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THE ONE-CARING

RECEIVING

CARING INVOLVES, FOR the one-caring, a “feeling with” the other. We might want to call this relationship “empathy,” but we should think about what we mean by this term. The Oxford Universal Dictionary defines empathy as “The power of projecting one’s personality into, and so fully understanding, the object of contemplation.” This is, perhaps, a peculiarly rational, western, masculine way of looking at “feeling with.” The notion of “feeling with” that I have outlined does not involve projection but reception. 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 I see and feel with the other. I become a duality. I am not thus caused to see or to feel—that is, to exhibit certain behavioral signs interpreted as seeing and feeling—for 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 on loan to me.

Although receptivity is referred to by mystics, it is not a mystical notion. On the contrary, it refers to a common occurrence, something with which we are all familiar. It does not have to be achieved by meditation, although many persons do enter a receptive state in this way. We are interested here in the reception of persons, however, and we do not receive persons through meditation. Yet a receptive state is required. It can happen by chance when our manipulative efforts are at rest. 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 is 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.

Mothers quite naturally feel with their infants. We do not project ourselves into our infants and ask, “How would I feel if I were wet to the ribs?” We do this only when the natural impulse fails. Naturally, when an infant cries, we react with the infant and feel that something is wrong. Something is wrong. This is the infant’s feeling, and it is ours. We receive it and share it. We do not begin by trying to interpret the cry, although we may learn to do this. We first respond to the feeling that something is the matter. It is not foolishness to begin talking to our child as we respond to the cry. We say, “I’m here, sweetheart,” and “I hear you, darling,” as we move physically toward the child. And, usually, we comfort first, saying, “There, there. Everything is all right,” before we begin to analyze what is the matter. We do not begin by formulating or solving a problem but by sharing a feeling. Even when we move into the problem identification stage, we try to retain alternating phases of receptivity. We say, “Do you have a pain?” or its equivalent in baby talk. We do not expect, certainly, that the infant will respond verbally, but the question and its tone impel us to attentive quietude. We await an answer of some sort. We watch for a knee to be drawn up, the head to be tossed, a fist to be sucked.

Now it is just nonsense to say that a feeling response to my infant’s cry will “reinforce his crying behavior.” To begin with, I am not sure what is meant by “to reinforce,” and I suspect that, if it has any meaning in the real world, I cannot know what is being reinforced without being inside the one whose behavior is being so affected. But the sort of empathy we are discussing does not first penetrate the other but receives the other. Hence I do not “reinforce.” I receive, I communicate with, I work with. If by “reinforce” we mean simply that the likelihood of the behavior’s being continued is increased, then, in the case we are discussing, the claim is quite simply and demonstrably false.

There is another point to be made here. When we consider reinforcement strategies, we are obviously in a manipulative mode. We want to change the other’s behavior. The mother as one-caring, however, wants first and most importantly to relieve her child’s suffering. But, the philosopher asks, suppose the child is not suffering? Suppose it has merely acquired a bothersome habit of crying at the same hour every night? For that matter, how can you even know that you are actually “receiving the other"?

How can I know? We must move cautiously here. The entire program I am trying to establish hangs on the answer to this question. If I respond that I cannot be mistaken in a basic act of receptivity, I fall into the trap that has already snared the phenomenologist when he speaks of the infallibility of basic intuitions. He asserts his position and presents it as right by definition. Surely, I do not want to respond in this way. Gently, gently, I must resist my colleague’s efforts to bring me into the standard mode of argumentation. I am not claiming that I know either in my receptivity itself or in my description of it. It is not at bottom a matter of knowledge but one of feeling and sensitivity. Feeling is not all that is involved in caring, but it is essentially involved.

When I receive the other, I am totally with the other. The relation is for the moment exactly as Buber has described it in I and Thou.¹ The other “fills the firmament.” I do not think the other, and I do not ask myself whether what I am feeling is correct in some way. When I have a sudden, severe pain in my mouth, for example, I may complain of a toothache. I cannot be wrong in responding to what I feel as a pain. It is not a matter of knowledge at all. Later, when the pain has gone and I think back on it, however, I may say, “Well, I guess it was not a toothache after all. It’s gone. Perhaps it was a bit of neuralgia caused by the cold or altitude.” I do not say, “Well, I guess I did not have a pain.” Of course I had a pain. My error, if one occurred, lay in assessing the pain as a toothache. Similarly, I may, in looking back, become aware that there was a failure somewhere in my movement from feeling to assessment. But in the receptive mode itself, I am not thinking the other as object. I am not making claims to knowledge. There can be failures to receive, and we shall discuss such cases, but these are not matters of faulty claims to knowledge.

