The ethics of care begins from the observation that the two major well-established Euro-American theories of morality are focused on justice and impartiality, and have difficulty justifying parts of our moral lives that are focused on particular individual relationships. Utilitarianism, for example, tells us that we should do whatever results in the greatest good for the greatest number, and this seems to imply that preferring the benefit of one’s friends and family is not morally justifiable—it is a form of selfishness. Similarly, Kantian deontology says we should never use others as a means to our own ends, and thus seems to imply that we should never allow others to suffer in order to benefit those closest to us. Should we then give away all our income and spend all our time caring for those who are most needy, unless and until our own children are as impoverished and neglected as the least among us? If we are in a burning building, is it immoral to run past other children in order to save our own instead? We have a strong intuition that caring for, and showing favoritism and partiality towards those we have relationships with is part of moral life, and that acting with pure objectivity toward friends and family would be a moral failure.
In this way, we see the grounds for an ethics of care that exists alongside ethics of justice. Neither is necessarily more right or more fundamental or more important; both are parts of our moral lives. In care, we act on special obligations to show partiality to those we have relationships of interdependence with. Partiality (as opposed to impartiality) can be moral according to ethics of care; partiality is where we support one another within a relationship of mutual interdependence and seek to grow that relationship and to allow it to flourish. Care is not a duty: it has an emotional component. But it isn’t just an emotion: it takes place within a history of interdependence in which we grow close to those we care for and care about, in relationships that become emotionally deeper and practically more and more intertwined. It shouldn’t be difficult for you to think about your close relationships and think about how they are more or less caring. The ethics of care holds that caring relationships are a moral basis to treat those closest to you as especially important, and that morality, on a caring basis, can extend beyond justice and impartiality.
The ethics of care apply beyond personal relationships, though, into wider sorts of connections and interdependence. We can think about social services like health care and public education in terms of justice and what people are owed, or what they deserve, but we can also think about what a caring policy would be, and what a caring society looks like. We can think about a caring government as one that recognizes the mutual interdependence between it and its citizens, and where both government and citizens work toward mutual flourishing where both people and government are able to work toward their best possibilities. Using the ethics of care, we can think about how moral policies and moral institutions might go beyond merely meeting our obligations to others and not being unjust or unfair.