Politics of the Ordinary

What is an ethics formulated in a “different voice” ? This book develops the connection between ordinary language philosophy, represented by Wittgenstein and Austin, and the ethics of care. Care is at once a practical response to specific needs and a sensitivity to the ordinary details of human life that matter. The Ordinary has been variously denied, undervalued, or neglected – not taken into account – in theoretical thought. Such negligence, I propose, has to do with widespread contempt for ordinary life inasmuch as it is domestic and female. The disdain stems from the gendered hierarchy of objects deemed worthy of intellectual research. One important aspect of ordinary language philosophy is its capacity to call our attention to human expressiveness as embodied in women’s voices. It thus provides the basis for a re-definition of philosophyas attention to ordinary life, and care for moral expression. This book proposes nothing less than a paradigm shift in ethics, with a reorientation towards vulnerability and a shift from the “just” to the “important.”