Care ethicist Joan Tronto shared sad news on the International Care Ethics Forum. One of the eldest and most famous participants, Virginia Held, has passed away at the age of 96 on May 26, 2026.
Professor Virginia Held (October 28, 1929–May 26, 2026) was Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Women’s and Gender Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and Hunter College, where she had been on the faculty since 1965. She earned her PhD from Columbia University. She served as president of the Eastern Division of APA (American Philosophical Association) in 2001–2002.
Care ethicist Carol Gilligan remembers her “In sadness, and with deep appreciation for all her contributions”, in her In Memoriam on the APA platform. She writes: “Virginia was one of the main innovators of the field of Care Ethics, and she made other important contributions to social and political philosophy, including work on social action, terrorism, and collective responsibility. She was an incredible supporter of women in philosophy.”
Among others, a person comments on the loss of Held (APA, posted Thursday, June 4, 2026): “I took Virginia’s last course at the CUNY Graduate Center, somewhere around 2006. At the time, she was a great breath of fresh air at the GC–a renowned feminist moral and political philosopher in a program dominated by men who treated philosophy like a contest in domination. […] she showed me that I don’t need to fit the model of the philosopher that my other teachers so often represented. […] Our field has lost a giant.”
Together with other feminist pioneers, Held founded and developed care ethics as a distinct moral and political framework. They offered an alternative to traditional, justice-based theories. Into advanced age Held delved deep into the relationship between care and justice. She was profoundly disturbed by the repression of the vital act of caring and the neglect of the vulnerable in society. Care is the social foundation of society. She wanted to develop care ethics into a moral theory in which emotional life, performance, undergoing impressions (perceptions), creativity, and inter-relational bonds take center stage. Mothering, friendship, and family responsibilities constituted for her an important source of knowledge with regards to a caring society. [JvdK: paraphrasing from my dissertation, p. 130. Disquised suffering.]
On 22 October 2014, Held contributed to the seminar series Care practices: towards a re-casting of Ethics, organised by the University of Oxford. Her lecture was entitled: Care and justice in society.
In 2020, care ethicists Frans Vosman, Andries Baart and fellow Jaco Hoffman (Eds.) published a book that is highly important: The Ethics of Care – the State of the Art. This volume includes the (actualised) lectures that were held in 2014, and added are also some chapters of care ethicists. Held’s last direct contribution to care ethics is included in this book. In the chapter Care Ethics and the Social Contract, she explores a classical idea in political ethics, the concept of the social contract.
For a short impression of Held’s position in care ethics in 2012, see here
A interesting video interview with Held (2018, 8.45 mins.) you will find here
Main books and articles
Feminist Morality: Transforming Culture, Society and Politics, University of Chicago Press (1993).
The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. Oxford University Press (2006).
How Terrorism is Wrong: Morality and Political Violence. Oxford University Press (2010).
“Morality, Care and International Law”, in Ethics and Global Politics, online open access (2011).
“Care and justice, still”. (19-36). In: Engster, D. & Hamington, M. (Eds.). Care Ethics & Political Theory. Oxford University Press. (2015).
“Care ethics and the social contract”. (137-162). In: Vosman, F., Baart, A., Hoffman, J. (Eds.). Ethics of Care – The State of the Art. Peeters Publishers. (2020).