The chiaroscuro of care: A reading from the perspective of female thought

The credit for the recent thematization of care must certainly be given to a current of women's thought that reacted to the devaluation typical of early feminism and rehabilitated care by framing it within a relational ontology. In polemic with the image of an autonomous and self-sufficient subject, it instead emphasized his vulnerability and dependence. However, this speculative horizon presents undeniable differences in approaches and intentions. In fact, one can distinguish different paradigms of the philosophy of care: the approach that has valorized it from the point of view of moral reasoning (Gilligan, Held); another that has highlighted its epistemological value (Ruddick, Noddings); finally, the one that has considered it as practice and as work, showing its public and politically relevant side (Tronto, Kittay). In this already jagged panorama, an element that further distances certain positions acts as a detonator: the question of the maternal-parental relationship on which to root both the dependence and the altruism of care.