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Caring: Feminine Ethics or Maternalistic Misandry? A Hermeneutical Critique of Nel Noddings' Phenomenology of the Moral Subject and Education
Author(s) -
VANDENBERG DONALD
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
journal of philosophy of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.501
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9752
pISSN - 0309-8249
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9752.1996.tb00394.x
Subject(s) - phenomenology (philosophy) , subject (documents) , sociology , philosophy of education , moral education , higher education , psychoanalysis , social science , epistemology , philosophy , pedagogy , psychology , law , library science , political science , computer science
After her curriculum proposal is presented, Noddings' feminine ethics is submitted to a critique through an interpretation of her three books. Her distortion of Gilligan and Chodorow is explained. Indebtedness to male sources is noted. The over‐emphasis upon good and upon first‐person experience is criticised and traced to feminist rage, which is interpreted as the result of the oppression of women. Noddings' suppressed ‘Kantianism’ is explicated to maintain the dialectic between so‐called male and female voices. Main strengths of her curriculum proposal are interpreted more broadly than her perspective allows to indicate a promising return to normative, macro‐theory of education.