In her essay ‘The Curious Coincidence of Feminine and African Moralities’ (1987), Sandra Harding was perhaps the first to note parallels between a typical Western feminist ethic and a characteristically African, i.e., indigenous sub-Saharan, approach to morality. Beyond Harding’s analysis, one now frequently encounters the suggestion, in a variety of discourses in both the Anglo-American and sub-Saharan traditions, that an ethic of care and an African ethic are more or less the same or share many commonalities. (...) While the two ethical perspectives are indeed sisters, in this article I argue, first, that they are not identical twins, and, more strongly, that the family resemblance between the two is significantly less than has been recognized. I highlight key differences between representative forms of an ethic of care and a sub-Saharan communitarian morality, after which I argue, second, that the latter better captures some central feminist concerns and moral considerations generally. That is, I maintain that an African ideal of community, when understood in a philosophically refined way, provides an important, relational corrective to the ethic of care. (shrink)

An accessible introduction to care ethics.

This volume is an exploration of the ethical issues raised by health insurance, which is particularly timely in the light of recent advances in medical research and political economy. Focusing on a wide range of areas, such as AIDS, genetic engineering, screening and underwriting, new disability legislation and the ethics of private and public health insurance, this comprehensive and sometimes controversial book provides an essential survey of the key issues in health insurance. Divided into two parts, the first considers the (...) ethics of underwriting, risk assessment and the acceptance and refusal of insurance risk by insurers. Discussing the unjust treatment of high-risk applicants, the authors identify sources of unfairness to both parties of the insurance contract, indicating how reasonable trade-offs can be made. The second part considers the argument for a mix of public and private insurance for acute and long-term care, offering recommendations for changes in the balance of social insurance, and discussing the shift toward long-term contracts in private health care and pension insurance. (shrink)

This essay will focus on the moral issues relating to surrogacy in the global context, and will critique the liberal arguments that have been offered in support of it. Liberal arguments hold sway concerning reproductive arrangements made between commissioning couples from wealthy nations and the surrogates from socioeconomically weak backgrounds that they hire to do their reproductive labor. My argument in this paper is motivated by a concern for controlling harms by putting the practice of globalized commercial surrogacy into the (...) context of care ethics. As I will argue, the unstable situations into which children of global surrogacy arrangements are born is symbolic of the crisis of care that the practice raises. Using the Baby Manji case as my touch point, I will suggest that liberalism cannot address the harms experienced by Manji and children like her who are created through the global practice of assisted reproductive technology. I will argue that, if commissioning couples consider their proposed surrogacy contracts from a care ethics point of view, they will begin to think relationally about their actions, considering the practice from an ethical lens, not just an economic or contractual one. (shrink)

Whereas evidence-based medicine (EBM) encourages the translation of medical research into decision-making through clinical practice guidelines (CPGs), patient-centred care (PCC) aims to integrate patient values through shared decision-making. In order to successfully integrate EBM and PCC, I propose a method of orienting physician decision-making to overcome the different obligations set out by a formally-rational EBM and substantively-rational ethics of care. I engage with Weber’s concepts “the ethic of responsibility” andverstehenas a new model of clinical reasoning that reformulates (...) the relationship between medical knowledge and social values, while demonstrating the relevance of the classical sociological cannon to contemporary medical humanities. (shrink)

Applying Care Ethics to Business is the first book-length analysis of business and economic cases and theories from the perspective of care theory.

Recent work in clinical nursing ethics has been influenced by two main areas of insight associated with the challenge levelled by the women's movement to traditional thinking about morality and ethics. Broadly speaking these two realms have been distinguished as articulating ‘feminist’ socio‐political and ‘feminine’ ethic of care concerns. Often these two impulses are seen as pulling against each other, or worse, the ‘feminine’ emphasis on the ethics of care is seen as reinforcing the dynamics that elicit (...) the ‘feminist’ concern. In this paper I suggest how an expanded understanding of an ethic of care in clinical settings can provide resources for dealing with both concerns. A discussion of the way institutional relations can ride rough‐shod over the ‘feminist’ insights of ethical care, in the second part of the paper, provides evidence for my conclusion that ethical nursing care depends on recognizing that both areas of insight are imperative for its success. (shrink)

