Abstract
What we owe one another as individuals and citizens, and what governments owe to us, has long been the subject of vigorous debate. This dissertation seeks to provide a novel intervention into that conversation by integrating the works of Judith Shklar with care ethics. In so doing, it explores the role of relationships, virtues and vices, injustice, the utility and danger of power, and liberal democracy in our quest to prevent and respond to suffering. Although we all recognize injustice around us and all require care, theorists often eschew focusing directly on these concerns, instead subsuming them within or curtailing them as outside other frameworks. This dissertation argues that integrating Shklar and care ethics provides a novel path to developing a theory of obligation that can serve as an alternative to more ideal theories, such as Rawls’ or Mill’s. However, its intent is not to provide such an alternative, but to open a discussion on what Shklar and care ethics, two often parochialized literatures, in concert have to say to the broader discipline.