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The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. By Virginia Held. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. viii + 211.
Virginia Held's latest work, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global, is another important contribution to the ongoing reconstruction and strengthening of care ethics in the face of continuous criticism, especially from liberal Kantian theorists in both the feminist and non-feminist communities. In Held's book what is of interest to the community of Asian and comparative philosophy is, first, that the struggle of feminist theories in comparison with established canons is reflective of the struggle of Asian and comparative philosophy in finding ways to fit into the mainstream philosophical (Western) discourse; and, second, that Held's advocacy of care ethics is reminiscent of the Confucian ren. However, Held is not particularly aware of the first resemblance and rather boldly dismisses the second in her brief reflection on the merits of Confucianism (pp. 21-22). Despite shortcomings in her attempt to extend the field of feminist discourse beyond the canonic Western traditions, Held's latest reconstruction of care ethics clears new ground for a fruitful dialogue between the feminist and non-feminist communities concerning the ideal way of being in the world, which takes caring relations at home as paradigmatic of one's moral thinking. Although it takes private, unchosen relations as its starting point, Held's care ethics extends far beyond the domestic into the political and the global, as a way of reorienting humanity away from the abstract neutrality of liberal universalism toward a concrete, caring way of being in the world of co-dependent relations.
Held divides the book into two sections: "Care and Moral Theory" and "Care and Society." The first section aims at clarifying care ethics as a moral theory-its theoretical foundation and its relation to other moral theories, such as liberalism, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics, and other religious/intellectual traditions, including Confucianism. Tracing the genealogical roots of care ethics back to Sarah Ruddick's "Maternal Thinking" in 1980, Held insists on retaining the centrality of women's caring experiences in the formation of a care ethics in order to set it apart from what she calls the "non-feminist" form of care ethics. Confucianism, according to Held, is one of the unacceptable candidates calling itself care ethics: "A traditional Confucian...