noddings care based ethics

Language of Care Ethics Noddings expresses the view that the act of caring can be the basis for a moral way of life, and builds this into her illustration of the value of care ethics. She chooses specific language that is to be the basis of this vocabulary – empathy, care, attention, response, reciprocity, receptivity. A central theme of her paper is that these terms have special meaning, and when understood form the foundational element of care ethics.

The point that care ethics can be the basis of a moral way of life is not dissimilar to some of the arguments that date to virtue ethics, or even deontological ethics. While there are elements that are different, all of these contrast consequentialism in the sense that they presuppose a set of rules that govern morality. Noddings simply argues that care ethics can form morality. In this, she is not wrong. There are many means by which people form their morality.

The religious will see morality is relating to laws handed down by some deity or other; the irreligious may turn to deontology, but there is always some sort of code that people follow, in a rule-based way, that they choose to follow the rules, and trust in the morality of those rules. Noddings does not argue in favor of following rules, so that is a key difference with her point about care based ethics. Her vocabulary of care-based ethics highlights the core principles of this moral code.

One must take into consideration others, and indeed care for them, have empathy, and respond positively to them. This caring serves as a code because there will be times when one's instincts are not to have empathy, or not to think about reciprocity, or not to pay attention to the needs of others. Noddings' suggestion is that care-based ethics is rooted in these things, and paying attention to these things can serve as a means of moral testing.

A person in conflict can turn to this system and know the response, lending care-based ethics a consistency held by other moral codes (consistency in the sense that one believes the same situation repeated should have the same response). The moral way of life described in care-based ethics can certainly extend beyond what other moral codes might prescribe. It contrasts, for example, with the Christian view that the Lord gave humans dominion over the world.

The contrast arises from the idea that care should extend to all sentient, or all living, beings. Most codes of ethics only concern themselves with human beings. The emergence of care-based ethics would then, by that reasoning, predate Noddings' article, as clearly this form of thinking extends to earlier times.

Veganism would be an example of this form of ethics applied in the world, and in the West veganism is a relatively recent trend, one trend among many that makes the case for case-based ethics as a distinct form of moral code, different from prior ones that did not take into account animals or the environment. There is a certain utilitarianism to care-based ethics, in the sense that outcomes are clearly taken into consideration.

One cares when one's actions create a negative outcome, as would be the case with eating meat. The concept may still give.