From Care Ethics to Care Politics. Toward a Political Notion of Care

Abstract

This thesis is an investigation into the notion of care and what role it can play for developing a concept of the political based on care. It is a systematic attempt to lay a foundation and sketch out the premises and ramifications in which a full-fledged philosophical theory of a politics of care may be grounded. In chapter I, the thesis traces the etymological and historical development of the notion of care showing that care has always been an important ingredient to philosophical thought, although not entering mainstream philosophical theories. Furthermore, in chapter I, it is argued that care is an essential ingredient to human life. Chapter II investigates the notion of care in relation to ethics and how a comprehensive ethics of care may look. It discusses the roots of care ethics, its theoretical and ontological foundations as well as guiding principles that are important in order to develop care into an ethical theory on par with utilitarianism, deontology and justice theory. Chapter III discusses care with regard to the political and how it may contribute to a contemporary comprehension of politics as politics of care, preventing harmful relations between agents, and furthering human flourishing. A tentative concept of care politics is sketched out toward the end of chapter III. Several theoretical and practical challenges to care politics are discussed over the course of chapter III. Throughout the thesis, the notion of care is discussed and applied to practical examples both from the private and public domain such as the European refugee crisis, global warming and general as well as specific relations between agents. The thesis concludes that in order for care to play a significant role both as a theory, that is, as a political concept, as well as a practically guiding political notion, the fundamental categories and ontology on which our current concepts of the political are based have to be changed.

Key words: care, ethics of care, care ethics, politics of care, care politics, history of care, ontology of care, myth of cura, existential care, the care of the common, expanded mature care, refugee crisis