Labor By Eva Kittay

The debate over individualism and collectivism has been the fundamental conflict both in political philosophy and in ethics. Philosophers such as Ayn Rand think that human beings are fundamentally individuals, and that everyone exists for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. But it is very rare for one to live completely alone by himself. The entire human race would not be able to evolve and reproduce, if humans were individualistic in nature, and each individual needs some form of support from group to enhance its own odds of surviving. Humans naturally are in need of each other to survive, to reproduce, and to protect their offspring. Such needs are innately built into every human being, and

Based on Rawls’s definition of social cooperation as something achievable for persons with certain moral capacities and sense of justice, Kittay’s understanding of moral ethics emphasized on sense of attachment, empathetic attention to others’ needs and responsiveness to those needs. Such attachment and the capacity to respond to vulnerability, show that humans are by nature not individualistic, but collaborative. Kittay also pointed out the fact that everyone may become dependent and may require support from others at that point. Such understanding, and the need to be assured that if we become dependent we would be taken care of, ought to be acknowledged when we discuss moral ethics of human nature. Women for example, make sacrifices on their maternal roles to provide care, and the ability to care have been politically fought for in many countries, as people widely value the dependency relationships between human

Kittay’s work detailing the dependency relationship explains that human rely on each other; Aristotle’s work conveys that human forms household for economical interest; and Marx’s work implied that humans are eventually one classless society with best economical benefits for all. Whether or not being members in community is the best way to live for every human is still debatable, but it is the only choice that humans all made by