This is the third of four posts about caring, constructed from excerpts from Nel Noddings' 1984 book Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education.
In crossing a river, Cura gathered clay and, engrossed in thought, began to mold it. When she was thinking about what she had already made, Jove arrived on the scene. Cura asked him to grant it spiritus, "breath" or "spirit." He grants her request readily, but when she also asked to give her creation her own name, he forbade it, insisting that it had to carry his name. While the two were arguing, Tellus (Earth) arose and wanted it to have her name because she had made her body available for it.
The judgment is finally rendered by Saturn. He determines that since the spiritus was granted by Jove, he should have it in death; Tellus, or Earth, would receive the body she had given; because Cura, or Care, had been the creator, she would keep her creation as long as it lived. To resolve the debate, homo, "human being," would be the name, because it was made from humus, earth.
[Hyginus, Fable 220]
The one-caring has one great aim: to preserve and enhance caring in herself and in those with whom she comes into contact. To care and be cared for: these are the basic realities of human being and its basic aims.
What we seek is completion in the other - the sense of being cared-for and, hopefully, the renewed commitment of the cared-for to turn about and act as one-caring. What we are talking about is how to meet the other morally.
This moral viewpoint is prior to any notion of justification. For an ethic of caring, we are not ‘justified’, we are obligated, to commit ourselves to maintain and enhance caring.
When natural caring fails, the motive energy on behalf of the other can be summoned out of caring for the ethical self. Ethical caring depends not upon rule or principle but upon the development of the ideal self. It does not depend upon just any ideal of self, but the ideal developed in memory of one’s best remembrance of caring and being cared-for.
At the foundation of commitment to nurturing the ethical ideal is feeling, a commitment to remain open to that feeling, to remember it, and to put one’s thinking in its service. All those who comes under our gaze must be met with this feeling.
Constructing and maintaining the ideal
What is required to construct the ethical ideal? We must confirm the cared-for through dialogue and practice.
'Confirmation' requires that we receive the other - see clearly what he has actually done, and receive the feelings with which it was done. Out of what may be a mixture of feelings and motives, we attribute the best motive to his actions.
Confirmation depends upon, and interacts with, dialogue and practice. We cannot confirm unless we talk and engage in cooperative practice. Listening is essential. One tuned to it, interested in it, committed to it, sees tragic examples of its failure everywhere.
Practice is required. The child in the process of forming an ethical ideal needs practice in caring; he must be allowed to assume increasing responsibility. Practice in caring is a form of apprenticeship, of caring-with. One must have encounters, legitimate opportunities to care, in order to go on caring effectively.
We are realistic; we do not hide from what is there. But we are also idealistic, in the important sense that our attention and educational efforts are always focused on the ethical ideal, on its nurturance and enhancement.