The Care Principle

I just finished reading Wolff's Introduction to Political Philosophy and am pretty pleased. It would have been useful during my intro theory class at Harvard. Of particular interest to me were the weaknesses of traditional consent theories (tacit or otherwise), and the last chapter which focused on feminist attacks on liberal individualism. In particular, Wolff references Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice, which though I've yet to read, appears to have a facially interesting look at the distinct approaches to moral theory by men and women. From what I gather the basic distinction is between the male emphasis on abstract rights and the female emphasis on caring and responsibility.

I'll have to read it to give a proper evaluation, but from my own anecdotal experiences this seems pretty insightful. I have noticed in law school that the male students tend to focus immediately on more abstract underlying principles, whereas female students are more likely to be interested in the particular facts of a case. This is obviously a over-simplified generalization. It also means neither that men can't care about the facts nor that women can't understand the abstractions. I just see a difference in what tends to be the first priority.