Abstract

Contemporary American feminist ethics has two main branches, an ethic of care which focuses on caring, relationship, responsibility and dependency and an ethic of freedoms, which focuses on liberation, friendship and equality, mostly to the exclusion of care. Feminist ethics of freedom criticize ethics of rights for neglecting women's freedom. Ethics of care criticize ethics of rights for neglecting both the connection in which humans exist and the obligation of responding to needs. Rather than resolving the tension between care and freedom, I demonstrate that both are equally important moral principles. I illustrate the necessity of relationship to freedom and autonomy, and the necessity of self-respect and autonomy to relationship and care. First, by surveying ethics of care written by Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings, Rita Manning and Joan Tronto for the reification of patriarchal femininity which limits freedom, I suggest ways of restructuring care ethics by revaluing self-respect and reciprocity. Second, by using the work of Mary Wollstonecraft and Virginia Woolf, I argue that gender-hierarchy relies on constructions of masculinity and femininity which replicate tyranny. Third, through readings of Immanuel Kant and feminist philosophers of emotion, I argue that our duty to respond to others' needs concurs with our duty to maintain our own self-respect because in helping others we constitute ourselves as agents who are able to put others' needs first. False ideals of independence, such as patriarchal images of femininity and masculinity, impede personal and moral autonomy and thwart self-respect. Fourth, I show that Simone de Beauvoir develops a relational subjectivity which includes reaching out for one's freedom by acting with others. To care for another is to risk that there will not be mutual recognition, that one's assertion of boundaries will be denied or that one's denial of boundaries will be rejected. I conclude by arguing that ideals of moral practice, rather than ideal images of moral persons, will enable us to act according to care and freedom. I argue that seeking some knowledge about others' specificity enables our finding each other and our recognition of each other as essential subjects