The Fragility of Concern for Others: Adorno and the Ethics of Care

Estelle Ferrarese argues for an understanding of morality that is materialist and political. Taking the Frankfurt School philosopher Theodor W. Adorno as a point of departure, she questions his 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 gestures it enjoins, as well as its political stakes. 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. Offering a systematic study of the idea of ‘coldness’ in Adorno’s philosophy, she stages a dialogue between Adornian Critical Theory and the ethics of care. In doing so, Ferrarese approaches old questions in a new light in a bid to give dignity to the singular, to make its specific claims and its moral pertinence heard.