The Second Political Studies Association Graduate Network Conference of 2010

6-7 December 2010, University of Oxford

Reassessing Feminist Care Ethics from the standpoint of Contemporary

Aristotelian Virtue Ethics

Kim Redgrave (London Metropolitan University)

Faculty of Law, Governance and International Relations
k.redgrave@londonmet.ac.uk

This draft paper is a work in progress and is not to be circulated or cited

without the authors express permission.
Abstract

Over the past couple of decades feminist care ethics has put forward a substantial critique
of the liberal paradigm of the self-interested economic man. Care ethicists such as Eva
Feder Kittay (2002) and Virginia Held (1995) have proposed that this paradigm be replaced
with that of the relationship between mother and child which is essentially other-directed.
In this paper I will identify the problems with the mother-child moral paradigm and suggest
instead we look to Aristotles conception of philia or friendship for an alternative paradigm,
of which the mother-child relationship is a particular example. If we look at the mother-
child relationship in terms of character friendship, the best kind of philia, we lose the
connotation that maternal care is based on irrational feelings of love. Care ethicists have
drawn attention to the facts of dependency and the need for care in social relations, not just
in the private sphere. However, they continue to debate how care fits with justice and
which should take priority (Bubeck, 2002). Another related concern within this field is how
we define care. Is it a labour, a feeling, a virtue or all of the above? I will argue that care
should not be narrowly defined as labour, as it is by Bubeck, but more broadly conceived as
a disposition or virtue which one employs when a particular other is in need. Finally I will
argue, along with MacIntyre, that in order to respond to dependency we need a
combination of the virtues of justice, generosity and the disposition of affectionate regard
which we can only cultivate through practices and intimate social relations. According to
MacIntyres Aristotelianism, it is through the pursuit of the good life, not an abstract sense
of justice or care, that we train our desires and impulses to act for the good of others.

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Introduction

In this paper I will be arguing that care is an appropriate response to urgent need and
dependency and that we first learn this response in the family and other intimate
relationships. In a particular relationship with another we act from an affectionate regard
for that other. Alasdair MacIntyre, in Dependent Rational Animals, argues that it is through
the education of dispositions to act in a caring way (i.e. the affections, sympathies and
inclinations) that we can act both justly and generously towards another who suffers from
certain deprivations. And while one could argue that our affections are not ours to
command, MacIntyre responds that we can train our inclinations to feel as well as to act,
and to act with and from a certain amount of feeling (MacIntyre, 1999). This does not just
come naturally to us as humans, though we may feel affectionate towards intimate others
or towards those whom we sympathise with. Rather we require an education into such
virtuous action and feeling and this begins with our families. Even with those for whom we
feel a natural affection, we still must educate this feeling so that we act appropriately and
give both generously and justly. When we cannot act from inclination we must act from our
duty to others. Through the education of inclinations we must give care willingly and
ungrudgingly without any analysis of what we might get in return.

I will be arguing that this is primarily learnt, or fails to be learnt, in the family. I will also be
arguing that, although care ethics has done much to draw attention to the facts of
dependency and human vulnerability, and has done much to criticise traditional liberal
theory for its ignorance and denigration of care and dependency, it still often embeds itself
within that liberal tradition and has missed the opportunity to draw on the tradition of
Aristotelian virtue ethics. In particular I will focus on three care ethicists with quite different
approaches, Diemut Bubeck, Eva Feder Kittay and Carol Gilligan. I will be arguing that the
abstract notion of an ethic of care advanced particularly by Bubeck, is open to similar
criticism to that of abstract liberal justice. And even though Kittays brand of care ethics is
closer to that of virtue ethics, she still misses the opportunity to draw on the tradition of
Aristotelianism and instead tries to fit care ethics roughly into liberalism.

