The Moral Necessity of Care

Abstract

Care ethicists are so-called because they argue that care is not optional but is a fundamentally necessary feature of moral experience. They hold that this position is radically distinct from pre-existing normative theories, such that care ethics warrants its own name. I agree that care ethics offers us new moral insights, but I do not believe that the insights afforded us by thinking about the importance of care have yet been fully articulated. After outlining some problems with current depictions of care ethic’s unique moral standing, I argue that the moral necessity of care is structural rather than instrumental and that the unique insight afforded us by care ethics is twofold: 1) we cannot make sense of morality unless we care and 2) care is a real feature of our world, embodied in the infrastructure of our environment. Rather than arguing for care as uniquely particularistic, or feminine, or contra-defined by justice, I argue that care is a metaethical framework that underpins all moral thinking. Given that all moral thinking is made possible because of an attitude and atmosphere of care this means that we cannot endorse a normative moral theory that does not recognise the ethical importance of care but, unlike the popular view that recognises the moral importance of care to the extent that it is justified by a pre-existing, independent moral framework, my thesis makes the case for characterising care as that which underpins moral thought, discourse and action as such.