The Ethical Systems of Noddings and Bell - Term Paper Example

 The Ethical Systems of Noddings and Bell In this paper, I will analyze and compare two systems of ethics. The first is posited by Nel Noddings, the second by Linda A. Bell. It is my belief that Bell’s criticisms of Noddings’ care ethics are valid due to Noddings’ narrow focus on individuals at the expense of wider consideration of systemic inequalities. I will explore this more fully, and will explain how Noddings’ care ethics can be made more valid by including Bell’s case for a more thorough system. Noddings begins by characterizing women as having a “natural caring” (373). Her ethical system proposes the evolving of women from their innate natural nurturing tendencies to an ethic of caring based on the repudiation of male history and values. This in itself makes the argument that all women are nurturing, which is not necessarily true. Her ethics theory is based on this premise. To illustrate, she tells the story of Ceres, who loses her daughter, Proserpine, to Pluto, god of the underworld (373). Greif-stricken, Ceres is taken in by Celeus and finds a sick boy at his home. She cures him and gives him knowledge of agriculture: “the cared-for shall be blessed not with…power, but with the great gift of usefulness” (374). In telling of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, Noddings posits a male system of responsibility to an abstract ideal, which is “absolute duty toward God” (375). Noddings system repudiates the ideals of an absolute deity and abstract principles in favor of an ethics based on “natural caring, that makes the ethical possible” (376). In terms of ethics, Noddings asserts that women are concrete thinkers, devoted to an ideal of “we-ness:…She does not, in whatever personal agony, inflict death upon her child in devotion to either principle or abstract entity” (377). Noddings’ ethics assert that women, by possessing natural caring, have a more profound morality than men, and can build a better world based on caring. She posits “circles and chains” to describe levels of relation and caring, as well as three considerations to the moving outward from the inner circle of family: “how we feel, what the other expects of us, what the situational relationship requires of us” (378). I believe the “have-tos of the one-caring and the cared for”, which Noddings describes as “internal imperatives”(380) refer to the chains of obligation placed upon women. Even Noddings’ language internalizes the position of the oppressed. Bell’s system of ethics presupposes a paradigm. The feminist ethicist must first be aware of the larger society to which she belongs, and whose mores she has internalized, even if she is now questioning them. Class differences, racial and ethnic groups, “even different classes within those groups” as they relate to gender oppression must be included in an ethical system (18). The societal context of any moral/ethical analysis must be considered, or the analysis will be shallow (20). Bell’s definition of morality is “a set of prescriptions and proscriptions, a practical list of dos and don’ts” that govern behavior (19). To arrive at a system of feminist ethics, Bell examines different moralities and questions their origin, their place in the larger societal system, their possible inconsistencies and whether or not “one morality can be shown to be superior to any other” (19). Her ethical system is not synonymous with a common definition of morality. Bell’s paradigm includes the “reality of violence” routinely directed at women in society (21). This includes “sexual child abuse, rape, sexual harassment” as well as the legal system’s casual attitude in prosecuting the perpetrators(21). It also includes the persecution of the victim of violence when it occurs in the public sector. By characterizing such violence as a private matter, social institutions thus serve to condone it. By portraying individual victims of violence as examples of “individual failure” or describing the murder of a woman as “love gone sour”, institutions and the media contribute to the culture of violence (23-4). A feminist paradigm must “anchor itself in the reality of violence, oppression and colonization in order to offer adequate moral critiques” (Bell 25). Bell asserts that “the personal is political, meaning that society as a whole influences everyone on an individual level (26). Noddings side-steps this issue by a narrow focus on the voice of the mother, while ignoring the greater reality of her social class (professional), her gender roles (wife and mother) and by focusing on relational “circles and chains” to the exclusion of society . Her assertion of women as concrete thinkers (377) leads me to Smith’s quote in Bell’s work: “The more successful women are in mediating the world of concrete particulars so that men do not have to become engaged with (and therefore conscious of) that world as a condition to their abstract activities, the