The reason I believe we should make care ethics a part of the tradition of Aristotelian virtue
ethics is that it offers is a way of thinking about care as a form of virtuous activity which is
not confined to the private sphere and the domain of women but is something that we all
owe to everyone in different ways. Looking at care from this perspective, as closely related
to friendship, or philia, allows us to pay attention to the different ways of giving care that
come from different reasons for such virtuous action. For example, a parent gives care to
his or her child for different reasons to a person giving care to a stranger in the street. Both
are responses to need but the action must be of the right kind and for appropriate reasons.
A parent does not usually give care to his or her child because it is their duty to or because
no one else could have provided better care if they do, then they recognise they are in

3
want of affectionate regard and the inclination to give care, and they act out of duty
instead. Equally, a stranger in the street would probably not say that they give care because
they love the person in need but rather because they see another in distress and they have
educated their dispositions to respond to that need rather than ignore it. This is not some
abstract benevolence towards a generalised Other to reassure ourselves of our own good
will but rather the actions of a person of virtue who has habituated such practice and
educated her inclinations. Feminist care ethicists have defined care in different ways but
many have argued from the premise that we should act on an abstract ethic of care and
that this should be the basis of morality, similar to the morality of abstract justice put
forward by Liberal thinkers. What an Aristotelian approach gives us, is a way of thinking
about care as a virtue embedded in concrete human practices and particular relations and a
necessary response not only to deprivations of physical care and intellectual instruction,
but and most of all deprivations of the attentive an affectionate regard of others
(MacIntyre, 1999, p.122). The approach also pays attention to all the other virtues,
including justice, which are necessary to live a good life. In the first chapter I will look at how
feminists have defined care, the similarities between their positions and those of an
Aristotelian and, more importantly, what is missing from the feminist standpoint because of
its ties to the liberal tradition.

1.
Diemut Bubeck defines care as a response to a particular subset of basic human needs, in
other words, those that make us dependent on others (Bubeck, 2002, p.165). She
distinguishes care from activities or acts that are expressions of love, friendship, or
consideration in order to further qualify her definition of care, though she recognises that
care and love may often coincide. The reason for this particular qualification, Bubeck
argues, is firstly that an emotional bond need not exist in order for someone to give care to
another. Secondly, acts which express an emotional bond such as that of friendship or love
are not always care. They may in fact satisfy needs or wants of the other that the other
could satisfy herself. While I would agree that the act of caring does not require an
emotional bond between the giver and receiver of care, I will be arguing that it is only
through intimate social relations that we can cultivate the disposition to give care. Another
problem with Bubecks argument is that many of our needs and wants which are not urgent,
such as the need for friendship cannot be satisfied by the agent alone; one needs another
person with whom one can be friends with. A friend may also be able to give many things
that a person cannot get on her own such as emotional support. If one is suffering with
grief, a friend may be able to share that grief and provide the kind of care and support that
one could not possibly have alone. One cannot talk things through with oneself very easily.
In fact, Bubeck recognises that one cannot talk a problem through with oneself, yet she
does not recognise friendship as a similar response to care. She instead distinguishes the
act of talking things through as a form of caregiving from actual friendship. But one does

4
not stop being a friend and become a carer to meet a certain need, and then go back to
being a friend when the need has passed. If one is a true friend, as Aristotle defines
friendship, one meets these needs because they value that person for who they are rather
than because of an abstract notion of an ethic of care. This understanding of friendship
thus provides a motivation for acting to meet a need. In Bubecks argument the agent acts
on the basis of an ethic of care and this may or may not coincide with an intimate
relationship of love or friendship. Bubeck thus attempts to universalise norms and rules of
care. On the other hand, the Aristotelian motivation is that one values the friend either
because one finds pleasure in her company or because one thinks that person has her own
worth independent of ones own needs or desires. Someone might retort that if we are
acting to meet a need on the basis of intimate friendship, we may ignore the needs of those
whom we have not formed such a close bond with hence the urge to universalise norms
and rules governing care. My initial response to this would be to say that we should
cultivate the virtue of care because we must learn to share common goods and participate
in ongoing relationships with fellow citizens. Hence we may think of a certain form of civic
philia, a concept which is more fully developed by Sybil Schwarzenbach (Schwarzenbach,
2009), where the good of our fellow citizens is part of our own good and the common goods
of a community. The needs of the disabled and dependent, for example, should not be seen
as a special interest but as the interest of all, integrated into the common conception of the
good (MacIntyre, 1999, p.130). As MacIntyre argues, we are all of us vulnerable to
dependency and therefore we must all be concerned with how the needs of those who are
dependent are met, whether we have a close bond with them or not. According to
MacIntyre, when it is required, not to act from affectionate regard is a sign of moral
inadequacy. He argues that the virtue of just-generosity is the appropriate response to
deprivations of care and of the affectionate regard of others. To act towards another as the
virtue of just-generosity requires is therefore to act from attentive and affectionate regard
for that other (MacIntyre, 1999, p.122). True character friendship (philia) in the Aristotelian
sense then is a paradigm for how we should treat all people who suffer such deprivations. It
is my understanding that through practicing different types of philia with intimate others,
particularly family members on whom we are so often dependent, we learn how to cultivate
the virtue of just-generosity towards strangers and intimates alike as well as recognise our
own vulnerability and dependencies. MacIntyre stresses that we must acknowledge our
dependence on others. Without that understanding, we cannot understand how others
might need us. If someone has been deprived of the affectionate regard or philia of others,
then it falls to those who have not been so deprived to tend to their deprivations. In the
next section I will critically examine the abstract ethic of care further and compare it with
the Aristotelian alternative.

