Care in Times of Crisis: Phenomenological, Political and Theological Perspectives

Abstract

The threat of increasingly adverse existential conditions has prompted activist groups like Extinction Rebellion to enact civil disobedience. In this article, this sort of behavior is interpreted as a message about not only what they care about, but about what they think their surroundings ought to care about. Care is investigated through the lens of hermeneutic phenomenology as a call to awareness of the value of something or someone. By drawing especially on Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology of love and on Joan Tronto's early work on political care, it is shown how to bridge phenomenological concerns with an ethics of caring for someone or something. It is argued that that we may, in some circumstances, demand that other people care about what we care about. Last, these reflections are connected to Sallie McFague's theological suggestion of a friendship model of the divine-creation relationship.