Reply to Ann Bradshaw

My original paper suggested that an ethics ofcare which failed to specify how, and about what, to care would be devoid of normative and descriptive content. Bradshaw's approach provides such a specification and is, therefore, not devoid ofsuch content. However, as all ethical approaches suggest something about the 'what' and 'how' of care, they are all 'ethics of care' in this broader sense. This reinforces rather than undermines my original conclusion. Furthermore, Bradshaw's 'ethics of care' has philosophical and historical problems which I outline. Introduction: an ethics of care? I should like to thank Ann Bradshaw for addressing herself to me in her article (1), which was far more wideranging than my own (2). Indeed she seems to have used my article as a springboard to wider issues but not really to have any substantive disagreement with me except, perhaps, over points on which I should have been clearer. In particular, I did not mean to suggest that 'care' was nothing more than 'self-concern' (3), nor that it was devoid of moral import (4). It is clear that care and its cognates are very commonly used as terms of moral approval and approbation, as when we call people and actions caring, careless and uncaring. What I did suggest was that such judgments are not based upon the absence or presence of care in itself. We do not deem someone to be caring simply because they care for or about something or someone. A caring person cares for the right things in the right way. It follows that any ethics which emphasises care itself, enjoining us to be caring or to do the caring thing will be devoid of content. I believe this to be a fault in much of the caring ethics literature. Bradshaw, in her comments on Noddings (5), seems to agree (6). Bradshaw suggests that caring conveys moral meaning because it is attached to a (religious) tradition which gives it meaning and