The Ethics of Receiving

Abstract

As a teacher and philosopher, Dr. Kate Lindemann has spent much of her professional life thinking about morality in human relationships. Critical analyses abound about the obligations and particular responsibilities of health care providers to patients, teachers to students, etc. Such analyses often emphasize the inherent inequality, and thus vulnerability, of those who are the recipients of care or knowledge. Though familiar with the ethics of care as a moral framework, Dr. Lindemann's perspectives on such relationships were profoundly affected and forever altered after acquiring a brain injury in 1998. The current manuscript describes how her views on caring acts as not only dynamic but reciprocal have been shaped by her experiences during rehabilitation and as a person now living with disability.