Ethics and politics
A caring society requires spaces and places to reflect on the conditions for a good life in old age and to struggle for a just and democratic organization of care (Tronto 2013). It is essential to reflect on the existential questions of ageing, care and dying with regard to their political conditions and to discuss questions of systemic change in care structures.
For example, how must care structures be designed in order to promote new forms of living and the realization of relational autonomy? How do ethical conversations and decisions in acute medical-ethical situations differ from questions about the good life in old age(s), including in vulnerability or illness? What contributions can the life and care wisdom of older people make to appropriate social approaches to ageing and care? To what extent are certain forms of anthropological and ethical reductionism and intersectional patterns of injustice inscribed in the organization of care?
In our research and publications on communal ethics, care ethics, migration and ageing, social images of ageing and living and housing in old age, we therefore attempt to deconstruct medical ethical practices, socio-ethical patterns and political conditions in order to derive a new relationship between everyday care ethics and the necessary political framework conditions.