A Study Of Gilligan’s Ethical Thought On Care And Its Theoretical And Practical Value

Carol Gilligan,an American feminist moral psychologist,firstly introduced gender differences in ethical research.She adopted a phenomenological approach to study the differences between men and women in moral situations,elaborating the core of her feminist ethics of care.This laid the groundwork for the ethics of care and exerted a strong influence in Western academic and social fields.Based on Gilligan’s care ethics,this paper examines the social background and ideological origins of care ethics and systematizes the core essence of Gilligan’s care ethics.In addition,by discussing the related questions and challenges in academia as well as the responses of Gilligan himself and her supporters,it also attempts to explore the impact of Gilligan’s care ethics on the academic circles,moral education and institutional construction in China and gain insights.In the 1960 s,there was a feminist movement in the West,hence the birth of Gilligan’s ethics of care.It has been,one of the key outcomes of the development of feminist psychology and feminist ethics.Its essence is an intellectual effort to criticize and reflect on the values of a traditionally patriarchal society and to reconstruct feminine values.In terms of the lineage of intellectual development,the ethics of care partially inherited the traditional psychological theories of Freud,Erikson,Piaget and Kohlberg on the development of moral occurrence.On the one hand,Gilligan acknowledges the obvious differences between men and women in moral values and stages of moral development highlighted by the above studies,but on the other hand,she refuses to accept the discrimination and prejudice against the differences in women’s values as reflected in the above studies,and gives positive meaning to women’s values in solving moral dilemmas and social problems.As an associate of Kohlberg,most of Gilligan’s research builds on Kohlberg’s.The central idea of Gilligan’s ethics of care is very concise,reflecting Gilligan’s main views on the moral differences between men and women,and mainly focusing on the comparison and contrast between justice（or righteousness）and caring.Firstly,the fundamental feature of male moral orientation is justice.Their morality is established on the recognition of human rights,subjectivity,autonomy and independence.It establishes moral principles in the spirit of natural law and social contract theory,aims to protect self rights,makes moral duties and obligations have the negative and preventive nature of the "Ten Commandments" of Christianity,and argues the necessity of morality from the negative aspect.Women’s morality is basically characterized by caring,based on the interdependent relationship between people and the sense of mutual responsibility arising from this relationship,and moral responsibility is to respond to the needs of others,thus arguing the necessity of morality from the positive aspect.Secondly,men see morality as a hierarchical structure of rights and norms,and moral choices and judgments are accordingly derived from mathematical calculations or logical reasoning.Females,in contrast,see morality as a networked relational structure,and moral choices and judgments as understandings and dialogues in relationships.Male morality’s emphasis on human autonomy and rights is based on a separation of persons that is prone to insensitivity and indifference in response to the needs of others,and even a loss of moral responsibility,while female’s morality is based on an emphasis on interpersonal interdependence to unite relationships.Finally,unlike the distinctly hierarchical and unidirectional nature of male moral development,female’s moral development presents a distinctly horizontal and network-like character.Once Gilligan’s care ethic was introduced,it has been criticized and challenged by the academic circles.These questions and challenges mainly include: Is gender decisive for moral value orientation? What is the relationship between justice and care? Can they be explained by differences between men and women? Are the interviews and simple sampling methods used by Gilligan scientifically valid? etc..This paper discusses the responses of Gilligan and her supporters to these criticisms.Without doubt,whether to well respond to challenges is important to the continued existence and development of an innovative theory.The paper finally gives a discussion of the historical place of Gilligan’s ethics of care and its practical value.There is no doubt that Gilligan’s ethics of care laid the foundations for Western care ethics by proposing a very important moral value: caring.Gilligan criticized the male power basis of the traditional view of justice and its hierarchical and one-sided nature,highlighted the importance of the special orientation of women’s value,which in a certain sense is conducive to the reconstruction of modern women’s social status,and exerted a deep influence in the western academic and social fields.However,Gilligan,like other theorists,is didn’t perform well in dialectical thinking when it comes to the gender issue of moral value orientation,the relationship between justice and care,the interview environment and sampling and seldomly analyzes the deep social roots,which can easily make it subject to criticism and questioning.In spite of this,the ethics of care pioneered by Gilligan is gradually received more and more attention from scholars,and the ethics of care has gone through great development in the West.It is obvious that the core essence of the ethics of care has contributed a lot to relevant academic research,the practice of moral education and the construction of relevant institutions in China.