Friday, March 30, 2012

Care and Justice: Mutually Exclusive?

Reading justice ethics compared to care ethics, I immediately seemed to associate with the justice side of viewing things. As Gilligan discussed, when people were trying to test how children viewed ethics and morality, the researchers would disregard a lot of the information taken from little girls that was inconsistent with a justice and rule based system. Gilligan believes that these 'inconsistencies' show a whole knew way of viewing how to act. When Gilligan conducted her own research, she found that 100% of men answered questions of how one should act with rule based ideas: questioning the law, questioning the validity of the rules, and acting accordingly. However, women were divided into multiple categories: some would answer using justice ethics, and others would answer based on relationship and perceptions with others.
Care ethics still seems like a bit of a confusing term: how is it different from justice ethics? Does one only act on one ethic system or the other? We discussed on Thursday the idea of private sector versus the private sector. I would argue that this is where care ethics and justice ethics differ. Looking at the Trayvon Martin case, even some of the more interpretable part of the case can be seen in a universal justice light. If someone has a history of racist tendencies, it is the law's right to judge their actions as a hate crime. If someone has tangible evidence saying a racial slur before they shoot someone, it is not only viewed through the relationship with the person, but rather the evidence and perception of the perpetrator. Care ethics can not be used in a court of law, seeing as how it would have to rely less on things that can be proven.
These two sectors do not have to be exclusive though. With all interactions, people have to make judgments based on the knowledge they have. However, justice ethics also applies to most things as well and could contain human interactions.

So you think that care ethics could ever be used in court cases, or that everything would have to be based in a justice mindset? Based on Gilligan's research, does she really intend to say that men do not have care ethics at all? Could we really say that they do not view their interactions in a similar way (based on relationships, how they want to be viewed etc.). I find it strange to think that men only view things in a justice rule based thought process?

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