2.
Bubecks definition of care refers to basic human needs but I would argue that, from an
Aristotelian perspective at least, friendship and love are basic human needs because we are

5
social animals. What I think Bubeck is referring to are much more physical and material
needs such as nutrition, the provision of mobility, the administering of medicines, and
perhaps the provision of stimulation such as music, conversation etc. which an elderly
person or a young child might not be able to obtain for themselves through friendship or
socialising. However, dependency is not an all or nothing state of being we are not either
dependent or independent consistently for periods of time. We may also be dependent on
someone for only one thing. We are not only dependent when we cannot do basic tasks for
ourselves; dependency can be understood in a much more nuanced way. We may
encounter dependency intermittently on a daily basis but the degree to which we
experience dependency will no doubt vary throughout our lives and from person to person.
Bubeck rightly points out that throughout the lives of all human beings there are times
when we do need others to care for us in various ways, especially at the beginning and end
of our lives, but also whenever we are faced with needs that we cannot possibly meet
ourselves (Bubeck, 2002, p.165). Therefore, she recognises that dependency is not a
special case for certain persons but something which is experienced universally, if in
different ways. However, Bubeck argues that care has been mystified in so many ways so
that even many women believe that those they provide care to could not do certain things
without their care, when in fact they could. So in the case of a wife cooking her husbands
dinner, assuming he is able-bodied he would be able to do this for himself. However,
Bubeck argues that a woman may confuse her act of love, or the service she provides, for
care because she thinks her husband would not eat properly if she did not cook for him.
Bubeck thus delineates care from other activities in order to firmly situate it in the realm of
socially necessary labour. With Bubecks definition, one can then supposedly distinguish
between care and a service or act of love by whether it meets a certain type of need, rather
than judging by the activity itself. Hence cooking a meal for someone who is disabled in
such a way that they are incapable of cooking a meal for themselves is understood as care,
as distinguished from a wife cooking her able-bodied husband a meal because she sees that
as part of her role as a wife.

Bubeck goes on to argue that we need an ethics of justice as well as an ethics of care in
other words, a just distribution of the burden of care. Bubeck rejects the over-
personalisation of care that the paradigm case is an intimate relationship, because she
believes this is an over-sentimentalised view. She argues that private care-giving must be
supplemented with a gender neutral public caring service in order to provide a just
distribution of care to all individuals that need it. Bubeck contends that the ethics of care
alone is morally incomplete because it does not solve the exploitation dilemma. Thus, in
order to shield caregivers from exploitation, we need to endorse an independent but
complementary ethic of justice. Diana T. Meyers, on the other hand, argues that though
considerations of justice are important in an ethic of care, it is feasible to advocate a caring
service on the basis of an ethic of care alone. For example, one might act on ones own
caring principles (or a citizens obligation to care) as someone who is not overburdened with

6
caring responsibilities by lobbying the government to create such a caring service in order to
help those women who are exploited as caregivers (Meyers, 1998, p.248). In other words,
one may seek to care for carers. She argues that, since Bubeck states that the ethic of care
is not confined to intimate relations, there would be no obstacle to a citizen acting in such a
way.

