It seems that Tversky and Kahneman (like Carol Gilligan) had to navigate their own “civil war.” In their case, the war concerned a radically different perspective on economic behavior. In Carol Gilligan’s case it was a revolution regarding moral development. Kahneman and Teversky were able to offer each other important support as their “undoing project” was engaged. While they were not political opponents, these two psychologists did have to appreciate quite different ways in which their colleague addressed the professional challenges they were facing. Carol Gillian, on the other hand, had to find a way to support someone (Kohlberg) who was the recipient of her own “undoing project.”
Finally, we see that Kahneman and Tversky exemplified Carol Gilligan’s emphasis on connection as a basis for an ethic of care. They established a setting with boundaries that was conducive to creative and constructive production in the midst of stylistic difference. They taught us that connections are never fully a matter of either head or heart. Both words (voice) and action are required to ensure trust. For Kahneman and Tversky this meant being face-to-face in a high-boundary setting. It was in this setting that they could confront one another, laugh at (and with) one another, build on one another’s ideas, and genuinely merge any sense of personal contributions. Micheal Lewis (2017, p. 239) proposed that Tversky and Kahneman had established a unique intimacy while working together; “What they were like, in every way but sexually, was lover. They connected with each other more deeply than either had connected with anyone else.”
Conclusions
As two ambitious males, Kahneman and Tversky manifest the caring “human” voice that Carol Gilligan suggested was potentially to be found among all people—regardless of gender—when working in a setting that minimizes differences in status and power (non-patriarchal). It is a setting that enhances our ability (and desire) “to communicate our experience and . . . our desire to live in relationship, not alone or walled off in silence.” (Gilligan, 2023, p. 104). Such a setting should not be hard to establish, for as Gillian (2023, p. 105) notes, humans:
“. . . are inherently relational and responsive beings, born with a voice and with the desire to engage responsibility with others. It no longer makes sense to ask how we gain our humanity. Instead, the question becomes: How do we lose it?”
In this statement, Gilligan leaves us not with a lesson to be learned, but with an important question: how and why did we lose our capacity to care and relate. I have offered examples of specific people who did care, relate – and successfully collaborate—despite major differences of perspective and practice. Divergent viewpoints could be set aside and alternative solutions could be held in abeyance so that new ways of thinking and doing could emerge. Given Gilligan’s question, we move to several potential answers in the next two essays. I introduce some preliminary ideas regarding how processes can be established and settings created in which those in a collaborative relationship can find safety and care (both expressed and received) despite significant differences in perspective and practice.
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