Home / Political objections / Ethics of care
"Care applies to close relationships, not to unknown animals."
Ethics of care: the principle
Respond to the needs of the vulnerable and the dependent with attention and responsibility.
Why excluding animals contradicts the principle
- Domesticated animals are, by definition, dependent on us: we made them that way.
- The feminist care tradition has already applied the concept to animals, as Josephine Donovan and Carol J. Adams show.
- Care is not limited to those we know by name: it also guides what we do to those affected by our choices.
The strongest counter-reply
The most serious version says care depends on a relationship, and we have no relationship with the chicken at the supermarket.
The answer
Buying the chicken is a relationship: it is the choice that orders its life and death (K2). An ethics of care that ignores those who depend on our choices loses its own foundation.