Connected Lives

Connected Lives examines the account of human nature that is implicit in an ethics of care, a picture of human lives that emphasizes interdependency, embodiment, and social connectedness.

The book makes important connections to the picture of human life found in theorists of love such as St. Augustine and Emmanuel Levinas, and shows that when care theory is articulated clearly, it provides resources for thinking through some of the difficult moral issues we face in the contemporary world, issues such as assisted reproduction and the new genetic technologies.

Reviews

Care is a many splendored thing. Groenhout not only clarifies the concept of care as a remedial approach to contemporary ethics; she also provides a fresh, lucid, and convincing account of its philosophical underpinnings.

--Mary B. Mahowald, professor emerita, University of Chicago

Ruth Groenhout has written what may be the most significant development in the ethics of care since Gilligan's, Noddings', and Ruddick's pathbreaking books. Groenhout weaves together Christian, phenomenological, and feminist understandings of care into an ethics powerful enough to use in the public as well as personal realm. Indeed, Groenhout is the first thinker I have encountered who has successfully applied care theory to thorny social problems such as cloning. Connected Lives is a compelling account about why human beings cannot be full human persons unless they care about each other and the society they create for one another.

--Rosemarie Tong, Distinguished Professor in Health Care Ethics and director of the Center for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of Nort

Ruth Groenhout has made a great contribution to the ethics of care. She shows convincingly that thinkers sometimes taken to be anti-feminist?Augustine and Levinas?have actually supported ideas central to care theory. Carefully argued and clearly written, this is a splendid book.

--Nel Noddings, author of Happiness and Education