Care and responsibility: from Hans Jonas to Carol Gilligan

Abstract

The objective of this work is to place the ethics of care in the context of the ethics of responsibility. For this we analyze the orientation towards care in the ethics of responsibility, showing the transition from a limited responsibility for the consequentialist calculation in political activity, to an integral responsibility required by the preservation of nature in the face of the challenges of science and technique. We interpret the contribution of Carol Gilligan in terms of «provocation» to contemporary ethics so that care is not only a sentimental or affective category but a category with which reflexively reconstruct social justice. This interpretation avoids that care orientation be reduced to an introduction of gender in the ethics of justice and underestimates the role of the foundation to the detriment of activism. This strengthening the care of responsibility is fruitful if we read Gilligan from Hans Jonas. Thus a substantive and integral responsibility is constructed that raises the «voice» and becomes a cry to break with carelessness, indifference and insensitivity.