Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education

Introduction

Nel Noddings, who taught philosophy of education at Stanford, published the book in 1984. She grounds ethics in the caring relation between the “one-caring” and the “cared-for”: caring involves engrossment, an attentive receptivity to the other’s reality, and a shift of motivation towards the other’s projects, and it is completed only when the cared-for responds. Obligation arises not from universal principles but from the memory of being cared for and the wish to remain a caring person, so it binds most strongly towards those close to us. The final chapters propose a moral education based on modelling, dialogue, practice and confirmation. Critics objected to the narrow circle of obligation and to the word “feminine”; the second edition (2013) is subtitled “A Relational Approach”.

Connections

Builds on

• In a Different Voice1982 · Carol Gilligan

Taken up in

• The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global2006 · Virginia Held