What Is the Justice-Care Debate Really About

MIDWEST STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY, XX (1995)

What Is the Justice-Care Debate Really About?

LESLIE CANNOLD, PETER SINGER, HELGA KUHSE, AND LORI GRUEN

1. MALE-FEMALE, JUSTICE-CARE AND IMPARTIAL-PARTIAL: CONNECTIONS AND DISTINCTIONS

he publication of Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice spawned a complex T philosophical discussion about gender differences in moral development and moral thinking.’ The notion that moral reasoning engaged in by women might differ from that engaged in by men has raised the question whether virtually all of philosophical ethics is oriented toward the way in which men, rather than women, think about ethics. The difference in male and female reasoning is sometimes described as the difference between an ethic ofjustice and ethic of care. Although the literature on the justice-care debate continues to grow, we find the debate unsatisfactory because accounts of the justice perspective, the care perspective, and the differences between them are so unclear.

This essay does not aim to resolve the justice-care debate but rather seeks a more precise delineation of its nature. After clarifying the terms of the debate, we shall also attempt to answer one of the central questions raised by it: “Is the care perspective a critique of all standard (male) ethical theories, or simply a critique of the justice perspective?’ We will argue that while some of the care critique is applicable only to the justice ethic, some aspects pertain to standard ethical theory. We believe, however, that the aspects of the care critique that apply to a broad range of standard ethical approaches echo another important- and far older-critique of one mainstream approach: the partialist critique of the impartialist ethical tradition. This debate between partialism and impartialism is a debate that has taken place within conventional (predominantly male) moral philosophy. Thus while those who have, from the standpoint of the care perspective, often written as if they were at odds with the entire tradition of this, we conclude that the justice-care debate is not so much a debate about the standard tradition but rather a debate within this tradition. One of the implications of this

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conclusion is that the care perspective should not be linked specifically with the moral reasoning of women; it is a perspective that has been defended by philosophers of both genders. Finally, we believe that this conclusion strengthens the concern that many feminist philosophers have expressed about an ethic of care.

2. SOURCES

Our conception of justice morality is taken largely from Lawrence Kohlberg’s and Anne Colby ’s description of the theoretical underpinnings of his moral judgment interviews in the first volume of TheMerrrurementofMoralJudgement.2 Kohlberg was a Harvard moral psychologist whose work on the nature of moral development was and continues to be widely influential. His work was the focus of Carol Gilligan’s influential book, In a Diferent Voice, which is widely acknowledged as the germ of the justice-care debate in its current form. Kohlberg and others have described the underpinnings of his moral judgment interviews as Kantian in nature, and so at some points we have filled out our exposition of the justice approach by drawing on Kant’s moral philosophy. Our account of the care position is based on Gilligan’s description of the ethic of care, as laid out in In a Different Voice, and in several earlier and later articles reporting and defending her work.3 This account also draws on the ethic of care described by Nel Noddings in Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics MdMoral Education4 There are some important differences between Gilligan’s and Noddings’s descriptions of care. We shall note these differences as they arise in our discussion.

3. JUSTICE AND CARE: CLARIFICATION OF THE TERMS OF THE DEBATE

The following is an attempt to clarify the terms of the justice-care debate by isolating ten features in which justice and/or care ethicists have claimed an important distinction exists between the two perspectives. This clarification will serve as a basis for the next section, in which we explore whether the ten features challenge most standard (male) ethical theories, or simply pose a challenge to those that are characterized by a justice perspective.

3. I . Abstraction versus Contextualism

The primary demand of Kantian moral theory is that adherents live by the abstract ethical principle known as the categorical imperative. Although Kant formulates this imperative in different ways, the first and most often quoted formulation is: “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”5 Moral propositions, by their very nature, are not tailored to fit the specifics of each individual situation. Thus, in order to know how to respond to a moral quandary, the Kantian agent must shape the moral situation in such a way that the applicable rule or principle becomes apparent. To

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do this, the contextual detail of the situation must be stripped away until only the morally relevant details remain. For Kant, irrelevant contextual details include the particular identity of the decision-making agent and the particular identity of the people involved in the situation-for example, whether one of them is a friend. Such detail is not only considered inessential to an adequate understanding and resolution of the issue, it is often viewed as an impediment to understanding and resolution. Kant himself gave a clear example of this. He considers an objection to his own theory from the French philosopher Benjamin Constant. Constant wrote, apparently with Kant in mind: ‘This philosopher goes so far as to assert that it would be a crime to lie to a murderer who asked whether our friend who is pursued by him had taken refuge in our house.” Kant quotes this sentence and does not deny that it accurately describes his position. Instead, he reiterates that to lie would be to “commit a wrong against duty generally in a most essential point.”6

Kohlberg built this approach to ethics into his method of measuring moral development. He asked his research participants to find solutions to a number of hypothetical moral dileqmnas. Those subjects who stripped back the dilemma to its morally relevant features in order to resolve it by discovering and applying the appropriate principle or rule received higher moral development scores than participants who attended to the details of the particular case and sought to adjust the dictates of morality to fit these details.

Gilligan’s central claim in In u DSgerenr Voice was that the latter method of addressing moral quandaries was characteristic of women and was not matu- rationally deficient, but simply an alternative and equally valid way of concep- tualizing morality. For Gilligan and Noddings, the details that make up a moral situation are indispensable to an adequate resolution of that situation. It is through attending to the identity of the characters involved and to one’s own particular perspective as the moral agent that the caring nature of one’s moral response arises. If the contextual details of a situation are relevant, and consequently are considered rather than stripped away, the application of principles no longer provides solutions to moral quandaries because their abstract nature makes it impossible to “fit” them to a moral situation that keeps its individualizing detail. The need to attend to the particulars of a moral situation lies behind Gilligan’s objection to Kohlberg’s use of abstract, rather than real-life, moral dilemmas to assess moral maturity:

Hypothetical dilemmas, in the abstraction of their presentation, divest moral actors from the history and psychology of their individual lives and separate the moral problem from the social contingencies of its possible occurrence. In doing so, these dilemmas are useful for the distillation and refinement of objective principles of justice and for measuring the formal logic of equality and reciprocity. However, the reconstruction of the dilemma in its contextual particularity allows the understanding of cause and consequence which engages the compassion and tolerance repeatedly noted to distinguish the moral judgements of women.’


