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Care is something that concerns all of us. At some point in our lives we will all have the experience of caring for another person – a child, an elderly relative, a sick friend – or of being cared for ourselves. Care ethics can provide us with a deeper understanding of what happens when one person cares for another. It tries to provide answers to questions such as: What exactly is care? What do we mean by ‘good’ care? And how can we make informed ethical decisions about the care needs of others?

Care ethics is an approach to thinking about care that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century and challenges some traditional approaches to moral decision-making as it affects care.  Feminist thought has been a key influence on the development of care ethics, but it also draws on other philosophical traditions, such as virtue ethics and phenomenology, to produce a vision of ethics which values emotions and relationships and recognises the vulnerability of embodied human existence. 

Some key thinkers

Although many of the ‘founding mothers’ of care ethics were based in the United States, the development of care ethics has also been shaped by important influences from Europe and elsewhere, and there are now lively hubs of activity across the world. Here’s a snapshot of some of the key names in care ethics whose ideas continue to shape thinking about care:

Defining care ethics

Pinning down a succinct definition of care ethics is difficult, though in her book Ethics of Care: Personal, Political and Global (2006), Virginia Held, another influential care theorist, sets out five characteristics of care ethics which we summarise here:

1. Care ethics recognises that human beings are dependent for many years of their lives and emphasises our moral responsibility to care for one another.
2. It values emotions as an important component of ethical decision-making.
3. It prioritises responsibilities arising from particular relationships.
4. It draws on feminist thought to challenge the traditional division between private and public life.
5. It views people as inherently relational beings, rather than as self-sufficient individuals.

In practice this means that our actions need to be grounded in empathy and the lived experience of others. This may sound like common-sense, but it contrasts with some broadly used ethical theories that seek to separate the way we make decisions from our emotions and personal relationships.

New directions in care ethics

Furthermore, care ethics theorists seek to extend this thinking from the personal to the political in a way that responds to contemporary issues in society. These are a few recent developments in the field:

Decolonising care ethics

In common with other academic fields, mainstream care ethics has been criticised for being too focused on the Global North (especially North America and Europe) and scholars are now working to promote voices from the Global South, as well as rediscovering the value of indigenous traditions of caregiving.

Ecological care ethics

This emerging area of work explores the need to extend care ethics to consider non-human animals and the natural world.

Care aesthetics

Another exciting development has been a new focus on the embodied and sensory aspects of care, exploring the role of art and creativity in care. The Care Lab in Manchester is an example of an organisation promoting ‘artful, creative care’.

Some helpful resources

• The Careful Thinking podcast, hosted by Open University professor Martin Robb, explores ideas about care in conversation with some of the key thinkers in care ethics.

• The Careful Thinking Substack newsletter has more information about the podcast and features articles and updates about new developments in care theory.