But am I not making claims to knowledge as I describe the state of one-caring in moments of caring? What is offered is not a set of knowledge claims to be tested but an invitation to see things from an alternative perspective. When I describe the one-caring in particular situations, we should not infer that one who behaves or feels differently in similar situations is necessarily one who does not care. To begin with, I am denying the sort of generalizability that would be required to make such a judgment. Situations of relatedness are unique, and it is my purpose to build a picture of one-caring from a collection of concrete and unique situations. There is, I think, a logic of the caring relation, and there is empirical support for much of what I shall say, but the program under construction does not evolve inevitably out of the “logic of the concept” nor out of a catalog of what is known about persons caring. Both require a move to abstraction that tends to destroy the uniqueness of the caring itself. This must be captured in the caring moment—in the one-caring and in the cared-for.

When I care, when I receive the other in the way we have been discussing, there is more than feeling; there is also a motivational shift. My motive energy flows toward the other and perhaps, although not necessarily, toward 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. It is clear that my vulnerability is potentially increased when I care, for I can be hurt through the other as well as through myself. But my strength and hope are also increased, for if I am weakened, this other, which is part of me, may remain strong and insistent. When this displacement occurs in the extreme form, we sometimes hear parents speak of “living for” their children. Clearly, both parents and children are at risk of losing themselves under such conditions, and I shall say more about this when we discuss the cared-for in detail.

Now, just what is the place of emotion or affect in caring, and how is it related to the motivational shift just described? 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. When we are in problem solving situations, the characteristic and appropriate mode of consciousness is, usually, one of rational objectivity. It is a thinking mode that moves the self toward the object. It swarms over the object, assimilates it. When this mode breaks down under pressure, we respond emotionally. Suppose that I am trying to open a window that is stuck. As I push, one side goes up and the other side goes down. I move very carefully trying to prevent this lopsided movement. No luck. I examine the parts of the window. I hypothesize. I may examine a window that is working properly in the hope of understanding its mechanism. I experiment. Then, suddenly, I deteriorate. I beat and curse the window. Consciousness has entered a mode in which it meets its objects with emotion.

Jean-Paul Sartre calls this a “degradation of consciousness,”² a condition in which the higher consciousness of rationality gives way to the lower, nonreflective consciousness of emotion. At least his use of “degradation” leads us to infer a movement from higher to lower. In the case I have described, “degradation” seems to be the right word, for my beating and cursing the window seem indicators of an attempt to influence the window as though it had an obstinate will. But, perhaps, in most cases, it would be more fruitful to think in terms of a movement from appropriate and/or effective to inappropriate and/or ineffective, for there is an appropriate change in modes even in problem solving. We can switch from an assimilatory mode to a receptive-intuitive mode which, by a process we do not understand well, allows us to receive the object, to put ourselves quietly into its presence. We enter a feeling mode, but it is not necessarily an emotional mode. In such a mode, we receive what-is-there as nearly as possible without evaluation or assessment. We are in the world of relation, having stepped out of the instrumental world; we have either not yet established goals or we have suspended striving for those already established. We are not attempting to transform the world, but we are allowing ourselves to be transformed. This is, clearly, not a degradation of consciousness, although it may be accompanied by an observable change in energy pattern.

It is a lateral move of some sort. We mentioned earlier Mozart hearing music, Gauss being seized by mathematics, and Miró having his hand guided when he painted. An affective-receptive mode of this kind cannot be thought of as a “degradation” of consciousness. Indeed, emotion may be absent or, at least, the one-receiving may be unaware of it. But it is, clearly, qualitatively different from the analytic-objective mode in which we impose structure on the world. It is a precreative mode characterized by outer quietude and inner voices and images, by absorption and sensory concentration. The one so engrossed is listening, looking, feeling.

The receptive mode seems to be an essential component of intellectual work. We do not pass into it under stress, and this is further evidence that it is not a degradation of consciousness. Indeed, we must settle ourselves, clear our minds, reduce the racket around us in order to enter it. If we are unable to do this, we may remain in an unproductive assimilative mode. Sometimes, for example, mathematics students get “stuck” in an analytic mode. They persist in trying to force a particular structure upon an unyielding problem. They are usually tense, frowning—on the edge of a genuine degradation. Then, the teacher may say, “Wait. Just sit still for a minute. Stop thinking and just look at the problem.” Humor, patience, and quiet enter. The student may say, “What kind of mathematics teacher would tell a person to ‘stop thinking’?” Teacher and student receive each other. Then the student relaxes and receives the problem. Often the result is quite remarkable. Over and over, I have heard students say, as they looked at what was in front of them, “For goodness sake! Why didn’t I see that before?”

