Care ethics for people, consequentialism for governments, deontology for judges

(Disclaimer: as ought to be obvious, I’m not an academic philosopher and haven’t even read all that widely. But one way or another, everyone needs to think about these questions) I’ve long supported Bob Goodin’s view that utilitarianism (or, more generally, impartial consequentialism) is best understood as a public philosophy, rather than as a system of personal ethics. But that raises (or begs, if you must) the question of how we should think about personal ethics. And it leaves open the question of where, if at all, rights fit into this picture. After thinking about it for a bit, I reached the view that some kind of care ethic was the best way forward. There’s not as much literature on this as I would have hoped. For example, there’s no entry in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, only a subsection in the article on Feminist Ethics . So, in thinking about this, I’ve relied pretty heavily on a couple of sources, most importantly Nel Nodding’s Caring, which focused on the…

Commenting on Bubbles has been removed. Why? If you want to talk about this post, write to the author, use the comments on their blog if it has them, or reply with a "RE:" post on your own blog. Suggestions? feedback@bubbles.town