Content area
Full Text
From its inception in the early 1980s (Gilligan 1982, Noddings 1984), interest in care ethics has grown rapidly (Held 2006, Noddings 2002, Slote 2OO7). The language of care ethics has arisen largely from women's experience, but that is not to say that it is inaccessible to men. It does suggest, however, some beneficial changes in male experience and education, just as women's participation in mathematics - long almost exclusively a male domain - has encouraged changes in female experience. To understand and appreciate care ethics, one must become acquainted with the basic ideas and language. First, care ethics is a relational ethic.
The Caring Relation
As a relational ethic, care ethics begins its thinking - as life itself begins - in relation. We do not start with the individual, adult moral agent. Right from the start, we are concerned with the caring relation - from the briefest encounters to long-term associations, and we describe the roles of both carer and cared-for in establishing and maintaining that relation.
In an encounter, the carer is attentive; she or he listens, observes, and is receptive to the expressed needs of the cared-for. (For convenience, in what follows, I will refer to the carer as "she," the cared-for as "he"). Typically, on detecting an expressed need, the carer "feels with" the cared-for and experiences motivational displacement; that is, her motive energy is directed (temporarily) away from her own projects and towards those of the cared-for. Then she must think what to do. She must respond. She responds positively to the need if she has the resources to do so and if doing so will not hurt others in the web of care. If a positive response might hurt others, she must still try to find a way to respond so that caring relation can be preserved even though the need has been denied. All parents and professionals in the helping professions understand the challenge implied here.
The contribution of the caredfor is simple but essential. He responds in a way that shows that the caring has been received, recognized. When an infant stops crying and smiles in response to his mother's caress, when a student energetically pursues a topic after the educator's encouragement, when a patient breathes a sigh...