The receptive or relational mode seems to be essential to living fully as a person. In caring, a permanent or untimely move from feeling and affective engrossment to abstract problem solving would be a “degradation,” a movement from the appropriate to something qualitatively different and less appropriate. Again, this is not to say that a lateral or temporary move into objective thinking is necessarily a “degradation.” What seems to be crucial is that we retain the ability to move back and forth and to invest the appropriate mode with dominance. When we give over control to the inappropriate mode, we may properly speak of a degradation of consciousness; in the one case we become irrational and in the other unfeeling and unseeing.

THINKING AND FEELING: TURNING POINTS

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 an awareness of and commitment to what we are doing, what we are living, and I am using the term in this way. Existence involves, then, living with heightened awareness. A receptive mode may be both reflexive and reflective; that is, instead of receiving the world or the other, I may receive myself, and I may direct my attention to that which I have already received. It is in this subjective-receptive mode that I see clearly what I have received from the other, and then I must decide whether to proceed in a state of truth or to deny what I have received and talk myself into feeling comfortable with the denial.

Instrumental thinking may, of course, enhance caring; that is, I may use my reasoning powers to figure out what to do once I have committed myself to doing something. But clearly, rationality (in its objective form) does not of necessity mark either the initial impulse or the action that is undertaken. If I care enough, I may do something wild and desperate in behalf of the other—something that has only the tiniest probability of success, and that only in my own subjective view. Hence, in caring, my rational powers are not diminished but they are enrolled in the service of my engrossment in the other. What I will do is subordinate to my commitment to do something.

I have suggested that we can make lateral moves—that is, moves which are neither up nor down—in modes of consciousness. Clearly we cannot remain perpetually in the receptive mode. Mozart moved to the piano, to pen and paper. Gauss produced proofs. Miró perfected what his hand sketched out. And we, in caring, must respond: we express ourselves, we make plans, we execute. But there, are, properly, turning points. As we convert what we have received from the other into a problem, something to be solved, we move away from the other. We clean up his reality, strip it of complex and bothersome qualities, in order to think it. The other’s reality becomes data, stuff to be analyzed, studied, interpreted. All this is to be expected and is entirely appropriate, provided that we see the essential turning points and move back to the concrete and the personal. Thus we keep our objective thinking tied to a relational stake at the heart of caring. When we fail to do this, we can climb into clouds of abstraction, moving rapidly away from the caring situation into a domain of objective and impersonal problems where we are free to impose structure as we will. If I do not turn away from my abstractions, I lose the one cared-for. Indeed, I lose myself as one-caring, for I now care about a problem instead of a person.

As an ethical theory develops out of this analysis of caring, we shall consider a process of concretization that is the inverse of abstraction, and we shall explore the possibility that this process is one preferred by women faced with moral dilemmas. Instead of proceeding deductively from principles superimposed on situations, women seek to “fill out” hypothetical situations in a defensible move toward concretization. Suppose, for example, that we are considering appropriate punishment for one who has committed a particular crime. The traditional approach, that of the father, is to ask under what principle the case falls. But the mother may wish to ask more about the culprit and his victims. She may begin by thinking, “What if this were my child?” Neither position is fairly put forth and examined by merely identifying its first move but, clearly, the approaches are different: The first moves immediately to abstraction where its thinking can take place clearly and logically in isolation from the complicating factors of particular persons, places, and circumstances; the second moves to concretization where its feeling can be modified by the introduction of facts, the feelings of others, and personal histories. The father might sacrifice his own child in fulfilling a principle; the mother might sacrifice any principle to preserve her child. This is far too simplistic to be considered a summary or definitive description of positions, but it is indicative and instructive. It underscores the sort of difference that places the present approach in opposition to traditional ethics.

GUILT AND COURAGE

The one-caring is in a unique position with respect to the caring. I can be aware of myself caring, and I can think about and doubt my caring. If the cared-for receives my caring and completes it, I may never turn inward (except in wonder) to examine my own state or to question it. I care, and that means that my consciousness is turned to the cared-for. I have little need to reflect on this consciousness, and I may be but dimly aware of a euphoria, ranging from a mild “all’s well” to ecstasy, that accompanies my activity with the cared-for.

