Developmental psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg is foremost known for his work on moral development, particularly his examination of how ethical thinking matures from childhood to adolescence. To systematize children’s moral reactions into universal stages of moral development, Kohlberg interviewed and evaluated young research participants after they were presented with morally ambiguous scenarios (Hock, 2012). One of his famous scenarios, known as the Heinz dilemma, reads below:
A woman was on her deathbed. There was one drug that the doctors said would save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it.” So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's laboratory to steal the drug for his wife. Should Heinz have broken into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not? (Kohlberg, 1981).
Kohlberg used his subjects’ response to scenarios like the Heinz dilemma to distinguish three levels of moral thinking, which he titled pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional. Each level is divided into two stages, which results in a total of six moral stages. There was one puzzling finding: female children consistently scored in lower stages of moral development compared to male children of equivalent age. Specifically, Kohlberg noticed that women paralyze in the earlier stage of conventional thinking, while men tend to advance to higher moral reasoning (Hock, 2012). This finding sparked debate about women’s ethical abilities: were women at an innate intellectual and moral deficit? Kohlberg himself suggested that women lagged behind men in moral capability.
Carol Gilligan, a colleague of Kohlberg, challenged his interpretation, arguing that Kohlberg’s stages of moral development did not adequately consider sex-associated differences in ethical reasoning (Medea & Katz, 2021). Gilligan criticized Kohlberg’s theory as androcentric: it was crafted from a male perspective and neglected the female experience. According to Gilligan, Kohlberg’s model unjustifiably favored an individualistic, principled morality over an empathetic, flexible morality. Thus, Gilligan proposed that women tend to make moral decisions with a “care orientation” instead of an individualistic orientation (Hock, 2012).
In her groundbreaking work In a Different Voice, Gilligan laid the groundworks for the ethics of care, a feminist-associated philosophy that posits caring relationships and emotions as crucial guides for moral decision-making (Kwan, 2023). In contrast to classic utilitarianism and deontology, ethics of care underlines humans’ dependency on each other. It argues that the impulse to care is universal, so care ethics should be a universally applicable lens of ethical analysis (Dunn & Burton, 2023). Along with her contemporary Nel Noddings, Gilligan emphasized that although women’s ethical framework was different from their male counterparts, it was nonetheless equally valuable.
However, care ethics is not without criticism. Some early critics assert care ethics as a “slave morality” that glorifies characteristics associated with oppressed populations (Sander-Staudt, n.d.). They argued that care ethics did not actually reflect an authentic ethical approach, but instead reflected a cognitive consequence of “rigidly enforced sexual divisions of labor” (Sander-Staudt, n.d.). Specifically, critics advocate that the voice of care is artificially formed from the historical burdening of women with care roles, and implicitly encourages women to continue their self-sacrificial behavior.
Further, care ethics is not the same as the field of feminist ethics and is not a women-exclusive paradigm. As philosopher Jonathan Kwan states, “care ethics is not simply concerned with the perspectives of women… but is meant to guide all of us in our ethical decision-making, no matter our gender” (2023). There is not a consensus on the extent to which sex and gender issues define care ethics, but the majority of psychologists and philosophers emphasize the importance of not considering care ethics a “woman’s morality” (Sander-Staudt, n.d.). Yet, the experiences of women are a central discussion in care ethics, as women have historically occupied care-laden roles and expressed care-considerate morality. Regardless of whether one subscribes to care ethics, Gilligan’s advocacy for the voice of care was pivotal for the advancement of women in ethics and morality.
References
Photo: © Joyce Ravid
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2023, November 24). Carol Gilligan. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carol-Gilligan
Dunn, C. P. and Burton, B.K. (2023, June 8). ethics of care. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/ethics-of-care
Hock, R. R., PhD. (2012). Forty Studies that Changed Psychology. Pearson Higher Ed.
Kohlberg, L. (1981). Essays on Moral Development, Vol l. I: The Philosophy of Moral Development. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row
Kwan, J. (2023, May 5). Care ethics. Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/care-ethics/care-ethics.html
Medea, A. and Katz, M.B. (2021, June 23). Carol Gilligan. Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. Jewish Women's Archive. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/gilligan-carol
Muuss R. E. (1988). Carol Gilligan's theory of sex differences in the development of moral reasoning during adolescence. Adolescence, 23(89), 229–243.
Sander-Staudt, M. (n.d.). Care Ethics | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/care ethics/#SH3a