August 18, 2021

Care ethics

Care ethics emerged in the 1980s as a challenge to individualism, arguing that people are interdependent beings and reaching a good life can only happen if there is a strong base of caring relationships. The theory also moves away from abstractions and universals, turning instead to the daily contextual experiences of care that keep people in a society alive and well: cooking, cleaning, teaching, transporting, resting, and much more. Since care work is disproportionately done by women and people of colour, care ethics seeks knowledge from voices that have a history of being marginalized in philosophy.