The following appeared in Volume 98, Number 2 (Spring, 1999) of the APA Newsletters

The main aim of Held’s paper was to show how feminist ethical theorizing has provided an important challenge to what she called the "dominant moral tradition," exemplified by Kantian and utilitarian ethics. While Held was careful to show that we cannot simply equate care ethics with feminist ethics, she claimed that we must not ignore the role that "care" has played and still plays in feminist critique of the (male) bias of the dominant moral tradition. Held claimed that the experience of women caring for others has been excluded from this tradition, whereas care ethics accords value to such experiences. Held identified the three particular ways in which the ethics of care, by giving value to the experience of women, presents a challenge to the dominant moral tradition. First, the ethics of care holds that actual relationships can be central to morality, thus challenging the impartial and universalistic view of others characteristic of the dominant moral tradition. Second, in contrast to the rationalism of the dominant tradition, the emotions are allowed to be of value to morality in the ethics of care. Finally, the ethics of care offers an alternative conception of persons: we are connected to others, rather than isolated individuals. Yet, as Held stated, while there has been extensive exploration of the differences between the ethics of care and Kantian, utilitarian, and contractualist theorizing, as well as of the possibilities of meshing the different ways of thinking, less work has been done to examine the distinctions between the ethics of care and virtue ethics. This is, as Held pointed out, perhaps unsurprising, since virtue ethics shares much with the ethics of care. Yet, she argued, it would be a mistake to think that care ethics is to be considered a form of virtue ethics, or that it could be subsumed into virtue ethics, as there are some pivotal distinctions (which she outlined) between the two ethics. First, Held noted that virtue ethics has paid little attention to the actual practice of care. Next, she claimed that in virtue theory the virtues are linked to tradition or traditional communities, while an ethics of care, as a feminist ethic, is (justifiably) suspicious of tradition and traditional communities as they are typically patriarchal. Finally, Held argued that while in virtue ethics the virtues are seen as dispositions, care ethics focuses on caring relations, and as such they cannot be reduced to the status of one disposition among a person’s bag of virtues. Given this gender bias (or potential for such bias) in non-feminist moral philosophy, Held concluded that the ethics of care must be maintained and developed as distinct not only from the dominant moral tradition, but also from virtue ethics in both its traditional and its contemporary versions.

Darwall began by addressing the recent history of the division of metaethics from normative ethical theory, and stated that he would argue instead that the two must be integrated, for (as he wanted to show) normative ethics by its very nature is a part of the subject matter of philosophical study. Darwall explained that while normative ethics is concerned with how, for instance, we should act, beyond this fundamental agreement there is little agreement as to what exactly we should be doing (or not, as the case may be). Ultimately, he claimed, disagreement in normative ethics will tend to move beyond a clash of these moral judgments to more deep-rooted disagreements about the nature of morality itself. This, Darwall demonstrated, follows whether the original disagreement is over the application of a consequentialist theory, or whether the question is, and this was of greater interest to Darwall, what a virtue theory can tell us about the sort of people we should be. In order to answer the latter question, Darwall argued, we shall find ourselves needing to know how we are to think of the virtues. Thus a satisfactory answer to this question requires metaethical discussion. Darwall stated that this relationship between normative ethics and metaethics can be productive, and he cited the examples of Kant, Mill, and Nietzsche, to show how there is not only an integration between their normative ethical thought and their metaethical thought, but how the latter grounds and develops the former. Darwall’s main argument for an integrated philosophical ethics is as it stands neither feminist, nor non-feminist (although it could be claimed that a desire for a unitary ethics is masculinist). Yet his argument does connect to recent work in feminist ethics in an important and interesting way. Darwall argued that if we wish to develop a virtue-based ethics we must integrate and answer metaethical questions about the nature and normativity of human good; questions that cannot be answered without a consideration of a central insight offered by feminist ethics about the relation of care to human welfare or good. For, as Darwall explained, someone’s welfare is normative, not for that person as an agent, but for the desires of those who care for her for her own sake. Darwall’s recognition of this insight demonstrates the impact that a feminist ethics of care has had on more "mainstream" ethical theorizing, and indeed, in introducing his paper he explicitly acknowledged what he saw as the debt of contemporary philosophy to feminist ethics.

While the focus of Slote’s paper was virtue ethics, he began by pointing out that we should not assume that a virtue ethical theory need be neo-Aristotelian. He was instead offering a form of virtue ethics rooted in the moral sentimentalism of Hutcheson, with its moral ideal drawn from care ethics. Slote claimed that Hutcheson produced a "hybrid" theory in that motives were assessed morally in themselves, but actions were assessed morally in terms of their consequences for overall human happiness. While Utilitarianism results if we evaluate motives in the same way as actions, Slote argued that, given recent developments in virtue theory, an alternative direction is possible. We can follow Hutcheson in holding that universal benevolence is the best of motives, but then rather than evaluate actions in terms of consequences for human happiness, we can instead evaluate them in terms of their underlying motivations for universal benevolence. This then results, Slote claimed, in a theory that has as its basis the notion that universal benevolence is the best of motives, with the rightness or goodness of actions being evaluated in terms of the level to which they contain this motive. Thus this theory (which Slote called "morality as universal benevolence") will be a virtue ethics because of the way that the inner life (the motive for the act) will be used to evaluate the act itself. However, as Slote noted, the problem with all three of these theories is that our concern for the welfare of others is always framed in impersonal and aggregative terms. Slote claimed that this framing is not always ideal. If we look at the way we love others (our children, for example) we can see that our concern for their welfare is not aggregative, but rather something closer to a balancing between them and their (often competing) needs. If we hold that love is morally valuable, and we hold that the loving parent who acts in this way is behaving in an appropriate and praiseworthy manner, then we will want to reject any claims that an aggregative approach to universal benevolence is always morally ideal. Yet Slote also noted that while we may accept in this particular case the value of the personal over the aggregative, he suggested that in the case of unknown others, a general, possibly aggregative, humanitarian concern for others would be more ideal. Slote claimed that a moral ideal which is both personal and general in this way can be seen as growing out of the work of Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings on the ethic of care. Indeed Slote claimed that an ethic of care in order to be genuine and self-sufficient must encompass both types of caring. Because caring, on Slote’s view, is an inner motivational state, he concluded that it would seem clear that this version of the ethic of care is a form of sentimentalist virtue ethics; one that finds its roots in Hutcheson’s moral sentimentalism.