I think that both Meyers and Bubeck are too abstract about what care is and how we give it.
They both argue for a morality based on an abstract ethic of care, which parallels
liberalisms abstract ethic of justice. The idea that we act on a set of caring principles which
we can apply in any situation where there is need neglects the need to give care in the right
way. How a doctor gives care, and why she does, is different to why and how a parent gives
care. Even how a parent gives care differs to a lesser extent from how a friend would give
care to another friend. Though care is particular it is also something we owe to everyone,
but that does not mean it is something abstract. Though I have only talked about the virtue
of care as something which we need to cultivate and be educated in, it is also necessary to
attempt to cultivate other virtues alongside it, for example a sense of justice. If someone is
exploited in their caring role, often it will be a family member of the cared for, then this is
unjust, hence why family cannot be self-sufficient and needs other institutions to sustain it.
Public institutions are more often than not necessary for supporting and sometimes taking
over the caring role when a carer or even a family or kinship group no longer has the
resources to give good care. It does not matter how well one has cultivated the virtue of
care if one does not also have a sense of justice and a desire to do what is best for oneself in
order to flourish.

Another problem Meyers identifies with Bubecks thesis is her narrow definition of care and
broad definition of justice (1998, p.249). With her definition of care, Bubeck confines the
dilemma of exploitation to only a small group of unpaid caregivers who are mothers of very
young children or daughters or partners of seriously ill or disabled adults. With her broad
definition of justice, being treated unjustly, including being exploited, does not entail being
harmed (though this depends on how one defines harm). This ignores the problem that Eva
Feder Kittay points to when she says that all caregivers are vulnerable to exploitation:
because of the special demands of caregiving and because of the traditional assignment of
this work to women or servants, dependency workers are more subject to exploitation than
most. When paid, dependency work is rarely well paid. When done by family members, it is,
as a rule, unpaid (Kittay, 2002, p.260). Kittay includes paid dependency workers because
they are often women and often drawn from relatively powerless classes or groups. This is
the case for all kinds of social care including childcare; not just the care of the sick, elderly
and disabled. Kittay also defines care as a much more multifaceted term than does Bubeck.
Does Kittays approach to care ethics offer something closer to the Aristotelian tradition of
virtue ethics then?

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3.
For Kittay, care is a labour, an attitude, and a virtue (2002, p.259). As a labour it is
attending to someone who is in a condition of need. As an attitude, caring is a positive
affective bond which requires investment in anothers well-being. We might say that the
caring attitude is analogous to what MacIntyre says about training our disposition to act out
of affectionate regard for others. One can do the labour without the attitude according to
Bubecks thesis but Kittay argues that without the attitude one cannot give good care. What
the attitude provides is an open responsiveness to another which allows the carer to
understand the cared-fors needs thus it is essential to performing the labour. Good caring
then comes from a trained disposition that is practiced more frequently in affectionate
relationships. Through cultivation of the virtue by habituation and training ones dispositions
one can give care to strangers as well as intimate friends and relations. This is one particular
instance where I think care ethics can draw fruitfully on Aristotelian virtue ethics.

Returning to Kittays argument about exploitation, discussed in the previous section, she
claims that we must not only advocate for the needy, sick and otherwise disabled but we
must also advocate for their carers who are similarly in a vulnerable position. To not do so
is, according to Kittay, unjust and uncaring. While the cared-for may be totally dependent
on the carer, the carer may also be vulnerable to those in whose interest it is to have the
needy person cared for, and to the actions of the cared-for. Equally the cared-for is often in
a position where they too can be exploited by the carer. The more severe their need the
more likely this is to be the case. A great deal of trust is bestowed on the carer that she will
not abuse her power over the cared for. The greater the lack of voice the dependent has,
the more opportunity there is to violate that trust. However, if some kind of emotional
bond forms between the carer and the dependent, Kittay argues, then it is more likely that
the carer will meet the moral obligation to provide for the dependents needs, The
caregiver who has cultivated the virtue of care comes to view the interest of the charge as
part of her own well-being (Kittay, 2002, p.261). Here we might recall Aristotles good
friendship (philia) where the good of another becomes part of ones own good because one
values that other for their own sake. As Kittay rightly points out, caregiving is other-directed
and so the virtuous carer is not accommodated in the liberal picture of the rationally self-
interested actor. This is why, I argue, we must turn to Aristotle and contemporary
Aristotelians such as Alasdair MacIntyre for an alternative view of human nature that we
are social animals rather than try to fit care ethics into a liberal framework.

