At this point, Gilligan (2023, pp. 109-110) seems to be turning in part to her study of the young women who speak with two voices:
“I know that if you want to hear the under-voice—the human voice that goes undercover—you may have to question the cover voice:
If it’s good to be empathic with people and responsive to people’s needs and concerns, why is it “selfish” to respond to yourself?
Why is that the ultimate nightmare [her in the arms of another man]?
Is that true?
Do you believe that?
Do you really feel that way?
As an ethics of relationship, care ethics is a guide to knowing others and oneself. It is a guide to listening. Its wisdom is a psychological wisdom: notice what happens when you replace judgment with curiosity.”
Carol Gilligan (2023, p. 110) directly acknowledges her shift in perspective.
“From the vantage point of the present, then, it has become possible for me to clarify and articulate what couldn’t quite be seen or said at the time when my work was first published: that the “different voice” (the voice of care ethics), although initially heard as a “feminine” voice, is in fact a human voice, that the voice it differs from is a patriarchal voice (listen for the tell-tale gender binaries and hierarchies), and that where patriarchy is in force and enforced, the human voice is a voice of resistance, and care ethics is an ethics of liberation.
With this theoretical clarification, it becomes evident why In a Different Voice continues to resonate strongly with people’s experience and, perhaps more crucially, why the different voice is a voice for the twenty-first century.”
Rarely, do we witness this level of openness and candor offered by someone like Carol Gilligan who has been professionally successful. And it is in this final passage that we may find an important message regarding how we can remain engaged in meaningful relationships with other people while disagreeing with them regarding important perspectives and practices. It is in the abandonment of patriarchy (Eisler’s sword) that we are able to listen to the divergent views of another person. It is with an ethic of care that we listen deeply to the voice of people with whom we are relating—even when they disrupt our view of reality.
Conclusions
As Carol Gillian notes, it is a matter of remaining vigilant regarding our own biases—and we might become most aware of these distortions in our relationship with other people who disagree with us. Furthermore, it is when we embrace an ethics of care that we are most like to sustain this relationship of differences in a manner that preserves the dignity of both parties. Carol Gilligan has taught us about this ethics of care not only in her own writings but also in her sustained relationship of care with her mentor, Lawrence Kohlberg.
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