Care ethics and moral theory: Review essay of virginia held,the ethics of care

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Volumn 77, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 539-555

  Friedman, Marilyn ^a  

^a WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 65249165989     PISSN: 00318205     EISSN: 19331592     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2008.00205.x     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. Virginia Held, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
2. See also Virginia Held, Feminist Morality: Transforming Culture, Society, and Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
3. Held, pp. 10-14, 21.
4. Held, pp. 30-39, 54.
5. Held, p. 133.
6. At the same time academic life has opened up to greater numbers of women than in most earlier times, so more women than ever before are now doing moral theory. However, ironically, at least some of the women prominent in moral philosophy today are working in the Kantian, utilitarian, or liberal traditions. These include Marcia Baron, Robin Dillon, Barbara Herman, Frances Myrna Kamm, Christine Korsgaard, Martha Nussbaum, Onora O'Neill, and Susan Wolf.
7. Most notably, Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).
8. Held, pp. 15-16.
9. Held, pp. 17-19, 68-71.
10. Held, pp. 10, 45-46, 91-92.
11. Held, pp. 59-62, 66.
12. Held, pp. 23-24, 61.
13. Held, pp. 22, 37-39.
14. Held, pp. 22, 39, 55, 135.
15. Held, pp. 20, 38, 66.
16. Held, p. 38.
17. Virtue ethics, too, comes in for some criticism, but Held considers care ethics to have some affinities with this tradition, so the criticisms are different and less extensive. See "Care and Virtue" below.
18. It should be noted that Held does not reject all aspects of liberalism. She approves of democratic political institutions and "systems of fundamental rights" (87). Despite thinking that rights are affected by a masculine bias, Held regards them as salvageable for purposes of women's social advancement (86). What she rejects is extending liberal political concepts and presuppositions to the whole of moral life.
19. Held, pp. 24-25, 64, 80-87, 157. Held claims that, for justice to occur among people, their relationships must be characterized by "less intense but not entirely different forms" of "the value of caring that can be seen most clearly in such activities as mothering" (89).
20. It is noteworthy that John Stuart Mill explicitly cautioned that most moral actions are not those of public officials, and that most moral agents needed to consider only the "particular" others affected by their actions; see John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, Ch. 2.
21. Held sometimes claims only that dominant moral theories "seem" to have generalized liberal political models of moral decisionmaking to the whole of morality (158), or that they "can well be interpreted" as doing so (68).
22. Alan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990);
23. and Simon Blackburn, Ruling Passions (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1998). These theorists have connections to Hume but many regard Hume as a precursor of the utilitarian tradition.
24. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, Ch. 3.REVIEW
25. Immanual Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 469. This is not to say that Kant has a satisfactory account of friendship overall. The point is simply that Kant does find a moral role for emotion. To understand Kant's views about emotion, one has to reach beyond the confines of his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. For more on Kant's account of friendship, see Lara Denis, "From Friendship to Marriage:Revising Kant," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. LXIII, no. 1 (July 2001), 1-28.
26. See Jesse Prinz, "The Emotional Basis of Moral Judgments," Philosophical Explorations:An International Journal of Mind and Action, Vol. 9, No. 1 (March 2006), pp. 29-44.
27. Barbara Herman argues that Kant's account of practical judgment calls for persons to have capacities to recognize and understand the moral saliencies of the various circumstances in their experience. See Barbara Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), esp. Ch. 4.
28. See Marcia Baron, "Impartiality and Friendship," Ethics, Vol. 101, No. 4 (July 1991), 836-57;
29. and Brian Barry, Justice as Impartiality, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), ch 10.
30. Held, p. 69.
31. Held, p. 21.
32. Held, pp. 96-97.
33. On the occasions when they cannot be jointly realized, some additional moral considerations would be needed to resolve the conflict.
34. Held, p. 99.
35. See Marilyn Friedman, "Partiality," in Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. Lawrence Becker, assoc. ed., Charlotte Becker (New York: Garland, 1992), pp. 928-931.
36. Of course, at least part of what feminism is about is justice. So these starting points are not mutually exclusive.
37. Held, pp. 125, 129.
38. See, for example, Richard Dagger, Civic Virtues (New York: Oxford University Press).
39. See, for example, Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
40. Held notes that certain objections to care ethics had been based on early versions of care ethics, and that these objections have been answered by later versions of care ethics (pp. 61-62). It is similarly important that feminists who criticize mainstream ethical traditions discuss and respond to the latest versions of mainstream theories.
41. Held, p. 147.
42. Held, p. 113, cites a study by Robert H. Frank, Thomas Gilovich, and Dennis T. Regan, "Does Studying Economics Inhibit Cooperation?" Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 7, no. 2 (1993), 159-71.
43. Held, p. 11.
44. See, for example, Michael Slote, Morals from Motives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
45. Held, pp. 19, 55-56.
46. Held, p. 53.
47. Held, pp. 111-12, 121-23, 159.
48. Held, p. 112.
49. Held, p. 116.
50. Held, pp. 159-60.
51. Held, pp. 155, 161.
52. Held, p. 166.