With this book Daniel Engster greatly advances arguments for a political theory based on care. He reminds citizens of what they obviously know but to which they often pay little attention: “we all depend on the care of others to survive and achieve basic social functioning” (p. 11). From this he derives a duty to care and argues that the central concern of a theory of justice should be to ensure adequate care for all.

Engster is generous in acknowledging his debt to feminist theorists developing the ethics of care. He thinks that care theory “offers a new theory of justice that can guide and justify the development of a new form of welfare state organized around the fundamental goal of supporting and accommodating caring practices” (p. 242). He thinks that other care theorists have not yet offered satisfactory accounts of the institutions and policies a caring society would need to have, and his book aims to supply such accounts.

With chapters on domestic politics, economic justice, international relations, and culture, Engster explores the institutions that could enable care for all who need it and the sorts of policies a caring government would pursue. Many of his suggestions go further than other discussions of care theory to outline specific institutional forms that caring should take and the principles by which they should be guided. For instance, he discusses in some detail the policies that could encourage better parental care and the development of more caring children, such as subsidized family leaves from work, guaranteed access to quality child care, the ways in which government could encourage employers to offer more flexible hours and schedules for work, and an affirmative action program to enlist more men into care work and early education. He notes that many European countries already support such policies but that “political theory has lagged behind political practice in recognizing and justifying these policies” (pp. 15, 241).

Engster's focus is on ways in which government action should facilitate adequate care of the dependent being provided by individuals. In contrast with most liberal political theory, care theory, he maintains, “makes public support for parenting, education, health care, elder care, and the like the main substance of justice” (p. 8). He does not propose that government itself promote any particular conception of a good or humanly worthwhile life, but that it “should function primarily to provide all individuals the opportunity to satisfy their basic needs,” develop and sustain their innate capabilities, and live without unnecessary pain (p. 11). He repeatedly emphasizes that care theory would demand only adequate minimums of care; it would not recommend that government smother individuals with its visions of the best care possible.

We may have strong inclinations to care for those near and dear to us, but Engster argues for a universal obligation to care for everyone, including ourselves. His argument is based on Alan Gewirth's “dialectically necessary method” for arriving at our underlying moral commitments. Engster's adaptation of the argument is as follows: We all make claims on others to help us survive and develop, since no one can survive infancy without the care of other human beings. We further depend on the care of others to sustain the social network needed to function. Thus, we implicitly appeal to the general moral principle that capable individuals should care for others in need when they can, and in appealing to this principle “we may all be said to recognize it as valid” (p. 166). We are hypocritical and inconsistent if we refuse to act accordingly.

Government is the best means, Engster argues, to help us carry out the requirements of our duty to care for all, because only government can as effectively assure peace and security and a protected environment for everyone. Government can coordinate care, intervene if necessary, and compel all capable individuals to contribute their fair share to the care of the dependent (pp. 71–74).

The author makes a very important contribution to an understanding of what care theory would demand of government and why. His depiction of the ethics of care, however, is less satisfactory. There may be good reasons for care as a political theory to limit its concerns to the minimally adequate levels of care that would be required for all, but there are also good reasons to think that the ethics of care is much more than a political theory. We want suggestions for building caring relations in any number of contexts, as well as evaluations of the best possible care and how to approach it. There is thus a vast area of interest for the ethics of care above the minimum levels of adequacy he considers.

Also problematic are Engster's formulations of the concepts of care and justice. To the author, care is at the heart of justice, the most important part of a theory of justice. Those developing the ethics of care, however, have usually seen the two as conceptually distinct. It is unclear what is gained theoretically by his reconceptualizations.

One could use a traditional conception of justice as equality to which all persons have rights, realize that many views of equal rights to freedom have neglected enablements to act freely in favor of rights to be left alone, correct this, and conclude that all persons have rights to what they need to be effective agents. The latter would include being cared for when one is dependent, but the argument could be in terms of justice rather than care, as earlier arguments for welfare rights tended to be. This would miss much that has been brought out by the ethics of care, but attending to care does not require that the conceptual distinction between care and justice be lost.

With both care and justice, there is a distinction between values and practices that Engster seldom clarifies. There are practices of justice, such as legal enforcements and punishments, and there are practices of care, such as feeding infants and nursing the ill. Actual practices should usually involve both values, though one may predominate. At the conceptual level, however, there seem to be good reasons for recognizing the differences between the values of care and justice. Justice is associated with a cluster of further values such as equality, fairness, and desert. Care, in contrast, is associated with a different cluster, such as responsiveness to need, sensitivity, and trust.

Recognizing care and justice as distinct, we can well argue that societies ought to embody both. Care would demand that societies provide at least minimal levels of necessary care to all through governmental support, but it might further encourage better care through many social and personal efforts. Justice would demand the equality of women, even though care as Engster sees it might well not. It would oppose workplace discrimination on grounds of fairness for its own sake, in contrast with Engster's merely instrumental argument against it (pp. 141–42). It would protect the autonomy that care might neglect.

Engster's arguments that society ought to be more caring are admirable and compelling. We can also remember that it should better incorporate the freedom and equality called for by justice, and that persons should be more caring than they are required to be by their governments.