The 

ethics of care is an emerging discipline developed by feminist ethicists in the

latter half of the 20th century. It has gradually gained support from non-feminist

ethicists and is now examined not as a feminist ethics but as a possible general ethical

theory.

Care ethics has three main characteristics:

 It views the human being as interdependent, who values caring relationships

and recognizes the family as the primary setting where interdependence is evident
and caring relationships are cultivated.

 It recognizes the moral value of emotional feelings and emotion-based virtues

such as benevolence, empathy, receptivity, and sensitivity.

 It acknowledges the moral value of partiality in intimate relationships, such as

those defined by family ties and close friendships.

This article considers each of these characteristics, notes criticism from traditional

ethicists, examines the Unificationist perspective, and suggests that it offers the basis

for a global ethic.

 Interdependence. Major proponents of this theory such as Carol Gilligan, Virginia

Held and Nel Noddings argue that dominant modern ethics, such as Kantian ethics

and utilitarianism which they characterize as ethics of justice, were built upon the

assumption that the human being is an autonomous, rational, independent individual.

Care ethicists disagree. They point out the fact that no human can survive without

caring adults who nurture and raise him or her at the early stages of life. Later in life,

one also becomes dependent upon others who take care of them. It is an illusory view,

care ethics theorists argue, that a human being is independent. Rather, they argue that

an adequate ethical theory must be built upon the understanding that human beings

are essentially interdependent.

This insight is similar to the Unificationist understanding of co-existence. One’s

identity is not an isolated, atomic entity. It is intertwined with others.

Although traditional ethics in the West starts from a state or a society and moves

down to family roles, care ethicists reverse the order. They argue that morality is

established in the family first and then is extended to the state or society. Care ethics

has brought a family and home to the forefront of moral discourse.

Emotion-based virtues. Whereas dominant modern ethics pays little attention to the

fact of caring in human life, an ethics of care argues for the moral relevance of caring

and being cared for as the basis of moral reasoning.

Emotion has been often dismissed as unreliable or even an obstacle to sound moral

judgments. “To be emotional” was nearly equated to being “irrational.” An ethics of

care values “sympathy, empathy, sensitivity, and responsiveness.” Care ethicists

stress the importance of these emotion-based virtues to bring peace and reconciliation

in conflicts. Thus, an ethics of care is recognized for its practical value.

Partiality. Dominant modern ethical theories recognize moral reasoning as the

pursuit of impartiality. Despite one’s natural inclinations to be partial towards certain

people, e.g., family and friends, modern ethics takes those emotional feelings as

“natural” and defines moral reasoning as an attempt to overcome those partial

feelings. Impartiality is thus the primary requirement in ethical reasoning.

An ethics of care, on the other hand, finds moral value in special, partial, caring

relationships themselves. A care ethics starts from particular experiences, primarily

found in family relationships, and extends them to other people.

Criticisms

Traditional ethicists level several criticisms of an ethics of care. Critics argue, for

example, that care is not intrinsically good. A person must care about the right things,
have the right set of values, and “the person must care in the right way. Since the

judgment of right and wrong is external to care and outside of the framework of care

ethics, they dismisses a possibility of an ethics of care.”

Second, if an ethics of care recognizes the value of emotional feelings and values

partiality in relationships, how can one avoid unfair favoritism? We can extend this

reasoning to racial groups, the nation, and other communities. If partial caring is

morally justifiable, how can one avoid racism, nationalism and other sectarianism?

Third, its virtues can be applied to any family or community or organization including

crime organizations or tyrannical families. Filial piety to a superior in a criminal

organization or a tyrant can conflict with fidelity to the general public.

Fourth, emotional feelings can turn into negative ones such as hatred, vengeful

feelings, and resentment. If, for example, a person one deeply cares for is hurt by

someone else, one can develop resentment and vengeful feelings against the person

who caused the harm

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Objections to an Ethic of Care

Last Updated on Wed, 16 Dec 2020 | Medical Ethics

Since the publication of In a Different Voice, the proposal to develop a feminine ethic
of care has met with a variety of concerns and objections. One set of concerns is that a
feminine ethic of care may unwittingly undermine feminism. These concerns stem, in
part, from a belief that the qualities in girls and women that feminine ethics esteems
have developed within the context of a sexist culture. Thus, some suspect that
women's competency at caring for and serving others is an outgrowth of their
subordinate status within modern societies (Sherwin; Moody-Adams), and worry that
emphasizing caring as a virtuous feminine quality may simply serve to keep women
on the down side of power relationships (Holmes). Susan Moller Okin, for example,
cautions that women are often socialized from a very early age into strict gender roles,
involving caring for and serving others. This socialization radically limits their future
prospects by diminishing women's capacity to choose alternative life plans. We
should therefore reject traditional socialization, because it seriously violates the
equality of persons basic to liberalism. Others urge women to aspire to assertive-ness,
rather than caring, in order to challenge conventional images of women as concerned
with serving and pleasing others (Card, 1991). Feminist critics also warn that caring
cannot function as an ethic that is complete unto itself. Observing that caring can "be
exploited in the service of immoral ends" (Card, 1990, p. 106), Card insists on the
need to balance caring with justice and other values. Exclusive attention to caring can
also lead to overlooking "the lack of care of women for women" and may preclude
"the possibility of our looking at anything but love and friendship in women's
emotional responses to one another" (Spellman, p. 216). Finally, excessive focus on
caring at the expense of other values can blind us to the critical assessment of the
object of caring. As Warren Thomas Reich noted in 2001, care by itself can be easily
manipulated, and does not offer tools for analyzing the moral importance of what we
care about.

