Feminine Virtues or Feminist Virtues? The Debate on Care Ethics Revisited (original) (raw)
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Feminine Virtues or Feminist Virtues? The Debate on Care Ethics Revisited 1
In this paper, I would like to offer a reinterpretation of care ethics both as a feminist perspective on moral reflection and as an interesting remapping of the moral domain in itself. The feminist nature of care ethics can be understood in different terms. The leading idea of this paper is that the effort of distinguishing these terms may have important implications for a more structured philosophical understanding of our account of care ethics (and therefore of ethics). As I hope will become clear in what follows, this can be thought of in terms of distinguishing-at least metaphorically, if not technically-between considering care ethics as an ethics which puts at its centre (more traditional) "feminine virtues" or alternatively (some new) "feminist virtues".
The Ethics of Care: Valuing or Essentialising Women’s Work?
Springer eBooks, 2020
A major theme of ethics, introduced by feminist philosophers in the 1980s, concerns the role of care in human life. While the importance of care has historically been neglected by philosophy, some argue that it should be placed at the centre of our ethical systems and understood as a locus of distinctive virtues that have been wrongly devalued as feminine. Whether caring reflects a characteristically feminine set of virtues has been a source of controversy, with some arguing that women have different ethical approaches from men, while others argue this has no basis in an essential sexual or gender difference. Despite these important questions, it is valuable to explore what an ethics looks like that places central importance on relations of care.
2019
The intersection between virtue and care ethics is underexplored in contemporary moral philosophy. This thesis approaches care ethics from a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethical perspective, comparing the two frameworks and drawing on recent work on care to develop a theory thereof. It is split into seven substantive chapters serving three major argumentative purposes, namely the establishment of significant intertheoretical agreement, the compilation and analysis of extant and new distinctions between the two theories, and the synthesis of care ethical insights with neo-Aristotelianism to generate a virtue ethical theory of care. In the first two chapters, I outline virtue ethics and care ethics, and argue for considerable agreement over central premises. Chapter 2 summarises the foundational commitments of care ethics, focusing particularly on their relational ontology and its links to the other ethical claims care ethicists universally ascribe to, namely particularism, partialism, the...
The Unhappy Marriage of Care Ethics and Virtue Ethics
Hypatia, 2006
The proposal that care ethic(s) (CE) be subsumed under the framework of virtue ethic(s) (VE) is both promising and problematic for feminists. Although some attempts to construe care as a virtue are more commendable than others, they cannot duplicate a freestanding feminist CE. Sander-Staudt recommends a model of theoretical collaboration between VE and CE that retains their comprehensiveness, allows CE to enhance VE as well as be enhanced by it, and leaves CE open to other collaborations.
Feminism and the ethics of care
South African Family Practice, 2009
In a world where the physician-patient relationship is dominated by "male" values of autonomy and rights, space must be given to the no less important "feminine" values of care and connectivity. Both are necessary and complementary.
Feminist ethic of care: A third alternative approach
Health Care Analysis, 2004
A man with Alzheimer's who wanders around, a caregiver who disconnects the alarm, a daughter acting on het own, and a doctor who is not consulted set the stage for a feminist reflection on capacity/competence assessment. Feminist theory attempts to account for gender inequality in the political and in the epistemological realm. One of its tasks is to unravel the settings in which actual practices, i.c. capacity/competence assessment take place and offer an alternative. In this article the focus will be on a feminist ethics of care in which relationality, care, vulnerability, and responsibility are privileged concepts and attitudes. The emphasis on these notions leads to a specific view of autonomy that has consequences for both carereceivers (patients, clients) and caregivers (professional and not professional). These concepts constitute a default setting that shapes the context for capacity/competence assessment. Whereas this notion is meant to distinguish between those who need to be taken care of and those who do not, reflection on what it means to say 'those who need to be taken care of' is also required. The feminist analysis presented here emphasizes the necessity of the contextualization of assessment of competence. It sketches the multifold and complex grid that comprehends capacity assessment.
25 Years of Care Ethics: A Personal Retrospective
2012
Sitting in my newly co-ed home ec class, with two boys who decided a 1:8 gender ratio just might be the right move for their love lives, I toil over my first and last knitting project-a rather misshapen kitty cat. In the course of conversation, I announce loudly to my fellow knitters my liberal feminist intentions: "I am not going to get married and I am not going to have children; when the time comes, I'm just going to live with some man and follow my career." Keeping this early declaration in mind, it shouldn't be surprising that, eight years later when I am first introduced to Carol Gilligan and the ethic of care, my response is suspicious. By claiming that women utilize an ethic of care while men use justice, Gilligan seems to suggest that women are better suited for caregiving roles within the home than for professional life. Thus, I see her as calling into question my liberal feminist aspiration-to craft a self-chosen life that foregrounds self-development and career.