Theological basis -- Religion and health care -- The dignity of human life -- The integrity of the human person -- Implications for health care -- Theological principles in health care ethics -- Method -- The levels and questions of ethics -- Freedom and the moral agent -- Right and wrong -- Metaethics -- Method in Catholic bioethics -- Catholic method and birth control -- The principle of double effect -- Application -- Forgoing treatment, pillar one: ordinary (...) and extraordinary means -- Forgoing treatment, pillar two: killing and allowing to die -- Forgoing treatment, pillar three: decisions by competent patients -- Forgoing treatment, pillar three: decisions for incompetent patients -- Forgoing treatment, pillar three: advance directives -- Hydration and nutrition -- Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia -- Medical futility -- Pain and pain management -- Ethics committees -- Embryonic stem cells and the beginning of human personhood -- Genetic engineering -- Allocating health care resources -- The use and misuse of the allocation argument. (shrink)

‘Have you ever taken sufficient care of yourselves?’ By asking the elite Athenian youth this question, Socrates implies that the liberation of self and the capacity to govern are inseparable. Drawing on the lectures given by Michel Foucault at the Collège de France in 1984 – only recently made available to the public – we show the consequences of the return to this ancient care‐of‐self ethic in the organizational context. After reviewing the contributions made to business ethics (...) by these two philosophers, we propose four phases necessary to the emergence and constitution of a moral subject in organizations: self‐awakening, self‐evaluation, self‐transformation and self‐presentation. We then suggest various managerial practices and behaviour inspired by this philosophical parrhesia embodied by the Greek philosopher wherein the manager should have a personal relationship with his or her own activity. Finally, we discuss implications of our study in the field of business ethics and propose an agenda for future research. (shrink)

"Characterized by breadth of coverage, a refreshingly balanced approach to controversial issues, & a highly readable style."-Theological Studies.

Background: Empathy is a contested concept in the field of care ethics. According to its proponents, empathy is a unique way to connect with others, to understand what is at stake for them, and to help guide moral deliberation. According to its critics, empathy is biased, inaccurate or a form of projection that does not truly grasp and respect the otherness of the other, and that may be distorted by prejudices. Objectives: We aim to contribute to a better understanding (...) of the significance of empathy in care ethics by reviewing both the functions and limitations of empathy in this field. Research design: Drawing on literature from care ethics and closely related fields, we identify the relevant functions and limitations of empathy from the relational, epistemic, normative, and political perspectives. These perspectives are drawn from four main characteristics of care ethics, which serve as a concise framework for understanding the significance of empathy. Participants and research context: This article is written as part of an empirical and theoretical research project that aims to better understand the functions and limitations of empathy in care practices, from the perspective of care ethics. Ethical considerations: We try to do justice to both the appraisal and critique of empathy in the care ethics literature. Findings: Our findings stress that the relationship between care ethics and empathy is complicated and rife with opposing views. Therefore, we conclude that care ethics is not an ethics of empathy. Discussion and conclusion: Based on our findings, we formulate pathways that may guide the further analysis of empathy in care practices and care ethics. (shrink)

Ethics consultation has become an integral part of the fabric of U.S. health care delivery. This article summarizes the second edition of the Core Competencies for Health Care Ethics Consultation report of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. The core knowledge and skills competencies identified in the first edition of Core Competencies have been adopted by various ethics consultation services and education programs, providing evidence of their endorsement as health care ethics consultation (HCEC) standards. This revised (...) report was prompted by thinking in the field that has evolved since the original report. Patients, family members, and health care providers who encounter ethical questions or concerns that ethics consultants could help address deserve access to efficient, effective, and accountable HCEC services. All individuals providing such services should be held to the standards of competence and quality described in the revised report. (shrink)

Vulnerability has emerged as a fruitful concept in recent political discourse. Although care theorists have sometimes framed care ethics in terms of vulnerability, they have most often oriented it around dependency. This article discusses the differences between dependency and vulnerability and argues for a reconceptualization of care ethics in terms of vulnerability. By reframing care ethics around vulnerability, care theorists can not only broaden the scope of issues that care ethics can address and clarify (...) ambiguities in the theory but also strengthen the justification for a responsibility to care. (shrink)

Readings in Health Care Ethics provides a wide-ranging selection of important and engaging contributions to the field of health care ethics. The second edition adds a chapter on health care in Canada, and the introduction has been expanded to include discussion of a new direction in feminist naturalized ethics. The book presupposes no prior knowledge, only an interest in the bioethical issues that are shaping our world.

Care Ethics and Political Theory is a collection of fifteen original essays that explore the implications and applications of care to social and political policies, practices, and theories.