But if the cared-for does not complete my caring by receiving and acknowledging it, I may examine myself and ask, “Do I really care?” In some cases, an affirmative answer comes through clearly and honestly. I do care. I shall always care. The situation may be such that I just have to wait for my caring to be completed in the other and, if it never is, I see clearly that the attempt to care will nonetheless go on. This is a source of wonder when I see it. However, a negative answer may come through. If it does, I may accept it honestly and study it, or I may reject it in horror and begin to talk myself out of it. Let’s say that I have the courage to accept it. My caring for this other has turned into “cares and burdens.” When I see this, I know that I have become the object of my own “caring.” I need my pity, compassion, and sympathy. “Wallowing in self-pity” is not a bad thing if I intend to help myself as I would another. So, perhaps, I dwell on my troubles for a while, let them lead and chase themselves into an enhanced state of despair at which I draw back sheepishly and say, “Well, now, it is not that bad.” Then I can climb out. I recognize that I do not care at this time, that I am weary, but I recognize, also, that this mood may pass. It may be that I must still do certain things in behalf of the cared-for. I resolve to do them as though I care. This is very dangerous, and I must monitor the situation in a way that is completely unnecessary when I do care. I am not really prepared to care. I am in a deliberate state of neutrality, waiting and watching. I run a dreadful risk in this decision for, if the potential cared-for turns on me and says, “You don’t really care!” I may become stricken with guilt. I do not really care, and yet I “care” enough to be bothered by this accusation.

What I care about is crucial at this point. If I care about the other, if I am stricken by his belief that I do not care—that is, if I am stricken as he is by disappointment and desperation—then I do care, and things will mend naturally. But if this accusation strikes me as a threat, as a reprimand that triggers no sympathy for the other but only a massive resistance, I will feel guilt. Here am I, one who cared, who does not now care, and the other sees it. I can summon reason to my defense: Look at this other! What has he done to encourage or to appreciate me? What a mess he is. How I have tried. . . . I can go on and on and guilt comes right along like my shadow.

Can I avoid this? Can I be free of guilt? I do not think it is possible. Paul Tillich describes the anxiety of guilt as ontological. It transcends the subjective and objective. It is a constant threat in caring. In caring, I am turned both outward (toward the other) and inward (my engrossment may be reflected upon); when caring fails, I feel its loss. I want to care, but I do not. I feel that I ought to behave as though I care, but I do not want to do this. Of someone in this kind of situation, Tillich says:

A profound ambiguity between good and evil permeates everything he does, because it permeates his personal being as such. Non-being is mixed with being in his moral self-affirmation as it is in his spiritual and ontic self-affirmation. The awareness of this ambiguity is the feeling of guilt.³

Contrary to many of the messages from some schools of modern psychology, we cannot be free of this guilt. There is something to be said for “not wasting time on guilt,” if by this we mean suffering guilt and letting our guilt color all we do in the world. Clearly, if that which has induced guilt can be partially remedied by action, then it makes sense to act. This does not mean to avoid. We might, of course, refuse the guilt and engage in frenetic activity to avoid looking at it, but I am not suggesting this. I am saying what we all know, that some action which may remove the reason for the other’s accusation will tend to alleviate the guilt. In such cases we act out of regard for our own ethical or, perhaps, psychical selves, but the reaction of the other may enable us to recover the caring that has lapsed. Caring is, by its nature, filled out in the other.

There are, however, occasions upon which no action can relieve guilt. These are not necessarily situations in which caring has lapsed. There are situations in which caring is sustained but something has gone wrong. Something terrible has happened. In caring we risk guilt, either through accidents while caring is sustained or through the lapse of caring. In the former case, nothing can undo what has been done. Atonement is not required, because forgiveness was freely given at the outset. To be free of the guilt, the one-caring would do anything for the cared-for. Yet this “anything” would be a mockery, because there is nothing that could restore what has been lost to the cared-for. So here is this reality, this thing of which I can never be free. Courage requires that I accept it. I do not dwell on it so that it cripples me and provides an excuse (which I can never have) for my lapsed projects. But I accept it. When it comes to me I accept it as mine-that-I-would-not-have-chosen but mine nonetheless. I live it through as often as it comes to me. There is a double requirement of courage in caring: I must have the courage to accept that which I have had a hand in, and I must have the courage to go on caring. Might it not be easier to escape to the world of principles and abstractions? These cared-fors under whose gaze I fall—whose real eyes look into mine—are related to me. I can be hurt through them and by them. Intermittently, they are I and I they. The possibilities for both pain and joy are increased in my world, but I need courage to grasp the possibilities.

The question raised by mistaken psychologies, “Why should I feel guilty?” suggests that I may reject the possibility—and, of course, I may, if I am willing to reject my self, that part of my finite self which is embedded in an infinite that I cannot entirely grasp. But I do know, if I look with open eyes upon it, that any movement out of a stagnant self-as-it-is risks this guilt which is existential, which accompanies an awareness of lived experience. It is a risk I always run when I care.

The risk of guilt is present in all caring. But its likelihood is greater in caring that is sustained over time. Here we experience the “ups and downs” of close contact in normal living. Not all caring is sustained over lengthy periods. When we care for a stranger in immediate need, we care for the interval of need and, afterward, forget. A stranger needs to use our telephone, or we stop to help a stranded motorist. There is no demand in these cases that we care either intensely or for a prolonged period of time. There is a temporal aspect to caring. From the view of the one-caring, the engrossment characteristic of caring and the typical motivational shift must span the interval whether that be, properly, a few moments or a lifetime. Martin Buber says: “Love is responsibility of an I for a Thou:* in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling.”⁴ Caring, too, although it is not necessarily accompanied by love, is partly responsibility for the other—for the cared-for. As we care, we hear the “I ought”—direct and primitive—and the potential for suffering guilt is ever present. What “I ought” to respond to, I may ignore or reject; what I decide to do in genuine response to the other and to the internal “I ought” may go awry, bringing pain to the cared-for and guilt to me.

To spare ourselves guilt, we may prefer to define our caring in terms of conformity and/or regard to principle. If the other does not respond, we are still quite safe from criticism. We are righteous. We act in obedience to some great principle—I must defend my country! I must execute the law! I must be fair!—and from the potential cared-for we avert our eyes. We do not care for him any longer.

WOMEN AND CARING

We have already noted that women often define themselves as both persons and moral agents in terms of their capacity to care. When we move from natural caring to an ethic of caring, we shall consider the deep psychological structures that may be responsible for this mode of definition. Here I wish to concentrate on the caring itself—on particular examples of feminine courage in relating and remaining related and on the typical differences between men and women in their search for the ethical in human relationships.

We may find the sorts of examples and contrasts we seek in legend, Biblical accounts, biography, and fiction. I shall do no more than sample the possibilities here. The legend of Ceres, for example, can be interpreted beautifully to illustrate the attitude and conflicts of one-caring.⁵ Recall that Ceres was the goddess who cared for the earth. It was she who made the fields fertile and watched over the maturation and harvest of crops. She had a daughter, Proserpine, whom she dearly loved. One day, Pluto, god of the underworld, crazed by love from Cupid’s arrow, snatched Proserpine from her play and abducted her to his underground kingdom. Ceres searched the world for her daughter without success and was grief-stricken. Next something happens in the legend that is especially instructive for the one-caring: Ceres, in all her misery, is approached by an old man, Celeus, and his little girl. They respond to her grief and invite her to visit their cottage; indeed, they respond by weeping with her. Ceres is moved by this show of compassion and accompanies them. Here is a concrete illustration of the power of the cared-for in contributing to the caring relation. Ceres knows that she is the one-caring, that she has the power to confer good or ill on these passersby. But, in her misery, she needs the active response of the cared-for to maintain herself as one-caring. Typical of one-caring who would be one-caring, she answers Celeus by saying: “Lead on, . . . I cannot resist that appeal.”⁶

Arriving at the cottage, Ceres finds a little boy very ill, probably dying. She is received, however, by the child’s mother, Metanira, and moved to pity, Ceres cures the child with a kiss. Later, when Ceres tries to make the child immortal by tempering his body in flaming ashes, Metanira snatches the child fearfully from her. Ceres chides the mother for depriving her son of immortality but, still, she assures Metanira that he will nevertheless be “great and useful.” The boy, Triptolemus, will someday teach humankind the secrets of agriculture as revealed to him by Ceres. Here, then, is a second facet of the ideal for one-caring. The cared-for shall be blessed not with riches, luck, and power but with the great gift of usefulness. The conversation between Ceres intending immortality for Triptolemus and Metanira afraid to risk her son in the flames is illustrative, again, of the feminine striving for an attainable ideal. It stands in bold contrast to the story we shall consider next—that of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son to divine command.

