Volume 81, Issue 6

As familiar and self-evident as what is meant by ›helping‹ may seem at first, it is difficult to define ›helping‹ in a precise conceptual way. Against this backdrop, the question of what ›helping‹ is will be taken up and dealt with from a theoretical point of view. The path taken to work out and systematically define the form of helping leads to the discussion of some of the (predetermined) breaking points built into it and to the conclusion that ›helping‹ must be categorically defined differently. Recent anthropological research also suggests this by referring to the social-theoretical embedding of individuals and leaving behind individual-theoretical understandings of isolated individuals who would then enter into a relationship with each other.

The contribution starts anthropologically, following biblical narratives but also modern anthropological research, by assuming that people are fundamentally related to others and that human cultural development is based on fundamentally cooperative processes. Against this background, love of self and love of neighbour are not understood as competing patterns of behaviour; rather, they are mutually dependent. This is confirmed by empirical results with regard to volunteer work, which show that for most volunteers altruism, sociability and self-development do not denote contradictory motives, but rather interpret each other reciprocally.

Psychological research has long been interested in whether helping can make people happy. This article summarizes empirical evidence and theoretical models on the relationship between helping and well-being. Empirical studies indicate a significant, but weak positive relationship between helping behaviors and well-being. The functional approach and self-determination theory are two theoretical frameworks that are particularly relevant for interdisciplinary investigations of this topic. The article concludes with a discussion of open questions and avenues for future research.

In the mirror of the New Testament, helping is an authentic expression of being human. The focus is on the people who need help but should not remain dependent on it. Therefore, empathy and effectiveness are important virtues of helping. Helping makes people happy when it is done out of charity; helping brings misfortune when it becomes a means to an end. The ethos of helping is based on faith in God, who alone is able to save people's lives. This theocentrism relativises human helping and thus justifies the focus on what is humanly possible, but also the hope of transcending these limits, so that no one needs help any more, because all are filled with God's love.

In our culture, helping people in need is essentially determined by Christian motivations. This applies not least to the time of the formation phase of the organised social form of diaconal action since the middle of the 19th century. Regardless of the many transformations that have resulted in helping becoming a profession for many people, religious motivations remain formative, but are no longer dominant. However, a latent openness of helping professions to normative, especially Christian semantics can be observed, to which diaconal leadership can be connected.

Markets in social services are often rejected with the argument that they do not do justice to the special nature of social services. In contrast, this article argues for thinking about how the care market should be organised so that good care can be provided. A productive approach is to use the four steering mechanisms according to J. Le Grand: Trust/motivation, command-and-control, voice and choice/competition. The regulatory debate must clarify how and in which mixes the four steering models are to be used.

Care work can be provided in various forms and in differing institutional settings, ranging from private households over social networks and charitable organizations to public or private entities employing professional care persons. All these forms of care work create a value-added, but are subject to very different economic conditions. Focusing on professional care and building on German micro-data, the article shows preliminary evidence that there might be a »care wage-gap«, i.e., a systematic disadvantage of care workers compared to other professions in terms of their remuneration. It points out how this presumption could be thoroughly scrutinized and suggests possible reasons - among other things, the existence of informal care - that could be tested in subsequent steps.

The contribution directs attention to the Corona pandemic and its effects on care work with female connotations - paid and unpaid. The focus is on acute needs and requirements as well as the structural problems behind them. Finally, what political changes are needed after our pandemic experiences have shown so clearly that care work, which is predominantly performed by women, is the foundation of the economy and society?

Using the terms »reproductive labour« and »care«, the contribution traces the feminist discourse on (domestic) labour. The focus is on two publications from 1977 and 2019 that, despite different theoretical traditions, refer to love as a justification for gendered social inequalities. However, love is conceptualised here one-dimensionally as an inequality-creating variable. For this reason, the contribution argues for an integration of emotion-sociological approaches into the current care debate.

The author turns to the question of the significance of motivation for action. She explains how, from the perspective of Christian ethics, this basic moral philosophical problem is further exacerbated by a thought of God that is aimed at practical action. Since Christian faith can motivate to social action, but not justify morality, the question of the religious motives of helping and the experiences associated with them becomes virulent in the present context. If Christianity wants to develop a motivating force for solidarity in post-secular societies, Christian ethics cannot avoid critically reflecting on Christian motives in terms of structures that promote asymmetries and dependencies. At the same time, it must extrapolate alternative religious interpretations of helping that can develop plausibility potential in society and become morally effective.