Between Care and Justice: The Passions as Social Resource

Elena Pulcini (1950-2021), an internationally renowned philosopher of care, was at the forefront of thinking and creating a new ethical framework to respond efficaciously to problems that affect individuals at a global level. This translation of Pulcini’s last work addresses perhaps the two fundamental questions for our times--namely, ＂Why care for others when we are not bound by personal relationships?＂ and ＂Why commit to justice even when it does not personally affect us?＂ By focusing on passions such as indignation, fear, compassion, resentment, and love, Pulcini offers an alternative ethical perspective in which justice and care intertwine to supplement and balance each other. Together, care and justice are proven capable of addressing the challenge of the ＂other,＂ distant in space (the outsider, the marginalized, and the migrant) and time (future generations). In the end, Pulcini proposes a form of moral education that nurtures and develops desirable moral sentiments for a more just world at the interpersonal, social, political, economic, and environmental levels, thereby providing an alternative social, global model to current individual-focused, rights-based, purely rationalist ethical systems.

Silvia Benso is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She is the author of Viva Voce: Conversations with Italian Philosopher and The Face of Things: A Different Side of Ethics, both also published by SUNY Press. Antonio Calcagno is Professor of Philosophy at King’s University College at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He is the author of On Political Impasse: Power, Resistance, and New Forms of Selfhood, among other books.