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Nel Noddings' Caring : a critical analysis
Abstract
In this thesis I will provide a critique of the positive contributions and limitations of Nel Noddings' ethics of caring. My thesis is that although the ethics of caring approach has an important contribution to make in ethics, in Noddings' version it is limited by its inability to account for the possibility of moral relations with strangers. Noddings' ethics of caring, I shall suggest, suffers, not only from an inability to account for ethics in the public domain, but also from an unavoidable potential for a reduction to caring for only one other "cared-for". That it does not appear to be vulnerable to the latter problem in Noddings' explication is because, I suggest, she is relying implicitly on an abstracted though still personal "ethical ideal". An exposition of this ethical ideal will suggest how caring can be legitimately enlarged, not only to a larger private domain, but also to the public, or non-intimate, domain to produce a more adequate ethics. Nodding's ethics of caring is described in her book "Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education." I give a summary of this book in Chapter One, relying heavily on quotations from Noddings herself. In the following two chapters I focus on criticisms of Noddings' ethics. They tend to fall into two main groups: criticisms about her claim that her ethics is an alternative to mainstream ethics while lacking any universalization component; and, secondly, the inability of her ethics to account for ethical relations with the non-intimate, i.e. in the public domain. In Chapter Four I focus on a criticism, not discussed in the literature to date, that there is an inherent risk of shrinkage to the dyad in her ethics. By closer examination of the ethical ideal I show how Noddings' ethics of caring can be enlarged into the public domain. In Chapter Five I describe a moral dilemma which demonstrate how the use of this new ethical ideal produces a more adequate ethics of caring. Finally, in Chapter Six, I contrast the roots of Noddings' ethics with mainstream ethics to emphasize the radical departure of Noddings' ethics from mainstream ethics, and I mention briefly the important problem of autonomy of the caring agent which is not addressed by Noddings.
... The findings of research on care in education have been subject to much critique (see e.g. Hoagland, 1990;Sowerby, 1993). For instance, Noddings' works have been appraised as universalising the nature of care, reproducing dominant western notions and marginalising the perspectives of others (strangers). ...
This study examines the care work of teachers employed at two schools in situations of severe deprivation. At the teachers’ places of employment, basic amenities and complementary support structures for sustaining students’ psychosocial, economic and emotional needs were absent. The focus of the article is twofold: firstly, to fathom the reasons why teachers voluntarily expressed care for impoverished students by way of providing them with food, money and counselling; and secondly, to determine the outcomes of caring on their (the teachers’) well-being. The data was generated through narrative inquiry. The narratives made visible four key influences that motivated the teachers to provide students with pastoral and academic care, namely teachers’ early life experiences, religious beliefs, students’ living conditions, and beliefs about the importance of education. The study revealed that the pastoral care and academic work of teachers in deprived schools is arduous, extensive and protracted and comes at financial and emotional cost to the teachers who chose to care. A Derridian reading of the findings suggests that pastoral care is a complex phenomenon, comprising a combination of hazards and benefits for carers that are paradoxical, ambivalent and inseparable in nature.
In this opening chapter, we draw on our readings to propose a working definition of ‘care’ to underpin the remainder of the book. We examine the providence of ideas relating to care, relying predominantly on the extant feminist literature that has explicitly attended to care in various forms including care ethics, moral education, emotional labour, and embodied care. We take an ecological approach to our interpretation, examining care from the micro (individual, personal), to the meso (institutional), to the macro (political, societal), and to the chronological (temporal) lenses. Through our engagement with this literature, we also ask questions about perceived silences, considering how normative frameworks regarding care may act to exclude certain experiences and values. We conclude by establishing key tenets of care for our discussion of higher education as: relational, intentional, and (somewhat) radical, and foreshadowing how these elements will be considered throughout the remainder of the book.
The Christian Creeds outline the central beliefs of Christianity, providing a universal statement of faith for Christians everywhere. This is an account of one perspective on the Creeds, which begins in a narrow Christian community, moves through isolation and solitude, and ends at the edges of a new community; a journey which edges towards the human goal of self-acceptance and understanding. The doctrines are often perceived as fact, but are there grounds for a more nuanced approach? Theologically, some insiders have developed new approaches to Christianity, while traditional Church theology maintains a stubborn outward attitude of non-compromise. Others who have attempted to develop a more existential approach have been often vilified and disowned by the Church. But is there a third way? One which encompasses neither theological technicality nor angry emotional rejection, but a gradual dawning, personal realisation that we are all moving from one type of community to another, and that the answers lie in doubt rather than certainty. This paper analyses internal and external dialogues the author has experienced, when moving from the confines of a small Evangelical Christian Church community, through solitude, to the tentative edges of a new multi-vocal community. Starting with an analysis of Fowler’s methodology as a tool to evaluate the faith narrative, the author will examine the multiplicity of voices that have informed her journey. She will stop on the way to challenge and encourage the young adult who has become an outsider, to acknowledge the voices of dissenters, to accept a different form of spiritual friendship, and to encounter an evolving community which accepts new voices of gender, doubt and radical interpretation. Finally, she will visit a new creed and ask whether, in the famous words of T. S. Eliot, ‘... the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time’.
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