Sandra Laugier discusses some of the most provocative aspects of the ethics of care in a French context and why it has been controversial. She presents the ethics as a subversion of traditional ethics and feminism, and as a redefinition of politics.

Sandra Laugier is Professor of Philosophy at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France, and Senior member of Institut Universitaire de France.  She specializes in Ordinary Language Philosophy, Ethics, American Philosophy (Cavell, Emerson, Thoreau) and gender studies (Ethics of care). Her recent books include Tous vulnérables, le care, les animaux et l’environnement and Face aux désastres, le care, la folie et les grandes détresses collectives.

Professor Laugier: "In my work on Wittgenstein, Austin,and Cavell, I have tried to open new perspectives in France on the neglected theme of the ordinary. My project is to show the relevance of ordinary language philosophy for ethical and political issues by developing an ordinary conception of politics for thinking about civil disobedience and radical democracy, and an ordinary conception of ethics for thinking about care and gender inequality. This systematic exploration of the (theoretical and practical) question of the ordinary is anchored in ordinary language philosophy, the “rough ground” of the uses and practices of language; it leads to further investigating the denial or undervaluation of the ordinary as a general phenomenon in contemporary thinking. My thesis is that the ordinary is variously denied, undervalued, or neglected (not seen, not taken into account) in theoretical thought. Such negligence (carelessness) has to do with contempt for ordinary life inasmuch as it is domestic and female, and it stems from a gendered hierarchy of the objects of intellectual research. One important result of ordinary language philosophy is to call our attention to human expressiveness, and I want to show that attention to expression is care about human expression as embodied in women’s voices."

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