Feminist Care Ethics
By the 20th century, western philosophy was increasingly criticized by Feminist philosophers who were concerned that it was biased towards a male experience of morality. Western philosophy had always placed a huge value on abstract and general principles (see Kant’s five Formulas and Bentham and Mill’s Greatest Happiness Principle) to develop moral codes, and the fact that women do not always embrace such principles was frequently used to justify women’s subservient role to men.
Without insisting that such principles were wholly mistaken (many feminists are willing to agree that they do capture the way that men deliberate about morality), feminists were keen to point out that precisely because women had long been constrained to the home, their moral view was formed through interpersonal relationships with others. The psychologist Carol Gilligan supported this claim with evidence that women’s view of morality involved preserving their relationships with others, which they justified because people can only thrive when they live in a community. This gave rise to a movement known as “Feminist Care Ethics,” and because this movement focuses on states of character, and not abstract principles, it falls into the virtue framework.
Nel Noddings and Care Ethics
One of the most prominent Care Ethicists is Nel Noddings, who claims that the only genuine virtue is that of Ethical Care (any other trait that counts as a virtue must be one that contributes to caring in some way). Noddings says that Ethical Care is a virtue because it builds upon the natural capacity to care that is most typically exhibited by mothers toward their children, though of course men exhibit it as well. However, she points out that natural caring for one’s own child is not ethical on its own. It often requires an effort to respond to the needs of other people, and the virtue of Ethical Care is developed when we are able to go beyond our natural tendencies, and to care for other people regardless of our relationship with them.
We exhibit the virtue of Ethical Care whenever we feel and follow the sense of “I must….”, and this is true even if we only feel it weakly or when we “fetch it out of recalcitrant slumber when it fails to awaken spontaneously” (Noddings 84). However, Noddings also claims that we can only care for another person when we are in some kind of personal relationship with that person. Only when we are face to face with the person in need can we care for that person and know that person’s reactions.
The Pragmatics of Ethical Care
Noddings claims that Ethical Care is a virtue we ought to develop because it is more pragmatic than other virtues. Ethical Care puts the emphasis on the relationships between members of one’s community, rather than on following abstract moral principles or exhibiting more masculine virtues, such as Bravery, Wisdom, and Temperance. The masculine virtues place the emphasis on building up the individual, and helping oneself to live the “good life;” if someone else is also helped through the more masculine virtues, it is simply by chance.
By contrast, Noddings argues that Ethical Care helps everyone live the “good life,” because the person who cares become better through responding to someone who needs help, and she also enables the other person to become more virtuous because they can focus on their own character once the immediate problem they are facing is solved. Ethical care is more pragmatic because each action it motivates has a practical impact on other people. More generally, ethical Care helps everyone to live better because it strengthens the personal relationships between all people.
Noddings, Nel. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.