Abstract

This chapter explores the major debate over care and justice historically and today in philosophy of education. The debate is situated in Western ethics first, particularly examining major historical approaches from the fields of ethics and epistemology. Then it explores care theories and related views that give a more significant role to care, emotion, and relationality. The chapter then briefly considers non-western approaches, particularly within Eastern traditions, as they intersect and contrast with Western views. This chapter emphasizes historical continuity in the debate over care and justice in philosophy and philosophy of education, and its ongoing contestation, in relation to recent psychological approaches to moral education, and other promotions of education for intercultural ‘living together’. Rather than indicating a preference for one perspective over another in relation to these ethical and educational debates, this chapter aims primarily to lay groundwork for further examinations about the places of care and justice in educational theory.