WFQS 106 - Philosophy & Contemporary Issues

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)

(Same as PHIL 106) Topic for 2024/25a and b: Feminist Ethics of Vulnerability and Care. Prominent feminist philosophers, including Judith Butler and Adriana Cavarero, have argued that vulnerability is a fundamental, ontological category for humans—we are all embodied and born of others, we require care to survive and thrive throughout our lives, and we are susceptible to forms of violence. While vulnerability is argued to be universally shared, it is nevertheless unevenly distributed according to historically and politically contingent features of our world that mark some lives as more valuable and grievable than others. This course carefully and critically examines feminist and queer theories of vulnerability and precarity in order to better understand what is meant by these terms and what kind of ethics and politics they give rise to. We also consider pressing questions about the ethics and politics of care, including: What would an ethical and just distribution of caring labor look like? What do philosophers have to say about the appropriation of “self-care” in neoliberal, capitalist contexts? How is care theoretically and practically constrained by dominant norms of family and kinship, and how are these being challenged in feminist and queer contexts? Rachel Silverbloom.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS