Ancient Virtues,Contemporary Practices

Abstract

Earlier discussions of care have both insisted on its importance to political life and decried the unequal burden borne by women in care work. Yet they have failed to demonstrate why for reasons above and beyond the instrumental ends it serves. We ought to make the cultivation of an ongoing practice of caregiving a political priority. This article redefines and reframes care as a thoroughly critical and deeply embodied practice that is central to the flourishing of human beings. By way of Aristotle, I situate philia and embodied practices of care at the center of the shaping of the citizen and demonstrate a deeper significance of relations of care to our political life. When this is done alongside attention to habituation to right action and thinking, we can see more clearly how a particular kind of embodied politics can activate and sustain an ethic that cultivates citizens’ capacities and desires to care.