In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development

The deontological approach to ethics was developed by the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who argued that there are universal principles that all moral agents should adhere to, regardless of context. Gilligan believes that an emphasis on this approach to ethics has tended to devalue the more relational ethics favored by women.

The Heinz dilemma is the most well-known of Kohlberg’s fictional moral dilemmas through which he measures subjects’ stage of moral reasoning. The dilemma is that a man named Heinz has a wife who is dying. He has been assured by doctors that a pharmacist in his town has invented a drug that will cure his wife. The pharmacist, however, is charging 10 times what the drug costs him to make. Heinz has failed to raise enough money to purchase the drug for his wife, and the pharmacist refuses to give it to him at a discount. Heinz breaks into the pharmacist’s lab. The question that Kohlberg asked his research subjects to consider was: Should Heinz have broken into the lab to steal the drug? Why or why not?

Gilligan criticizes the Heinz dilemma for assuming that the final question of whether theft should occur or not insists on a justice framework that many women, in particular, do not employ in approaching moral dilemmas. Instead, Gilligan is interested in analyzing those responses that go “off track” in attempting to find a solution outside of theft.

In a Different Voice develops the theory of a feminist care ethic. This ethic of care differs from traditional approaches to ethics, such as Kant’s deontological ethics (see above), which attempt to quantify and thereby determine how to decrease suffering. In a deontological approach, the moral agent aims to be entirely rational, focusing on principles. A feminist ethics of care, however, values emotion and relations. A feminist care ethic does not attempt to detach the moral agent from their lived relations and contexts but instead posits that these are central to moral thinking.

An ethic of care is contrasted with an orientation toward justice by Gilligan. Neither approach is superior to the other; Gilligan in fact insists that these different orientations always work in coordination, through their tension.