A related concern that Gilligan and Noddings voice regarding the abstraction necessary to utilize a morality of principle is the “hierarchical” nature of principles. Here the problem seems to be that because some principles are deemed to be more important than others-and thus to override the lesser ones in all situations where they are in conflict-the particular features of a given situation are not allowed to determine the appropriate moral response.8 Again, in other words, the context of a particular situation is subsumed under the sanctity of an abstractly determined moral code.

3.2. Moral Motivation

According to Kant, an action has moral worth only if done for the sake of duty. We know what our duty is because we are reasoning beings, and the categorical imperative is an imperative of reason. Ultimately, then, the Kantian view of ethics holds that morally worthy action must spring from reason. To the degree that an action is solely motivated by a feeling or an emotion, it lacks moral worth. (The only feeling that Kant allows as the basis for morally worthy action is the feeling of reverence for the moral law.) Doing one’s duty, on this view, is not always easy: what is required morally often bears little relation to the emotional dictates or inclinations of the agent. This gives rise to a tension between duty and our desires that Michael Stocker has labeled “moral, schi~ophrenia.”~ Nevertheless, for a Kantian, the fact that one’s inclinations and duty may conflict is no reason to doubt the dictates of morality.lo

Kohlberg essentially agrees with Kant that reason is a motivating force for moral behavior. He does however accept that there may be a small gap between an individual’s reasoning about a moral dilemma and her actual moral performance. This gap may be caused, according to Kohlberg, by “the problem being addressed, the context, and other factors.”ll

Proponents of a care approach do not experience a tension between the dictates of their morality and their moral motivation. This is because on the care view it is not reason but rather, as Noddings puts it, our “longing for caring”’* that provides the motivation for us to behave morally, a longing that is a “natural inclination.”

3.3. Objectivity and Universality

For Kant, the objectivity of moral judgments lies in the fact that they are derived from reason. Every rational being is capable of grasping the same moral law and hence of reaching the same correct moral judgment in any situation. Perhaps the most striking claim that Kohlberg makes for his research on moral development is that it supports this view of morality as objective and discoverable by the use of reason. Kohlberg argues that his findings show that all human beings progress through invariant stages of moral development, with each successive stage showing more developed moral reasoning than the preceding stage. This shows, he claims, that the “most general core structures of moral judgment are universal,” although he goes on to add that “many other very important aspects


of moral judgment do vary from one culture to the next.”l3 Thus for Kohlberg, objectivity and universality go hand in hand, the universality of the stages being the best argument for the objectivity of morality and for the superiority of the higher stages.14

It is not easy to unravel Noddings’s view of objectivity, as she seems to use the term in two different ways. On the one hand, she explicitly disavows any claim “to present or to seek moral knowledge or moral truth” and says flatly: “Moral statements . . . are not truths.”lS At the same time she wants to hold that there is an objectively right way of doing good-you have to do it in a caring way-and much of her work is an explication of what it is to do good in a caring way. A decision, she says, is “right or wrong according to how faithfully it was rooted in caring-that is, in a genuine response to the perceived needs of the other.”16 Thus Noddings is arguing for what she takes to be an objectively correct approach to ethics, but she denies that there is any single objectively correct answer to any specific moral dilemma. Nevertheless, this must imply that there are objectively wrong ways of dealing with moral dilemmas, namely those that do not arise from a caring approach to them; and the statement that such a way of dealing with a moral dilemma is wrong would appear to be a moral statement that Noddings must hold to be true.

Because she sees acting from care as objectively desirable, Noddings makes her own claim of universality, in this instance, a claim for the universality of the ethic of care. So Noddings, like Kohlberg, claims that there is “a fundamental universality in our ethic.” There must be, she says, if we are to escape relativism. Noddings finds this universality in the fact that “[tlhe Caring attitude. . .is universally accessible.”l7 But this again takes Noddings close to contradiction, for she also writes about the “feminine nature” of the ethic of care. This suggests that the ethic of care may not be accessible to those with a strongly masculine nature. Noddings attempts to resolve this contradiction by appealing to a notion of the feminine that is not restricted to women, but rather is feminine only in the “deep, classical sense,” adding that the ultimate goal of morality is the “transcendence of the masculine and feminine in moral matters.”18

Gilligan’s position on ethical objectivity and universality is also not straight- forward. Her work has been popularly regarded as making the case for the different paths of moral development followed by men and women. However, the disclaimer Gilligan issues at the beginning of In u Diflerent Voice suggests that this reading of her work is not entirely accurate. She states:

The different voice I describe is characterized not by gender but by theme. Its association with women is an empirical observation, and it is primarily through women’s voices that I trace its development. But this association is not absolute, and the contrasts between male and female voices are presented here to highlight a distinction between two modes of thought and to focus a problem of interpretation rather than to represent a generalization about either sex. No claims are made about the origins of the differences described or their distribution in a wider population, across cultures or


through time. Clearly, these differences arise in a social context where factors of social status and power combine with reproductive biology to shape the experiences of males and females and the relations between the sexes.19

Here Gilligan seems to be leaving open the possibility that her observations of gender differences in moral development indicate merely the distortion of a universal morality, made up of both care and justice perspectives, which would blossom in a society where neither women nor men were oppressed. If, however, one restricts oneself to the main thrust of Gilligan’s claims in In a Diferenr Voicethat within American middle-class culture there currently exist significant gender-based differences in moral deveiopment-then she and Kohlberg are clearly in disagreement. Kohlberg insists that “there is no evidence that there are two tracks of development, one for women and one for men.”20 Gilligan, on the other hand, insists that Kohlberg’s scoring system is incapable of scoring women’s distinct moral voice as a fully developed approach to moral issues.21

3.4. Justice Kohlberg characterizes his scheme of moral development as the development of justice reasoning and invokes the Socratic claim that “virtue is not many but one and its name is justice.” He also draws on Rawls’s account of justice as the first virtue of a society. His hypothetical moral dilemmas are designed to focus on justice:

