The Fragility of Concern for Others

A systematic reflection on the social conditions of caring for others

• Offers a feminist renewal of Adorno’s philosophy
• Stages a conversation between two strands of theory that, despite the importance that they each grant to human vulnerability, have yet to enter into discussion: the Frankfurt School and the ethics of care
• Sheds light on the difficulties and the lacuna of Adorno’s Critical Theory concerning patriarchy
• Highlights the difficulty involved in determining the meaning of a moral act in the capitalist context
• Brings the work of one of the leading figures of the contemporary French reception of Critical Theory to an English-language audience

Estelle Ferrarese, one of the leading figures of the contemporary French reception of Critical Theory, 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 Adorno as a point of departure, Ferrarese 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.