The ethic of care
l'éthique du care (ou du soin)
Concept developed by psychologist Carol Gilligan (*In a Different Voice*, 1982)—in English, her language of writing. She describes a moral orientation rooted in responsibility, connection, and the concrete concern for others, in contrast to a morality of rights, rules, and abstract fairness. Gilligan’s “different voice” does not treat the moral problem as a conflict of rights to be arbitrated, but as a web of relationships not to be damaged. The French term *« l’éthique du care »* is merely a homegrown translation, flagged as such; the English word *care* encompasses care, concern, and attentiveness.
separation is justified by an ethic of rights while attachment is supported by an ethic of care. The morality of rights is predicated on equality and centered on the understanding of fairness, while the ethic of responsibility relies on the concept of equity, the recognition of differences in need.
The expression originates with Gilligan, who writes in English—an ethic of care, the word care weaving into a single term the notions of tending, concern, and attentiveness. “The ethics of care” is merely a French calque, marked as such. What it names is a “different voice” in moral reasoning: not a woman’s voice against a man’s, but a way of framing ethical problems that dominant theories of moral development had failed to hear.
The definition hinges on a sharp opposition: separation is justified by an ethic of rights while attachment is supported by an ethic of care—separation is justified by an ethics of rights, attachment is sustained by an ethics of care. Gilligan clarifies the divide: the morality of rights is predicated on equality and centered on the understanding of fairness, while the ethic of responsibility relies on the concept of equity, the recognition of differences in need. On one side, equality, formal fairness, the rule that treats everyone the same; on the other, equity in the sense of rightness, which acknowledges that needs differ. Where the ethics of justice seeks not to encroach on others’ rights, the ethics of care seeks not to break the bond, not to wound.
This stance aligns with adjusted regard—responding to what is present rather than applying a uniform rule—and attention as the primary turn of moral perception. It also extends a thinking of connection, where the subject is not an atom of rights but a nexus of relations for which they are answerable.
≠ ethics of justice (rights, universal rules, abstract fairness): this is not the same voice speaking, and Gilligan holds the two as complementary, not hierarchical. ≠ mere sentiment or private altruism: care is not a warm disposition of the heart but a structured moral orientation, with its own logic—the psychological logic of relationships, which contrasts with the formal logic of fairness.