In stressing an account of moral stages in terms of justice, we should also note that our moral dilemmas not only probe deontic questions of rightness, duties and rights, but are themselves dilemmas of justice. They do not attempt to capture moral situations raising issues of supererogation, of moral goodness beyond duty, or of special responsibilities to friends and family in situations that do not centrally raise issues of justice.22

It is, of course, precisely to this focus on justice in Kohlberg’s work that Gilligan has objected, arguing that it fails to take account of women’s characteristic mode of moral reasoning. Kohlberg’s response has been to claim that what Gilligan describes as care reasoning “falls. . . within the domain of Justice.”23 Can the justice perspective really swallow up the care perspective in this way? It would seem not: there are differences between justice and care. Justice is the virtue most sensibly appealed to in situations of conflict between strangers. It is not a virtue for everyday relationships within a family or between intimate friends. Gilligan uses the illusion of the vase which can also be seen as two faces to illustrate her belief that, while we may be able to think through moral issues in either a care or a justice mode, we cannot combine these modes into one: we cannot see the vase and the two faces simultaneously?4 Justice remains a feature distinctive of the justice approach.


3.5. Rights

As already mentioned, Gilligan believes that Kohlberg’s method of assessing moral development consistently discriminates against women. Men who focus on rights and principles are classified as being in the higher “postconventional” or “principled” stages of moral development (stages four through six on Kohlberg’s scale), while women, who are more likely to focus on their responsibility to others, are classified as merely “conventional” reasoners who have not developed beyond stage three. Women, Gilligan contends, often find “amorality of rights . . . frightening . . . in its potential justification of indifference and unconcern” as well as inadequate “to deal with the issues of responsibility in relationships.”= They do not share Kohlberg’s perception that the key issue in his dilemmas is how individuals can exercise their rights without interfering with the rights of others.’ Rather, women see the dilemmas as posing the issue of how they can fulfill their responsibilities to others without sacrificing their own integrity and needs.26

Noddings, it seems safe to assume, is equally unenthusiastic about seeing moral issues in terms of a conflict of rights. This follows from her emphatic rejection of rules and principles. Noddings holds that those whose actions are governed by predetennined principles, propositions, and rules cannot be said to care. Rights, like rules and principles, encode the notions ofjustice that Noddings rejects in favor of notions of care.

For Kolhberg, rights and justice belong together-as the passage quoted in the preceding discussion of justice suggests. Kohlberg, however, rejects Gilligan’s claim that judgments made by his interview subjects must also be rights-focused if they are to be scored as evidence of a high stage of moral development. Kohlberg claims that responses focused on:

concern and love for another person, on personal commitments, on the need for sympathy and understanding, on responsibility to humanity and one’s fellow human beings as well as rights, rules and duties . . . fall within the scope of the moral domain as we construe it.27

Gilligan is suspicious of this claim, and our reading of Kohlberg’s handbook for scoring moral judgments found nothing to justify putting her doubts to rest.28

3.6. Individualism

Kohlberg’s higher stages of moral development are grounded, as we have already seen, in a Kantian conception of a rational moral agent. This rational moral agent is conceived in the abstract, apart from and without any reference to even the most basic and necessary relationships between people. The nature of morality in this picture springs from the universal capacity of individuals to reason rather than from the connections individuals have with one another.

Noddings and Gilligan have very different moral visions from Kohlberg. Both posit an individual embedded in social relationships, from which the ethic of care springs. Noddings, for example, grounds ethical caring on natural caring,


which arises from our “earliest memories of being cared for and our growing store of memories of both caring and being cared We know how to care because we have been cared for, and without the natural impulse to care there is no ethical caring. Thus, Noddings holds that morality cannot be understood in terms of an abstract individual; it is dependent upon the existence of social relationships.

Gilligan reaches a similar conclusion by grounding women’s sense of identity, from which she supposes women’s morality arises, in ielationship. She quotes Jean Baker Miller, who notes:

women stay with, build on, and develop in a context of attachment and affiliation with others. . . [their] sense of self becomes very much orga- nized around being able to make, and then to maintain, affiliations-and relationships . . . for many women, the threat of disruption of an affiliation is perceived not just as a loss of a relationship but as something closer to a total loss of self.30

Gilligan draws on this view of female identity to ground a morality of responsibility, which emphasizes connection rather than separation and considers the relationship rather than the individual as primary.

3.7. Impartiality Kohlberg sees impartiality as a mark of moral decision-making. For a decision to be just, it must be impartial, and thus all of Kohlberg’s dilemmas, in so far as they focus on justice, are concerned with impartiality. For a decision to be impartial, the decision-making agent must detach herself from her personal response to a situation so that she is not swayed by her emotional response to subjective and personal concerns. In the Kantian tradition, the ideal would be to have the decision-maker detach herself from all the variables that would prompt such an emotional response and so become a purely rational decision-making mind, moved only by the moral law. If, however, this ideal is unattainable or undesirable for human beings-as Kant’s modem followers have recognized- then at least our non-rational desires must be tested for conformity to impartial moral principles before they can count as morally right.

One way of testing our desires for impartiality is to see if the judgments to which they give rise are ones that we are prepared to apply universally. As we have already noted, Kant himself suggested that the moral law requires that the maxim of our action be one that we desire to become a universal law. R. M. Hare later defended this requirement and made it more precise, arguing that if I make a moral judgment (for example; ‘Dr. Kevorkian was right to help Mrs. Adkins to commit suicide’), then I am logically committed to making a similar judgment about any other situation that is identical in all its universal properties to the situation in which Dr. Kevorkian helped Mrs. Adkins to commit suicide. By “universal properties” Hare means all properties other than those that refer to specific individuals. Thus ‘being terminally ill’ is a universal property, and so is ‘being a mother,’ but not ‘being me’ or ‘being a member of my family’


or ‘being Dr. Kevorkian.’ It is important to see that while ‘being my mother’ is not a universal property because of its ineliminable reference to me, the speaker, ‘being the mother of the person helping one to commit suicide’ is a universal property since it does not contain a reference to any specific individual.31 It is this exclusion of references to oneself, or to any individuals in so far as they are specific individuals, that makes the requirement of universalizability a way of ensuring a kind of impartiality in moral judgments. But it is impartiality at a higher and more philosophical level of thought and so is compatible with some forms of partiality at the level of everyday moral judgment. Thus the judgment, ‘Parents ought to buy treats for their own children before buying them for other children,’ is one that encourages parents to be partial to their children, but it is itself universalizable and impartial. (Contrast it with the non-universalizable and less plausible judgment: ‘Parents ought to buy treats for my children before buying them for other children.’)

