Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 44, No.

1, 2010

REVIEW ARTICLE

Empathy, Paternalism and Practical

Reason: Philosophy of Education and the
Ethics of Care Revisited

PAUL SMEYERS

The Ethics of Care and Empathy. Michael Slote. London and New York,
Routledge, 2007. Pp. 152. Hbk. d65.00; Pb. d18.99.

In The Ethics of Care and Empathy (2007) Michael Slote thinks of moral
issues not in terms of autonomy and independence from others, and the
just and rational application of rules or principles to problem situations,
but in terms of emotionally involved caring for and connection to others.
After offering an analysis of his position I argue that he has been able to
show the philosophical coherence of care ethics and to demonstrate its
compatibility with moral perspectives more robustly occupied with
questions of justice and right action. By countering the standard
criticisms of care ethics he has enlarged the scope of this position to
include moral problems seen previously as beyond its jurisdiction. Care
ethics pursues—with a vigour equal to other, more ‘rationalist’
perspectives on our ethical being—the promotion of appropriate moral
intervention, due critical reflection to ethical choice, and the active
cultivation of autonomy. In doing this it accords greater weight to
naturalistic factors (the importance of a particular relation) and to the
moral psychological significance of our emotional and ‘sentimental’
investments. Slote’s innovation lies in seeing these elements as absolutely
central to the exercise of moral reasoning rather than as simply an
alternative ‘approach’. His insights add to an articulation of the central
role of education in enhancing knowledge, understanding and the powers
of critical judgment in young people.

In The Ethics of Care and Empathy (2007) Michael Slote thinks of moral
issues in terms of emotionally involved caring for others and connection to
others, instead as seeing these issues in terms of autonomy from others and
the just and rational application of rules or principles to problem
situations. His book differs from most previous work by seeking to show
that a care-ethical approach makes sense across the whole range of
normative moral and political issues that philosophers have sought to deal
with. Starting from the insight that caring motivation is based in and
sustained by our human capacity for empathy with others (the primary

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172 P. Smeyers

mechanism of caring, benevolence, compassion etc.), he addresses issues

such as obligations to distant people, deontology, the relational character
of autonomy, paternalism, and finally social justice and practical
rationality all along ‘sentimentalist’ lines. Throughout the book it is
argued ‘that distinctions of empathy mark or correspond to plausible
moral distinctions’ and thus an explanation is offered ‘as to why empathy
is relevant to right and wrong’ (p. 8).1
There is a vast amount of literature in philosophy and philosophy
of education dealing with (aspects of) the ‘ethics of care’ following
the seminal work of Nel Noddings’ Caring: A Feminine Approach
to Ethics and Moral Education now 25 years ago,2 and continued by
many more publications from this author such as The Challenge to Care
in Schools. An Alternative Approach to Education (1992). Criticism
has focused on the (presumed) naturalism that is embraced in this position,
but particularly that it is lacking in terms of being able to offer a viable
ground for a theory of justice, i.e. an impartial morality. Slote more
specifically concentrates on the question ‘Why should we be moral?’
and by using many examples he is moreover warning the reader not
to ‘forget’ the particularities of the situation and (only) rely on abstract
principles.3 After elaborating the main arguments of his position,
the recent discussion of the ‘ethics of care’ will be taken up. Thus it
will be shown how this new step is relevant for philosophy of education,
how it makes clear that the all too fashionable criticisms are invalid, and
finally how it offers a framework for issues central to philosophy and
education.

EMPATHY, IMMEDIACY, ‘INDUCTION’ AND JUSTICE

Starting from the positions of Carol Gilligan and particularly Nel
Noddings, we are reminded of some of the central issues that they have
highlighted such as that an ethics of caring is partial, stresses the
reciprocity involved in good relationships of caring, and involves a
‘displacement’ of ordinary self-interest or engrossment in the other
person. Slote follows Martin Hoffman (2000) and Charles Daniel Batson
(1991) who both argue that various psychological studies and experiments
show that empathy plays a crucial enabling role in the development of
genuinely altruistic concern or caring for others. The development of
individual empathy through several stages makes it possible for the
(normal) child deliberately to adopt the point of view of other people. It
requires further the intervention of parents and others making use of
‘induction’. The identification which this implies, should not be seen,
however, as a total merging with or melting into the other. Different from
training a child or attempting to inculcate moral thought, motivation, and
behaviour, induction makes the child vividly aware of the harm that he or
she has done. Such ‘habitual associations . . . underlie and power (the use
of) moral principles or rules . . . in claims like ‘‘hurting people is wrong’’’
(p. 15).

