Description
Book SynopsisVirginia Held assesses the ethics of care as a promising alternative to the familiar moral theories that serve so inadequately to guide our lives. The ethics of care is only a few decades old, yet it is by now a distinct moral theory or normative approach to the problems we face. It is relevant to global and political matters as well as to the personal relations that can most clearly exemplify care. This book clarifies just what the ethics of care is: what its characteristics are, what it holds, and what it enables us to do. It discusses the feminist roots of this moral approach and why the ethics of care can be a morality with universal appeal. Held examines what we mean by care, and what a caring person is like. Where other moral theories demand impartiality above all, the ethics of care understands the moral import of our ties to our families and groups. It evaluates such ties, focusing on caring relations rather than simply on the virtues of individuals. The book proposes how such
Trade Review"Virginia Held's theory of care is no less substantial than John Rawls' theory of justice. Her probing and engaging analysis of caring values, virtues, actions, and attitudes will become a classic in moral theory."--Rosemarie Tong, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Table of ContentsPart I Care and Moral Theory 1: The Ethics of Care as a Moral Theory 2: Care as Practice and Value 3: The Caring Person 4: Justice, Utility, and Care 5: Liberalism and the Ethics of Care 6: Caring Relations and Principles of Justice 7: Care and the Extension of Markets 8: Civil Society, Rights, and the Presumption of Care 9: Power, Care and The Reach of Law 10: Care and Justice in the Global Context