The ethic of care described by both Gilligan and Noddings rejects the kind of impartiality that requires moral decision-makers to detach themselves from the context in which they are making decisions, including who they are, the nature of their relationships with others in the situation, and their own involvement in the situation. Care ethicists deny that a decision-maker who remains situated will make a biased and thus unjust decision; rather they claim that she will be able to use her reactions to the situation to make a more responsive and thus better moral decision. This is the point at which Noddings seems to be driving when she claims that women are unhappy making moral decisions in the abstract and search out greater detail:

Ideally, we need to talk to the participants, to see their eyes and facial expressions, to receive what they are feeling. . . Women can and do give reasons. . . but the reasons often point to feelings, needs, impressions.32

By its very nature, then, caring is not impartial, requiring as it does “engrossment in the other, regard, [and] desire for the other’s ~el l -being.”~~

Noddings also has firm views on universalizability:

Many of those writing and thinking about ethics insist that any ethical judgment-by virtue of its being an ethical judgment-must be unversaliz- able; that is, it must be the case that, if under conditions X you are required to do A, then under sufficiently similar conditions, I too am required to do A. I shall reject this emphatically. First, my attention is not on judgment and not on the particular acts we perform but on how we meet the other morally. Second, in recognition of the feminine approach to meeting the other morally--our insistence on caring for the others-I shall want to preserve the uniqueness of human encounters. Since so much depends on the subjective experience of those involved in ethical encounters, conditions are rarely “sufficiently similar” for me to declare that you must do what I must d0.34


3.8. Logic and Reasoning The Kantian tradition takes the moral law to be an imperative of reason. This view finds an echo in Kohlberg’s method of scoring interview responses, which is designed to “measure the most advanced level of reasoning of which the individual is capable.”35 For Kohlberg, logic is the means by which successful resolutions of moral dilemmas are achieved.

It is, of course, difficult to object to logic as such-such objections tend to be self-refuting. But both Gilligan and Noddings object, as Noddings puts it, to ethical argument proceeding “as if it were governed by the logical necessity characteristic of geometry.”36 Women, says Gilligan, do not see in Kohlberg’s moral dilemmas “a math problem with humans but a narrative of relationships that extends over Noddings too says that “Moral decisions . . . are qualitatively different from the solution of geometry problems.”3* It seems that not logic itself, but rather an excessive emphasis on logical ways of reasoning in ethics, is the target of these remarks.

The “affective-receptive” mode that Noddings requires of the “onecaring” is not based on reasoning. She describes it as follows:

We enter a feeling mode, but it is not necessarily an emotional mode. In such a mode, we receive what-is-there as nearly as possible without evaluation or assessment. . . An affective-receptive mode of this kind. . . is clearly, qualitatively different from the analytic-objective mode in which we impose structure on the world. It is a precreative mode characterized by outer quietude and inner voices and images, by absorption and sensory concentration. The one so engrossed is listening, looking, feeli11g.3~

In other passages, however, Noddings writes more positively about reasoning:

When we care, we should, ideally, be able to present reasons for our actiodinaction which would persuade a reasonable, disinterested observer that we have acted in behalf of the cared-for. . . . The reasons we would give, those we give to ourselves in honest subjective thinking, should be so well connected to the objective elements of the problem that our course of action clearly either stands a chance of succeeding in behalf of the cared-for, or can have been engaged in only with the hope of effecting something for the cared-for.40

3.9. Conflict and Choice Kohlberg’s method of assessing moral development focuses on situations of conflict and choice. The way in which Kohlberg’s subjects seek to resolve these conflicts determines their moral development score. In this respect Gilligan’s work is similar to Kohlberg’s, although she was interested not only in presenting her subjects with previously constructed moral conflicts but also in seeing “how people defined moral problems and what experiences they construed as moral


conflicts in their lives.”41 Thus, in addition to evaluating the moral response of participants to hypothetical dilemmas, Gilligan evaluated the response of a selected group of women to a real-life moral dilemma-the dilemma of whether to bear or abort an unwanted pregnancy.

Noddings’s description of ethical caring, on the other hand, implicitly rejects a picture of morality focused on conflict and choice. In Noddings’s view, we enter the moral sphere whenever we interact with others. Her examples of the receptivity and engrossment required of the one-caring spring from unremarkable events in most people’s lives. For example, she discusses the nature of the caring response required from a mother when her child comes home from school angry. Although Noddings also cites a few examples of the way a caring response is effective in negotiating conflict, the overall thrust of her text clearly rejects the view that conflict is the primary site of moral response.

