The Fragility of Concern for Others
Adorno and the Ethics of Care
Published on 25. August 2022
Book
Paperback/Softback
160 pages
978-1-4744-6740-7 (ISBN)
Description
Estelle Ferrarese is one of the leading figures of the contemporary French reception of Critical Theory and this book offers a renewal of the thinking of Theodor W. Adorno.
Ferrarese develops our thinking about the social conditions of caring for others, while arguing for an understanding of morality that is materialist and political - always-already political.
Taking the social philosopher Theodor W. Adorno as a point of departure, she questions this social philosophy by submitting it to ideas deriving from theories of care. She thinks through the mechanisms of the social fragility of caring for others, the moral gesture it enjoins, as well as its political stakes.
In the end, Ferrarese shows that the capitalist form of life, strained by a generalised indifference, produces a compartmentalised attention to others, one limited to very particular tasks and domains and attributed to women
Ferrarese develops our thinking about the social conditions of caring for others, while arguing for an understanding of morality that is materialist and political - always-already political.
Taking the social philosopher Theodor W. Adorno as a point of departure, she questions this social philosophy by submitting it to ideas deriving from theories of care. She thinks through the mechanisms of the social fragility of caring for others, the moral gesture it enjoins, as well as its political stakes.
In the end, Ferrarese shows that the capitalist form of life, strained by a generalised indifference, produces a compartmentalised attention to others, one limited to very particular tasks and domains and attributed to women
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 212 mm
Width: 131 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
Weight
424 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4744-6740-7 (9781474467407)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Estelle Ferrarese is Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at Picardie-Jules-Verne University, France. She is the author of Vulnerability and Critical Theory (Brill, 2018), Ethique et politique de l'espace public. Habermas et la discussion (Vrin, 2015) and Qu'est-ce que lutter pour la reconnaissance? (Editions Le Bord de l'Eau, 2013). She is co-editor of Formes de vie (editions du CNRS, 2018) and The Politics of Vulnerability (Routledge, 2017). She is also the author of numerous articles on the Frankfurt School, feminism, deliberative democracy and vulnerability as a political category. Steven Corcoran has translated numerous works by French and German philosophers, including Jacques Ranciere and Alain Badiou, and is the editor of The Badiou Dictionary, published by Edinburgh University Press.
Content
Introduction
1. Confluences
A Body-Centred Morality
The Particular against the General
What Is Moral Reasoning?
Internal Nature, External Nature
Gaps
2. The Empire of Coldness
The Withering of Experience, Commensurability, Fetishism and Self-Preservation.
Forgetting Others
The Withering of Lived Experience
Commensurability and Interchangeability
Fantasmagoria and Fetishism
Self-Preservation
Reflections on the Thesis of 'Forgetting'
Forgetting as a Political (not Cognitive) Category
The Human Being, A Figure without Substrate
3. A Forgetting in the Thesis of Forgetting
Adorno and 'Woman'
The Gender Order: Adornian Insights and Blind Spots
Cold, Furiously Cold Women
Gendered Moral Dispositions: A Reading of Care Theories
Coldness and Caring for Others after Late Capitalism
The Temptation of 'Emotional Capitalism'
Counter-Arguments
4. Concern for Others in a Wrong World
The Fragility of Concern for Others in Acts
The Impossibility of Moral Knowledge
Disadjustments and Reversals
Moral Powerlessness, Political Power
The Moral 'Wrongness' of Concern?
Bibliography
1. Confluences
A Body-Centred Morality
The Particular against the General
What Is Moral Reasoning?
Internal Nature, External Nature
Gaps
2. The Empire of Coldness
The Withering of Experience, Commensurability, Fetishism and Self-Preservation.
Forgetting Others
The Withering of Lived Experience
Commensurability and Interchangeability
Fantasmagoria and Fetishism
Self-Preservation
Reflections on the Thesis of 'Forgetting'
Forgetting as a Political (not Cognitive) Category
The Human Being, A Figure without Substrate
3. A Forgetting in the Thesis of Forgetting
Adorno and 'Woman'
The Gender Order: Adornian Insights and Blind Spots
Cold, Furiously Cold Women
Gendered Moral Dispositions: A Reading of Care Theories
Coldness and Caring for Others after Late Capitalism
The Temptation of 'Emotional Capitalism'
Counter-Arguments
4. Concern for Others in a Wrong World
The Fragility of Concern for Others in Acts
The Impossibility of Moral Knowledge
Disadjustments and Reversals
Moral Powerlessness, Political Power
The Moral 'Wrongness' of Concern?
Bibliography