Care versus justice
The standing debate over whether obligation is built from relationships or from impartial rules.
What it commits you to
Gilligan and Held against Kohlberg and Rawls: is the moral life organised around the impartial, generalisable rule, or around the particular relationship one is in? The debate is usually misdescribed as a dispute about facts, when it is about which features of moral life are fundamental. It maps onto every disagreement between a fairness metric and a stakeholder.
Which realms lean on this
Philosophy carries the arguments the other four kinds are downstream of — what an agent is, what a person owes, what a rule is for.
philosophy · 8 realms — The Care Weft, The Contractual Court, The Existential Wilds, The Kantian Citadel, The Longview Foundry, The Middle Kingdom, The Pragmatic Wharf, The Sangha Terraces.
Canon that discusses this
modern · 2006
Ethics of Care
Held develops the care perspective into a full ethical position and argues against the priority claim of justice: obligations arise inside particular relationships, are partial, and are not derivable from general principles. The book that made partiality respectable in moral theory. The excerpt below paraphrases Held's thesis rather than quoting the 2006 book.
modern · 1971
A Theory of Justice
Rawls reconstructs distributive justice as a hypothetical contract made behind a veil of ignorance, and derives two principles — equal basic liberties first, then fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle. Published in 1971 and revised in 1979, it displaced utilitarianism as the default starting point for two decades. The excerpt below paraphrases the passage in section 3 rather than quoting a translation.
primary · 1274
Summa Theologiae
A systematic theology in three parts, of which the second — law, justice, and the common good — is the part that enters every later argument about legitimate authority. Its claim that an unjust law is not a law at all makes legitimacy a property of the rule's structure rather than of the body that enacted it.
primary · 300 BCE
Mozi
The one ancient Chinese text that argues for impartial care as a principle rather than as a sentiment: regard others' parents as your own, reject aggressive war and defensive hierarchy, and justify both by an explicit standard. The excerpt below paraphrases the jian xiang ai chapters rather than quoting a translation.
See also
Care ethics
ethicsObligations arise inside relationships, are partial, and resist general principles.
Reciprocity
ethicsThe expectation that benefits received will be returned, which grounds obligation in relationship.
Veil of ignorance
philosophyA device for choosing principles without knowing which position in society you will occupy.
Li
philosophyRitual and propriety: the shared practices through which a life becomes coherent.