Nel Noddings and Virginia Held Caring PDF

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April 23, 2019 Nel Noddings: Caring ● Gender essentialist thinking; The caring and the cared for; Consequentialist ● Introduction: Eros based on feeling and psychological relations, the responsiveness and receptiveness depending on how close they are to a person ○ Based on pure relation out of natural relationships and accepting of inclinations: One-carrying and the Cared for ○ Kantian realm inclination is the wrong way to do things ○ Principles lead to feelings of superiority, issues: rejected and shunned and not developed, being able to maintain a relationship instead ○ Cannot universalize relationships and one has the capacity to care ■ Focusses how one encounters the other ■ The uniqueness of the encounter ■ Universally accessible because these things are natural to us (to be caring beings) ○ Not everyone is cared for or cares the same ○ Moral education on caring and relationships ○ Objection: is it really natural when in the next few chapters she mentions getting an education from it. ● Section 1: Why Care about Caring?: proofs and mathematics and didn't really share the in-between of the process and she states that caring is the process ○ Fundamental Nature of Caring: What does it mean to care? Putting yourself in someone else's shoes and trying to understand them. Understanding them by being them and listening to them engrossed in their life ○ Involved in their perspective and just listen pg14 To be touched, to have aroused in me something that will disturb my own ethical reality, I must see the other's reality as a possibility for my own. ■ Too high of the demand for care? It is too high, difficult to listen to someone… Simultaneously right though because we can choose whether to actual listen back  ■ Selfish care: failed to engross ourselves so were are not really caring, it does allow for indirect care, action not required for care to be viable ● We cannot physically care sometimes and it causes more burden and that is more toxic so sometimes it is reasonable not to act on it  ○ A Relational Approach to Ethics and Moral Education: motivational displacement (feel and act in a certain way; displacement of our own care to care for others motivations) 

○ Problems Arising in the Analysis of One-Caring: engrossing is variable which is one level of engrossing with different levels and with different people ■ Engrossing is required for caring (one of the fundamental things in caring) and universal caring is impossible ■ Motivational displacement is another requirement for caring ■ How does this work with those I would not naturally care for? Receptivity and be ready for an encounter to care for others which are also seen in Kant but for the sake of the other person having dignity but for her it is more because of their ability for caring and human relation ■ One-caring  is involved with commitment and burden and motivationally displaced… The cared for needs to be receptive to all this and confirming and acknowledging they are being cared for (disposable)  ● Both responsible for the engrossment and understanding of each other ○ Aesthetical Caring, Caring and Acting, Ethics and Caring: Universal caring not really real ● Section 2: The One-Caring: the dangers of reinforcements ○ Receiving: good it will create in the relationship itself ■ Disagreeing with the care ethic then pg34 is the most important part of this because of how she truly believes that this is NATURAL? Is it really though???? ● People obviously want more of a balance ■ Accusing people of being mean: not rational ○ Thinking and Feeling: Turning Points: concrete relationships and that concrete moment (of the Abstract Principle) ■ Encounter the other, and use feeling and reasoning (enhance the caring, understand, and acknowledge one’s needs and wants; guidance)  ■ Thinking of engaging during an encounter leading to feeling and care ● The danger in encountering: feeling the guilt of leading to rejection; the process of caring for someone and start treating problems like abstract problems instead of actually dealing with concrete relations  ● Distinguishing thinking and feeling: how they work with caring ○ Mill mathematical: pays off - Kant categorical comparatives - Noddings encountering ● Ethical encounter, dyadic, supplemental/substitute

○ Guilt and Courage: caring and cared for feeling guilty for not being there for each other and it requires a great amount of courage to do so… how does one avoid rejection and how does one know one is giving what is required??? ■ Different expectations for caring and this is confusing and sometimes a person can expect too much when there is no reason too ■ Caring is so dependent in communications and it involves before acknowledgment of the relationship ■ Different type of engrossing levels with different people ○ Women and Caring: lesson she draws on the impulse on the ethics in caring: ■ The sacrificial impulse of caring for others and staying constant with these principles of caring ■ Sacrifice the interest ○ Circles and Chains: one has circles of peers, chaining and linking these circles or peoples in these circles ■ Not engrossed with everyone, I must care for other chains depending on my circles ■ Natural imperative but it becomes more difficult because the world becomes more complex ■ Objection: objectification because you are denying everyone around your circle comparing to my associative people/duty ● BUT: Basis of how to care for someone and template we have as human beings, encountering others and learn how to encounter people through our/other people anyway… ○ We intensify our engrossment and knowledge of caring through intuition and experience ○ Asymmetry and Reciprocity in Caring: even distribution in the cared-for depending upon the one-caring ○ The Ethical Ideal and the Ethical Self: acceptance of my rational and progressive self of caring and being cared for ■ A person not matching my template there should be no engrossment continuing afterward the recognition of it ■ I have integrity when I care for people: caring happens between ○ Rules and Conflicts: ■ Role of rules of caring help us act on some principles (no abstraction but concrete) ■ Conflicts of caring situations (taking care of spouse vs child) falls back to feelings and thoughts and a process of different levels/degrees of caring (genuine) and in the end, there is not actual concreteness

