E-book
Adriana Jesenková
The textbook Citizenship in the Context of the Ethics of Care seeks to introduce students of the humanities and social sciences to current issues of citizenship from the perspective of a specific moral-philosophical theory—namely, feminist moral philosophy, specifically the feminist ethics of care. Traditionally, the topic of citizenship and its related questions have been perceived and studied primarily as subjects of political thought and political theory.
We predominantly consider citizenship as a political category, which is mainly the domain of political science or, at most, other social science disciplines. However, both the past and the present urge us to reflect on citizenship in connection with humanity and solidarity, and thus from a moral perspective. Understanding citizenship solely as a political category and political institution is insufficient. The conceptual separation of politics from morality and ethics results in difficulties in grasping citizenship as a morally relevant category and as an ethical value. This, in turn, prevents us from critically analyzing the assumptions underlying our understanding of citizenship and, ultimately, from identifying the causes and factors that contribute to the failures of civil society, as well as the shortcomings and deficits in the realization of citizenship as a vision based on freedom, equality, and solidarity.
Thus, the textbook clarifies the values associated with democratic citizenship, while also highlighting the potential of the feminist ethics of care as an analytical, evaluative-critical, and applicative tool for understanding and examining the concept of citizenship and the practice of citizenship as a caring practice, and as the practice of caring for a good life in civil society.
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