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 Empathy, Paternalism and Practical Reason 173

The importance of empathy is shown by marking out the relevance of

immediacy. Slote observes that it seems worse to us to turn from someone
we see drowning as compared to not giving to famine relief, the latter case
one in which one knows about someone only by description. He
distinguishes between different kinds of immediacy: perceptual/spatial
distance and further temporal distance, an example of the latter being
miners trapped in a coal mine versus installing safety devices; another is
family connection or common roots, which give rise in us to feelings of
solidarity and affection, and finally the sharing that occurs between friends
and life-partners. In all these cases of ‘immediacy’, he claims, ‘moral
obligations to help seem intuitively stronger than when such factors are
absent, and this constitutes strong support . . . for the idea that empathy and
differences of empathy can plausibly function as criteria for moral
evaluation and moral decision-making’ (p. 28). Stressing the relevance of
‘inductive discipline’ it can moreover be explained how empathy with
distant groups can and does develop and indicate in what way it can be
increased or strengthened. For example, children can be exposed to
literature, films, or television programs and to the habit of thinking about,
and being concerned about, the effects of one’s own actions and inactions. If
we accept for a moment that Slote has established the relevance of empathy
to explain why people would want to be moral, it remains to be shown that
he can answer the critics who find such a position lacking in terms of a
theory of justice and the impartiality that is supposed to go with it.
In a sentimentalist care-ethical framework that appeals to empathy:
‘actions are morally wrong and contrary to moral obligation if, and only if,
they reflect or exhibit or express an absence (or lack) of fully developed
empathic concern for (or caring about) others on the part of the agent’ (p.
31). Thus a society is just to the degree or extent that its laws, institutions,
practices, attitudes, and customs are just, i.e. in terms of ideals of empathic
caring that apply at the level of social groups; and further ‘a law is just if it
reflects or expresses empathically caring motivation toward their
compatriots on the part of the legislative group that is responsible for
passing it . . . less demandingly, a law is just even if it merely fails to
reflect or exhibit a lack of appropriate empathic concern on the part of
those who promulgate it’(p. 95). Importantly, this does not imply that a
person who doesn’t care about others always acts wrongly or contrary to
her obligations: ‘it only requires us not to act from uncaring motives, not
to act in ways that reflect a lack of empathic concern for others’ (p. 33).
This is underscored by the distinction that can be made between people
who have fully developed empathy and those very few other persons who
demonstrate an unusual and unexpected gift for empathy and for
transcending or limiting their self-concern. That ‘we are empathically
more averse to causing loss or harm than to allowing such losses or harms
to occur through the agency of third parties or as a result of natural forces
(that we are in a position to counteract)’ (p. 45), demonstrates also how
well facts about stronger and weaker empathy correlate with some of the
moral distinctions we find it plausible to make, supporting further the
argument that ‘deontology isn’t a matter of principles or rules or rational

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174 P. Smeyers

considerations that oppose the sentiments, but rather arises from, or can be
understood in terms of, the sentiments themselves’ (p. 45).
A sentimentalist ethics of care cannot only ground respect, but moreover
respect for autonomy in its own terms. Here the autonomous person is
seen as not afraid of his or her own desires or aspirations; she realizes the
initial human capacity for thinking and deciding things for herself. In his
discussion of paternalism (when someone acts against another person’s
wishes ‘for his or her own good’), Slote points out that there is evidently in
some cases too much emotional connection with one’s children. But a
distinction should be made between those parents taking a child to the
dentist (against her wishes) and those with a weak sense of self who seek
to live through the successes of their children, thus stressing the relevance
on the part of the cared-for of ‘acceptance’ or ‘acknowledgement’ in a
longer term perspective. A morality of empathic caring requires ‘to
respect other people’s autonomy and not just or simply be concerned with
their welfare’ (p. 57). Thus autonomy is not only conceived as causally
relational; for an ethics of care it is also constitutively relational, unlike a
more traditional, rationalistic notion, as embodied in the liberal Kantian
tradition, where a falsely atomistic picture of our identity is assumed (cf.
p. 74).
This may help to clear up a number of misunderstandings prevalent in
this area, such as that this kind of morality is simply about caring for
others and letting their needs supplant one’s own; that there are no rules,
no principles, no rights involved (of the child, the parent, others); that
there is no room for rational thought. Though these criticisms are unfair to
the work of Noddings and others, it may be the case that some crucially
relevant ideas have not been developed as fully as possible in the past, and
in that sense Slote’s work is certainly a very much welcomed addition.
Support for his arguments can be found in the discussion of quite a few
philosophers of education. For example, in a recent article Susan Mendus
lists a number of allegations levelled against impartial morality: such as
that it drives out things which we value, ignores important sources of
meaning and fails in itself to provide adequate meaning (cf. Mendus,
2008, p. 203). Thus she claims ‘that although personal loyalties and
commitments conflict with the requirements of impartial morality at the
level of individual examples, there is a deeper level at which these
loyalties and commitments are the preconditions of impartial morality’
(pp. 204–205). This includes the possibility that our partial concerns for
particular others should be nurtured as the indispensable components of a
life that is both genuinely meaningful and moral. Pointing out that the
agent’s propensity to declare life meaningful is not enough, she develops
the idea that ‘what is required for a meaningful life is that the agent shall
care about things and the things he or she cares about shall be worthy of
such care (or at least, not unworthy)’ (p. 206). And although the criteria
for making such a distinction are difficult to identify, some such
distinction is in fact a precondition of being able to grasp important
moral concepts (cf., p. 211). Care, she argues, is ‘not only a precondition
of finding life meaningful; it is also a precondition of being genuinely

