Earlier this year a new book about care ethics became available: ‘The Core of Care Ethics’ by Stephanie Collins. 

Although the ethical and political theory of care ethics has flourished in recent decades, we still remain without a succinct statement of its core normative commitment. This study aims to remedy that by dissecting the existing care ethics literature and arriving at four key claims that constitute the most defensible reconstruction of that literature. It sums up those four key claims in a principle. In slogan form, the principle proposed is ‘dependency relationships generate responsibilities.’ This principle is subjected to a novel and detailed analysis and is then used to unify, specify, and justify the four key claims of care ethics, as those claims apply to both individuals and groups, in a way that retains care ethics’ intuitive appeal and phenomenological and feminist insights.

Joan C. Tronto from the University of Minnesota, USA and author of ‘Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care’ says about this book: ‘Are care ethics a moral theory? Stephanie Collins offers this synthesis to demonstrate its coherence: ‘dependency relationships generate responsibilities.’ After Collins’ reformulation, moral philosophers no longer can ignore care ethics. It is also essential reading for supporters of care ethics. This is a smart and indispensable book.’

The author Stephanie Collins is a lecturer in Political Theory at the School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester in the UK. Her research is orientated around feminist, collective, and global ethics. Her work has appeared in such places as The Australasian Journal of Philosophy and Ethical Theory and Moral Practice.

S. Collins (2015). The Core of Care Ethics. London: Palgrave Macmillan Publishers

The book is available through the publisher’s website.