Feminist Ethics: Ethics in a Different Voice

Abstract

Ethics is the philosophical study of morality. As Sterba (1998, p. 1) notes there are a number of ethical questions to which philosophers have constantly returned including what is the nature of morality, what are its requirements and justification and what challenges can be made to different systems of morality? These are clearly ancient questions and a consideration of them underscores the way in which ethics is prior to politics and the law — ultimately our systems of governance and legislation rest on our beliefs about how people ought to treat one another, in other words our systems of morality. In this chapter I concentrate on describing the main ethical theories prevalent in Western philosophy and feminist critiques of them. This discussion is followed by an extended consideration of the feminist ‘ethics of care’ as a potential alternative. Coupled with the discussion of Chapter 2, this prepares the theoretical armoury for the discussion of computer ethics which follows in Chapter 4.