3.10. Impersonal Focus The conflicts posed by Kohlberg’s dilemmas orient subjects to considerations of personal desires or interests in the light of greater societal obligations. In the famous Heinz dilemma, for instance, a subject is invited to consider whether, and in what circumstances, it is morally permissible for Heinz to break the law and steal a much needed drug for his ailing wife. While what Kohlberg would score as a higher stage response is one that justifies stealing, the moral grounds to which he gives a high ranking all focus on the individual’s duties to other individuals, obligations grounded in universal principles of justice rather than on the bonds of personal relationships. Kohlberg provides an example of this sort of reasoning by a postconventional thinker named Bill:

It is the husband’s duty to save his wife. The fact that her life is in danger transcends every other standard you might use to judge his action. Life is more important than property. Suppose it were a p e & not his wife? I don’t think that would be much different from a moral point of view. It’s still a human being in danger. What is this moral [point of view]? I think every individual has a right to live and if there is a way of saving an individual, he should be saved.42

In contrast, the ethic of care described by Noddings is one predominantly concerned with the proximate other. “At bottom,” she says, “caring involves engrossment.” This does not mean that one may not “care . . . momentarily for a stranger in need,”43 but it does mean that in general, one cares deeply for those in the inner circle, rather than for strangers. Because of its intense and personal nature, the obligation implied by an ethic of caring is “limited and delimited by relation” and thus one is:


not obliged to care for starving children in Africa, because there is no way for this caring to be completed in the other unless [one] abandon the caring to which [one] is obligated.44

While Gilligan’s ideas on the personal focus of the ethic of care are less formally elaborated than those of Noddings, she does argue that women’s moral development, which moves from a sense of responsibility to proximate others, to a sense of responsibility to themselves and the world at large, is the mirror opposite of men’s developmental pattern.45

4. THE APPLICABILITY OF THE CARE CRITIQUE BEYOND THE JUSTICE PERSPECTIVE

In this section, we will critically evaluate each of the ten features that care and/or justice ethicists have claimed mark a significant distinction in their approach. Our goal is to discover whether the care critique should properly be understood to apply only to ethical theories in the justice tradition, or whether it can validly be extended to a broad range of standard ethical theories. To do this we shall ask to what extent the distinctions seen to exist between care and justice theories also exist between care and consequentialist ethical theories such as classical utilitarianism. We take consequentialist theories as our touchstone here because they are the best known rival to the Kantian approach and are indisputably part of the classical Western tradition in ethics. In so far as we find no significant distinction between care and consequentialist approaches, we will conclude that the care critique must be restricted to justice-based ethical theories, and thus that the critique involves issues within the Western philosophical tradition, rather than between this tradition and an entirely new approach based on the way in which women think about ethics.

4. I . Abstraction versus Contextualism The basis of all consequentialist ethics-the idea that we should judge actions by their consequences, so that the right action is the one that will have the best consequences-is certainly an abstract principle. But in contrast to Kantian ethics, the consequentialist standard is highly sensitive to contextual detail. This detail serves as necessary information for the calculation of the maximizing moral response. For the consequentialist, for instance, the fact that telling the truth would lead to the loss of an innocent life is very relevant indeed to deciding whether it is right to tell the truth.

Nonetheless, in making a moral decision acceptable to consequentialists some contextual detail is to be disregarded, namely, the identity of the decision- maker. It would be wrong, in consequentialist terms, for the person confronted by the murderer to lie only when her friend were being pursued and not when someone else, a stranger to her but no doubt a friend to others, were the murderer’s intended victim. Like those committed to justice-based theories, consequentialists believe that some contextual detail must be stripped away not simply because it


is irrelevant, but because it actually stands in the way of good moral decision- making. The relationship of the decision-maker to those involved in a moral situation is one such detail. Thus, while the differences between the care and consequentialist perspectives are not as sharp as those between the care and justice perspectives, they are still significant enough to make the care critique on t h i s point relevant to consequentialism.

4.2. Moral Motivation Although consequentialist moralities do not share Kant’s view that only acts done for the sake of duty have moral worth, they can give rise to a similar “moral schizophrenia.” If what we ought to do is dependent on what will produce the best overall consequences, our own desires and emotions will play-a relatively small role in determining what we ought to do. Thus, as Bernard Williams has pointed out, if I am a peace-loving biological scientist, I may find myself in a situation in which it is best for me to spend my lifetime developing new methods of conducting germ warfare because otherwise this job will go to someone else who would carry out the work with much greater zeal than I would, and hence would do more harm.46 So the gap between what I ought to do and what I most care about-my relationships and personal projectwan be very wide. Thus in regard to consequentialism, the care critique on this point also stands.

4.3. Objectivity and Universality

Here consequentialism is in a different position from Kohlberg or Kant. Conse- quentialism is strictly a nonnative theory, and so consequentialists as such are not committed to any particular view about the objectivity of ethics, nor to any belief in the existence of a universal structure of moral reasoning. They may hold, as Henry Sidgwick did, that the fundamental axioms of consequentialist morality are rational intuitions that will be self-evident to any rational being who reflects on them in a calm and clear-minded manner. On the other hand, they may also hold, as J. J. C. Smart does, that the basis of consequentialism is simply a subjective feeling of general benevolence and not something capable of defense by reasoning or

4.4. Justice

Consequentialists do not share Kohlberg’s view of the primacy of justice. Conse- quentialists, for example, typically see justice as an important means toward the maximization of happiness, but not as good in itself. Accordingly, on Kohlberg’s scheme, appealing to the “rational calculation of overall utility” as the basis for right action is evidence of being only at Stage V, the second highest stage of moral development.48 It should be noted, however, that this still leaves consequentialists with a score two stages higher than those Gilligan claims are obtained by women reasoning according to an ethic of care.


4.5. Rights

The comments above about justice apply equally to rights: consequentialists may see rights as an important aspect of a good society, but typically they do not see rights as good in themselves. Consequentialists can agree with much of the recent feminist criticisms of rights. For instance, some feminists have pointed out that standard conceptions of rights rest on a conception of interactions between individuals as competitors. This conception of rights presupposes that each individual needs to create a barrier to protect herself from others, ruling out many positive experiences of mutual interdependence and compassion. To the extent that this criticism is sound, consequentialists can join with feminists in raising questions about the role rights should play in ethical deliberation. .

4.6. Individualism

The founders of utilitarianism were nineteenth-century Englishmen, who tended to be individualist in their approach-in contrast, for example, to the Hegelian conception of an organic state that prevailed in Germany during much of the same period. Twentieth-century consequentialists have tended to be similarly disposed-perhaps because consequentialism has flourished in English-speaking cultures-which continue to favor individualism rather than more holistic approaches to social and political philosophy. There is, however, nothing inherent in consequentialism that requires a belief in either political or methodological individualism. Consequentialism says only that we should judge actions by their consequences. It says nothing about how good consequences are produced. Therefore consequentialists can accept whatever view of human nature and of the good society is best grounded in evidence and argument.