Technological developments involving robotics and artificial intelligence devices are being employed evermore in elderly care and the healthcare sector more generally, raising ethical issues and practical questions warranting closer considerations of what we mean by “care” and, subsequently, how to design such software coherently with the chosen definition. This paper starts by critically examining the existing approaches to the ethical design of care robots provided by Aimee van Wynsberghe, who relies on the work on the ethics of (...) care by Joan Tronto. In doing so, it suggests an alternative to their non-principled approach, an alternative suited to tackling some of the issues raised by Tronto and van Wynsberghe, while allowing for the inclusion of two orientative principles. Our proposal centres on the principles of autonomy and vulnerability, whose joint adoption we deem able to constitute an original revision of a bottom-up approach in care ethics. Conclusively, the ethical framework introduced here integrates more traditional approaches in care ethics in view of enhancing the debate regarding the ethical design of care robots under a new lens. (shrink)

Feminist care ethics has become a prominent ethical theory that influenced theoretical and practical discussions in a variety of disciplines and institutions on a global scale. However, it has been criticized by transnational feminist scholars for operating with Western-centric assumptions and registers, especially by universalizing care as it is practiced in the Global North. It has also been criticized for prioritizing gender over other categories of intersectionality and hence for not being truly intersectional. Given the imperialist and colonial (...) legacies embedded into the unequal distribution of care work across the globe, a Western-centric approach may also carry the danger of paternalism. Hence, a critical approach to care ethics would require reckoning with these challenges. The aim of this article is first to unfold these discussions and the responses to them from care ethics scholars and then to present resources in Beauvoir’s existentialist ethics, specifically the tenet of treating the other as freedom, as productive tools for countering the Western-centric and paternalistic aspects of care practices. (shrink)

From Harry and Louise through the McCaughey septuplets, this book explains stories and issues in health care ethics that have appeared in the news media.

Care Ethics and Poetry is the first book to address the relationship between poetry and feminist care ethics. The authors argue that morality, and more specifically, moral progress, is a product of inquiry, imagination, and confronting new experiences. Engaging poetry, therefore, can contribute to the habits necessary for a robust moral life—specifically, caring. Each chapter offers poems that can provoke considerations of moral relations without explicitly moralizing. The book contributes to valorizing poetry and aesthetic experience as much as (...) it does to reassessing how we think about care ethics. (shrink)

In this article the relevance of the feminist ethic of care for current Dutch social policies is elaborated. It starts from the observation that Dutch society is witnessing two intertwined processes: the relocation of politics and the relocation of care. Together these processes result in the need for new normative frameworks for social policy. Care has to become part of the practices of active citizenship, which should be based on notions of relationality and interdependence. Basic moral (...) concepts of the ethic of care, like attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness, trust and asymmetrical reciprocity are introduced. In the final part, the ethic of care is applied to two topical issues: policies on combining paid labour and care and generation-sensitive policies. Finally some norms are proposed to guide social policymaking. (shrink)

The paper argues that care ethics should be subsumed under virtue ethics by construing care as an important virtue. Doing so allows us to achieve two desirable goals. First, we preserve what is important about care ethics. Second, we avoid two important objections to care ethics, namely, that it neglects justice, and that it contains no mechanism by which care can be regulated so as not to be become morally corrupt.

Bruno Latour is one of the founding figures in social network theory and a broadly influential systems thinker. Although his work has always been relational, little scholarship has engaged the relational morality, ontology, and epistemology of feminist care ethics with Latour’s actor–network theory. This article is intended as a translation and a prompt to spur further interactions. Latour’s recent publications, in particular, have focused on the new climate regime of the Anthropocene. Care theorists are just beginning to address (...) posthuman approaches to care. The argument here is that Latourian analysis is helpful for such explorations, given that caring for the earth and its inhabitants is the dire moral challenge of our time. The aim here is not to characterize Latour as a care theorist but rather as a provocative scholar who has much to say that is significant to care thinking. We begin with a brief introduction to Latour’s scholarship and lexicon, followed by a discussion of care theorist Puig de la Bellacasa’s work on Latour. We then explore recent work on care and the environment consistent with a Latourian approach. The conclusion reinforces the notion that valuing relationality across humans and non-human matter is essential to confronting the Anthropocene. (shrink)

