Politics of Vulnerability and Responsibility for Ordinary Others

Abstract

The ethics of care has contributed to modifying a dominant conception of ethics and changed the way we conceive vulnerability. It has introduced ethical stakes into politics, weakening, through its critique of theories of justice, the seemingly obvious link between an ethics of justice and political liberalism. However, care corresponds to a quite ordinary reality: the fact that people look after one another, take care of one another and thus are responsible. The aim of this paper is to connect the ethics of care to the idea of the vulnerability of the human as it is developed in the moral philosophy inspired by Wittgenstein (and explored by Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond and Veena Das).

Keywords:

• Cavell
• Wittgenstein
• ethics
• care
• vulnerability
• responsibility

Notes

1 C. Gilligan, In a Different Voice, Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).

2 J. Tronto and B. Fisher, “Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring,” in Circles of Care, ed. E. Abel and M. Nelson (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 41.

3 S. Laugier, “Voice as Form of Life and Life Form.” Nordic Wittgenstein Review, Special Issue “Wittgenstein and Forms of Life” (2015): 63–80.

4 A. Ogien and S. Laugier, Pourquoi désobéir en démocratie? (Paris: La découverte, 2010); S. Laugier, Recommencer la philosophie (Paris: Vrin, 2014).

5 A. J. Langshaw, How to Do Things With Words, edited by J.O. Urmson and M. Sbisà (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962).

6 S. Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say? Space A Book of Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969, 1976).

7 Austin, How to Do Things With Words, 130.

8 S. Cavell, The Claim of Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); Ch. Travis, The Uses of Sense (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); S. Laugier, Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

9 See Austin, How to Do Things With Words.

10 S. Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome, the Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990).

11 Cavell, The Claim of Reason, 28.

12 Cavell, The Claim of Reason, 109.

13 S. Laugier (ed.), La Voix et la vertu, variétés du perfectionnisme moral (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2010).

14 S. Laugier, “Wittgenstein and Cavell: Anthropology, Skepticism and Politics,” in The Claim to Community: Essays on S. Cavell and Political Philosophy, ed. Andrew Norris (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 19–37; and Sandra Laugier, “Voice as Form of Life and Life Form,” Nordic Wittgenstein Review Special Issue “Wittgenstein and Forms of Life” (2015): 63–80.

15 S. Cavell, “Preface,” in Veena Das, Life and Words (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007).

16 V. Das, Life and Words (Stanford, CA: University of California Press, 2007).

17 J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).

18 A. Baier, “What Do Women Want in a Moral Theory?,” in Moral Prejudices (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

19 J. Tronto, Un monde vulnérable. Pour une politique du care (Paris: La Découverte, 2009).

20 Wittgenstein considered using this expression (from Shakespeare, King Lear) as an epigraph for the Philosophical Investigations (1953).

21 Tronto, Un monde vulnérable, 15.

22 L. Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958).

23 Gilligan, In a Different Voice. 

24 C. Gilligan and D. Richards, The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance, and Democracy's Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

25 Gilligan, In a Different Voice, 28.

26 C. Diamond, The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind (Cambridge: MIT Press, Bradford Books, 1991).

27 Carol Gilligan, “Looking Back to Look Forward: Revisiting In a Difference Voice,” Classics@ 9 (2011): http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Classicat.

28 See P. Paperman and S. Laugier, eds., Le souci des autres. Éthique et politique du care (Paris: Éditions EHESS, 2005).

29 Tronto, Un monde vulnérable, 17.

30 Tronto, Un monde vulnérable, 15.

31 Tronto, Un monde vulnérable, 15.

32 J. Tronto, Care as the Work of Citizens, in Women and Citizenship, ed. M. Friedman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

33 Tronto, Care as the Work of Citizens, 130.

34 Tronto, Care as the Work of Citizens, 135.

35 J. Tronto, Moral Boundaries. A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (London/New York: Routledge, 1993).

36 Tronto, Care as the Work of Citizens, 142.

37 J. Tronto, “Partiality Based on Relational Responsibilities: Another Approach to Global Ethics.” Ethics and Social Welfare, special issue: Gender Justice 6.3 (2012): 303–316, 312.

38 M. Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).

39 A. Ogien and S. Laugier, Le Principe Démocratie (Paris: La Découverte, 2014).

40 Tronto, Care as the Work of Citizens, 144.

41 Tronto, Care as the Work of Citizens, 144.

42 A. Sen, “Human Security Now,” UN report, Commission on Human Security (New York: Harvard University Press, 2003).

43 K. Norgaard, “‘People Want to Protect Themselves a Little Bit,’: Emotions, Denial, and Social Movement Nonparticipation.” Sociological Inquiry 76.3 (2006):372–96, 379.

44 Tronto, Care as the Work of Citizens, 142.

45 A. Sen, The Idea of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sandra Laugier

Sandra Laugier is Professor at Université Pris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, Faculty of Philosophy, member of the Institut des sciences Juridique et philosophique de la Sorbonne, France. She works on moral philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of action and philosophy of science. She has worked extensively on J. L. Austin and L. Wittgenstein, Emerson, Thoreau and Stanley Cavell. Her recent work focuses on moral philosophy, the ethics of care and gender studies, and aesthetics. Her books include Qu'est-ce que le care? (with P. Paperman and P. Molinier, Paris: Payot, 2009); Wittgenstein. Les sens de l'usage (Paris: Vrin, 2009); Wittgenstein. Le mythe de l'inexpressivité (Paris: Vrin, 2010); Pourquoi désobéir en démocratie? (with Albert Ogien, Paris: La Découverte, 2010); and Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 2013).