The Case for Our Widespread Dependency (Book Review‪)‬

[Review Essay: Eva Feder Kittay and Ellen K. Feder (eds.), The Subject of Care: Feminist Perspectives on Dependency (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), ix + 382 pp.] Eva Kittay and Ellen Feder end their introduction to The Subject of Care with a powerful challenge to philosophers: "We must take account of the fact of dependency in our very conceptions of the self ... We cannot continue to build our conceptions of a just society and the good life and to shape our aspirations for freedom and sublime experience without facing human dependency head-on" (10-11). Their collection does compelling work in identifying dependency as a fact of life and demonstrating its importance philosophically. At a minimum, the collection builds a case against four tenets of traditional liberalism, which I shall represent as follows: (T1) Dependency can be avoided by adults and equals. (T2) Dependency should be avoided by adults and equals. (T3) Independence can be achieved by adults and equals. (T4) Independence should be achieved by adults and equals. The remarkable effect of the volume is the inescapable sense that we are all dependents and that the above four tenets are problematic ideals at best. This raises at least two questions, however. First, it is not clear to me whether I am correct that this is the intended effect; that is, do the contributors mean to make the case that we are all dependents, or merely that dependency is philosophically important? Second, I am interested in determining whether it is correct that we are all dependents; even if the volume does not make this case, perhaps the ideas within could contribute to establishing universal dependency. Both questions hinge on the definition of dependency, which is my focus in this essay.