Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education

Noddings's founding statement of care ethics, which grounds morality in the caring relation rather than in principles. She analyses the relation between the "one-caring" and the "cared-for". The one-caring shows "engrossment", receptive attention to the other person's reality, and "motivational displacement", in which her energy flows towards the other's projects. The relation is completed only when the cared-for receives and responds to the care. Noddings distinguishes natural caring, as between a mother and child, from ethical caring, which we summon when we do not feel like caring, drawing on our memories of caring and being cared for; the resulting "ethical ideal" is the source of moral motivation. She is sceptical of universal principles and argues that our obligations are limited by the possibility of actual relation. The last chapter applies this to moral education. Critics have argued that the view neglects distant strangers and justice, and risks reinforcing gendered roles.

It is the classic philosophical account of care as the basis of ethics, and it remains central to debates in feminist ethics and the philosophy of education.