4.7. Impartiality Are all consequentialists impartialists? There is a form of egoism that is consequentialist and not impartialist-the form usually referred to as “first person egoism,” because it is best expressed by the statement, “Everyone should do whatever is in my interests.” This form is contrasted with “third person egoism,” expressed by “everyone should do what is in his or her interests.” But most philosophers do not regard first person egoism as an ethical theory because it is not statable in universalizable terms. We do not think that feminists who defend a care approach to ethics would wish to defend first person egoism or similar non-universalizable theories. They surely want their approach to ethics to be one that can be recommended to a broad audience, including those who have no desire to help to promote the interests of the speaker, or of the speaker’s relatives and friends. Hence we put these non-universalizable theories aside.

Consequentialism, as an ethical theory, is impartialist in the sense that the judgments to which it gives rise are universalizable. This seems to mark a significant difference between consequentialism and the ethic of care defended by Neddings, in particular. But do advocates of an ethic of care really want to

JUSTICE-CARE DEBATE 37 1

reject universalizability? Certainly, as we saw above, Noddings says that she rejects universalizability. But the passage quoted gives reason to doubt that it is really universalizability that she is rejecting. Noddings says that “conditions are rarely ‘sufficiently similar’ for me to declare that you must do what I must do.” That may well be true, but it is no objection to universalizability, which is a logical thesis that does not depend on there being instances of it in h e real world. Consider something we often say to children when they have done something hurtful to another: “How would you like it if she did that to you?” A smart child will sometimes reply: “But she can’t because I’m bigger than she is.” That, we try to explain, misses the point. “rf she could do it to you, you wouldn’t like it, and you would think that she was doing something wrong. So you should see that what you are doing to her now is also wrong.” Similarly, the proponent of universalizability will contend that Noddings has missed the point of universalizability. Suppose that I have the opportunity to visit, and thus cheer up, my aged parents, but at a significant cost to myself. We can assume that no other child is or ever will be in precisely the same relationship with his or her parent. Nevertheless I can still imagine that a precisely similar situation could occur, in which I am one of the aged parents and I have a child exactly like me. If I want to say, in this hypothetical situation, that my child ought to pay me a cheering visit, then I must also accept that I ought to visit my parents. Although Noddings says that she rejects universalizability, what she says about it indicates that she rejects the idea that moral rules or principles are generally applicable to more than one case. But that is not part of, or implied by, universalizability. As Hare has pointed out, generality is the opposite of specificity, and a principle can be universalizable and highly specificPg It is entirely in keeping with this that Noddings does not reject the giving of reasons for actions, but merely insists that the reasons given must be highly specific to the situation:

Women can and do give reasons for their acts, but the reasons often point to feelings, needs, impressions, and a sense of personal ideal, rather than to universal principles and their application.50

In this passage, “universal” can only mean general. The reasons to which Nod- dings refers are universalizable.

In discussing Gilligan’s view of impartialism, Lawrence Blum has argued that Gilligan’s critique is importantly distinct from other critiques, most notable those of Williams and Nagel. Blum understands GiUigan to be arguing that “care and responsibility within personal relationships constitute an important element of morality itself, genuinely distinct from impartiality,” but not replacing it. He suggests that:

Gilligan holds that there is an appropriate place for impartiality, universal principle, and the like within morality, and that a final mature morality involves a complex interaction and dialogue between the concerns of impartiality and those of personal relationship and care.51


This understanding of Gilligan raises a second question we should ask: whether consequentialists are impartialist in a sense in which those who hold an ethic of care are clearly not impartialist, that is, the sense that requires the moral decision-maker to cultivate a sense of detachment in order to avoid the kind of bias that is associated with an emotional involvement of the kind that is encapsulated in the term ‘care’. The answer depends upon the level at which the impartialist perspective is meant to enter into moral thinking. As we argued in Section 4.1, above, consequentialist decision-makers-like justice ethic decision-makers- must detach from their identity in order to make moral decisions. Justice ethicists and consequentialists alike believe that a decision-maker’s failure to abstract from her identity may lead to an emotional involvement that puts at risk her capacity to make sound moral judgments. While it can,& argued that a two- level consequentialist theory of the sort advocated by Hare can enable decision- makers in some instances to remain situated in their identity and thus make partial decisions, this partiality must be justified in impartial terms. Therefore, while a consequentialist can in practice concur with Gilligan in allowing a role for personal relationships and care, there are important differences in the justification that each kind of ethic would offer for these judgments.s2

4.8. Logic and Reasoning

It was, we saw, not to logic or reason itself, but rather to an excessive emphasis on logical ways of reasoning in ethics, that Gilligan and Noddings object. Again, the distinction between levels of moral reasoning is important here. Ultimately, consequentialists faced with a choice of actions must seek to discover which action has the better consequences. If this means that they &e involved in, to use Gilligan’s phrase, “a math problem with humans,” then they must accept that description. But it does not seem very different from the passage we have already quoted from Noddings, in which she accepts the need for giving reasons “so well connected with the objective elements of the problem” that we can hope to bring about some desired good for the person for whom we care.

Moreover, some consequentialists have recognized that it is not possible to make detailed calculations of consequences every time we have a choice between actions. Therefore they have advocated that we follow “rules of thumb” or “intuitive” principles of morality.53 Noddings, too, in discussing rules, suggests that we must “ask ourselves whether the rule is a guideline, a useful and dependable aid to generally acceptable behavior, or whether it is an imperative never to be violated by us.”% So at the everyday level, at least, there seems to be very little difference here between consequentialists of this persuasion and care ethicists.