Eventually, Ceres finds the place where Proserpine was swallowed up by the earth, but she mistakenly supposes that the earth itself did this terrible thing. She is stricken by a double grief. Not only has she lost her beloved Proserpine but another cared-for, her fruitful earth, has turned against her. Now Ceres does not fly into a destructive rage and visit the earth with lightning, fire and flood. She merely ceases to care; she withdraws as one-caring, and the earth dries up in mud and weeds and brambles. Ceres, the one-caring, has nothing to sustain her in caring. Here, we see foreshadowed the power of the cared-for in maintaining the caring relationship.

Finally, Ceres learns the truth and entreats Jove to intercede on her behalf with Pluto. As you may recall, Pluto, in fear of losing his kingdom entirely, agrees to return Proserpine but induces her to eat some pomegranate seeds so that she will be unable to spend more than half of each year with her mother. When Proserpine returns each spring, Ceres bestows great fruitfulness on the earth and, when she leaves each fall, Ceres is overcome by grief and allows winter to settle on the earth.

This story is widely understood as an allegory of the seasons, of sleeping grain and awakening fruitfulness, but it may be interpreted also as a fable of caring and being cared-for.⁷ It illustrates the vulnerability of the one-caring, her reception of the proximate stranger, her generosity upon being herself received, and the munificent displacement of motivation that occurs when she is sustained as one-caring.

Now, someone is sure to point out that, in contrast to the legend of one-caring as the pinnacle of feminine sensibility, feminine skullduggery lies at the root of the problem described in the legend.⁸ It was, after all, Venus who prompted her son, Cupid, to shoot Pluto with the arrow of love. I am not denying the reality of this dark side of feminine character,⁹ but I am rejecting it in my quest for the ethical. I am not, after all, suggesting a will to power but rather a commitment to care as the guide to an ethical ideal.

This commitment to care and to define oneself in terms of the capacity to care represent a feminine alternative to Kohlberg’s “stage six” morality.¹⁰ At stage six, the moral thinker transcends particular moral principles by appealing to a highest principle—one that allows a rearrangement of the hierarchy in order to give proper place-value to human love, loyalty, and the relief of suffering. But women, as ones-caring, are not so much concerned with the rearrangement of priorities among principles; they are concerned, rather, with maintaining and enhancing caring. They do not abstract away from the concrete situation those elements that allow a formulation of deductive argument; rather, they remain in the situation as sensitive, receptive, and responsible agents. As a result of this caring orientation, they are perceived by Kohlberg as “being stuck” at stage three—that stage in which the moral agent wants to be a “good boy or girl.” The desire to be good, however, to be one-caring in response to these cared-fors here and now, provides a sound and lovely alternative foundation for ethical behavior. Like Ceres, the one-caring will not turn from the real human beings who address her. Her caring is the foundation of—and not a mere manifestation of—her morality.

In contrast to the story of Ceres, who could not abandon her child even for the sake of her beloved Earth, we may consider Abraham. In obedience to God, Abraham traveled with his son, Isaac, to Moriah, there to offer him as a sacrifice: “And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.”¹¹

Kierkegaard interprets Abraham’s action as supra-ethical, that is, as the action of an individual who is justified by his connection to God, the absolute. For him, as for us, the individual is higher than the universal, but for him that “higher” status is derived from “absolute duty toward God.” Hence a paradox is produced. Out of duty to God, we may be required to do to our neighbor what is ethically forbidden. The ethical is, for Kierkegaard, the universal, and the individual directly obedient to God is superior to the universal. He says: “In the story of Abraham we find such a paradox. His relation to Isaac, ethically expressed, is this, that the father should love the son. This ethical relation is reduced to a relative position in contrast with the absolute relation to God.”¹²

But for the mother, for us, this is horrendous. Our relation to our children is not governed first by the ethical but by natural caring. We love not because we are required to love but because our natural relatedness gives natural birth to love. It is this love, this natural caring, that makes the ethical possible. For us, then, Abraham’s decision is not only ethically unjustified but it is in basest violation of the supra-ethical—of caring. The one-caring can only describe his act—“You would kill your own son!”—and refuse him forgiveness. Abraham’s obedience fled for protection under the skirts of an unseeable God. Under the gaze of an abstract and untouchable God, he would destroy this touchable child whose real eyes were turned upon him in trust, and love, and fear. I suspect no woman could have written either Genesis or Fear and Trembling, but perhaps I should speak only for myself on that. The one-caring, male or female, does not seek security in abstractions cast either as principles or entities. She remains responsible here and now for this cared-for and this situation and for the forseeable futures projected by herself and the cared-for.