The Ethics of Care

As the Malden Mills fire and rebuilding shows there are perspectives on ethics that are not understandable from the point of view of utilitarianism, rights or Kantian philosophy. The owner had no obligation to rebuild (or to pay his workers when they were not working) from any of these perspectives; still he maintained that he had a liability to his workers and to his community. Rather than being unbiased (which all of these theories maintain is crucial), this owner treated his community and workers partially.

This is fundamental to the point of view known as the ethics of care, an approach to ethics that many feminist ethicists have recently advanced. In accordance with this method, we have duty to exercise special care toward the people with whom we have close relationships. Concern, love, compassion, friendship and kindness are all sentiments or virtues that normally manifest this dimension of morality. Hence, an ethic of care emphasizes two moral demands:

1.   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.

2.  We each exist in a web of relationships and should preserve and nurture those concrete and valuable relationships we have with specific persons. An ethic of care can be seen as encompassing the types of obligations that a so- called communitarian ethic advocates. A communitarian ethic is an ethic that sees material communities and communal relationships as having a primary value that should be maintained and preserved.

The demands of caring are at times in conflict with the demands of justice and no fixed rule exists to decide these conflicts. Critics point out that the ethics of care can easily degenerate into unjust favoritism. However the ethics of care can also lead to burnout, the advantage of the theory is that it is a curative to the other approaches that are impartial and universal.