Care means to identify with other persons, each of whom is unique with a view toward nurturing the web of relationships they share or can share (Chadwick et al., 2002). Care ethics refers to contemporary approaches to moral theory that focus on care as a significant element. The two most important proponents of care ethics are Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings. Both of them wrote major texts in the realm of care ethics in the early 1980s: Gilligan wrote: “In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development” and Noddings wrote, “Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education” (Desautels and Waugh, 2001). According to Gilligan and Noddings, the moral reasoning of women is different from that of men. They do not approach problems as problems of principle, reasoning, and judgment. They have a greater orientation towards relationships and moral understanding (Desautels and Waugh, 2001). It is this difference that is the basis of care ethics.
Care ethics revolves around the moral salience of attending to and meeting the needs of others for whom responsibility is undertaken (Held, 2006). The ethics of care recognizes that human beings are dependent for the most part of their lives and dependent people have a pressing moral claim to care in order to live and progress. Almost all people need care in the early years; as people become ill and dependent later on in life, they will need care for the whole of their lives (Held, 2006). In the process of trying to understand what morality would recommend and what would be morally best in a particular situation, the ethics of care relies on emotions. Not all emotions are valued, and in contrast with the dominant rationalist approaches, emotions such as sympathy, empathy, sensitivity, and responsiveness are seen as the kind of moral emotions that need to be cultivated to help understand what the morally right thing to do is.
According to dominant ethical theories such as Kantian and utilitarian theories, emotions interfere with objectivity and hence must be avoided. Moral reasoning aims at stepping back from emotions to get the right perspective. From the care perspective, moral inquiries that rely entirely on reason and rationalistic deductions or calculations are seen as deficient. Emotions and desires are essential to achieving moral wisdom and effective moral reasoning. By rejecting the central role of objectivity, ethics of care provides a framework for understanding moral questions that is compatible with the important role that people and relationships play in human lives (Furrow, 2005).
Moral situations deal with concrete individuals with different histories, identities, and feelings. To do the right thing under such circumstances, it is important to understand these differences. Too much reliance on stereotypes and broad generalizations when reasoning about moral questions will cloud reality (Furrow, 2005). All human beings are connected to reality via various feeling states, and therefore people can be understood only if their feelings are understood. Emotion helps in moral reasoning to get a clear perspective of others. It also serves to provide moral relevance to moral reasoning. In the realm of care, when a friend is suffering, the person who acts to relieve that suffering solely out of a sense of duty without experiencing appropriate emotions such as worry is failing to grasp the significance of suffering (Furrow, 2005). A person who lacks the capacity for moral emotion cannot grasp the full significance of moral actions. Only through emotions, is it possible to have a moral understanding of the situation.
Thus, according to the ethics of care, the role of emotion is to enhance moral reasoning. Emotions help the person to understand the situation and the participants. Moralities that are based on the image of the independent, autonomous, rational individual overlook the needs of the dependent humans and the morality they demand. Care ethics caters to this central concern of human life and includes care to a realm within morality.
Bibliography
Chadwick, F. Ruth; Ed, R. Chadwick and Schroeder, Doris. Applied Ethics: Critical Concepts in Philosophy. Taylor & Francis, 2002.
DesAutels, Peggy and Waugh, Joanne. Feminists Doing Ethics. Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.
Furrow, Dwight. Ethics: Key Concepts in Philosophy. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005.
Held, Virginia. The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. Contributors. Oxford University Press. New York. 2006.