One of the original proponents of care ethics, Carol Gilligan, was concerned with moral
development from a psychological perspective and drew parallels between the liberal
rationalist approach to morality and supposedly masculine ways of thinking about moral
problems. Gilligan argues, following Nancy Chodorow, that in the early years of childhood
development, boys and girls have different experiences of relationships. The boys
experience of relationship is defined by differentiation and separation from the primary

8
caretaker, usually female, in the early years of his development. The girl on the other hand
recognises continuity with the caretaker(s) and experiences attachment, female identity
formation takes place in a context of ongoing relationship (Gilligan, 1990, p.7). So in
identifying as female, she sees herself in relation to other females mothers, aunts,
teachers etc. as most primary caretakers tend to be female. Boys on the other hand go
through a process of separation in developing a masculine gender identity. This supposedly
makes them more advanced than girls in terms of rational objective thinking and
individuation, because they dont see themselves embedded in relationships. The problem
Gilligan identifies is that mainstream psychological development theories see womens lack
of differentiation and their embeddedness in relationships as a developmental deficiency.
The fact that women emerge from their childhood with a better sense of empathy and of
experiencing other peoples needs and emotions as their own, does not entail that women
are naturally more empathic and less rational. Rather it shows that supposed objectivity and
individuation are more valued and perceived to be the correct way in we should develop. It
also shows that girls and boys generally experience development in different ways.

Alasdair MacIntyre has long argued that this so-called objective rationality about the social
world and morality is an illusion (MacIntyre, 1985). In Dependent Rational Animals he
describes the need for the child to separate herself from parents or others on whom she
depends. She must learn to exercise her own capacities for rational thought and action
rather than rely on the practical reasoning of those on whom she depends. MacIntyre
argues that To have learned how to stand back in some measure from our present desires,
so as to be able to evaluate them, is a necessary condition for engaging in sound reasoning
about our reasons for action (1999, p.72). If we do not become sufficiently detached from
our desires, where desire for ones own good or the good has not sufficiently developed
and may in fact perceive some infantile desire to be what is good for him or her. However,
this does not entail detaching ourselves from the relationships which have sustained us to
the point of relative independence. MacIntyre argues that the history of a particular self is
not independent of those particular others who are of crucial importance, either positively
or negatively, in aiding the transition from dependent infant to independent practical
reasoner. MacIntyre thus recognises that rationality does not entail becoming objective and
separated from concrete human relations,
Independent practical reasoners contribute to the formation and sustaining of their
social relationships, as infants do not, and to learn how to become an independent
practical reasoned is to learn how to cooperate with others in forming an sustaining
those relationships that make possible the achievement of common goods by
independent practical reasoners (MacIntyre, 1999, p.74).

On the contrary, he argues that the necessary counterparts to the virtues of rational
independence are the virtues of acknowledged dependence. In order to sustain our
relationships and exercise practical reason we need to recognise that we are always

9
embedded in concrete and complex relationships. These MacIntyre calls networks of giving
and receiving. Those whom we give care to are not always the same as those from whom
we receive it. But we shall always be indebted to those who gave us care and taught us how
to use practical reason to act for the good rather than merely satisfying our desires.

Thus it seems as though MacIntyre is arguing that in order for us to be fully rational and to
lead a good life, we need both the masculine and feminine forms of development described
by Gilligan. That is, we must only differentiate ourselves from others to a certain extent, in
order to understand what is good for us, whilst not failing to comprehend our
embeddedness in a network of human relationships. Indeed, MacIntyre even concludes
Dependent Rational Animals by suggesting what we should by now have learned from the
virtues of acknowledged dependence is that this is a respect in which men need to become
more like women (1999, p.164). What is equally important, for the purposes of my thesis,
is that his account of practical reasoning is embedded in an account of particular social
relations, which he takes to be a generally Aristotelian view. Thus he states Practical
reasoning is by its nature... reasoning together with others (1999, p.107). The relationships
within which we exercise our practical reasoning are the relationships through which each
of us first achieves and is then supported in the status of an independent practical reasoner
(Ibid.). This begins with the relationships of the family and develops in our relationships at
school, the workplace and the range of practices adults of particular societies engage in.

When Gilligan says that failure of women to fit existing models of human growth may point
to a problem in the representation, a limitation in the conception of human condition, an
omission of certain truths about life (Gilligan, 1990, p.2), perhaps MacIntyre goes some way
towards answering this problem. Girls, according to Gilligans research, resist expectation to
separate and detach themselves for longer than boys and so in adolescence they are divided
between what is expected of moral and emotional development and their own experience.
Gilligan argues that both women and men desire to be in relationships just as Aristotle
argues that we are social animals and can only truly know ourselves through our friends.
Gilligan believes that the different voice the feminine voice which resists the expectation
to become separate and individuated is potentially revolutionary and could open up new
possibilities for relationships and new ways of living.