■ Concern: can the ethics of care lead to a sense of integrity? Yes… caring when others may not care about themselves to a certain extent and leads to you to contradict yourself of how to care for the person ● The I MUST i s not consistent honestly and care supersedes these other principles, as replacing these other principles ● Yet sometimes it can’t because it may overcome most of our principles ● Section 3: The Cared-For: to reciprocate the caring and the one cared for is very vulnerable and simultaneously a very special spot ○ The apprehension of Caring Necessary to the Caring Relationship; Unequal Meetings: It cause apprehension, and sometimes feeling/ guilt of wanting to care and reciprocate ■ Nurse vs Patient: one persona caring more than other ○ Reciprocity: everything in this fucking book honestly ○ The Ethics of Being Cared-For: one knows to receive the care and reciprocate ■ No care for the one caring, positions turn sometimes and just wants to fake it because of the care... One loses the ethical value of caring and one is being receptive ● Section 4: An Ethic of Caring: where does obligation come from? Noddings answers with a Utilitarian approach at the end of this section of seeing someone and ending the pain. ○ She is giving us a certain version/practice of care… her version: A  Feminist Ethic of Care. Care is expressed differently in different traditions and practices. ○ From Natural to Ethical Caring: Both have engrossment ■ Natural caring- caring with instinct, desire, and inclinations ■ Ethical-caring- caring that requires effort for encountering another being; remembering natural caring and it leads to the I MUST care for others as a moral imperative ■ As caring creatures, we are naturally caring but the ethically caring reason gets involved which leads to uncaring for the others (social relations) ■ Noddings with Animal Caring: technically we can choose this to be something real but one can also choose not too… NEUTRAL  ● Their inability to care though… questionable? ○ Obligation: Relation itself is fundamental in obligation ■ Abortion: relationship with the fetus is the beginning of care and this becomes a sacred type of relation pg87-89

● More social, political, and ethical content in the background and not much was really said about it ■ We create sacredness and they might or might not intertwine with our views and principles which creates our assumption of specialness. ○ Right and Wrong: Cat harming on pg 91-92 and she mentions the capacity of feeling pain while having a Utilitarianism feel. ■ It is based on other’s peoples understanding to cause pain… limits us by our experiences and relations/connections with the pain of others ■ Part of caring is not to hurt people ■ Justifying actions in all other ethics but for this caring ethics one only has to justify why they don’t care. ○ The Problem of Justification: ■ Caring more than just treating people as ends ■ We are inconsistent with our rationality ■ More worth for people closer to one's circle ■ Noddings does not expect you to care for others but the duties of justice have higher power over you sometimes to care ■ Open to full care ○ Women and Morality: Virtue: ○ The Toughness of Caring: ■ Caring vs tolerance: duties of justice that lead to these tolerances ■ Caring relationships involves mutual engrossment ■ 3 perspectives… the one caring the one being cared for and the bystander April 30th, 2019 Virginia Held ● Section 1: The Ethics of Care as a Moral Theory ○ Respects and reconceptualized public and private ○ The conception of a person in which they begin ○ Birth and learn and car a lot better and held is saying that you were born to care ○ Noddings: private sphere caring, caring is mutual and should be equal ○ Held: beliefs in both the public and private sphere of caring, one can sometimes care more for others ○ The Critique of Liberal Individualism ○ Justice and Care ○ The Ethics of Care and Virtue Ethics ○ Care, Culture, and Religion ○ The Feminist Background

■ Favoritism and too narrow for mother and child type of care ○ Feminist Alternatives ● Section 2: Care as a Practice and Value ○ Taking Care: Basic care for others and their different distinctions of care ■ Caring for the sake of others caring for you ○ Some Discrimination: The attitude of caring ■ Care as a guide ■ Care of oneself as others cares for you ○ Some Suggestions: caring for the world is too broad and personal sometimes ■ Not caring when in closed doors the mother beats or mistreats the child for the sake that they just are their child  expresses ethically ■ Pg33. expresses our attitudes and relationships … significant ways in which we matter to each other, transforming interpersonal relatedness into something beyond ontological necessity or brute survivals ■ Care is not a virtue ● Virtue self-love and interest ● As for Held it is seen more focused on relationality ○ Care as Practice: Sex affective production ■ Caring for someone who needs it like mother or father ■ Sex gender: how caring differs from male or females but does it really?? ■ The danger in associating care with women and basing care on gender which is problematic ■ A feminist ethic of care exists but not to all extent  ■ How is care a practice? ● Cared and being cared for and engrossment ● Held it is involved with practice and value and relation with justice ○ Care as Value: defining care as justice and they are different but the work together ■ Care involves activity and is associative with feminisms and defined as a kind of labor activity and relation ■ This activity should be intended and have the willingness to do so for the sake of caring for and being cared for ■ Mutual engrossment is not necessary though ■ Caring for someone even when they are not in the right state of mind and yet one is still willing to help them out. Close comparison to Utilitarianism

