Care ethics, phenomenology, politics, and play – with Petr Urban
Episode 4 of Careful Thinking
‘equal play’ (via baltic.art)
My guest for the fourth episode of the ‘Careful Thinking’ podcast is Petr Urban, a senior researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. Petr’s work in the field of care ethics has included explorations of the political dimensions of care, the connections between care ethics and theories of play, and the relevance of the philosophical ideas of Edith Stein for the ethics of care. He is the co-editor with Lizzie Ward of Care Ethics, Democratic Citizenship and the State, which was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020.
Petr UrbanI first came across Petr’s work a few years ago, in the course of my work on gender and care, and when I was just beginning to be interested in care ethics. As an admirer of the work of Edith Stein, the German Jewish philosopher and convert to Catholicism, I was interested to learn that Petr had written about the connections between her ideas and those of feminist care ethicists. Petr and I corresponded by email and we then met at the inaugural conference of the Care Ethics Research Consortium in Portland, Oregon, in 2018. Our conversation on that occasion was quite brief, so I was pleased to have this opportunity to talk with Petr at greater length, not only about Stein, but also about his broader work in care ethics.
Our conversation on the podcast was wide-ranging, covering the origins of Petr’s academic interest in care ethics, his writings on care ethics and ‘enactivism’, his work with Alice Koubová on the relationship between care and play, and his thoughts on the political dimension of care.
We also spent some time talking about the philosophy of Edith Stein and its relevance for an ethic of care. I found this part of our conversation particularly illuminating, as I’ve struggled in the past with the implications of Stein’s writings for thinking about gender and care. Petr also suggested that Stein’s later, more theologically-inflected work, might contribute to a greater openness to thinking about religion and spirituality among care ethicists (which was my cue to ‘plug’ the edited collection on Care Ethics, Religion and Spiritual Traditions, published by Peeters in 2022, to which I contributed a chapter).
Given our discussion in the episode of the relatively unexplored connections between care, art and play, it was a nice coincidence that, just this week, the Care Ethics Research Consortium announced that the theme of its 2025 conference, in Utrecht, in the Netherlands, will be ‘Care, Aesthetics, and Repair’, posing the question ‘What if care and dependency work were designated as art so these practices might also be understood as having aesthetic qualities?’
Here are a few quotes by Petr from the episode, to give you a taste of our conversation:
Care ethics...is a kind of umbrella term that refers to a family of theories and these have some core things in common. The main thing...is that there is this strong focus on caring as a human practice which is fundamental to the human condition, and at the same time which has been historically marginalised and devalued in the dominant western moral and political philosophy...I would highlight relationality...that the central feature of the human condition is ... that we are interdependent beings, and that goes hand in hand with vulnerability.
…
In care ethics so far, as far as I am aware, there is no real research on play and playing as a phenomenon, which would be closely connected to caring practice...It would be very interesting for care ethicists to focus more on how play and playing plays an important role in these interpersonal relationships that we are describing when we are describing caring practice within more intimate relationships.
…
Once we take seriously, that care is a political concept, when we start seriously thinking about what transformation or change of our social and political structures is needed to get closer to the ideal of care being a central value in our polities and in our societies, you can’t avoid thinking about the transformation of institutions.
You can listen to the whole episode here, or wherever you get your podcasts. As always, I’d welcome your comments and feedback.
You can download a transcript of the episode here:
Footnote
The header image for this post is from equal play, an interactive exhibition by artist and educator Albert Potrony which was hosted by the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead in 2021-22. The project explored themes of non-gendered and non-prescriptive play, and specifically considered the role of men and childcare in relation to feminism, thus neatly bringing together ideas around art, play and care. I was a guest speaker at a symposium on ‘Men and Childcare’ organised as part of the project: you can watch a video of the symposium here and my own contribution starts at 25.16.