Peut-on étendre l’éthique du soin à l’environnement ?

Can the ethics of care be extended to the environment ? Is it possible to base an environmental ethic on an ethic of care ? Can care, or the absence of care, be an effective lever for social and political critique ? The object of this article is to assess the extent to which the ambition of the ethic of care – radically rethinking our relation putting our relations to the natural world – can be realized. The study of social relations based on care can be summed up by the question : “Who cares ?”. There is no obvious analogy between this question and those that are supposed to extend the ethics of care to environmental topics : “Who pollutes ?” or “Who destroys ?”. The criticisms addressed by Joan Tronto to Ulrich Beck, as well as the analysis of our relation to animals put forward by the theorists of care, show that extending care to the environment can imply two forms of engagement : 1. a socio-economic analysis which does not simply describe a system of domination based on genders and races ; 2. an attempt to found the principles of ethical action on an individual basis, as in the case of eco-citizenship, or on a gendered basis, as in the case of eco-feminism. Only the first of these alternatives realizes the ambition of radical social transformation to which the ethic of care aspires. This raises the question of whether it is coherent and realistic to reverse the social balance of power produced by capitalism thanks to a democratization of care, without a strong ethic of rights and laws.