Nel Noddings (1929–2022) was an American feminist philosopher of education, best known for her work on the ethics of caring, or care ethics. She started her career as an elementary school teacher, and then received her Master’s in mathematics from Rutgers University and doctorate in philosophy of education from Stanford.

What does it mean to care for somebody? Noddings defines caring in terms of two main concepts: engrossment and motivational shift (or motivational displacement). As she explains, engrossment is a full non-judgmental attention to the other person as a whole. Motivational displacement means that one’s motivation is no longer directed just at one’s own goals but also at the other person’s well-being and goals. When these two elements are fulfilled, we have a caring relation. But in a complete caring relation, an additional element takes place – the person who is cared-for receives and acknowledges the caring and shows that it has been received.

The following is lightly adapted from Noddings’ book Caring (1984).

Caring involves, for the one who cares, a “feeling with” the other. […] I have called it “engrossment.” I do not “put myself in the other’s shoes,” so to speak, by analyzing his reality as objective data and then asking, “How would I feel in such a situation?” On the contrary, I set aside my temptation to analyze and to plan. I do not project; I receive the other into myself, and see and feel with the other. I become a duality. […] I am committed to the receptivity that permits me to see and to feel in this way. The seeing and feeling are mine, but only partly and temporarily mine, as a loan to me.

[…]

Suppose, for example, that I am having lunch with a group of colleagues. Among them is one for whom I have never had much regard and for whom I have little professional respect. I do not “care” for him. Somewhere in the light banter of lunch talk, he begins to talk about an experience in the wartime navy and the feelings he had under a particular treatment. He talks about how these feelings impelled him to become a teacher. His expressions are unusually lucid, defenseless. I am touched – not only by sentiment – but by something else. It is as though his eyes and mine have combined to look at the scene he describes. I know that I would have behaved differently in the situation, but this in itself a matter of indifference. I feel what he says he felt. I have been invaded by this other. Quite simply, I shall never again be completely without regard for him. My professional opinion has not changed, but I am now prepared to care whereas previously I was not.

[…]

When I care, when I receive the other in the way we have been discussing, there is more than a feeling; there is also a motivational shift. My motive energy flows toward the other and perhaps, although not necessarily, towards his ends. I do not relinquish myself; I cannot excuse myself for what I do. But I allow my motive energy to be shared; I put it at the service of the other.

[…]

I have claimed that the one-caring is engrossed in the other. But this engrossment is not completely characterized as emotional feeling. There is a characteristic and appropriate mode of consciousness in caring. […] In such a mode, we receive what-is-there as nearly as possible without evaluation or assessment. […] We are not attempting to transform the world, but we are allowing ourselves to be transformed.

[…]

The receptive mode is at the heart of human existence. By “existence” or “existing” I mean more than merely living or subsisting. When existentialist philosophers refer to “existence,” they mean to include awareness of, and commitment to what we are doing, what we are living, and I am using the terms in this way. Existence involves, then, living with heightened awareness.