more complete man’s absorption in it, the more effective the authority of that world, and the more total women’s subservience to it” (27). Feminism, Bell insists, must take into account the abstract, and the wider systems, including those of class differences between women. The very legal fabric of society is patriarchal, and creates a “virtual synthesis of intimacy and state policy, the private and the public” (Bell 29). In the necessity for struggle, Bell finds an ethical dilemma: “if [the oppressed] do not revolt, they acquiesce in and perpetuate their own and others oppression; yet, if they do revolt, they are condemned by the laws and morality that buttress the status quo” (33). Only in an ideal world can all people be ethical all of the time. It is necessary, Bell says, to revolt when one is a slave, and Good is defined as what is good for the master (33). The slave needs to act to get what is Good for him. In Noddings’ ethics, one-caring is equivalent to making one’s own good into an Other’s Good, even when this means being enslaved to the Other. This denial of self, Noddings says, is the “sound and lovely alternative foundation for ethical behavior” (375). Bell counters with the statement that inaction is the same as conspiring in one’s own oppression, “thereby tacitly endorsing the violence that underlies it…[and should be] subject to moral condemnation” (35). Bell differs with Noddings in the duties of an ethical system to encompass scope and responsibility. Bell describes Noddings’ caring as “too limited, too personal, and ultimately too apolitical”, going on to state that Noddings narrow focus lets her off the hook in terms of addressing oppressive social systems both at home and abroad (36). Justice is lacking in Noddings’ construct, as is a cognizance of those of other race and class. They exist simply as the “proximate stranger,” embodied as a stray teenager or stray dog, whose needs for care impinge on the already overburdened caregiver (Bell 37). Bell charges Noddings with inaction in the face of larger need. By refusing to include society as a whole, Noddings refuses “to become aware, [which] makes one an accomplice of a different sort” (Bell 37). Noddings’ feminine rather than feminist position that women be “fundamentally receptive” places women in subordination to men and feeds into the idea of heterosexual virtue: “The ideology of heterosexual virtue entitles men to terrorize--possess, humiliate, violate, objectify--women and forecloses the possibility of women’s active response to men’s sexual terrorization” (Allen in Bell’s work, 39). Bell agrees with her colleagues that an ethical system promoting nurture by women must also be accompanied by a political answer to the notion of heterosexual virtue (39). Sartre’s relation of appeal/help is analyzed by Bell and related to Noddings’ care philosophy. A critical difference is that there is reciprocity between the helper and the helped in Sartre’s theory. Each participant is free to choose whether to give help, and whether to take the help. Each participant makes a choice based on whether his own individual freedom coincides with the action. (Bell 43). This is in contrast to Noddings’ one-carers, who give up their reality to the reality of the cared-for: “a displacement tantamount…to the ‘motivational displacement’ of interest on the part of the good servant or slave” (Bell 43). Bell would desire that Noddings’ caregiver think about who she is caring for, and does she agree with the motives of the cared-for? Bell and other theorists would like Noddings to have the reciprocity of Sartre’s vision, or at least a “critical stance” (44) towards the people that the one-carer helps. In conclusion, Bell disputes Noddings’ care theory on the grounds of its elitism, its insularity and its incomplete nature. Bell admits to the desirability of Noddings’ assessment of “the way care should operate in human relations” (42). This, however, is reflective of an ideal world, not an actual one. Bell’s differentiation of morality vs. a theory of ethics needs to be applied in Noddings’ work. Noddings’ theory needs to be grounded in the realities of political systems of oppression. It needs to address these realities, in order for it to be a true theory of ethics and not just a statement of altruism. As Bell notes, Noddings uses “a strategy familiar by now in feminist circles” by using the “mother’s voice” in order to formulate a new world ethical view (41). Noddings’ displacement of the reality of the one-caring to the reality of the cared-for is problematic, in that it removes the will of the one-carer and makes it subservient to the cared-for. This aspect needs to be examined, so that it does not perpetuate the subservient role of women as a whole. Works Cited: Bell, Linda A. Rethinking Ethics in the Midst of Violence: A Feminist Approach to Freedom. USA: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993. Print. Noddings, Nel. Women and Caring. Read More