Philosophy of Care
Description :
Retracing the philosophical discussions around careOur current culture is dominated by the ideology of creativity One is supposed to create the new and not to care about the things as they are This ideology legitimises the domination of the creative class over the
rest of the population that is predominantly occupied by forms of caremedical care child care agriculture industrial maintenance and so on We have a responsibility to care for our own bodies but here again our culture tends to thematize the bodies of desire and to ignore the bodies of careill bodies in need of selfcare and social careBut the discussion of care has a long philosophical tradition The book retraces some episodes of this traditionbeginning with Plato and ending with Alexander Bogdanov through Hegel Heidegger Bataille and many others The central question discussed is who should be the subject of care Should I care for myself or trust the others the system the institutions Here the concept of the selfcare becomes a revolutionary principle that confronts the individual with the dominating mechanisms of control