Noddings's Analysis Of "Caring" Experience

Caring ethics emerged with the western feminist movement in the 1970 s.Based on the study of women's experience,some scholars have proposed a caring course for moral development,which is different from the fair course which was relatively mainstream at the time and viewed from the male experience.On the basis of predecessors,Noddings made a deep multidimensional analysis of caring experience.The purpose of this paper is to make a comprehensive and systematic analysis of Noddings' s exposition of caring experience,and to discuss a new theoretical perspective of thinking about moral issues.Noddings' s analysis of caring experience can be roughly divided into three perspectives: phenomenological perspective,psychological perspective and ethical perspective.In terms of phenomenology,it is mainly an essential analysis of the structure of caring and the relationship between various elements.The caring experience that Noddings refered to including three basic elements: the one-caring,the cared-for,and the caring relationship.She discussed the meaning and characteristics of these three elements in detail through the presentation of caring in people's life world,and emphasized the importance of the response of the cared-for in a sustainable caring relationship.In terms of psychology,Noddings emphasized that caring exists in people's needs for self-development and maintaining each other's relationship.Which possessed both sensibility and reason factors.Its establishment and existence not only requires people's capacity for empathy,but also requires the mutual communication between the both parties of caring on the basis of reason.Through this level of analysis,Noddings highlights the fundamental importance of female caring experience in the development of individual moral psychology.It refutes the traditional mainstream psychology which takes the male moral psychology which pays attention to principle and individuality as the standard,and regards the female moral psychology which pays attention to relationship and feeling as the low-level or incomplete form of development.The analysis of ethics concerns the identification and confirmation of caring experience.Based on the perspective of ethics,the caring experience contains the values of equality,respect and altruism.In the caring relationship,people take the interests of the cared-for as the starting point,and everyone can be respected as the subject.Therefore,the caring experience is also a kind of experience with moral value or morality.In Noddings,there are two forms of confirmation of this point,one is direct confirmation,that is,confirmation that appeals to moral intuition with common senses;The second is indirect confirmation,that is,by pointing out that caring helps to achieve the overcoming of evil and the acquisition of happiness to confirm its moral value.Caring is an important and universal experience,practice and value of human beings.The analysis of caring experience constitutes a basis and a relatively independent part of the ethical research of caring orientation.Noddings' s multi-dimensional analysis of caring experience constitutes an important theoretical achievement of this research,and a systematic review of this achievement not only helps us to deepen and promote the research on Noddings' s own thoughts,but also helps to deepen and promote the research on caring ethics.