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 Empathy, Paternalism and Practical Reason 175

moral in the sense of recognising morality as more than a constraint on the

pursuit of one’s own self-interest’ (p. 216). The conclusion reiterates
Slote’s claim: ‘things people care about are themselves foundational for
morality’ (p. 218).
According to Slote, ‘justice thinking’, as typified by liberalism, and
‘care thinking’, as exemplified in an ethics of care, cannot be harmonized
or integrated (cf. p. 67). His examination of the educationally extremely
important issue of ‘hate speech’ assists in the understanding of his bold
claim. Many feminists and others disagree concerning ‘hate speech’, as
compared to what Kantian liberals believe. According to the latter it is
wrong to prevent or interfere with freedom of speech even if doing so is or
would be necessary to protect people from harm. The ethics of empathic
care turns on a narrower right of non-interference and holds that in
allowing ‘hate speech’ there is a lack of respect, implying that an action of
interference is morally permissible. Central to this is the concept of
autonomy. For liberal ethics of justice there is ‘the ideal of an individual
willing and able to subject each and every one of her attachments,
commitments, beliefs, and projects to critical scrutiny. This goes beyond
the autonomy that is constituted by thinking and deciding for oneself,
because it involves more self-consciousness and self-reflection than the
latter requires’ (p. 77). But, Slote argues, it seems odd or ridiculous for a
woman to be questioning, say, her love for her parents without having any
particular reason for being suspicious of that love (cf. p. 77).

The liberal tells us that it is always appropriate to scrutinize our feelings

and relationships, that we should maintain a kind of critical vigilance,
regardless of circumstances. However, such an attitude in effect
attenuates the feelings, the love, that one has toward others. If,
independently of danger signals, we seriously ask whether we should
love our children, our parents, or our spouses as much as we do, then in
effect we don’t love them as much as we could and as much as, ideally,
we should. So by recommending critical vigilance, I think the liberal
shows an insufficient appreciation of the value of love (pp. 78–79).

He therefore distinguishes critical vigilance, implied by the liberal

position, from critical responsiveness, being disposed to think critically if
things start to go or have gone wrong. Accepting that limiting freedom of
speech in particular cases can be discussed (thus allowing to draw the line
in different places), and moreover that legislation banning certain sorts of
hate speech may be perverted or distorted, he argues that none of this
constitutes a challenge to the plausibility or legitimacy of care ethics.
Reiterating the points he made concerning paternalism and invoking
‘acceptance’ or ‘acknowledgement’ on the part of the cared-for, he
continues:

The care ethicist may want to agree with the liberal about the general
moral undesirability of paternalistic interventions—while basing that
agreement on the value of connection rather than the diametrically
opposed considerations of autonomy that the liberal invokes. But if the

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care ethicist moves in this direction, s/he will have to interpret the value
of connection in a very particular way—as depending, on potential
acceptance of caring on the part of the cared for (p. 86).

