Women and Evil:

...Moreover, methods of moral reasoning cannot in themselves lead to the kind of relational sensitivity that women have learned in caring for the daily intimate needs of others...

...Evil is neither entirely out-there nor entirely in-herc...

...The greatest strength of the book, however, does not lie in Noddings's description of Western male writers' views of evil or even in her redefinition of evil from women's perspective, but in her concrete suggestions for education toward a morality of evil in which the goal is the reduction of pain, separation, and helplessness...

...instead of the usual sore tltroat or earache...

...Acknowledging that women seem to have these feelings more than men do because they have largely been confined to social roles in which they cared for others, Noddings would like to alleviate What is wrong with the vast majority of us...

...s alle-viation...

...attribute the best possible motive consonant with reality to both parties in the dispute"-can make an important contribution to the alleviation of evils...

...it isan interactive phenomenon that requires acceptance, understanding, and steady control rather than great attempts to overcome it once and for all...

...The "tough love" counseled for families of alcoholics addresses one kind of destructive empathy, but may be extended to a variety of "caring" relationships in which one person takes an inappropriate respon-siblity for another...

...Rather, the "real work" of caring for others must be incorporated into an education in which one simultaneously "works and thinks and theorizes...

...Even caring, it seems, must be critically examined rather than simply recommended and taught...

...Nel Noddings Women and Evil women's burden by extending it to all people...

...Such an education, she says, cannot rely on traditional ethical principles designed for individuals, but must instill a relational ethic in which "the response of another is one important criterion by which we judge the morality of our acts...

...it is pathological to ignore or deny this inclination...

...From this perspective, the content of evil is nonproductive physical pain as well as the psychic pains of separation and helplessness...

...Arguing that traditional views of evil-as defilement, disobedience, or transgression against a god -"are not only male but masculine in the sense that they maintain and even glorify traits that have been genderized in favor of males," Noddings proposes that a different analysis results from seeing evil "through the eyes of people who bear and raise children, try to maintain a comfortable and stable home, feed and nurture the hungry and developing...

...The answer I have been suggesting all along is that we do not understand or accept our own disposition toward evil and that we lack a morality of evil...

...By analogy, all of us are susceptible to the streptococcus, but some of us are allergic to it and get dreadful sicknesses...

...I hope it is not trivializing Noddings's frequently eloquent plea for empathy to suggest that the capacity for damage to the other, rather than reduction of evil, should receive some attention...

...The general point made in these sections, however, seems legitimate, namely that Christianity has contributed to the mystification of evil by circulating myths of evil that have produced unjust social arrangements, the construction of others as enemies, and cosmic validation of cruelty...

...Women have participated in male-designed and -administered religion not because they are gullible, hypocritical, or stupid, she says, but because of Christianity's emphasis on helping others: "We might argue that religious institutions merely gave a verbal blessing to that which women would have done anyway...

...Margaret R. Miles In this engaging book, Nel Noddings examines several theological, philosophical, and psychological associations of women with evil in order to propose a counter-definition of evil from the perspective of women's experience...

...It is normal (in both the "ordinary" and "healthy" senses of the word) to incline toward evil...

...If relational virtues and relational tasks-teaching, parenting, advising, mediating, helping-were distributed among men and women and not considered as feminine, the reduction of pain, separation, and helplessness would also be more likely to occur...

...Similarly, there is a continuum of susceptibility to the evil within, but no one is immune...

...Women and Evil does not explore the limitations or dangers of behavior based on empathy with another person's psychological or physical pain, separation, or helplessness...

...She does think that some of the skills women have developed in their traditional caring roles-"one must persuade, plead, appeal to sympathies, interpret, reword, and...

...Nevertheless, the book is a valuable contribution to the analysis of evil and its alle-viation...

...The weakest sections of the book deal with historical situations, events, and ideas handled, not in terms of their social, intellectual, or religious context, but from a pre-sentist perspective...

...Noddings's compassionate vision of the systematic reduction of evil through education, a continuation of a project begun in an earlier book, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education, clearly finds organized religion part of the problem rather than part of the solution...

...Nor does she wish to claim that women can save the world...

...Noddings argues that such an education for morality must be a high priority in a contemporary world riddled with war, terrorism, torture, and psychological abuse...

...Although Noddings finds the masculine views of evil that she explores consistently wrongheaded or shortsighted, she does not assume or conclude that "feminine" is good and "masculine" bad...

...Noddings privileges feelings of empathy, caring, and the desire to help others as the basis for moral reasoning and action...