Recontextualizing Reflective Consciousness: A Meadian Approach to Relational Care

This article offers an interpretation of George Herbert Mead’s thinking on the nature of self-awareness and explores the intersection of his ideas about this reflective consciousness and its relationship to the argued embodied impulse to care for others. The still ubiquitous tradition of conceptualizing ethical behavior from the context of rational and teleological frameworks is critiqued and contrasted with a more frankly metaphysical (ontological) postulate of relationality. It is argued that Mead’s treatment of selfawareness as an emergent of the act and his founding of action in relationship is reason to consider care as manifesting simultaneously with all other phenomena understood or perceived by reflective human consciousness. My argument suggests implications in a variety of areas related to human flourishing. What is specifically suggested is a strengthened warrant for recognizing the natural, emergent, and ubiquitous nature of care and caring behavior in social practice and the development of social identities.