Attunements of Care – The Art of Existence in the Anthropocene

Abstract

The ecological crisis places an unavoidable ethical imperative for the conscientious adult: to learn an art of existing in a way that supports life instead of destroying it. The paper suggests that care is a useful conceptual resource for responding to this imperative. An interpretation of the art of existence is presented by bringing together two different takes on care, the Foucauldian tradition of care of the self and feminist ethics of care. This novel connection is argued to hold theoretical promise for making sense of the unique challenge of self-cultivation implied by the art of existence in the Anthropocene.