preview

Controversial Contributions to Political Thought Made by Feminism

Good Essays

Justice and care One of the most momentous and controversial contributions to political thought made by feminism in recent decades involves the work of Carol Gilligan, who developed the claim that there exists an approach to morality and social relations that contrasts sharply with that which is based on justice and individual rights of the sort characteristic of mainstream (liberal) theory. The ‘care’ perspective – a moral orientation that focuses on the value of maintaining relations, acting on interpersonal responsibilities, expressing appropriate emotion and affect, and so on – has been put forward as a moral orientation uniquely connected with the experience and psychology of women, but which has been relegated to secondary status in traditional theories of moral development. Gilligan’s work famously suggested that women tend to think more in terms of care and responsibility when considering a moral problem than in terms of impersonal rights and justice, and that moral and political principles which were expressed in the latter terms have essentially silenced women’s voices (Gilligan 1982, Gilligan et al. 1988, Brown and Gilligan 1992). Gilligan questioned the dominant view of psychological development which placed the ability to think in terms of universal, impersonal, principles at the apex of moral thinking, claiming that this reflected the male tendency to value separation, objectivity, and autonomy over connectedness and relationships. Normative principles

Get Access