4.
However, there may be a problem with using care in our terminology in that it can have
negative connotations i.e. care can be overly paternalistic or maternalistic. Both Kittay and
Virginia Held have argued for replacing the paradigm of the economic man with that of
the mother or the relationship between mother and child. As Sibyl Schwarzenbach points
out, what they are arguing is not just that the economic production model needs rejecting
or that motherhood has been ignored in political analysis but that we need to reconceive
the relationship between citizens on the paradigm of the mother and child relation

10
(Schwarzenbach, 2009, p.211). But the connotations of this kind of care are that it is
asymmetrical, that it is non-rational and based on love. Even though, in MacIntyres thesis,
a good parent is not entirely non-rational and exercises practical reason when bringing up a
child. The relationship between a mother and child is in the Aristotelian sense, a particularly
thick kind of philia which is characterised by inequality. For example, Aristotle says,
Benefactors seem to love beneficiaries more than receivers love bestowers of benefits
(Nicomachean Ethics IX 1167b 18-19) so a parent being the creator of the infant through
birth, and the nurturer of the child as it grows, feels greater love for their creation than the
child can feel for the parent. Equally, the child owes a debt to the parents which cannot be
repaid as the child cannot give life to the parent. This goes back to what MacIntyre says of
how giving care back to those who gave it to us is incommensurable.

A citizen or member of a community who bases their relationships with others on the
mother-child paradigm may become dependent themselves on others or may make others
dependent on herself for practical reasoning and satisfaction of desires. In a state of total
dependency, as a young child is with her parent, one may act so as to please the person on
whom they are dependent for the satisfaction of ones desires. One would then not be an
independent practical reasoner but rather would rely on ones provider for all of ones
needs. As MacIntyre demonstrates, for a child to become independent and pursue the good
life, the parent must teach the child to act because it is good to do so, rather than so as to
please the parent (MacIntyre, 1999, p.84). A bad parent may instead make their child
continue to depend on them for selfish reasons, because the parent does not want to lose
the child. However, all adults, MacIntyre argues, struggle to teach this and so children learn
the virtues of independence imperfectly and encounter conflicting demands. While some
citizens may rely on others for all of their needs due to severe mental incapacity, the
majority learn some form of independence in their practical reasoning the ability to
transform their desires into actions that aim at what is good rather than the pure
satisfaction of a desire. The suggestion that the mother-child relationship might be an
alternative to the independent economic man paradigm does draw attention, however, to
the complexity of human relations and the need to understand them in context.

Care must therefore be just but the debate continues as to how justice and care should fit
together (Held, 1995; Kittay, 2002; Bubeck, 2002). For example, should care be the wider
ethical framework which encompasses justice? Should justice remain in the realm of the
public sphere whilst confining care to the private realm? I have suggested taking a
completely different approach to thinking about care ethics and justice, by looking to the
type of virtue ethics proposed by MacIntyre and discarding the liberal framework.

MacIntyre argues that the contrast between self-interested market behaviour and altruistic
behaviour as posited by Adam Smith obscures those activities where the goods achieved are
genuinely common goods as the goods of networks of giving and receiving are (MacIntyre,

