ABSTRACT
The notion of caring as used by nurses and as informing the self-understanding of nursing practice has been thematized and critiqued recently by Helga Kuhse in her book Caring: nurses, women and ethics. Caring is seen by many theorists as fundamentally a matter of emotion, where the emotions in question are those that give motivational impetus to actions required by interpersonal relationships of various kinds. Drawing on the literature generated by the work of Carol Gilligan, Kuhse acknowledges that the emotional conception is important. Kuhse's concept of dispositional caring raises the problem of adjudicating the various and sometimes conflicting claims upon us of our motivations and inclinations on the one hand and of practical reason on the other. Motivational internalism seems the most plausible view in relation to such judgements. Motivational externalism is taken to be necessary to explain how an agent can have reasons to act in a certain way.
