Public Ethics of Care—A General Public Ethics

Abstract

The discussion on how the ethics of care can be made political has increasingly expanded its scope from welfare politics and administration, to global processes such as migration. Notwithstanding this expansion, most studies on the ethics of care in this field remain in policy areas that we already consider being care-oriented, leaving non-care areas beyond the scope of investigation. In addition, there is seldom any concern of how ethics of care concerns in policy may be implemented. I argue that the concept of public ethics may serve as a vehicle for promoting care ethical concerns in practice. I develop the concept of public ethics of care (PEC), intended as a general public ethics, thereby expanding the scope of the ethics of care towards policy areas hitherto not considered care-oriented, such as law enforcement policy, prison management, as well as housing, infrastructure and environmental policies. I outline the argument theoretically and demonstrate how PEC may reshape concerns in practice.

Keywords:

• ethics of care
• public ethics
• public policy
• implementation
• responsibility