Critique of Noddings’ Ethic of Care In “An Ethic of Caring”, philosopher Nell Noddings puts forth a theory of ethics which tethers the ethical act to basic natural instincts to help others with whom we are in an ethical relation, ultimately grounding all ethical acts in one’s own memory of being in a similar plight as the other. This, according to Noddings, universalizes one’ own concept of the ethical self according to one wishing to follow a narrative of moral wealth—of not only always being able to give back what have received, but giving back what we would have wanted for ourselves. Although her argument sidesteps the classical belief that ethical systems ought to be objective and logically-binding, she nevertheless presents a theory which is far from abstruse and, in fact, quite intuitive. Applied to the perennial …show more content…
To make this point, she imagines that her daughter has a daughter of her own. In this case, however, the daughter ‘s daughter is imagined to be born out of wedlock, with Noddings’ daughter having been impregnated by a man whom she despises and is to have a mutually-hateful relationship with—if any relationship at all. It can, moreover, be imagined that Noddings’ daughter puts her own daughter up for adoption promptly. In this case, it is conceivable that Noddings’ daughter has zero relationship with her own daughter, and thus zero natural caring towards. In this case, Noddings’ gives birth to somebody that, for all time thereafter, does not exist for all practical purposes. Thus, Noddings reasons, there would be no reason for Noddings’ daughter to care at all, whatsoever, about the fetus. In such a case, abortion would be permissible in the mind of the moral agent so long as it does not have any bearings on her moral commitments to other people in her