In this article, an analysis was made of what’s new in the debate on the condition of the contemporary political community brought up by the discussion about the relationship between care and justice. The author introduces the category of care in philosophy and its understanding and with particular emphasis on the views of Virginia Held. He analyzes the importance of a relationship of care as the foundation for the proper functioning of the socio-political community and criticism of the idea of (...) a social contract undertaken by representatives of the ethics of care. Critically, he presents the consequences of the assumptions of the civic community accepted by Held. (shrink)

Tessman responds to her three critics’ comments on Burdened Virtues, focusing on their concerns with her stipulation of an “inclusivity requirement,” according to which one cannot be said to flourish without contributing to the flourishing of an inclusive collectivity. Tessman identifies a naturalized approach to ethics—which she distinguishes from the naturalism she implicitly endorsed in Burdened Virtues—that illuminates how a conception of flourishing that meets the inclusivity requirement could carry moral authority.

One of the most striking and underexplored points of difference between care ethics and other normative theories is its reluctance to offer a theory of right action. Unlike other normative ethical frameworks, care ethicists typically either neglect right action or explicitly refuse to provide a theory thereof. This paper disputes that stance. It begins with an examination of right action in care ethics, offering reasons for care ethicists not to oppose the development of a care ethical theory thereof. It then (...) considers some potential formulations of a first premise of a theory of right action, both demonstrating the diversity of possible first premises and arguing for a monistic subset of these. It subsequently presents some potential second premises, arguing that a care ethical theory of right action ought to adopt a eudaimonistic approach to care. The paper thereby makes several inroads into a care ethical account of moral evaluation. (shrink)

Despite the amount of attention that activists, educators, psychologists, and the media place on bullying and bullying prevention, there has been no sustained philosophical reflection on bullying, nor has there been a feminist analysis of the growing literature on bullying. This essay seeks to satisfy those two needs. The first section is a broad introduction to the literature on bullying. I define bullying and distinguish it from teasing, sassing, roughhousing, and other more benign interactions. I also outline two common solutions (...) to bullying: zero-tolerance policies and “ecological” interventions. The second section uses feminist ethics of care to analyze the effectiveness of each approach. I argue that ecological approaches to bullying are preferable to zero-tolerance policies because they operate on a relational model of the self and identity-formation. I elaborate a notion of affirmation as the mechanism that stabilizes and solidifies our sense of self across time. I then use affirmation to analyze three things: why people bully one another, the specific harm inflicted by bullying, and why ecological approaches are more effective in reducing bullying. The third section uses my account of affirmation to critique the scientism and troublingly gendered assumptions that underlie much of the work on bullying. (shrink)

. Morality is often dismissed as irrelevant in what is seen as the global anarchy of rival states each pursuing its national interest. When morality is invoked, it is usually the morality of justice with its associated moral conceptions of individual rights, equality, and universal law. In the area of moral theory, an alternative moral approach, the ethics of care, has been developed in recent years. It is beginning to influence how some see their global responsibilities.

This Thesis reconsiders the prospects for an approach to global justice centring on the proposal that every human being should possess a certain bundle of goods, which would include certain members of a distinctive category: the category of capabilities. My overall aim is to present a clarified and well-developed framework, within which such claims can be made. To do this, I visit a number of regions of normative and metanormative theorising. I begin by introducing the motivations for the capability approach, (...) and clarifying some of its most distinctive features. Next, I focus on Martha Nussbaum's version of the approach, and identify several problems therein. The most important concerns epistemology, and especially the challenges that constructivist theories pose. The middle part of the Thesis presents an alternative, based on the work of John McDowell, which I argue has superior prospects. Then, I turn to two further problems: that of making sense of the universalistic aspirations of cosmopolitanism, and that of integrating the microscopic prescriptions of ethics with the macroscopic analyses of political philosophy. Using the Aristotelian interpretation of its core framework that I have developed, I conclude that the capability approach can provide compelling answers to important questions about global justice. (shrink)