Joiner Flourishing Pathway Blog Fifteen - Ethics

If, after exploring liberalism, feminism, and the complex issues around motherhood, you find yourself in a confused or unsettled place, you’re not alone. These frameworks reveal just how flawed many of our social structures are—particularly in how they undervalue care, emotional connection, and human wellbeing. To move forward, we turn to ethics—not just as a philosophical pursuit, but as a practical tool for understanding how to live well. This brings us to JFP Principle 15: a fusion of psychological research and society’s ideological influences enables us to reject outdated moral theories in favour of a reworked ethics of care—what I call an ethic of social, emotional, and moral wellbeing.

This revised ethical framework provides a lens through which we can evaluate our lives and relationships holistically. It’s grounded in our interdependence and offers a human-centred response to the moral questions that traditional ethics often failed to answer.

Rethinking Traditional Moral Theories

Philosophers have long debated how best to live, yet consensus remains elusive. Three dominant theories—consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics—have guided this conversation, each offering insights but also limitations.

Consequentialism, especially as promoted by John Stuart Mill (1897), evaluates actions based on their outcomes. For Mill, a moral action is one that maximizes happiness and promotes the greater good. There is much to appreciate in his views, particularly his recognition of our interdependent nature. However, consequentialism raises difficult questions: what exactly is the "greater good"? Who gets to decide, and how far into the future should we evaluate consequences? These questions are not just theoretical—they become deeply problematic when dealing with issues that involve children, relationships, and emotional wellbeing, which often cannot be measured or predicted with certainty.

Deontology, often associated with Immanuel Kant, takes a very different approach. It argues that morality should be grounded in duty, not outcomes. According to Kant, actions are moral when they arise from a sense of obligation governed by reason alone (1785). Emotions, in this view, are seen as obstacles to moral clarity. The problem with this theory—aside from its dismissal of emotion—is that it assumes that rationality can be neatly separated from our lived, relational experiences. Historically, it also assumed that only men possessed the rational mind necessary for moral decision-making, while women, being emotional, were excluded from the moral sphere. Deontology promoted an abstract, rigid form of morality that doesn’t account for the real emotional and relational contexts in which moral decisions are made.

Virtue ethics, first articulated by Aristotle, shifts focus to the character of the moral person. Rather than emphasizing rules or outcomes, this theory holds that a good life comes from cultivating virtues such as honesty, courage, and kindness. While more holistic in tone, virtue ethics leaves unanswered a vital question: how do we become virtuous and what shapes our moral character? Something developmental psychology and care ethics tries to help clarify (Attfield, 2012). It assumes that people can develop moral traits without asking how environment, relationships, and early life experiences fundamentally influence our moral compass.

The Emergence of the Ethics of Care

These theories, though historically influential, fail to fully address the emotional and relational dimensions of human life. It wasn’t until the 1980s that a significant shift occurred. Feminist philosophers began to ask why the personal world—especially the world of caregiving and emotional labour—had been ignored in moral philosophy. Nel Noddings was among the first to articulate an ethics of care, arguing that dominant moral frameworks were shaped “in the language of the father”—detached, rule-based, and centred on justice—while the mother’s voice, focused on care and emotion, was missing (Noddings, 1984, p. 1).

Noddings offered a personal example: when her infant cried in the night, she not only felt obligated to respond—she wanted to. “The ‘I must’ is not a dutiful imperative but one that accompanies the ‘I want’” (Noddings, 1995). Her insight revealed something traditional ethics had long overlooked: the desire to care is deeply moral, and essential to human survival. Her motivation was not based on duty but on love—a powerful insight that turns traditional moral thinking on its head. In her view, morality begins not with abstract reasoning, but with emotional connection and care. This was a radical idea, and unsurprisingly, it was quickly dismissed by many in the philosophical mainstream for being too emotional, too personal, and too “feminine.”

Connection as Moral Foundation

Carol Gilligan built on Noddings’ work, showing how morality emerges through relationships, not in isolation. In contrast to liberal individualism, which celebrates autonomy and separation, Gilligan emphasised that human lives are shaped by connection. “The most basic questions about human living… are fundamental questions about human relations” (Gilligan, 1993, p. xiv).

Later, she argued that detachment—long seen as moral maturity— actually reflect moral injury, a concept supported by psychology and neuroscience. “Separation of the self from relationships and the splitting of thought from emotion signal injury or responses to trauma” (Gilligan, 2014, p. 89). Thus, Gilligan proposed that the real moral questions of life—how to live, what to do—are questions about relationships. Her work resonated strongly with emerging research in developmental psychology, which confirmed that connection, not separation, is foundational to healthy human development. Virginia Held further argued that emotions like empathy and compassion are not obstacles to morality but essential components of it (Held, 2006, p. 10).

Science Supports the Ethic of Care

Recent findings in neuroscience bolster the ethics of care. Neurobiologist Gerald Hüther describes empathy as a high-level cognitive function: “Empathy requires a tremendously refined level of perceiving and processing other people’s nonverbally expressed feelings” (Hüther, 2006, p. 114). This shows that moral sensitivity isn’t irrational—it’s an advanced human capacity.

Similarly, infant neuroscience demonstrates that we’re born ready to connect. When these emotional bonds are absent, children often develop insecure attachment patterns, which impair emotional and moral development (Narvaez, 2014). This shows that emotional suppression—long recommended by philosophers—actually narrows our moral and social potential.

A New Ethical Framework: Social, Emotional, and Moral Wellbeing

Integrating this scientific insight with feminist ethics reveals a compelling answer to philosophy’s oldest question: what makes a good life? A flourishing life is one where people feel emotionally secure, can regulate their feelings, and enjoy meaningful relationships. These qualities support not just individual happiness but also social and moral functioning.

This reworked ethics of care—what I now call an ethic of social, emotional, and moral wellbeing—provides a grounded, practical moral theory. It shifts our focus from rigid rules or abstract ideals to the quality of our relationships and emotional health. In doing so, it offers tools for re-evaluating childrearing, work-life balance, and societal priorities. Love, in this framework, is not a soft value—it’s a moral cornerstone.

What Comes Next

The next blog, JFP Blog 16, will explore how a re-evaluation of autonomy fits into this relational framework. Later blogs will offer practical suggestions for how we can use this ethic to guide decision-making in everyday life and family decision-making.

Bibliography

Attfield, R 2012, Ethics: An Overview, Continuum, London.

Gilligan, C 1993, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development Harvard University, Cambridge, Masachusetts 

—— 2014, 'Moral Injury and the Ethic of Care: Reframing the Conversation about Differences', Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 45, no. 1, p. 89.

Held, V 2006, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global, Oxford University Press, New York.

Hüther, G 2006, The compassionate brain : how empathy creates intelligence, Trumpeter, Boston. 

Kant, I 1785, The moral law; or Kant's Groundwork of the metaphysic of morals H. J. Panton (translator), Taylor & Francis, 2008, London.

Mill, JS 1897, Utilitarianism, 13th edn, Longmans, Green, London.

Narvaez, D 2014, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture, and Wisdom, W W Norton & Company, New York.

Noddings, N 1984, Caring: a feminine approach to ethics & moral education, University of California Press, Berkeley.

—— 1995, 'Caring', in V Held (ed.), Justice and Care: Essential Readings in Feminist Ethics, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, pp. 7-30.