The Need For More Than Justice Analysis

In the article “The Need for More Than Justice”, Annette Baier discusses the justice and care perspective and explains why the justice perspective can be looked at as an inadequate moral theory. Baier differentiates perspectives from many philosophers, including the care perspective from Carol Gilligan, from her book In a Different Voice, and the justice perspective from both John Rawls, his work included A Theory of Justice, and Immanuel Kant, his work included Metaphysics of Morals.

Justice remains a social value that carries great importance; Rawls looks to justice as being the ‘first’ virtue of social institutes, this to Baier is a claim that should be challenged, saying that justice needs to be looked upon as a virtue, one among many,

This is not to say that women cannot choose only the justice perspective, it’s just unlikely, unless a mid-life crisis occurs; however, most women are naturally linked to the care perspective due to their motherly instincts. According to Baier, the best moral theory would be to unify both women and men, this in turn would mean harmonizing justice and care (Baier, p. 160). The origin of this moral development has two aims, the first being, aiming to achieve satisfaction from community/relations with others, and the second, aiming at independence or the equivalence of power, both are said to begin from infancy. An infant can experience “the evil of detachment or isolation from others whose love one needs, or the other evil of relative powerlessness and weakness” (Baier, p. 154). Conferring to Gilligan’s research, gender differences in personality can be traced back to early social development, “in particular to the effects of the child’s primary caretaker being or not being of the same gender as the child” (Baier, p. 154). The dominance of a

Influenced by Gilligan, Baier discusses three reasons as to why women shouldn’t be content to not purse their own personal values within the context of liberal morality, first would be its doubtful record, second would be its inattentiveness to relations of variation, and the third would be its inattentiveness to unchosen relations (Baier, p. 160). Gilligan reminds us that “individuality, it becomes defined by responses to dependence and to patterns of interconnexion, both chosen and unchosen” (Baier, p. 156). Meaning that this is not something that a person just gains/has and then is able to choose which relationships suit, instead it is something that must progress from sequences of dependencies and independencies, and what the person’s responses may be. Baier follows this up by saying that it’s not okay to just choose this version of morality as an optional addition, she shows us that the option of allowing people to agree to just the bare minimum, this includes only justice and rights, and allow whoever else wishes to continue advancing and humanizing the ideal of responsibility and care does not work (Baier, p. 157). Baier debunks this by stating that, firstly, responsibilities and care