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The Ethics of Care

Virginia Held

David Copp (ed.)

in The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory

In the last few decades, the ethics of care as a feminist ethic has given rise to extensive literature, and has affected moral inquiries in many areas. It offers a distinctive challenge to the ... More

In the last few decades, the ethics of care as a feminist ethic has given rise to extensive literature, and has affected moral inquiries in many areas. It offers a distinctive challenge to the dominant moral theories: Kantian moral theory, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics. This chapter outlines the distinctive features and promising possibilities of the ethics of care, and the criticisms that have been made against it. It then examines the ethics of care’s recognition of human dependency and of the importance of responding to needs; its interpretation of the roles of emotion and reason in moral understanding; and its critique of liberal individualism and development of a conception of the person as relational. The ethics of care contrasts care with justice, tries to integrate them, and reconceptualizes public and private life and morality.Less

The Role of Rules

Susan Wolf

in The Variety of Values: Essays on Morality, Meaning, and Love

The chapter considers the role of rules in traditional utilitarianism, in rule utilitarianism, and in Kantian theories, but it favors a view of morality in which rules have an even more central ... More

The chapter considers the role of rules in traditional utilitarianism, in rule utilitarianism, and in Kantian theories, but it favors a view of morality in which rules have an even more central place. On this view—exemplified in the moral theory of Bernard Gert—morality has a specific subject matter: viz., how to live with other people. The importance and character of our interest in this domain give us a special reason to want to insist that people behave in certain ways, but it is also important that we not require too much. The structure of rules allows us to establish important requirements on which we can insist in a way that is minimally intrusive. Although rules do not constitute the bottom line in moral reasoning nor are they absolutely binding, they are ineliminable from moral thought and in a certain sense form the core of morality.Less

Moral Saints

Susan Wolf

in The Variety of Values: Essays on Morality, Meaning, and Love

This chapter asks us to consider what a morally perfect person—a moral saint—would be like. It offers models of moral sainthood drawn from commonsense morality, from Kantian moral theory, and from ... More

This chapter asks us to consider what a morally perfect person—a moral saint—would be like. It offers models of moral sainthood drawn from commonsense morality, from Kantian moral theory, and from utilitarianism, and concludes that none of them are unequivocally, much less supremely, appealing. After considering and rejecting the idea that we should broaden or revise the content of morality so as to generate a more attractive model of moral sainthood, it concludes that we should instead reject the idea that we ought universally to aspire to be as morally good as possible. Because there are important values other than those of morality and self-interest, other personal ideals are as choiceworthy as that of moral sainthood. An adequate moral theory must recognize this and thus must make use of the concept of supererogation.Less