Care theorists have yet to outline an account of how the concept of toleration should function in their normative framework. This lack of outline is a notable gap in the literature, particularly for demonstrating whether care ethics can appropriately address cases of moral disagreement within contemporary pluralistic societies; in other words, does care ethics have the conceptual resources to recognize the disapproval that is inherent in an act of toleration while simultaneously upholding the positive values of (...) class='Hi'>care without contradiction? By engaging care ethics with John Locke’s influential corpus on toleration, I answer the above question by building the bases for a novel theory of toleration as care. Specifically, I argue that care theorists can home in on an oft-overlooked aspect of Locke’s later thought: that the possibility of a tolerant society is dependent on a societal ethos of trustworthiness and civility, to the point where Locke sets out positive ethical demands on both persons and the state to ensure this ethos can grow and be sustained. By leveraging and augmenting Locke’s thought within the care ethical framework, I clarify how care ethics can provide meaningful solutions to moral disagreement within contemporary pluralistic societies in ways preferable to the capability of a liberal state. (shrink)

This was designed for all instructors who teach aspects of biological evolution in their college courses.

This paper argues that the language of rights cannot express distinctively ecofeminist insights into the treatment of nonhuman animals and the environment. An alternative is proposed in the form of a politicized ecological ethic of care which can express ecofeminist insights. The paper concludes with consideration of an ecofeminist moral issue: how we choose to understand ourselves morally in relation to what we are willing to count as food. "Contextual moral vegetarianism" represents a response to a politicized ecological (...) ethic of care. (shrink)

The personalist ethics of Edith Stein and her feminist thought are intrinsically interrelated. This unique connection constitutes perhaps the main novelty of Stein’s ethical thought that makes her a forerunner of some recent developments in feminist ethics, particularly ethics of care. A few scholars have noticed the resemblance between Stein’s feminist personalism and care ethics, yet none of them have properly explored it. This paper offers an in-depth discussion of the overlaps and differences between Stein’s ethical insights and (...) the core ideas of care ethics. It argues that both Stein and care ethicists relocate a certain set of practices, values and attitudes from the periphery to the center of ethical reflection. This includes relationality, emotionality and care. The paper finally argues that it is plausible and fruitful to read Stein’s advocacy of ‘woman’s values and attitudes’ in a critical feminist way, rather than as an instance of essentialist difference feminism. (shrink)

Whether practiced by ethics committees or clinical ethicists, medical ethics enjoys a solid foundation in acute care hospitals. However, medical ethics fails to have a strong presence in the primary care setting. Recently, some ethicists have argued that the reason for this disparity between ethics in the acute and primary care setting is that primary care ethics is distinct from acute care ethics: the failure to translate ethics to the primary care setting stems from (...) the incorrect belief that acute care ethics can be applied to the primary care setting. In this paper, I argue that primary care ethics and acute care ethics are species of the same ethical genus, and that the ethical differences are not ones of kind but of circumstance. I do this by appealing to the role obligations that underlie acute care and primary care clinicians’ medical ethical obligations and the shared institutions that ground those obligations. (shrink)

Care is at the heart of the Maori values system, which calls for humans to be kaitiaki, caretakers of the maun y the life-force, in each other and in nature. The relational Five Well-beings approach, based on four case studies of Maori businesses, demonstrates how business can create spiritual, cultural, social, environmental and economic well-being. A Well-beings approach entails praxis, which brings values and practice together with the purpose of consciously creating well-being and, in so doing, creates multi-dimensional wealth. (...) Underlying the Well-beings approach is an ethic of care and an intrinsic stakeholder view of business. (shrink)

The bioethical principle of respect for a person’s bodily autonomy is central to biomedical and healthcare ethics. In this article, we argue that this concept of autonomy is often annulled in the maternity field, due to the maternal two-in-one body (and the obstetric focus on the foetus over the woman) and the history of medical paternalism in Western medicine and obstetrics. The principle of respect for autonomy has therefore become largely rhetorical, yet can hide all manner of unethical practice. We (...) propose that large institutions that prioritize a midwife–institution relationship over a midwife–woman relationship are in themselves unethical and inimical to the midwifery philosophy of care. We suggest that a focus on care ethics has the potential to remedy these problems, by making power relationships visible and by prioritizing the relationship above abstract ethical principles. (shrink)

