ETHICS OF CARE

The ethics of care started as a reaction to the

male-centered theories of moral reasoning. In
1982, feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan, a
student of Lawrence Kohlberg, argued that men
and women have different orientations and
approaches when it comes to moral reasoning and
decision-making. In fact, Gilligan’s thesis stands as
“different voice”, a sort of criticism against what
she considered as the male-biased theory of
Kohlberg.
 For her, while men are driven by justice
and entitlement to rights, women are
oriented toward basic human feelings such
as sympathy, compassion, fidelity, close
relationship, and so forth.

The ethics of care is an approach to

ethical dilemmas that is significantly
different from the various perspectives that
we have discussed namely: utilitarianism,
deontology and rights theories.
 In their exploration of the application of care ethics
to business ethics, Maureen Sander- Staudt and
Maurice Hammington declared: “Care ethics is
skeptical of abstract and universal principles,
especially rational procedural mechanisms like the
Principle of Utility and the Kantian Categorical
Imperative that presume people to be
interchangeable, and moral judgments to be derivable
like deductive math problems.” The main premise of
the ethics of care is “that we have an obligation to
exercise special care toward those particular persons
with whom we have valuable close relationships,
particularly relations of dependency.”
 Let us give a concrete example. What if a stranger
and your wife are both dying and you can only save
one? What if you were told that the stranger happens
to be a nun who works devotedly to help the
alleviation of poverty in the African continent? And
what if you and your wife do not have children to take
care of because she is barren? Your honest-to-
goodness analysis would show that saving the
stranger has more benefit for humanity than saving
your wife. If you happen to be a strict utilitarian, then
you have the moral duty to let your wife die and save
the stranger. But you will notice that this decision
makes you uncomfortable.
 It seems that you have the gut-feel that saving the
stranger is not the ethical thing to do under this
unique circumstance. Rather, you have to save your
wife. And you have the moral duty to save her. What
makes you feel this way?

The claim of the ethics of care is that partiality is an

important consideration in making ethical decisions.
For the ethics of care, the decision-maker is a person
with flesh and blood. He/she is a person who engages
in concrete and particular relationships. He/she is also
defined and affected by these interpersonal
relationships.
 “ We are most basically in relation to each other,
and a deep and profound joy is the basic human
affect. The ethical ideal is the nurturing of the
understanding of our mutual interdependence.”

The ethics of care , an ethical attitude that many

feminist ethicists have currently promoted, obliges a
person to maintain and cherish his/her basic
relationships with people he/she cares for such as
family, relatives, friends, and close associates. If one is
caught in an ethical dilemma, interpersonal
relationships should be a main consideration.
 According to Velasquez: “We each
should exercise special care for those with
whom we are concretely related by
attending to their particular needs, values,
desires, and concrete well-being as seen
from their own personal perspective, and
by responding positively to these needs,
values, desires, and concrete well-being,
particularly of those who are vulnerable
and dependent on our care.”
 “In the corporate environment, there is an
increasing demand for business to be attentive
to its many stakeholders, particularly
customers and employees, in caring ways.” The
business world is not just a web of
relationships that are based on functions and
impersonal interactions. Rather, as we interact
with the various stakeholders, close
relationships are formed. We value
interpersonal relationships and this valuing
leads to caring for their specific needs and
improvement of their well-being.
 The basis of the ethics of care is the
person’s feeling of lack and meaningless
when he/she is isolated from other people.
The person is not born in isolation. He/she is
being in relation. It is the other person that
responds to my needs. It is the other person
who listens to me, who acknowledges me,
who recognizes my existence. It is in
interpersonal relationship that my very being
finds its completion. Therefore, when he/she
is in need, I am obliged to care for him/her.
 The ethics of care is also premised on the idea that
moral decision-making is not a cold-blooded,
emotionless, and detached process. Rather, the
decision-maker is a person affected by his/her desire to
maintain and nurture these relationships. For example,
an employer cannot even sympathize to the physical
and emotional pain of an employee who he just fired
due to a debilitating illness. For the advocates of the
ethics of care, “the person who acts from rule-governed
obligations without appropriately aligned feelings such
as worry when a friend suffers seems to have a moral
deficiency. In addition…insight into the needs of others
and considerate alertness to their circumstances often
come from the emotions more than reason.”
 Care ethics favors the view that the business
world is based on interdependence especially as
the world becomes smaller and smaller due to
globalization. As regards to the issue of
sustainability of the environment, one would
not find it difficult to support an ethics of
environmental care because care ethics does
not only consider the present generation as the
object of care. Through the principles of care
ethics, it is justified to talk about the moral
obligation to take care of the environment for
future generations.
 Finally, as regards the globalization of
business and the rise of multinational and
transnational corporations, the adverse
effects of corporate policies and decision
promulgated inside the air-conditioned
boardrooms may not at all move the
emotions of the decision-makers. An ethics
of care can help illuminate the people at
the top to also care about the needs and
concerns of the people at the bottom.