RATIONALITY AND CARE-ETHICAL MORAL SENTIMENTALISM

Some of the issues that keep surfacing when philosophers of education
discuss the ethics of care centre around the emphasis on the individual,
who is interpreted as flirting with relativism and possibly even ignoring
problems such as weakness of will or even self-deceit. Further, there are
issues of power and manipulation. Is ‘a warm personality’ not unduly
optimistic? Can psychological insight be relied upon? Or, even more
importantly, does it not jeopardise the possibility of ‘being moral’
altogether? At centre stage is the presumed lack of due emphasis on the
proper place of reasons, or being rational. Thus Joan Goodman (2008)
argues that care theorists, are caught between distaste for paternalism
and acceptance of its essential role in parenting, as parents are confronted
with the question of how to determine which need prevails (cf. Goodman,
2008, p. 237). They have to choose among multiple reasonable choices
and have to restrain some needs of the child when satisfaction comes at
the cost of future interest or when the legitimate demands of others
are in danger of being ignored (cf. pp. 240–242): ‘In these cases there
is a never-ending dialectic to parenting inadequately addressed in
care theory’ (p. 243), requiring that it be supplemented by principles
(cf. p. 245). However, following Slote, it is not difficult to identify the
problems with which positions critical of the ‘ethics of care’ confront us.
According to him, it may thus be asked, first, in what sense are principles
helpful? Do they determine by themselves how they have to be applied?
And moreover, how are we to understand their motivational force?
Further, the way paternalism is dealt with by those who are critical of the
ethics of care seems to ignore the fact that care ethicists are not reluctant at
all to present themselves as persons, with all that this implies (i.e.
exemplifying a particular way of filling in values). They are, therefore,
wrongly accused of just letting their needs be substituted. Slote, therefore,
holds that there is really not only no need in an ethics of care ‘to abandon’
oneself, neither is there an incentive to disregard the autonomy of the
cared-for.
Following Hume’s moral sentimentalism, an ethics of care which sees
caring as grounded in feeling holds that it is not irrational (not against
reason) to do immoral things. It does not seem implausible to deny the
irrationality of acting immorally or being immoral, but it does seem
implausible to deny the irrationality of acting against self-interest, or of
lacking concern for one’s own wellbeing, long-term self interest or
happiness. Care ethicists accept that it can be wrong not to help one’s
daughter even if one has no desire to help her. In other words, if the
relevant moral judgment of obligation applies to me and makes me liable
to moral criticism even if I lack the relevant desire, then that judgment is

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 Empathy, Paternalism and Practical Reason 177

functioning as a categorical imperative within care ethics. Thus, Slote

argues, care ethics can treat morality as genuinely normative, while
denying at the same time that moral judgments are either based in reason
or rationally binding (cf. pp. 107–108). That we cannot give a rational
justification for being moral is, therefore, not regrettable, as the attitude of
someone who sees something as his clear duty or obligation treats such
rational or self-interested considerations as extraneous and, by-and-large,
irrelevant (cf. p. 108): ‘if she does see them as relevant, if she worries or
wonders seriously whether what she is doing for another person is in her
self-interest or for some other reason rationally required of her, the
assumption that she loves or deeply cares about the other person will be
criterially undercut to a certain extent’ (p. 108). Excluding any rational
basis for morality, however, does not imply excluding as well the
possibility of understanding practical rationality in some other sphere or
spheres (for example, with respect to the agent’s own good) in rationalistic
terms. But if one is inclined to say that there is a practical inconsistency
between willing an end without willing the means, then one is already
committed to a rationalist view of what is involved in instrumental
rationality. Slote continues:

To count as practically rational . . . one need only have a moderately

strong concern for one’s own long-term happiness, a concern that doesn’t
require one always to maximize one’s good or wellbeing in self-regarding
contexts . . . that makes it easier to understand how practical rationality
can allow one to sacrifice one’s (greatest) good in other-regarding
contexts. . . The picture we end up with, then, is of the practically rational
individual as someone who has and shows substantial concern for her own
happiness in contexts not involving others, and whose self-concern isn’t
entirely washed away in contexts where the welfare of others is at stake
(pp. 117–118).

Only those cases which indicate a lack of rational self-concern are

irrational.
Caring relationships are motivated by both rational and moral
considerations and are thus not exclusively a moral ideal (cf. p. 118).
Though care ethics may reject moral rationalism as well as the traditional
ethics of justice in favour of its own self-standing view of morality, ‘this is
not at all tantamount to a rejection of reason, rationality or, for that matter,
thinking’ (p. 119). And thus, ‘to the extent that a parent is careless or
slapdash about finding out what his or her child needs, their love or caring
is substantially impugned or undercut, and so various attitudes and desires
vis-à-vis the (learning of) facts can be criticized in care-ethical moral
terms’ (p. 120). Thus, he concludes:

. . . that there is a correspondence between our differential empathic

tendencies and the moral distinctions we intuitively want to make . . . [I]t
indicates how the truth of the empathy/understanding hypothesis would
help explain why moral distinctions largely correspond to differences in
our empathic tendencies. And it might also entail that, and help to explain

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why, moral judgments/utterances are intrinsically motivating . . . distinc-

tions of empathy do broadly mark the moral distinctions we intuitively
want to make (p. 128).