4.9. Conjlict and Choice

In arguing for their theory against alternative approaches, consequentialists often focus on examples involving moral conflicts because these serve as thought- experiments in which differing theories can be tested. But all consequentialists


would agree that we enter the moral arena whenever we interact with others. More- over, it is at least an open question for consequentialists whether most morally significant behavior occurs in the context of everyday personal relationships or in more momentous choices and situations of moral conflict. William Godwin, the eighteenth-century English consequentialist, considers a dramatic situation in which a building is on fire, and you must choose between rescuing the celebrated Archbishop F6nelon or his maid, who happens to be your mother. He urged that you should rescue the Archbishop, who would do more good in the world. Yet Godwin subsequently also argued that:

True wisdom will recommend to us individual attachments. . . . True virtue will sanction this recommendation; since it is the object of virtue to produce happiness; and since the man who lives in the d d s t of domestic relations will have many opportunities of conferring pleasure, minute in the detail, yet not trivial in the amount.55

4.10 Impersonal Focus Like Kantian theories, consequentialist theories force us to abstract away from our personal relationships and similar ties with others. Consequentialists may often think (as Godwin suggested) that in practice we can achieve more good by focusing on the needs of those near and dear to us, but they are still a long way from accepting Noddings’s claim that we are not obliged to do anything for starving children in Africa because we cannot have a complete caring relationship with them unless we abandon other caring relationships to which we are obligated. The difference here is an important one of emphasis. Care ethicists are primarily committed to a morality focused on personal relationships, viewing the central conflict of their ethic to be the accommodation of a moral responsibility to society in general without impinging on this central commitment. Consequentialists, like other classical ethical theorists, are primarily focused on doing what is good or right generally, the central conflict of their ethic being the reconciliation of this commitment with personal interests, including personal relationships.

4.11. The Ten Features: An Assessment We can now summarize this section. Of the ten features of the justice perspective rejected by Gilligan and Noddings, only five are essential to the nature of consequentialism. These are:

i) a basis in abstract principle rather than a context of personal relation-

ii) a distinction between moral and other forms of motivation; iii) impartialism; iv) the use of logic and reasoning in moral decision-making; and v) an impersonal focus.

ships;

We should note, too, that for a two-level form of consequentialism, at least two of these (impartiality and the use of logic and reasoning in decision-making) apply


only to the critical level of moral thinking and not to everyday moral thought or action.

The other five features with which Gilligan and Noddings find fault are-at most-specific to the justice perspective. Toreject them is not toreject the Western ethical tradition as such. In the final section of this essay we shall therefore put these five aside and focus only on the five features that do characterize both the justice perspective and consequentialist theories.

5. AN OLD DEBATE IN NEW CLOTHES?

In philosophical discussions, the justice-care debate has run parallel to and sometimes become interwoven with a different challenge to standard ways of thinking about ethics. This other challenge began more than a decade before the publication of In a Diflerent Voice, arguably with the 1970 appearance of Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good56 Murdoch’s diffuse criticisms were, however, largely ignored by mainstream moral philosophy. On the other hand, Bernard Williams’s discussion of consequentialism and integrity in his contribution to Utilitarianism: For and Against started an extensive discussion of whether consequentialists must, if they are true to their theory, be alienated from many of the most central concerns of ordinary human exi~tence.5~ Michael Stocker then expanded this discussion to deontological theories of a Kantian kind, and the debate has now become broadly one about impartialism in ethics.58

We have seen that “impartiality” is one of the five features that remain from the GiIligan-Noddings critique of the justice perspective. So it is not surprising that there should be a link between the justicecare debate and the debate over impartialism in ethics. The connection is, however, stronger than that, for each of the other four remaining features is also an element of the debate over impartialism as it has developed in the classical tradition. Murdoch’s criticism of conventional moral philosophy on the grounds that it puts forward a unitary and abstract notion of value can be seen as a forerunner of the objection to abstract principle. Moreover, in the same way that care ethicists advocate an ethical system that places primary importance on the contextual features of moral situations- our own identity as decision-makers and our relationship to others involved in the situation-Murdoch suggests that we grasp the nature of “Good” when we consider a mother loving a retarded child or a “tiresome elderly relation.”sg Murdoch also objected to an emphasis on reasoning in morality, asking: “Will not ‘Act lovingly’ translate ‘Act perfectly’, whereas ‘Act rationally’ will not?”a The point about moral motivation being distinct from our natural ethical motivation is, as we saw earlier, precisely the point made by Michael Stocker in “The Schizophrenia of Modem Ethical Theories.” Stocker also insists that modem ethical theories miss something vital by their impersonal focus on value in a general sense, rather than on the particular person for whom one is acting.61

It would be possible, but perhaps tedious, to display in more detail the link between these five remaining features of the justice-care debate and the impartialism-partialism controversy. We have, however, done enough to suggest


that in so far as the critique of the justice perspective is a broader critique of standard (male) Western approaches to ethics, it is a critique of impartialism. This finding raises questions about claims of gender differences in ethical reasoning because the partialist-impartialist debate has a long history in conventional philosophy, with many of the defenders of the partialist position being men. While this debate should continue in philosophical forums, we think we have shown that neither side of the debate is the exclusive province of one gender.

This finding does not, however, undermine the important contribution that Gilligan and other advocates of a care perspective have made in understanding the ways in which traditional ethical theories have ignored the voices and moral concerns of women. Their work has opened up for discussion important new areas of ethical thought and practice. To it we owe, in large part, recent feminist m r k analyzing trust, compassion, care, anger, respect, and integrity, as well as the moral significance of the family, friendship, and community. Our conclusion here is simply that, for those interested in the broader issue of whether Western moral philosophy as a whole has somehow gone down the wrong track, it may be more fruitful to pursue the debate about impartialism rather than the justice-care debate.

NOTES 1. C. Gilligan, In a Diyerent Voice: Psychological Theoy and Women’s Development

(Cambridge, Mass., 1982). The literature since the publication of this book is extensive; some of the more important essays can be found in An Ethic of Cure: Feminist and IntediscipliMry Perspectives, edited by Mary Jeanne Larrahe (New York, 1993).

2. Anne Colby and Lawrence Kohlberg, The Measurement of Moral Judgement, vol. 1, Theoretical Foundatwns and Research Validation (Cambridge, fig., 1987).

3. D. Meyers and E. Kittay, “Introduction” in Women Md Moral Theory edited by Eva Kittay and Diana Meyers &anham, Md., 1987); C. Gilligan and J. Attanucci, ‘%VO Moral 0TientBtions”in Mapping the Moral Domain: A Contribution of Women’s Thinking to Psycho- logical Theory and Educahbn, edited by C. Gilligan, J. V. Wad, J. Taylor, and J. B. Bardige (Cambridge, Mass., 1988).

4. Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Appmach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984).

5. I. Kant, The Foundations of the Metaphysics ofMorals, first published 1785, translated by L. W. Beck in The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, vol. 1V (Chicago, 1949), 80.

6. I. Kant, ‘‘On a Supposed Right to Lie from Altruistic Motives,” first published 1785. translated by L W. Beck in The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, 346.

7. Gilligan, In a Diremu Voice, 100. 8. Noddings, Caring, 1-2,42; Gilligan, In a Dzrerent %ice, 32-33. 9. See Michael Stocker, ‘The Schizophrenia of Modem Ethical Theories,” Journal of

Philosophy 73 (1976): 453-66. 10. See, for example, I. Kant, Fowtdations and The Critique of Practical Reason, translated

by L. W. Beck in The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The most relevant passages are pp. 55-63 and 180-86.

11. Colby and Kohlberg. The Measurement of Moral Judgement, 5. 12. Noddings, Caring, 5. ,

13. Colby and Kohlberg, The Measurement of Moral Judgement, 9. 14. See L. Kohlberg and D. Boyd, T h e Is-Ought Problem: A Developmental Perspective,”

15. Noddings, Caring, 5, emphasis in the original, and 94. Zygon 8 (1973): 358-71.


16. Ibid., 53. 17. Ibid., 5. 18. bid., 6. 19. Gilligan, In a Different Voice, 2. 20. Colby and Kohlberg, The Measurement of Moral Judgement, 9. 2 1. Gilligan, In a Direrent Voice, 1 8-23. 22. Colby and Kohlberg, The Measurement of M o d Judgement, 24. 23. Ibid., 24. 24. Carol Gillinan and Jane Attanucci, ‘-0 Moral Orientations: Gender Differences and

Similarities,” Merkl-Palmer Quarterly 34 (1988): 236. 25. Gilligan, In a Different Voice. 22 and 37. 26. Ibid., 138. 27. See also Colby and Kohlberg, The Measurement of Moral Judgement, 11. 28. Colby and Kohlberg, The Measurement of Moml Judgement, Volume 2, St&& Issue

29. Noddings, Caring, 5. 30. As quoted in Gilligan, In a Di&t?nt Voice, 169, quoting Jean Baker Miller, Toward a

31. R. M. Hare, Moral Thinking (Oxford, 1981). 7 ff. 32. Noddings, Coring, 3. 33. Ibid., 19. 34. Ibid., 5. 35. Colby and Kohlbeg. The Measurement of Moral Judgement, 5 . 36. Noddings, Caring, 1. 37. Gfigan, In a Different Voice, 28. 38. Noddings, Caring. 96. 39. Ibid., 34. 40. Ibid., 23. 41. Gilligan, In a Direrent Voice, 3. 42. Colby and Kohlberg, The Measurement of Moml Judgement, 21. 43. Noddings, Caring, 16.17. 44. Ibid., 86. 45. Gilligan, In a Different Voice, 163. 46. Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in Utilitarianism For d Against,

edited by J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams (Cambridge, 1973). 97 ff. 47. See Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th edition (London, 1907). Book III,

Chapter WI, and J. J. C. Smart, “An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics,” in Smart and Wil~iams, Utilitarianism: For and Against, 7-9.

48. Colby and Kohlberg, The Measumment of Moral Judgement, vol. 1.18 (Table 1.1). 49. Hare, Moral Thinking, 41. 50. Noddiigs, Coring, 3; the same idea is repeated in virtually identical words on 96. 51. Lawrence Blum, “Gilligan and Kohlberg: Implications for Moral Theory,” Ethics 98

(April 1988): 473-74. 52. For the two-level view, see R. M. Hare, Moml Thinking, Part I. Our argument in this

paragraph is similar to that ma& by Jonathan Adler in his response to Blum “Particularity, Gilligan, and the lko-kvels View: A Reply,” E&s 100 (October 1989): 149-156.

53. The idea is an old one, going back at least to John Stuart Mill. See his Utilitarianism (first published 1861), (London, 1960), 22-23. J. J. C. Smart advocates the use of ‘‘rules of thumb’’ in Smart and Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against, 42-57; Hare advocates the use of intuitive principles in Moral Thinking, chapter 2.

Scoring Manual (Cambridge, 1987).

New Psychology of Women, (Boston, 1976). 83.

54. Noddings. Caring, 53. 55. William Godwin, Memoirs of the Aurhor of “A vindication of the Rights of Wonrun, ”

chapter 6.90, second edition, quoted in William Godwin, Thoughts Occasioned by the Perusal


of DI: Purr’s Spiral Sermon, (London, 1801); reprinted in Uncollected Writings (1785-1822) by W l M Godwin, edited by J. Marken and B. Pollin (Gainesville, Florida, 1968). 31415. For further discussion of Godwin’s views, see Peter Singer, Leslie Cannold. and Helga Kuhse, “Wdiarn Godwin and the Defence of Impartialism,” Utiliros 7, no. 1 (forthcoming, 1995).

56. Iris Murdoch, Thc Sovereignty of Good (London, 1970). 57. See note 47, above. 58. Michael Stocker, ‘The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories.” and also “Values

and Purposes: The Limits of Teleology and the Ends of Friendship,” Journal of Philasophy 78 (1981): 747-65; see also, for example, Peter Railton, “Alienation, Consequentialism, and Morality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 13 (1 984): 134-71. and Frank Jackson. “Decision- theoreticConsequentialismand theNearest andDearestObjection,”Erhics 101 (1991): 461-82.

59. Murdoch, The Sovereignty of G o d 103; for the Critique of the unitary idea of value, see 56-57. 60. bid., 102. 61. M. Stocker, ‘The Schizophrenia of Modem Ethical Theories.” 459-60: For further

discussion of this point, see Railton, “Alienation, Consequentialism, and Morality,” especially 91-93.

What Is the Justice-Care Debate Really About

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