The ethics of care, often known as care ethics, is a philosophical stance on morality and decision-making that takes a relational and context-bound perspective. The ethics of care is founded on the uniqueness of relationships. Therefore, a care ethicist would save the mother in the case of drowning.
Essentially, this ideal applies to natural caring, which is caring founded on propensity and love for individuals near the one caring. Care ethicists do not have the ability or the responsibility to care for everyone. Nonetheless, they must be ready to care for particular others in all instances.
In the second scenario, a care ethicist would say that saving the three people may be the right thing in this circumstance. Choosing to save strangers calls for ethical caring or a sense of “I must” reaction to an individual’s plight. Even in the case of total strangers with whom the one caring has no relationship, memories of natural care surface, prompting the sensation to act characteristically to the situation.
However, this duty to strangers is restricted within the ethics of care, and some requirements must be met for it to have force. Essentially, the relationship must exist and have the potential to develop into a mutually caring one. In this case, care ethicists can evaluate the mother’s and the strangers’ needs before they can offer care. The one-caring accepts the cared-for without judgment within this philosophy.
Nonetheless, when selecting how to react, the theorist uses a problem-solving approach to preserve the specific context and relation and avoid falling into Kantian and utilitarian’s impersonal thinking. For instance, if the three strangers are children, care ethicists would argue that they need immediate help. Therefore, they would advise that saving the strangers is the right action. Generally, there is a crucial function of what it implies to engage, which is a determining compulsion to act.