FINDING A PLACE FOR THE SUBJECT AT A GENUINELY

MORAL LEVEL
Will the critics of the ethics of care be convinced? Maybe the problem has
been that a number of its constitutive elements were not addressed as fully
as possible in the main accounts of the field. Slote has made an important
contribution to remedying this lack. Perhaps even more needs to be said,
however, as it is likely that doubts will continue to surface. It may
therefore be interesting to have a brief look at the position developed by
Charles Altieri (1994),4 which deals with many of the problems that were
elaborated above from a slightly different angle, i.e. a Nietzschean/
Wittgensteinian stance. Altieri contemplates the embeddedness of the
subject in the inter-subjective level and argues that we can define self-
reflexive moral judgements in terms of how the first person engages with
others from whom she seeks to read her sense of identity. He shows
through a dialogical model why the agent might want to submit herself to
impartial third-person criteria for assessing her actions and even her
projects. Hence he constructs a path from expressionist psychology to
related notions of ethical value: ‘What obligates us derives from what we
take as somehow fulfilling us, and what allows us to seek understanding
from others also binds us to the ways of structuring our concerns so that
they participate in a common framework’ (Altieri, 1994, p. 156).
Altieri concentrates on how the second-person function contributes to
the identification process and thus treats the conferring of identity as a
dialogical process responsive to cultural grammars but capable of
modifying those grammars to accommodate specific expressive traits.
The ‘you’ serves both as the constraint that holds one to obligations and as
the source of idealisation that pulls the agent towards certain versions of
its and its audience’s ‘best selves’. The agent does not want universal
agreement for its own sake but seeks a mode of assessment that will allow
her to maintain in the eyes of others—and hence in her own self-
representations—the identity of one who bases judgements on internalis-
ing shareable models of assessment. Such an agent must follow third-
person procedures. But by positing a second-person basis (for accepting
such conditions) she ensures both that her relation to those procedures
takes on considerable flexibility, and that the procedures need not be
grounded in terms of some independent principle. She thus remains
responsible to specific determinations of ends, but she also encounters
those determinations within complex discursive frameworks and clear
expectations about the actions that must follow. What makes a judgement
binding is not the coercive power of the judge but the commitment of the
agent. It goes without saying that this not only does not contradict what
Slote argues for, but adds to his message in a more convincing way.

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 Empathy, Paternalism and Practical Reason 179

If education can be conceived (at minimum) in terms of a relationship

between one individual person and another, particularity, care, integrity
and trust are of the utmost importance: so also is authenticity. Of course,
an agent cannot articulate a project concerning who she wants to be
without a context of inter-subjectivity. Such a project must constitute a
particularly illuminating example of what can be done in a certain social
predicament. For this the ethics of care offers by means of its reliance on
empathy and relational autonomy a very persuasive approach. By
explaining how this does not rule out rationality and thus invoking the
necessity of particularity (and practical judgment), Slote has made it clear
that it does not only offer a viable ground for a theory of justice, but
establishes, moreover, a framework for discussion of central issues in
philosophy and education, such as respect, intervention, responsiveness,
and the multiple practices folded into contemporary life. It is possible to
argue that Slote has not quite resolved the tension in care ethics between
emotionally-grounded and emotionally satisfying moral conduct and the
exercise (or protection) of autonomy understood as involving, definitively,
at least some capacity to think through the ethical implications of rational
abstractions and principles such as justice, freedom and (even) account-
ability for one’s choices and actions, and that in that sense the danger
remains that care ethics either patronises or indulges moral subjects, in
some ways letting them off the hook. But he certainly has argued the
philosophical coherence of care ethics and has demonstrated its
compatibility with moral perspectives more robustly occupied with
questions of justice and right action. By countering the standard criticisms
of care ethics he has enlarged the scope of this position to include moral
problems seen previously as beyond its jurisdiction. Care ethics pursues—
with a vigour equal to other, more ‘rationalist’ perspectives on our ethical
being—the promotion of appropriate moral intervention, due critical
reflection on ethical choice and the active cultivation of autonomy. In
doing this it accords greater weight to naturalistic factors (the importance
of a particular relation) and to the moral psychological significance of our
emotional and ‘sentimental’ investments. Slote’s innovation lies in seeing
these elements as absolutely central to the exercise of moral reasoning
rather than as simply an alternative ‘approach’. His insights might make
the work of, for example, schools in the development of ‘authenticity’
more well-grounded in the life experience of pupils and may thus add to
an articulation of the central role of education in enhancing knowledge,
understanding and the powers of critical judgment in young people. There
are, as he keeps reminding the reader of his book, a vast number of related
issues that still need to be addressed, but it seems to me, Slote’s important
contribution will not stand in the way of that at all.

