The ethics of care is a distinctive approach to moral theory that emphasizes the importance of responsibility, concern, and relationship over consequences (utilitarianism) or rules (deontologism). The concept of care is inherent to professions that care for individuals and this approach to ethics has therefore been a central part of professional ethical issues in both nursing and medical ethics, but in fact has much broader applications in relation to science and technology. "Due care" has for example, been a part of statements in engineering and has been used to include such typically technical activities as the maintenance and repair of an engineered system.

Origins and Development

As a moral theory the ethics of care originated during the 1970s and 1980s in association with challenges to the standard moral theories of utilitarianism and deontologism, primarily by women philosophers. The original work was Carol Gilligan's, conducted...