Samenvatting

This article considers Christopher D. Marshall’s proposal to draw a connection between the ethics of care and restorative justice. The ethics of care tradition is critical of the modern liberal interpretation of morality as a rational endeavor based on universal principles. The article attempts to spell out the ethical and political implications of adopting this fundamental viewpoint in the context of restorative justice. On the ethical level, the ethics of care may remind the tradition of restorative justice of its essential reliance on the concrete moral practices and competences of people that precede any conceptualized normative ethics. On the political level, an ethics of care approach to restorative justice seems to lead to a certain deadlock in that it fails (and refuses) to offer a rational justification of restorative justice practices. On a closer look, the ethics of care can provide such a justification, be it a ‘communitarian’ one.