This article defends an ethics of care approach to global justice, which begins with an empirically informed account of injustices resulting from the workings and effects of contemporary neo-liberalism and hegemonic masculinities. Dominant distributive approaches to global justice see the unequal distribution of resources or ?primary goods? as the basic source of injustice. Crucially, however, most of these liberal theories do not challenge the basic structural and ideational ?frames? that govern the global political economy. Instead, they seek to ?correct? (...) unjust patterns of distribution according to an ideal theory. Subjects in these theories are generally understood as abstract, autonomous and impartial; this is in contrast to an ethics of care, which starts with an ontology of the subject as embodied, vulnerable and relational. The first part of this article explores the role and nature of theory in relation to the task of considering injustice on a global scale and offers a critique of the narrow focus in traditional theories of justice on the distribution of ?primary goods?. The second part considers the effects of neo-liberal globalization and hegemonic masculinities on global working families in order to illustrate the relationship between care and global justice. The final section sketches out a care-ethics approach to global injustice, focusing on three features: first, care as a relational approach; second, the focus in care ethics on intersecting structures of injustice; and third, care as a multi-scalar approach to global injustice. (shrink)

A care deficit is clearly evident in global cities such as London and is attributable to an ageing population, the increased employment of native-born women, prevalent gender ideologies that continue to exempt men from much reproductive work, as well as the failure of the state to provide viable alternatives. However, while it is now acknowledged that migrant women, and to a lesser extent, migrant men, step in to provide care in cities such as London, there is less research (...) on how this shapes the nature, politics and ethics of care. Drawing upon empirical research with low-paid migrant workers employed as domiciliary care providers in London, this paper explores the emergence of a distinct migrant ethic of care that is critically shaped by the caring work that migrant women and men perform. (shrink)

Feminist care ethicshas for some time guided contemporary artists and curators in their search for sustaining and sustainable practices in the current neoliberal backwash and climate crisis. With a focus on current Australian art in the context of recent care ethics scholarship, this article considers what contemporary art – in its processes as well as aesthetic outcomes – can offer in imagining and practising care for the human and more-than-human world. The article focuses on a series of (...) exhibitions that comprised a key exploratory methodology of The Care Project: Feminism and art in neoliberal times (La Trobe University, 2019–2022). The exhibitions featured the work of regionally based artists. This accent on creative practices emerging from the experience of living in regional communities that are often on the frontline of climate change and social inequality offers unique perspectives on care ethics in practice. (shrink)

Health Care Ethics: Critical Issues for the 21st Century is built around the four central themes of healthcare ethics: theoretical foundations, issues for individuals, issues for organizations, and issues for society. The text brings together the insights of a diverse panel of leading experts from the fields of bioethics, long-term care, and health administration, among others, and a comprehensive update of the ethics of pandemics.

In her Nobel speech in 2019, Olga Tokarczuk presented the category of tenderness as a new way of narrating the contemporary world. This article is a proposal for the analysis and interpretation of tenderness in ethical and aesthetic terms. (1) From an ethical perspective, tenderness is interpreted as an extension and complement of feminist relational ethics, i.e., the ethics of care. In the proposed approach, tenderness is a broader and more universal quality than care in the feminist understanding. (...) This article opens with a brief discussion of feminist interventions in ethics, with particular emphasis on the ethics of care. Next, the differences between care and tenderness are enumerated and described, in order to show how tenderness can serve as an extension and complement of the feminist ethic of care. These considerations are guided by the question of why tenderness is a better—more appropriate and more responsive to contemporary challenges—moral guidepost than care. (2) From the aesthetic perspective, tenderness is the negation of a contemplative, distanced, impersonal, and rational view of reality. As an aesthetic imperative, tenderness implies engaged experience of the beauty of reality in all of its manifestations. Therefore, in the last part of the article, existential tender attunement is described in aesthetic terms, as a position serving to sensitize others to the beauty and complexity of the post-anthropocentric world. (shrink)

Care ethics is often criticized for being incapable of outlining what responsibilities we have to persons beyond our personal relations, especially toward distant others. This criticism centres on care theorists’ claim that the concerns of morality emerge between people, generated through our relations of interdependent care: it is difficult to see how moral duties can be applied to those with whom we do not forge a relationship. In this article, I respond to this criticism by outlining a (...) care ethical justification for an interest theory of human rights. This theory will argue that the demands of global justice include various positive actions that aim toward ensuring the conditions for good caring relations to flourish, which in turn protect and promote the vital interests of all persons. In doing so, I aim to concurrently advance the sparse work on human rights within the care literature, systematizing the ideas of care theorists such as Daniel Engster, Virginia Held, and Fiona Robinson. (shrink)