Du care

Despite a burgeoning literature, do we know what is care ? In this extract of her famous book Moral Boundaries, the author define it as referring both to the dispositional qualities we need to care for ourselves and others and to concrete practices, the work of caring. But if care always involves thinking about who is responsible for what caring and what that responsibility means, is it necessarily limited to the most intimate and local levels ? Why this fundamental aspect of human life has been deemed outside the proper domain of reason, confined to the private realm, this very realm in which women and the less powerful came to be relegated ? The author addresses these questions and focuses on two arguments : a critical argument aimed at demonstrating the inequitable effects of certain moral boundaries and a reconstructive argument that attempts to develop an ethic of care intended to correct or redraw these boundaries.