In response, defenders of feminine ethics distinguish between distorted and

undistorted forms of caring (Tong, 1998). Distortions of caring include the
exploitation, abuse, or neglect of careers. As Tong notes, just because caring can
become distorted does not suffice to show that an ethic of care is inherently distorted.
Nor does it establish that "every woman's caring actions should be contemptuously
dismissed as yet another instance of women's pathological masochism or passivity';
instead care should be preserved and celebrated in its undistorted form: "rescued from
the patriarchal structures that would misuse or abuse it" (Tong, 1998, p. 171).

A second family of concerns about a feminine ethic of care relates to the belief that
caring for others can lead to neglect of self. The phenomenon of burnout, for example,
refers to the situation of parents, nurses, family caregivers, or other individuals who
become utterly exhausted by the physical and emotional demands associated with
giving care. Especially when care is conceived to be an ethic that is sufficient unto
itself, the tendency may be to continue caring at any cost. Attention to other values,
such as respect for the rights of the one caring, may be necessary in order to preserve
the integrity of the caregiver: Arguing along these lines, Nancy Jecker notes that "if
women are seen as having the same possibility men have to create a plan of life that
places central importance [in activities other than caregiving] ..., then a duty ... [to
care] can potentially stand in the way ofwhat a woman wants to do" (2002, p. 128).
The idea here is that individuals presumably prefer to protect, as much as possible,
their freedom to choose whether or not to devote themselves to caring (2002). Others
suggest that in order to care for others—which is an inherently limited ability—one
must first be cared for by other individuals, by communities, and by oneself (Reich,
1991).

A third group of objections to developing a feminine ethic of care holds that the
concept of care is not helpful at the social and institutional level. This group of
objections may acknowledge that an ethic of care serves well within the limited
sphere of personal ethics, but finds care unhelpful outside of this sphere. One form
this objection takes is to argue that an ethic of care cannot be formulated in terms of
the general rights and principles that are necessary for designing public policies.
Proponents of a care ethic sometimes acknowledge this limitation. Thus, Noddings
states, "to care is to act not by fixed rule but by affection and regard" (1984, p. 24).
Similarly, Patricia Benner and Judith Wrubel maintain that caring is always specific
and relational; hence, there exist no "context-free lists of advice" on how to care (p.
3). They reject the idea of formulating ethical theories or rules about caring on the
grounds that general guides cannot "capture the embodied, relational, configura-
tional, skillful, meaningful, and contextual human issues" that are central to an ethic
of care (p. 6). Despite this view, there exist historically important examples of using
the vocabulary of general rights and principles to formulate an ethic of care. For
example, the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights identifies "motherhood
and childhood" as "entitled to special care and assistance," and that organization's
Declaration of the Rights of the Child asserts general principles of caring for children,
noting that children need "special safeguards and care" on the basis of their "physical
and mental immaturity."

Another reason why care may be assumed unworkable at a social or institutional level
is that historically, public and private spheres have been distinguished as separate
moral domains (Elshtain). During the nineteenth century, for example, the doctrine of
separate spheres held that the family constituted a private sphere in which a morality
of love and self-sacrifice prevailed; this private domain was distinguished from the
public life associated with business and politics, where impersonal norms and self-
interested relationships reigned (Nicholson). To the extent that these historical
attitudes continue to shape present thinking, they may lead to the mutual exclusivity
of care-oriented and justice-oriented approaches. In response to this structural
objection, some ethicists have argued that justice and care are compatible forms of
moral reasoning (Jecker, 2002).

A final set of objections to a feminine ethic of care does not deny the importance of
care, but rather argues that care is not properly interpreted as an ethic that expresses
an exclusively feminine form of moral reasoning. Iddo Landau, for example, argues
that the significant factors for preferring the use of care or justice ethics are, in fact,
not masculinity or femininity, but factors such as education and economic class.
Landau concludes that "Justice and care ethics should be seen as the ethics of certain
economic classes and levels of education, not of men and women" (p. 57). Defenders
of feminine ethics often meet this objection by claiming that their approach has been
misunderstood. Thus advocates of feminine ethics may deny that care is an ethic that
only women articulate, or an ethic that is valid only within the moral experience of
women. According to Noddings, caring is an important ingredient within all human
morality, and moral education should teach all people how and why to care. She
concludes that "an ethical orientation that arises in female experience need not be
confined to women"; to the contrary, "if only women adopt an ethic of caring the
present conditions of women's oppression are indeed likely to be maintained" (1990,
p. 171). Gilligan and Jane Attanucci also reject the idea that an ethic of care correlates
strictly with gender, and instead report that most men and women can reason in
accordance with both care and justice. Gilligan's research supports the more modest
claim that care is gender-related. That is, although women and men can reason in
terms of both care and justice, women are generally more likely to emphasize care
while men generally emphasize justice. Thus she states that the so-called different
voice she identifies is characterized "not by gender, but by theme," and cautions that
its association with gender "is not absolute" and is not a generalization about either
sex (p. 2).

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