Worldly Ethics

"Worldly Ethics is the smartest, subtlest treatment of the fraught relationship between democratic politics and the 'ethical turn' I have ever read. Ella Myers is not the first theorist to warn against the reduction of political questions to ethical ones, but this is no mere screed against the easy target of 'Kantian' moralism. Instead, through a series of engagements with other theorists who have brought more capacious ethical visions to bear on political life, Myers shows—with Arendt—that a properly political ethics must make the world rather than the self or the Other into its first object of concern, and—against the Arendtian grain—that such a worldly ethics can help bring problems of material deprivation and inequality into politics, rather than keep them out. Myers is a generous and incisive reader, and a perceptive observer of contemporary politics, and Worldly Ethics is a terrific debut." - Patchen Markell, author of .Bound by Recognition

"Ella Myers's contribution—to compare self-caring ethics to other-caring ethics to world-caring ethics—is original, simple, and brilliant. Worldly Ethics makes its most important contribution in conceptualizing politics and ethics differently. There is no single book that deals with this topic in this way. Using caring—for the self, for others, for the world and worldly things—is unique and powerful. I think that this book is very important and—I rarely use this word—wise." - Joan C. Tronto, author of Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care

“Myers’s rejections of attempts to politicize Foucault and Levinas are some of the richest sections of the book. Political theorists in particular will appreciate this attempt to articulate a democratic ethos.” - J. L. Miller, Choice

“Ella Myers’s new and debut book offers a timely and most welcome invitation to democratic theorists to rethink two influential versions of the so-called “ethical turn” that has, for some time now, influenced much of the discussion in contemporary democratic theory—namely, Foucault’s ethics of self-care and Levinas’s ethics of care for the Other.” - Gent Carrabregu, Theory & Event

“[This book is] … a work that should be seriously engaged by feminist ethicists interested in developing a politically rich and subtle ethics of care. Ella Myers frames an important and under theorized aspect of caring—caring for the world—that a robust argument for the place of care in politics ought to address.” - Richard A. Lynch, APA Newsletter: Feminism and Philosophy

"Myers makes a compelling case that political theorists need to focus more pointedly on collective action, and that we should begin with contextualized, political relations rather than cultivating rarefied judgments or ethical dispositions and presuming that the 'right' politics will follow. Her care for the world embraces political projects at once critical and programmatic, and goes a long way towards broadening the conditions of political action beyond individual judgment." - Nancy Luxon, Theory & Event

"Worldly Ethics is a nifty, brilliant book. Myers’s writing is superb: smooth, jargon-free and moves at a steady clip." - Shalini Satkunanandan, Political Theory