Abstract

The development of the notion of care brings about profound changes in ethical, political and legal thinking, particularly with regard to the environment. This is not simply an extension of care – whose plurality and diversity of forms, activities, subjects and places are already well known. Care has helped to modify a dominant conception of ethics and has placed vulnerability at the very heart of morality – in place of its hitherto held essential values such as autonomy, impartiality. Care has hence made environmental vulnerability the paradigm and not only a subspecies of care. Care for the environment (in both senses: attention to the ordinary environment and the well-being that this environment provides for individuals) is attention to what makes our lives possible, and which for this very reason we fail to see and neglect. The paradigm of care may prove more powerful to describe our situation than the 20th century concept of risk. A radical vision of care forces us to see an entire form of life as maintained by a care activity, most often invisibilized.