15 BIOGRAF 2022/75-76 15–38 )HPLQLVWLFNi HWLND VWDURVWOLYRVWL DNR YìFKRGLVNR SUH VWDURVWOLYp VN~PDQLH VWDURVWOLYRVWL 1 AGULDQD -HVHQNRYi 2 Feminist ethics of care as a starting point for careful research of care Care is part of our personal and social lives, whether we realise it or not. Its critical philo- sophical refection began relatively recently with the formation of the feminist ethics of care in the 1980s. It was Joan Tronto’s work that explicitly justifed why care must be con- ceptualised not only as a moral value but also as a political value (1993), and why care as a democratic practice must become a key part of the political agenda of contemporary democracies (2013). Indeed, care and related activities and values, such as protection and development, are fnding more and more space in the discourses of public policies and their actors – in the dictionaries of leaders, managers, and politicians. However, the ques- tion is what kind of care they talk about, what are the conceptual and normative assump- tions and frameworks on which they are based, and what does this mean for the creation of public care policies in various areas of society, be it education and upbringing, health care, social services, care for the environment or for the preservation, development, and improvement of democratic institutions. And, how the conceptualisation of care and re- lated concepts in public discourses infuences the practice of care that we are confronted with in the social reality, which we implement ourselves and in which we participate. In the frst part of her text, the author outlines the ethics of care as a set of ideas and approaches that grew out of empirical experience with care and its theoretical refection. In the second part, she clarifes the moral and political theory of care as formulated by Joan Tronto (1990, 1993, 2013) to show how the concepts of integrity of good care prac- tice and the concept of democratic care practice represent useful and inspiring tools for research, understanding, evaluation, and transformation of conceptualisation of current care practices in the various areas of life. Finally, the author focuses her attention on the possibilities of careful research of care. Keywords: feminist ethics of care, Joan Tronto, moral and political theory of care, dem- ocratic practice of care, research of care 1 Text vznikol v rámci projektu „Vzah flozofe a vedy v súčasnosti“ VEGA 1/0232/21. 2 Katedra flozofe Filozofckej fakulty Univerzity P. J. Šafárika v Košiciach