Care ethics, phenomenology, politics and play - with Petr Urban

What is ‘care ethics’ and what are some of the current themes and debates in the ethics of care? How are care, art, play – and democracy - connected? And what can the work of phenomenological thinkers, such as Edith Stein, contribute to an understanding of care?

These are some of the questions we explore in this episode, with Petr Urban, a senior researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague and project coordinator of the Center for Environmental and Technology Ethics - Prague. Petr has published books and journal articles on a wide range of topics. His work on care has included explorations of the political dimensions of care, the connections between care ethics and theories of play, and the relevance of the philosophical ideas of Edith Stein for feminist care ethics. He is the co-editor with Lizzie Ward of Care Ethics, Democratic Citizenship and the State, which was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020. His most recent book, co-written with Dan Swain, is Social Cohesion Contested, which was published by Rowman and Littlefield in January this year.

We cover the following topics in this episode:

Petr's current work (02:50)

The origins of Petr's interest in care ethics (04:40)

Defining 'care ethics' (10:15)

Writers on care ethics who have influenced Petr's thinking (17:55)

Care ethics and 'enactivism' (20:50)

Care ethics and play (27:15)

Play, art and democracy (35:50)

Care and institutions (39:20)

Edith Stein and care ethics (45:50)

Petr's forthcoming publications (58:44)

A selection of Petr’s publications

'Care Ethics and Public Administration', in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Care Ethics, edited by Matilda Carter (forthcoming, 2024)

‘Care Ethics and the Feminist Personalism of Edith Stein’ (2022)

Play and Democracy: Philosophical Perspectives (with Alice Koubová and others, 2022)

‘Enacting Care’ (2015)

Other publications mentioned in the episode

Maurice Hamington, Embodied Care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Feminist Ethics (2004)

Virginia Held, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, Global (2006)

Joan Tronto, Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality and Justice (2013)

Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (1982)

Sara Ruddick, ‘Maternal Thinking’ (1980)

Daniel Engster, Justice, Care and the Welfare State (2015)

Sophie Bourgault, ‘Prolegomena to a caring bureaucracy’ (2016)

Geoffrey Dierckxsens (ed.) ‘Ethical Dimensions of Enactive Cognition—Perspectives on Enactivism, Bioethics and Applied Ethics’ (Special Issue of Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy, 2022) 

Wendy Hollway, The Capacity to Care: Gender and Ethical Subjectivity (2006)

Martha Nussbaum, ‘Winnicott on the Surprises of the Self’ (2006)

Nel Noddings, Caring: A Relational Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (2013)

Sara Heinämaa, Towards a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir (2003)

Inge van Nistelrooij and others (eds.) Care Ethics, Religion and Spiritual Traditions  (2022)

Some of the writers and thinkers discussed in the episode

Edmund Husserl

Edith Stein

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Donald Winnicott