A Politics of Care?

Women Creating Caring Communities in Detroit by Olga Bonfiglio (EB)

Care as a virtue, or complex of virtues, cannot replace politics and justice, even if the love of common good requires care. The roles of men are complementary but different.

Such women may declaim the absence of care or compassion among those holding power, but the problem is not that men are in charge but that the size of the community is too big to be governed well. Instead of building up their traditional roles within the community, these women seek to take over the positions held by men. Politics is reduced to a power struggle and competition between interest groups. [This sort of] Community activism is more like a political action group or a political movement, rather than a true social network between women living together in the same place. No doubt they look for financing from the state as well as other sources; hence state recognition and financing instead of being an independent, organic association that is subordinate to the community as a whole. Moreoever, building up families, immediate associations, and community institutions can only be partially accomplished if men are excluded or not recognized as being valuable. Care/compassion is pitted against rules and justice, but without a conception of the human good and justice, care becomes mere sentiment that smothers others. Matriarchy is not better than patriarchy.

Feminists and other advocates of a care ethics or care politics presuppose that the new ethics that they are trying to develop is better than classical or Christian ethics, ignorant that while it may be somewhat suited to the nature of women, it is incomplete and cannot replace traditional ethics/politics. Only traditional ethics and politics addresses masculinity and intermale cooperation at all levels. They can pretend to be independent women who do not need a man but they are deceiving only themselves.

Related:
www.iep.utm.edu/care-eth
plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-ethics

The Ethics of Care by Virginia Held

Please Pray for the Women that Fall for a Man Like Me