ABSTRACT

This chapter explores some philosophically important dimensions of the sort of reasoning to which Carol Gilligan has drawn our attention. It shows that considerations of care and relationships are more important in overall moral reasoning than Lawrence Kohlberg has yet appreciated through a sequence of hypothetical narratives. The chapter discusses the role of contextual detail in moral reasoning. This is the philosophically important core of the “contextual relativism” which has caught Gilligan’s attention. The chapter addresses the philosophical importance of the two features of moral reasoning which Gilligan’s gender-based studies: care and contextual detail. Gilligan’s claims about the differences between men’s and women’s moral judgments have become highly controversial. Most of the controversy has centered on two claims: one that women tend to score lower than men when measured according to Kohlberg’s moral reasoning framework; and two, that Kohlberg’s framework is male-biased and fails to take into account the distinctly different moral orientation of women.