Ethics of Candor Applied to the Creative Use of Energy as Power or as Care

Abstract

In this thesis I establish an ethics of candor by which I assert that one ought to act with awareness, intentionality, and candor. I apply this ethics of candor to the creative use of energy where creatively using energy is a reordering of environment or media stemming from exploration, interaction, and reflection and where this reordering is intentional, willful and has a corresponding sense of satisfaction, pleasure, and/or joy. I limit the thesis to two possible creative uses of energy: as power or as care. Because I am working from an ethics of candor and neither an ethics of power nor of care, I take neither power nor care as an a priori �good.� In this thesis, my purpose is to facilitate the awareness of involvement in exertions of power or of care such that intentionality and candor may and ought to follow awareness. In formulating a theory of power, I use and synthesize elements from Friedrich Nietzsche�s (1887) On the Genealogy of Morals, George Orwell�s (1949a) 1984, and Michel Foucault�s (1977a) Discipline and Punish. I formulate a theory of care using a few core concepts from Nel Noddings� (1984) Caring and then reworking her theory substantially from there. Using clear and thorough understandings of power, disciplinary power, and care, I offer a method to distinguish between the two especially in situations where distinction is difficult, and especially focusing on situations that apply to education and traditional public schooling. Finally, I demonstrate the necessary connection between ethics, education, and economics such that education for economic success must lead to education rooted in the same ethics as the current economy. Consistent with my formulation of an ethics of candor, I conclude by addressing some issues of candor relevant to the writing of this thesis.