Care and moral understanding › Jake and Amy on the Heinz dilemma

Gilligan's comparison of Jake and Amy gives the interpretive issue a specific form. Both are eleven in the discussion. Jake understands the dilemma as a conflict in which a human life has priority over property. He can resolve the problem by ordering the claims. Gilligan presents Amy as attending to the relationships among the people involved and to what might happen after the immediate decision.

Amy considers the possibility that Heinz could be imprisoned and unable to help his wife. She looks for a resolution through communication rather than accepting theft or death as the only alternatives. For Gilligan, this response reveals a conception of the dilemma as a problem of sustaining connection and preventing harm. The response has a structure that can be missed if the interviewer expects a different kind of resolution.

The example does not demonstrate that Amy's proposed solution would work. The druggist might refuse to cooperate. There might be too little time. Careful attention to relationships can disclose a possibility without establishing that the possibility is available in the case. We should distinguish the moral significance of looking for another response from the practical adequacy of the response eventually proposed.

The same caution applies to Jake. Giving priority to life does not by itself settle every question about what Heinz should do next or how the people involved should be treated. A clear principle can resolve one dimension of a problem while leaving others open. Recognizing what each response notices allows us to assess both without reducing one child to a failure to resemble the other.

Gilligan uses this comparison to challenge an interpretation of moral competence. Two interview responses cannot establish the distribution of moral orientations across all girls and boys. They can nevertheless expose a question about the categories through which an assessment interprets a response. A case can motivate an inquiry without serving as proof of its broadest conclusion.