Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to determine whether or not the ethic of care has been given a philosophical underpinning and to provide a defensible account of the relationship between the ethic of care and the ethic of rights. I begin in Chapter 1 with a summary of Gilligan's In a Different Voice , which provides the first and most extensive articulation of the ethic of care in contrast to the ethnic of rights. I also critically examine in this chapter both Lawrence Kohlberg's response to Gilligan's claims and Gilligan's own view of the relationship of the two ethics. ;In the following two chapters, I summarize and give a critical analysis of the work of the only two philosophers I am aware of who have attempted in any direct way both to provide a philosophical underpinning for the ethic of care and to show the systematic relationship of the ethic of care to the ethic of rights. In Chapter 2, I consider the work of Caroline Whitbeck. I argue that Whitbeck ultimately fails to provide an effective underpinning for the ethic of care, and I explain why her account of the relationship between the two ethics is inadequate. In Chapter 3, I examine the recent work of Annette Baier, who clearly sees the need to make the moral experiences of women, to use her words, "reflective and philosophical." Primarily through a consideration of the problem of battered women, I reach the conclusion that Baier's analytic framework, though flawed, provides some of the theoretical tools necessary for analyzing problems that are particularly resistant to analysis from the ethic of rights approach. ;In Chapter 4, I argue that Baier's view of the relationship of the ethic of care vis-a-vis the ethic of rights is inadequate. I then argue for my own view of this relationship, according to which the two ethics are parts of one overall system, the ethic of care functioning as the necessary base of the ethic of rights. I also argue that the system as a whole is seriously flawed. Because women are held accountable to both ethics and the two ethics frequently conflict, women recurrently find themselves in a moral catch-22