The Nature of Critique in Care Ethics

The ethics of care is an approach to moral theorizing that prioritizes relations and context, and the giving and receiving of care, as an ethical orientation. As the ethics of care has developed, however, questions have been raised regarding the nature of this theory. For instance, can care ethics serve as a political theory? Is it rather an ethical code related to care professions and the work of care? Is it instead best understood as an interdisciplinary field of study? This thesis contributes to these debates by examining the ethics of care as a critical theory. Specifically, I argue that the ethics of care can meet the criteria necessary to be considered either critical theory or genealogy. Furthermore, because these two forms of critique are quite distinct and differ among their objects, assumptions, and ends, this argument illuminates that care ethics itself is flexible, able to accommodate different lenses within its broader concern for relationality, context, and response. More simply, this demonstrates that care ethics cannot be thought of as a cohesive field of study but is best described as an interdisciplinary field. In conceiving care ethics this way, this argument opens the theory towards many objects of critique, increases democratization in the field, and invites various contributions and modifications to the theory. These benefits allow the ethics of care to grow and resists the field becoming a regime of truth or dogmatically adhering to a specific moment in political theory.