Twenty years of care ethics, legacies, controversies and democratic horizons. Twenty years after the French publication of Le sourci des autres, this seminar revisits the intellectual trajectories, political translation and theoretical innovations that have shaped the field of care ethics over the past two decades.
In 2006, the publication of Le Souci des autres. Éthique et politique du care (collection Raisons pratiques, Éditions de l’EHESS) marked a decisive moment in contemporary French thought.
Care emerged from this intellectual constellation as far more than a new vocabulary for vulnerability or attention to others. Over the following twenty years, it became a powerful way of rethinking democracy from the realities of dependency and interdependence, making visible neglected forms of experience, questioning inherited conceptions of autonomy, and bringing ordinary life into the heart of moral and political philosophy.
Care Ethics in France
The French development of care ethics has since acquired a distinctive intellectual and political force of its own, at the crossroads of philosophy, sociology, feminist theory, political thought, psychology and the social sciences.
It has transformed the questions through which democracy itself can be approached: whose voices are heard, whose needs become politically intelligible, how institutions distribute attention and neglect, and what forms of life make autonomy, equality and participation possible.
The twentieth anniversary
To mark the twentieth anniversary of Le Souci des autres, the 2026 autumn edition of the Care and Democracy Seminar brings together an exceptional constellation of scholars whose work has founded, transformed and extended the field, while opening the conversation toward questions that increasingly define its future.
From Carol Gilligan and Joan Tronto to Sandra Laugier, Patricia Paperman and Pascale Molinier, and from the political and institutional implications of care to the still insufficiently explored question of masculinities, the three encounters form a single intellectual sequence: an anniversary that looks forward as much as it looks back.
A hybrid seminar
All events take place in person at the American University of Paris, in English and French, and include an extended Q&A with the audience. The seminar is hybrid: each session can also be followed live online via Zoom.
The Opening Symposium: A collective inquiry
Twenty years after Le Souci des autres – the opening symposium – brings together several generations and traditions of care scholarship for a collective inquiry into what has happened to care as it travelled through philosophy, sociology, feminist theory, psychology and democratic thought.
The symposium brings in conversation some of the scholars who have been central to the development of care ethics in France and internationally. The anniversary offers an occasion for intellectual stocktaking, but also for disagreement and projection.
Some central questions
What conceptual transformations have taken place over these twenty years? What did the French development of care make visible that established moral and political vocabularies had left at their margins? How has the encounter between care and democracy displaced our understanding of autonomy, vulnerability, institutions and political voice? And which tensions, blind spots and unfinished questions now define the field?
The Seminar is jointly organized by Sandra Laugier, ISJPS (CNRS–Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), and Zona Zarić, Center for Critical Democracy Studies, American University of Paris.
Opening symposium in the Care and Democracy Seminar Series
● Care and Democracy Seminar Series | Twenty Years After Le Souci des Autres
Room Q609, 6 Rue du Colonel Combes – 75007 Paris | Participation in person and live on Zoom – English and French – Q&A
Thu, Oct 8, 2026, 5.30 – 8PM
Two more symposia in the Care and Democracy Seminar Series
● Care and Democracy Seminar Series | Carol Gilligan
Room Q609, 6 Rue du Colonel Combes – 75007 Paris | Participation in person and live on Zoom – English and French – Q&A
Thu, Nov 5, 2026, 5.30 – 8PM
● Care and Democracy Seminar Series | Care and Masculinities
Room Q609, 6 Rue du Colonel Combes – 75007 Paris | Participation in person and live on Zoom – English and French – Q&A
Thu, Dec 3 2026, 5.30 – 8PM
Place: all events take place in person as well as live online via Zoom at the American University of Paris, in English and French, and include an extended Q&A with the audience. Registration is required. The Zoom link will be provided to registered participants.
To register, see the form on the symposium website