Correspondence: Paul Smeyers, University of Ghent and K.U. Leuven,

Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Dunantlaan 1, 9000
Gent, Belgium.
E-mail: paul.smeyers@ped.kuleuven.be

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180 P. Smeyers

NOTES
1. Unless otherwise indicated all references are to Slote, 2007.
2. In June 2009 the Philosopher’s Index gives more than 100 entries for ‘ethics of care’, 25 for
‘Noddings’ and 25 for ‘Slote’; the database ERIC gives for ‘Noddings’ 72 entries and for ‘ethics of
care’ 20. Attention was and is paid to this approach in the Journal of Moral Education,
Educational Philosophy and Theory, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Educational Theory,
and Studies in Philosophy of Education as well as by the Societies for Philosophy of Education of
Great Britain, Australasia and the USA—concerning the latter see for instance the yearbooks
Philosophy of Education. Some recent contributions include Johnston, 2008; Mendus, 2008;
Goodman, 2008; and Bergman, 2004. The position of Slote has been widely discussed within
philosophy, for example in Silverman, 2008 which addresses Slote’s Morals From Motives
(2001). Noddings and Slote have collaborated a couple of times (see for instance Noddings and
Slote, 2003; Noddings, 2000; Slote, 2000).
3. In outlining his position he debates the arguments developed among others by Baier, Benhabib,
Blum, Butler, Chodorow, Dworkin, Foot, McDowell, Nagel, Nussbaum, Rawls, Singer, Tronto,
Williams, and even more importantly by Hume, Kant, Smith, Gilligan and Noddings.
4. See Blake et al., 2000, chapter 8 for a further development of this position.

REFERENCES
Altieri, C. (1994) Subjective Agency (Oxford, Blackwell).
Batson, C. D. (1991) The Altruism Question: Toward a Social-Psychological Answer (Hillsdale,
NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates).
Bergman, R. (2004) Caring for the Ethical Ideal: Nel Noddings on Moral Education, Journal of
Moral Education, 33, pp. 149–162.
Blake, N., Smeyers, P., Smith, R. and Standish, P. (2000) Education in an Age of Nihilism
(London, Falmer Press).
Goodman, J. E. (2008) Responding to Children’s Needs: Amplifying the Caring Ethic, Journal of
Philosophy of Education, 42, pp. 233–248.
Hoffman, M. L. (2000) Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).
Johnston, J. S. (2008) Does a Sentiment-based Ethics of Caring Improve upon a Principles-Based
One? The Problem of Impartial Morality, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40, pp. 437–
452.
Mendus, S. (2008) Life’s Ethical Symphony, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 42, pp. 201–
218.
Noddings, N. (1984) Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley,
CA, University of California Press).
Noddings, N. (1992) The Challenge to Care in Schools. An Alternative Approach to Education
(New York, Teachers College Press).
Noddings, N. (2000) Two Concepts of Caring, in: R. Curren (ed.) Philosophy of Education 1999
(Urbana, IL, Philosophy of Education Society), pp. 36–39.
Noddings, N. and Slote, M. (2003) Changing Notions of the Moral and Moral Education, in: N.
Blake, P. Smeyers, R. Smith and P. Standish (eds) The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of
Education (Oxford, Blackwell), pp. 341–355.
Silverman, E. (2008) Michael Slote’s Rejection of Neo-Aristotelian Ethics, The Journal of Value
Inquiry, 42, pp. 507–518.
Slote, M. (2000) Caring Versus the Philosophers, in: R. Curren (ed.) Philosophy of Education
1999 (Urbana, IL, Philosophy of Education Society), pp. 25–35.
Slote, M. (2001) Morals from Motives (New York, Oxford University Press).

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