Ethics of Care – serie

Joan Tronto’s Moral Boundaries. A political Argument for an Ethic of Care (1993) is one of the most influential works in the short history of the ethics of care. In her book Tronto rethinks ‘care’ as one of the central activities of human life and explains that it is shaped through politics. Since it is two decades ago that Moral Boundaries was published it seems more than worthwhile to take stock of its significance. This volume does so. It attempts to redraw the moral boundaries Tronto discusses and explores the impact and meaning of her thinking for care ethics as a developing discipline. This volume celebrates the anniversary of a book. Our ‘author of honour’ is Joan Tronto herself. The contributions of the other authors concentrate on three domains: political theory, professional ethics and the understanding of care as practice.

Care and caring are essential to the core of life. As an everyday activity it guarantees the continuity of a humane society. In an era of cold-blooded neo-liberalism, relationality, attentiveness, compassion, solidarity and care are even more relevant traits to sustain a life worth living ‒ not only for the precarious ones among us but for all of us. To this end the Ethics of Care as a political ethical theory is the most prominent champion of the relevance of care and caring on all different levels of the research-policy-practice continuum and across all domains of our lived realities. Drawing on feminism as a critique on neo-Kantian ethics, the Ethics of Care developed into an acknowledged sub-field since the early 1980s. This edited volume by renowned scholars from across the globe presents this trajectory with a critical engagement on a range of key issues, its gradual development, and its subsequent scholarly and societal contribution. These insights pertain to issues related to the more intimate forms of care ‒ from person to person ‒ as well as issues of care at an institutional level and questions of global impact. More specifically, an up-to-date refinement of the concepts ‘vulnerability’ and ‘relationality’ are some examples of these insights. Similarly, lessons of caring practices ranging from social welfare to palliative care are shared. This volume offers a critical overview of the current debates and the future challenges of an Ethics of Care as a landmark branch of contemporary ethics.

This book investigates the relationship between philosophical phenomenology and ethics of care. The relationship between these two traditions in normative philosophy is particularly fascinating for theoretical scholars, researchers as well as bioethicists and health care clinicians. Both traditions elucidate the normative significance of human experience, emotion and embodiment. One reason for investigating the relationship is that care is both a concept (ethical, sociological etc.), a practice, and a phenomenon that has significant bearing upon human existence. Care as a phenomenon and concept also regards the human condition and experience as being invested with normativity. The book brings together care ethicists of different scholarly generations and from different countries (Belgium, Norway, USA, the Netherlands) who each explain their version of phenomenology, and secondly it includes three of today’s prominent German phenomenologists who have reflected on care. Hopefully, the collection will stimulate care ethicists to inquire more deeply into phenomenology, and phenomenologists looking for connection with care ethics.

This edited volume offers translations of important texts published by francophone care ethics scholars since the early 2000s. The anthology hopes to give readers a glimpse of the diversity of French-language care scholarship and of its unwavering commitment to showing that care is fundamentally political. The first part of the volume offers critical reflections on the controversies and debates that accompanied the introduction of care ethics in French-speaking academic life and in public debates. It also includes essays that reflect on the concepts of vulnerability and “the ordinary”. In the second part of the anthology, readers will find essays that place care ethics in conversation with other bodies of literature (disability studies, animal ethics, nanoethics, neorepublicanism, liberal theory, continental philosophy, contemporary feminist thought). This collection includes contributions from Sophie Bourgault, Fabienne Brugère, Solange Chavel, Aurélie Damamme, Estelle Ferrarese, Marie Garrau, Claude Gautier, Naïma Hamrouni, Monique Lanoix, Sandra Laugier, Pascale Molinier, Vanessa Nurock, Patricia Paperman. The volume also includes a foreword by Fiona Robinson.