A Note on the Ethic of Caring
15 Pages Posted: 21 Oct 2008
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A Note on the Ethic of Caring
Abstract
This note is a summary of Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice, with background information on Freud, Erikson, and Kohlberg. Gilligan theorizes that women analyze moral dilemmas in terms of relationships and the harm that might come to them. Men are more likely to view the situation in terms of the rights of the individuals involved.
Excerpt
UVA-E-0068
A NOTE ON THE ETHIC OF CARING
Carol Gilligan and Nell Noddings on a Feminine Ethic
Introduction
With the publication of In A Different Voice, Carol Gilligan aired a new ethical agenda that offered great insight into what makes us moral creatures. The task of Gilligan's book was to unmask the distinctly masculine quality of the most prevalent moral discourse in our society as well as to suggest that we have overlooked an alternative and immensely important voice in our moral selves. It is this “different voice,” more commonly found in women, which Gilligan wished to explore and offer as a valid way to live as an ethical person. This view focused on caring being connected to others in relationships which one nurtured, by listening and being receptive to the needs of others and of oneself—as the vehicle through which we understood what it was to be moral. Nell Noddings' book, Caring, followed a similar theme with some significant variations that expanded the project of a distinctly “feminine” ethic. Neither book suggested that this “feminine” ethic was the particular domain of women, for they saw the source of this ethic in both sexes. However, Noddings found expression more typically in women.
In The Beginning—Sigmund Freud
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Keywords: capital budgeting, decision making, interpersonal relations, diversisty in the workplace, managerial psychology, diversity case, value conflict, women in business
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