■ Caring values: sensitivity, trust, and mutual concerns that we’ll ought to value.  ○ Caring Relation: Care builds relationships of care and concern and mutual responsiveness to need to bother the personal and wider social levels. Essential value all cares and all deal with sensitivity, trust, and mutual concerns ■ Some relationships depend on care ● Section 3: The Caring Person ○ The Person in the Ethics of Care ○ Caring and Autonomy: Moral, Personal, and Relational Autonomy differentiation ■ Moral Autonomy: Rational being and purpose and develop goodwill and do the right thing despite not wanting to do it, and follow the supreme norm (aka the categorical imperative and its formulations) and by this one treats themselves as an end and this leads to autonomy. Dignity comes from rationality ■ Personal Autonomy:  Rational beings as well, sovereign over mind and body, knowing one owns expertise and increasing my pleasures and consistent with the harm principle (try not to harm other people) a true progressive being. Dignity comes from rationality ■ Relational Autonomy: One controlling actions how is being autonomous letting other people controlling one's actions… this becomes another version of heteronomy ● How is this Autonomy?? ○ Embedded in relations, engrossment is Noddings, (NOT HELDS) but still similar ideas of this like MOTIVE AND INTENTIONS (having the right ones exhibiting themselves from sensitivity, trust, and mutual concern), informs our own identity and necessary for self-realization and cultivation... it is the starting point of our moral reflections as well. ○ We act as we please and what we are used to and say that we are autonomous but are we really?? ○ ~ Dignity at the end of the day is a leap of faith ~ ○ What is the source of dignity here? ■ Our recognition of caring for others and others caring for you. Thou should be treated as thou… it's all a reasonable myth that we love to believe. ○ Why is relational autonomy better than Moral autonomy?

■ Caring version more understanding and as humans do we really know how to be rational or do all these rational ideas that we have come from our instinct and experiences. This is a huge metaphysical assumption ■ Engaging in the metaphysics of Moralit and they all do this throughout their claims… ■ Issues with this care of Noddings though ○ Rational Persons and Overcommitments: The Overcommitment Argument ■ Toxicity ○ Care as a Virtue of Persons ○ Sensitivity and Knowledge: They all come with understanding dignity, rights, and Extent/Limitations ○ Problems with Care as a Dispositions ○ Caring Relations and Trust ● Section 4: Justice, Utility, and Care ○ Feminist Moral Inquiry: ○ Care versus Justice: page 62, Without care, we cannot have justice ■ Background care and she rejects Scheffler's approach on reducing our associative duties to the voluntary choices and promises. ■ Ethics of care can contain both utility and justice, this part includes more of a Utilitarian point of view but she goes above and beyond which many would just do for associative duties or moral duties ● Justice contains (a Kantian approach) Utility and Care ● Care contains Justice and Utility ■ Pg 63 Utilitarianism is less obviously a morality of justice… maximizing utility  et she also or preference of satisfaction… and pursuing one’s own interests. Y argues about, Kantian moral theory’s categorical imperative, utilitarianism has one very general universal principle, the principle of utility on which it relies. ■ Parent and child and our opinion of morality the caretaker have so much power because of this. This is the limitation with care and this demands us to kind of care… ● overdemanding ○ Feminism and the Discourse of Rights ○ The Meshing of Care and Justice: Lengthy caring and knowingly using justice equally to divide the responsibilities between the ideas and actions ■ The care ethic gives us reasons to demand more admirable care and rights and justice.

■ We need care (rather than reasoning) to understand and equally as much like justice to understand other different needs of care ○ Feminist Morality and Reductionism: Reductions: Justice and utility versus more care ■ Not reducible to any Kantian principles… pg73… Care seems to me to be the most basic moral values… ● We need new images between justice and care, rejecting the impulse toward reductionism… The aims of morality are fundamentally different: with it, we seek to recommend how we ought to live and what we ought to so as seen from the 1st-person perspective of the conscious moral agent choosing how to live and to act. ■ Care and justice are distinct and they mesh through their difference distinctions and care is the wider value/distinction because it seems to be more natural… Equal partnership between care and justice??? NOPE  ○ Dignity, the fact of living and pain and pleasure, or just for being a rational being but for care ethics: we have dignity because of our ability to care and be cared for: ■ Care versus Rationality: Our vulnerability wins ■ Justice of fairness or Kantian constructionism ■ Care is based on the conception of the good - this is flawed because not many would agree with them and this all relates to Kantianism because of our “rational and just” morality...