Social Virtues in Taking Care of the Image of Others
Social Virtues in Taking Care of the Image of Others

Summary/Abstract: The Philosophy of Care finds in human life a sort of calling to take care of each other. This vocation for every human being is based on the vulnerability that belongs to the human condition. Among ordinary dimensions of vulnerability/care (such as eating, resting, learning, transporting, nurturing), one that is very ordinary and even broader is that of image. Theory of Politeness deals with this image care, responding to its vulnerabilities.Care is a central reality of human relationality, which requires a process of practical learning. Virtues are the concrete reality of the growth of the person. Pertinent for image care are the virtues related to truth, those related to dependence and autonomy, and the traditionally-called social virtues. After a long evolution of the latter from classical thought to the Middle Ages, it remains a system of virtues that illuminates the current way to perceive the image, its care, and the rights and duties related to image. The current propensity to safeguard goods through laws is transforming the type of “debt” that corresponds to virtues like truthfulness, liberality and affability, earlier acknowledged as being not very coercive. Leaving aside possible political proposals, this phenomenon draws attention to the deep humanity of such fields, where people sometimes presume a responsibility that presses the conscience more than duties endorsed by laws. The vocation to care transforms everybody into a caregiver, with the widest sphere in the case of the image.

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