11
1999, p.119). What blandly generalized benevolent desire translates to is the idea that we
are altruistic towards the generalized Other, whoever that may be, in order to feel good
about ourselves. Thus egoism and altruism are both forms of self-interestedness.
According to MacIntyre these categories do not allow us to think about what qualities are
needed in order for us to participate in relationships with particular others and learn to
share common goods; rather they only allow us to think about ourselves and our initial
desires. What MacIntyre wants us to think about is the relationship between justice and
generosity which is not usually recognised. The traditional catalogue of the virtues, if
cultivated in the young, allows them to become independent practical reasoners, but
because of our inherent vulnerability as human animals we must also cultivate the
necessary counterpart to these virtues of independence and they are the virtues of
acknowledged dependence. MacIntyre admits that there is no central virtue in the
conventional list of virtues which we can say is exhibited in relationships of giving and
receiving. While generosity and justice are both qualities that may be related to such
relationships, neither supply what is needed seeing as one can be just without being
generous and one can be generous without being just (as someone with a caring role might
be). MacIntyre argues the central virtue must then contain aspects of both. For us to have
just-generosity then we must exhibit uncalculated giving because we owe it to the particular
other that needs it: Because I owe it, to fail to exhibit it is to fail in respect of justice;
because what I owe is uncalculating giving, to fail to exhibit it is also to fail in respect of
generosity (MacIntyre, 1999, p.121). Using Aquinas, MacIntyre shows that we must
cultivate dispositions which allow us to exemplify, in one action, the various virtues of doing
good. If we attend to someone in need, we must therefore act justly, liberally, out of charity
and out of pity. Through being able to act in such a way we are then able to sustain
relationships of giving and receiving. This however, does involve training our desires and
affections. Therefore, when we respond to someone who is in need, we must act from
affectionate regard for that particular other. While he acknowledges that some argue our
feelings are not ours to command, MacIntyre believes that we can train our dispositions to
feel, as well as our dispositions to act, so that we act from certain feelings. In other words,
through the cultivation and education of the virtues of acknowledged dependence which
are complimentary to the virtues of independence, we can sustain our relationships of
giving and receiving. To not act from such an inclination to affectionate regard for another
is a sign of moral inadequacy. Care is a constitutive part of human flourishing, not to give
care generously and justly when it is needed is to be morally deficient. But also, due to our
vulnerability we often need the care of others in order to flourish. MacIntyre says that we
find ourselves in complex networks of giving and receiving where often how much we can
give depends somewhat on how much we have received. However, what we give and
receive is not a matter of strict reciprocity, as in a strict market relationship, because often
those that we give to arent the same as those that we have received from and, more
importantly, what we owe is uncalculated giving. We ought to always remember to who it
is we are in debt but often we do not know who it is that we will be called upon to give to.

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So we will be in debt to our parents and our teachers and other relatives for our upbringing
but when we ourselves need to give care it may be to a stranger or to our own children.
And if we are called upon to give care to our parents, it is incommensurable with what they
gave to us by way of care and nurture. So a network of giving and receiving is not based on
some form of market relations or abstract rationality. Because we often do not know in
advance what it is that another whom we are called upon to care for will need, we set no
limits to those needs, though we may call upon others to help us to tend to those needs.

In response to whether care or justice should take priority then, if we follow MacIntyre,
both are of equal importance. The virtue of caring, or affectionate regard for another, must
be balanced by justice, so that we give ungrudgingly, generously, at least the minimum that
is owed to that other. According to MacIntyre then, just-generosity is the appropriate
response to physical and mental deprivations which may result from a lack of physical care
and intellectual instruction, or even the deprivation of the affectionate regard of others.
Broadly speaking though, the virtues of acknowledged dependence allow us sustain
relationships which pursue common goods; rather than pursuing goods to satisfy our own
self-interest and damaging our relationships with particular others by not attending to their
needs when they suffer deprivations.

Conclusion
In this paper so far I have attempted to illustrate two problems with care ethics approaches.
One problem is with narrowly and abstractly defining care as Bubeck attempts to do. As we
can see with MacIntyres approach, care and its associated virtues are necessary to sustain
our relationships and dependencies within the various communities we inhabit in order to
share common goods. The type of care we are called on to give will vary between particular
relations and from one community or practice to another. Whereas Bubeck is interested in
care only as a form of labour, the burden of which must be justly distributed, MacIntyre
argues that it is something which is necessary to sustain particular relationships and pursue
common goods without rejecting that care must be given justly as well as distributed justly
within a particular community or practice. What we might call caring virtues, or the virtues
of acknowledged dependence, must be cultivated as a counterpart to the traditional virtues
of independence which allow us to move from dependence on the practical reasoning of
others to independence in our own practical reasoning. However, as Kittay proves, not all
humans can make this transition, often due to severe cognitive impairment. This is another
reason why the virtues of acknowledged dependence are necessary; because we cannot
assume that each individual, including oneself, will be an independent practical reasoner
consistently throughout ones life. The second problem I have begun to identify is that of
the negative connotations of the term care and in particular the moral paradigm offered by
care ethicists of the mother and child. That is that in a relationship between the carer and
cared-for the carer is perceived as maternalistic and to have power over the cared-for. Due

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to these perceptions of care and the relationship between mother and child, using it as a
paradigm for all moral relationships could be problematic, not least because women and
children have often encountered exploitation and oppression in their respective roles.

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