21 November 2025, 3:15pm - 4:30pm

Faculty of Humanities,
Charles University
Pátkova 2137/5, Prague 8
Room: Jan Sokol Grand Auditorium

Public lecture, free entry

After nearly forty years of discussion, contemporary feminist philosophies are pulling care ethics in two opposite directions. On the one hand, care is viewed through the lens of the ‘crisis’ it is said to be experiencing: a shortage is said to be affecting the Global North, driving migration and creating new forms of domination. In this context, care becomes a limited resource, the distribution of which must be reconsidered. On the other hand, care is merged with the categories and assumptions of ecofeminism. In this model, care is a skill assigned to women due to their supposed innate awareness of their connection with nature. In contrast to these two models, I would like to propose a conception of care as participation (understood as taking part) in relationships and, simultaneously, in a political community. Care work is as much a result of political organisation as it is a means of constructing it, and it is important today to reflect on this "taking part". This presentation will be an opportunity to reflect on the current worldwide rise of brutality, of "I don't care" as a political style, as well as the backlash against feminism that this has caused.

Estelle Ferrarese is Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at Picardie-Jules-Verne University, France. She is Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She was the head of the Gender Institute in Paris from 2020 to 2024. She has been Visiting Professor at the New School for Social Research in New York, Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation fellow at the Humboldt Universität in Berlin and at the Universität Potsdam, Germany. Her books include: Une philosophie des sanglots (Rivages, 2025); Le Marché de la Vertu (Vrin, 2023; English translation: The Market of Virtue, Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming, 2026); Vulnerability and Critical Theory (Brill, 2018), La fragilité du souci des autres. Adorno et le care (ENS éditions, 2018; English translation: Adorno and the Fragility of Caring for Others, Edinburgh University Press, 2020), Ethique et politique de l'espace public. Habermas et la discussion (Vrin, 2015). She is also the author of numerous articles on Critical Theory, feminism, forms of life, and vulnerability.

This event is part of a celebration of 20th Anniversary of Gender Studies programme at the Faculty of Humanities at Charles University. Its organisation is a cooperation between CETE-P, the French Research Center for Social Sciences and Humanities – Prague (CEFRES) and Charles University. The event is funded by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research, through the PARCECO scheme.