The Ethics of Care
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Business
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 Study questions for Test 2 coming tomorrow by
noon.
 Extra Credit Opportunity: Charles Murray “Coming
Apart”. 5 PM Thursday, April 10, Rockwell
Pavillion. (up to 5 points added to test 2). Two
substantive questions or one objection (1-2
paragraphs). Due on Tuesday, April 15.
 Watch out for flying eggs.
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Lawrence Kohlberg and
Moral Development
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Kohlberg’s Stages
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Heinz Dilemma
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 "In Europe, a woman was near death from a special
kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors
thought might save her. It was a form of radium that
a druggist in the same town had recently discovered.
The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist
was charging ten times what the drug cost him to
make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged
$2,000 for a small dose of the drug.
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Heinz Dilemma
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 The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone
he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get
together about $ 1,000 which is half of what it cost.
He told the druggist that his wife was dying and
asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But
the druggist said: "No, I discovered the drug and I'm
going to make money from it." So Heinz got
desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the
drug-for his wife. Should the husband have done
that?"
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Stage 5
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 Social contract orientation
 Kohlberg: “Generally with utilitarian overtones.
Right action tends to be defined in terms of general
individual rights and in terms of standards which
have been critically examined and agreed upon by
the whole society ... with an emphasis upon the
possibility of changing law in terms of rational
consideration of social utility (rather than rigidly
maintaining it in terms of Stage 4 law and order).”
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Stage 6
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 Stage 6: Universal Ethical Principle Orientation
 Lawrence Kohlberg: "Right is defined by the decision of
conscience in accord with self-chosen ethical principles
appealing to logical comprehensiveness, universality and
consistency. These principles are abstract and ethical (the
golden rule, the categorical imperative) and are not
concrete moral rules like the Ten Commandments. At
heart, these are universal principles of justice, of the
reciprocity and equality of human rights, and of respect
for the dignity of human beings as individual persons."
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Carol Gilligan
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Male Perspective
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 Jake (11 years old): (On the Heinz dilemma)
Compares the right to life to the right to property.
Works out the right answer like a math problem.
 Males in general, according to Gilligan, view
morality as abstract, impartial, and universal.
Focusing on rights (Kant) or duties (Ross) or
calculations of utility (Mill, Bentham, Singer).
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Female Perspective
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 Amy: Thinks there may be a misunderstanding.
Worries about the wife’s welfare if husband goes to
jail. Asks he can talk to the druggist and bring his
wife. What about getting a loan? Gilligan wrote
admiringly that Amy saw “in the dilemma not a
math problem with humans but a narrative of
relationships that extends over time.”
 Gilligan: Females focus more on interpersonal
relationships, concrete real-life situations,
“particular others” (as opposed to abstract persons),
and care.
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What is the
Ethics of Care?
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 Like virtue ethics, not just another competing theory
of how to behave or what we ought to do.
 Offers a fundamentally different way of looking at
ethics—of values, moral decisions, people, and
identity.
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Ethics of Care Features
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 Recognizes that humans depend on each other and
values caring relations.
 Values rather than rejects the importance of emotion
in moral decision-making. (Emotions still subject to
critical scrutiny, however.)
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Ethics of Care Features
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 Skeptical of universalistic or abstract or impartial
rules or principles. Respects actual relationships and
partiality.
 May wish to limit applicability of universal or
impartial principles to more appropriate domains
(such as the law).
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Kant on Women
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 Kant: Women are incapable of being fully moral
because of their reliance on emotion over reason.
 Baier: “Where Kant concludes ‘so much the worse
for women,’ we can conclude ‘so much the worse for
the male fixation on drafting legislation for the
beaurocratic mentality of rule worship, and for the
male exaggeration of the importance of
independence over mutual interdependence.” (480)
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Ethics of Care Features
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 Dominant (male) theories view morality as a battle
between egoistic interests and the interests of all of
humanity
 Ethics of care suspicious of such distinctions.
 People’s interests are “intertwined with the persons
they care for.
 Not acting for all others or humanity in general but
rather particular others.
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Ethics of Care Features
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 Suspicious of distinction between the public sphere
and the private sphere (in which government should
not intrude).
 “Feminists have shown how the greater social,
economic, political, economic, and cultural power of
men has structured this “private” sphere to the
disadvantage of women and children, rendering
them vulnerable to domestic violence without
outside interference…and subject to a highly
inequitable division of labor in the family.” (481)
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Conceptions of Persons
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 Male theories (or liberal individualist): conception of
person as
1. Rational
2. Autonomous
3. Self-interested.
 Persons cooperate “only when the terms of
cooperation are such as to make it further the ends
of each of the parties.” (482)
 “We are distinct individuals first and then we form
relationships.” (483)
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Conception of Persons
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 Ethics of care conception of person as
1. Relational.
2. Interdependent
3. Sees relationships as part of what constitutes
identity.
4. Regards autonomy as “the capacity to reshape and
cultivate new relations…to become more admirable
relational persons in better caring relations.” (483)
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Conception of Persons
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 Held: Ethics of care conception is more accurate (on
a descriptive level) and morally preferable.
 “As Annette Baier writes, “liberal morality, if
unsupplemented, may unfit people to be anything
other than what its justifying theories suppose them
to be, ones who have no interest in each other’s
interests.”
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Questions
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 Is ethics of care something you have to choose over
an ethic of justice and rights? Or a complement to
these perspectives? Or does one perspective capture
the other already? Or can they be combined to form
one larger theory?
 Is the ethics of care a version of virtue ethics?
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Questions
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 What is the connection between The Ethics of Care
and feminism? Does this approach have to be
thought of in terms of sex and gender at all?
 What are the social and political implications of
adopting the care ethics perspective? (pp. 487-8)
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