Care Ethics: Carol Gilligan

Question 1

Preconventional Level: Of an Ethic of Care

Answer 1

Orientation toward individual survival, caring for the self to exclusion of others (“What’s best for me?”)
Then: Transition from selfishness to responsibility to others.

Question 2

Conventional Level: Ethic of Care

Answer 2

Goodness as self-sacrifice (What’s best for them?”)
Then: Transition from “goodness” to truth that she’s a person too.

Question 3

Postconventional Level: Ethics of Care

Answer 3

Morality of non-violence (What’s best for us?”)

Question 4

For Kohlberg, moral maturity is a matter of:

Answer 4

1. Developed cognitive capability
2. Questioning conventional morality
3. Discovering individual rights
4. Generalizing this discovery into a principled, formal, and abstract conception of justice

Question 5

For Gilligan, moral maturity can also be marked by:

Answer 5

1. A sense of self as interdependent w/ others
2. An orientation toward issues of responsibility and care
3. Sensitivity to context and narrative

Question 6

According to Gilligan, her abortion study suggests…

Answer 6

that women impose a distinctive construction on moral problems, seeing them in terms of conflicting responsibilities.