Nel Noddings (1929–2022)

This is an oft cited (and criticized) book in Feminist Ethics. It is one of the earlier attempts to develop a theory of care (to contrast with the justice perspective). She shares in common with previous feminist ethicists a commitment to theorizing about real life (particularly women's lives), and she shares a feminist ontology that understands individuals as constituted by and through relation ("relational selves").

Noddings believes with others that a revaluation of care is necessary both in personal and public relationships, however she primarily focuses on the personal. Her paradigmatic case of caring-for is the mother/child relationship, but she includes teacher/student as well. As such her account of caring is primarily an account of an asymmetrical relationship. It is also a sentimentalist account--our obligations to care stem from our commitment to sustaining relationships and connectedness (reason is not a motivating, but may be a loosely guiding principle).

It is this reader's belief that Noddings has more or less adopted Martin Buber's "I and Thou" wholesale and is attempting to (re)work it into a feminist ethic. Buber famously identified two orientations towards this world: There is the I-it relationship in which the "it" is rationalized and instrumentalized for the I's use. (The It here can be a person, as well as idea, object, etc). It is the ordinary world of ordinary things. The second orientation (the "primary" one, in the sense that it lends the I-it relationship MEANING), is the I-You relationship. According to Buber this relationship, when it is entered into is wholly reciprocal, unmediated, essentially timeless/ahistorical. In other words it is essentially a transcendent relationship with a You. When we are engaged with the You, the You "fills our firmament." Another way of saying this is that nothing exists outside the I-You relationship when one is in the relationship.

Noddings cites Buber amply, and yet she seems to miss fundamental features of his thinking, which could actually help to correct her own account. First, I believe she misses almost entirely the world of I-it, which is the background "reality" as it were, of the world. She wants to establish the I-You as the primary relationship because it is the most fundamentally caring. But Buber himself does not think we can sustain ourselves in an I-You capacity. We can, as it were, drink from its well and be nourished, but we cannot live on You alone. It is too all-engrossing of a relationship, and after all we have things like dishes to do and art to make. But Nodding takes just this engrossment as a central feature that cannot be gotten rid of (in fact she prefers 'engrossment' with the other to 'empathy.' But engrossment is incredibly problematic. Most obviously it runs the risk of being too myopic, but it also leaves the one-caring liable (and perhaps even obligated) to sacrifice herself selflessly for the one cared-for.

Buber's I-Thou relationship is predicated on reciprocity, and thus he thinks a true I-Thou relationship is remarkably rare, and thus all the more to be cherished. Noddings wants to claim that the caring relationship she is talking about is reciprocal (she claims it is), but it is not reciprocal in the strong sense that Buber means. Noddings is at pains to show that caring cannot be called complete unless the caring is recognized by the cared-for. This allows her to claim a thin notion of reciprocity, but it doesn't amount to much. How can infants truly "reciprocate"? Noddings' emphasis on unequal relationships prevents her from exploring a more robust notion of reciprocity, which is needed since the majority of our adult relationships are voluntary and more equalized.

The last thing I will mention is Noddings very clever, but ultimately strange claim that we enhance the ethical ideal of caring in ourselves through feeling joy in relation to others. She derives joy (this is the clever part) from an inversion of Sartre. Sartre believed that our existential aloneness leads to develop a (quasi-metaphysical) anxiety. Noddings, who construes human beings as existentially bound in relation, decides that this leads to a (quasi-metaphysical, mostly magical/woo woo) joy in this fact. (Why this follows, I'm not sure). This experience of joy is supposed to replenish us to continue our acts of caring-for.

First, I'm not sure you can derive joy purely from a natural fact of our existence such as relatedness. There are plenty of natural things that I don't take joy in. For instance,I have to take a shit sometimes, but that doesn't mean I relish it. Similarly, Noddings seems to be assuming that all care-givers (or most anyway) are actually GOOD and competent care-givers. But why should we assume that? Not everyone has children because they planned it, and some parents are just shitty parents. Some kids don't get the right care they need because their parents have to work 3 jobs to make ends meet, and some kids don't get the right care because their fathers are locked away in jail for non-violent crimes. In other words, bad caring happens all the time, and it's not clear to me that Noddings' happy-hoorah-probably-white-middle-class parenting happens for plenty of children.

Maybe it should, but if she's developing an ethic of care based on "lived experience" then she needs to acknowledge that social structures actually militate against caring for many (especially) marginalized women/men.… (more)