Degrees of Care: Success, Recognition, and Completion

Abstract

Care ethics has attracted much scholarly attention since its inception in the 1980s. As befits a moral theory, which is how it is frequently perceived, those working in the field have increasingly sought to clarify and make robust elements central to the project. This article hopes to offer a small but important contribution to this iterative process. I make a case for resisting what is characterized as the recognition claim found in the work of Joan Tronto, Nel Noddings, and Eva Feder Kittay. This is the claim that for an action to be caring it is necessarily recognized as such by whomever is being cared for. I explicate the arguments pertaining to this issue in these authors’ writings and conclude that not only do the arguments fall short of showing the necessity for including this aspect in an ethics of care, but I make preliminary arguments as to the implications for resisting the inclusion of the recognition claim. The thrust of these suggestions is that care ethics is a better moral theory when it admits to degrees of care rather than taking a binary view.