The Communicative Relationship Between Dialogue and Care By Mari ...

others in the community. The individualistic self is defined by its ability to choose its own values and arbitrary preferences. It is “separated from family, religion, and calling as sources of authority, duty, and moral example” (Bellah et. al., 1996, p. 79). The self and one's feelings are left as the sole moral guide, as evidenced within many characterizations of the tenets of the postmodern age. According to Sim (1998), postmodernity has led to an “unprincipled emphasis upon personal and individual gratification at the expense of our responsibilities to others” (p. 63). This turning inward to the self not only leaves the individual isolated from society and the community, but ethically it leaves one alone to distinguish right from wrong and good from bad and to care only about oneself. We now turns to philosophers Zygmunt Bauman and Alasdair MacIntyre to explore further the ethical implications of the postmodern tendency to turn inward to the self.

The Good Life: Responsibility-free Living

Cook and Holba (2007) described communication ethics as involving choices, duty of obligation, issues of right and wrong, and articulating decisions. Arnett, Fritz, and Bell (2009) advocated a communication ethic's literacy that identifies a good within the interplay of self, other, and the historical moment. Neher and Sandin (2009) identified the problematic nature of integrity in communicating ethically and suggested that integrity in ethics poses an inconvenience in communication. We suggest, like Neher and Sandin's integrity as ethics and inconvenience, that care is a blessing and also a burden. According to Bauman (1992), the postmodern approach to morality is the celebration of the demise of the ethical and traditional ethics.