Care for Oneself and Care for Others in Moral Virtues: Surpassing the Dilemma

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze some aspects of the tension between ‘care for oneself’ and ‘care for others’ from an aretological approach to morality. A traditional perspective—based on a metaphysical foundation—may conceive virtue ethics as centered on the affirmation and realization of the self. Conversely, an ethics of care will tend to have an ethical perspective centered on the other. However, a virtue theory centered on a “relational self” that reconfigures its spectrum by considering care as a virtue among other virtues (justice, temperance, courage, etc.) will allow us to overcome the antinomy of self and other centredness and render the opposition between these ethical proposals obsolete. The traditional principle of unity and mutual implication of virtues is reinforced if we see virtues as multiple expressions of care and care as a virtue that implies the whole aretological spectrum. From these assumptions, a new perspective of “moral perfectionism” emerges.