Virtue Ethics, Feminism, and Relativism

Anti-feminist writer Janice Fiamengo recently published an article on Substack that discusses the relationship between support for Lindsay Clancy and what Fiamengo refers to as "feminine ethics," which she argues "prioritizes prevention of harm over punishment for wrongdoing." This is in contrast to principles like personal responsibility and absolute prohibitions, which may more commmonly be associated with masculinity.

I've only skimmed the article, but the first thing that caught my attention was the mentioning of feminist philosopher Carol Gilligan, whose ideas embody feminine ethics (more technically referred to as "the ethics of care" or "care ethics"). In a previous post, I gave virtue ethics a hard time, criticizing its account of causation as well as its adjacency to moral relativism. One of the sources I drew from in that post was Moral Theory: An Introduction by Mark Timmons, who notes that Gilligan was central to the development of care ethics, and that this ethical theory is a version of virtue ethics.[1]

It appears there might be some substance to my worry that virtue ethics gives way to moral relativism after all. Here's what Fiamengo has to say after quoting Gilligan: "Gilligan was here describing a far more subjective and relativistic, ever-shifting and flexible, approach to moral judgement than the rules-based approach developed and refined by the men who crafted western law."

Notes

1. Mark Timmons, Moral Theory: An Introduction, pp. 224–225.