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Ethics of Care

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Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy

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Introduction

The ethics of care and its application to a wide variety of fields in recent decades have rapidly entered the debate in moral, political, and legal domains. Since its dawn, care ethics scholarship has served to unhinge from its foundations the ontological view of human being as self-determined and self-independent, along with the epistemologicalprospects of universalistic morality grounded upon deductive reasoning. An ethics of care takes connectedness to be the defining feature of the human condition and construes moral reasoning as relational rather than individual process. Although the ethics of care has roots solidly entrenched in moral psychology, later formulations of care as a political concept that is consistent with democratic engagement have decreed its expansion into a general moral and political theory, thus rendering the boundaries between traditional research disciplines somewhat outdated. The ethics of care turned into an interdisciplinary approach,...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Legal and Social Studies, University “G. D’Annunzio” of Chieti and Pescara, Pescara, Italy

    Alessandro Serpe

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  1. Alessandro Serpe
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Correspondence to Alessandro Serpe .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Regents Professor of the University System of Maryland and Director of the University of Baltimore Center for International and Comparative Law, University of Baltimore School of Law, Baltimore, USA

    Mortimer Sellers

  2. Professor for Legal and Social Philosophy, Department of Legal Theory, International and European Law, University of Salzburg, Austria, Churfurststrasse 1, 5020 Salzburg, Austria

    Stephan Kirste

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Philosophy, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Patricia Mindus Ph.D

  2. Charles III University, Madrid, Spain

    Triantafyllos Gkouvas

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Serpe, A. (2023). Ethics of Care. In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_61-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_61-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-94-007-6730-0

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