Beyond the Opposition between the Ethics of Justice and Care

Abstract

Within the framework of the evolutionary theory of moral development, Carol Gilligan formulates an ethics of care that broadens and complements Lawrence Kohlberg’s ethics of justice. Her proposal arises from the recognition of the androcentric bias inherent in Kohlberg’s model, which was constructed exclusively from male samples. In response to this abstract universalism, Gilligan restores the silenced voices and advances a relational conception of moral judgment in which empathy, responsibility, and interdependence are acknowledged as essential ethical foundations. In the later stage of her thought, expressed in In a Human Voice, she moves beyond the opposition between justice and care to conceive them as complementary dimensions of a unified moral rationality. This study therefore argues that the ethics of compassion does not replace justice but rather expands it, articulating normative impartiality with sensitivity to human vulnerability. Thus, morality is redefined as a dialogical process in which reason and affectivity converge in the construction of a truly human ethics.