ETHICS OF CARE AND EMOTIONS

Abstract

What unites the ethics of care theorists (since Gilligan’s In a Different Voice) is their enhancement of the affective dimension. However, their reference to the emotions remains generic. I propose to investigate this aspect further by asking: what emotions motivate care? I will affirm, first, the need to distinguish between the different emotions (such as love, compassion, or generosity) that motivate care in its various forms (private, social, global), in order to distinguish between the emancipatory and negative aspects of care; second, I will try to identify what the effectively ethical dimension of care is, by assuming the care towards the distant other (both in space and time), inspired by gratuitousness, as an exemplary case.