Study On The Relations Of Care And Gender

Feminist Ethics of Care is rooted in the post-modernism of post-industrial society. It makes the unitary changed to the diversification, the mainstream to the edge and the absolutism to relativity theory. Affected by this environment, Feminist ethics of care shows distinctive times features. At the same time, it is the product of the second feminist movement theory, which draw support from gender study methods of Feminist and integrate with the results on the level of moral development in the field of psychology in1980s and1990s, which construct a complete theoretical system. This system is contained in Feminist Ethics and it also has a unique theoretical perspective. My paper is based on three elements of the Feminist Ethic of care:Feminist, Caring Theory, Ethics. It focuses on the relationship of care, gender and the theoretical path of social care.The existence of gender is an objective fact, yet the existence of ethics is a human-did fact. Western philosophy experienced the classical period, modern times, and the contemporary age. Correspondingly, the development of ethics also experienced teleological ethics of early period, the modern specifications ethics of modern times, and the normative ethics of the contemporary age. All of them are called mainstream ethics, which defaulting the reason, the principles and the nature’s dominant position, while placing the emotion, situation and intuition on the edge. Moreover, it connects the former to men, the latter to female. The Feminist Ethics slams violently to this deep-rooted traditional gender ethics and trys to eliminate the obstacles of dual-structure, like as nature and society, the public field and the natural field. It can be said that the "care" is implanted into Feminist Ethics as a pointcut. Therefore, the theoretical task of the care ethics is to prove that the empiricism and the irrationalism (they are belonged to women) are playing an important role in human thinking and moral area. They use it to compete against the justice ethics which is recognized as men’s theory by the traditional ethics. However, as it shows precisely that feminist ethicists admit the existence of the dual-structure, so care ethics falls into the morass of gender-specific immediately. In order to get out of the "women’s moral border", the views which include transcending gender and sharing care with justice appeares. Feminists (Tronto as a representative) lead the care ethics to the political field. We can not help but ask:This is the escape of gender issues, or a reasonable solution to the diameter? If you admit to transcend gender, then how to care of the differences in the condition of gender equality? living in the constraint of formal institutions and informal institutions, we have to think thoroughly on these issues.This paper consists of four parts. The first part is a theoretical overview of the feminist ethic of care, which including historical background, some academic concepts’ interpretation, formation process of theory and the representatives’ main points. Second part is focusing on the analysis the theory’s connotation, which including the implication of "care", feminist gender-research methods and the rheology of ethics, in order to generalize connection points about this three parts. The third part is investigating the gender of care’s characters at different times and in different theories. The general evolution starts from the "difference" to "exclusive" then to "transcend". Hereafter leading to the issue of equality and difference. Part IV is trying to combine empathy theory with care and justice theory in condition that transcending gender is feasible. At the same time, I want to explore a way to resolve the problem of the marginalized groups.