Eva Feder Kittay
Eva Feder Kittay is an American philosopher whose work on dependency and disability has deepened care ethics’ critique of liberal political theory. Her Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency (1999) argues that the social contract tradition’s foundational assumption — free, equal, and independent persons choosing to enter political association — erases the dependency relations that structure all human life.
Core ideas
- Nested dependencies: the caregiver who tends a dependent person is themselves made dependent by that work — dependent on resources, support, and recognition that are often withheld. Care creates chains of dependency that political theory must address.
- Dependency critique of liberalism: the “independent” subject of contract theory is an ideological fiction sustained by invisible care work. Political theory built on this fiction cannot adequately represent those it claims to include.
- Doulia: the principle that anyone who provides care for a dependent person is owed support in turn — that the labor of care creates obligations that extend beyond the immediate caring relationship.
- Disability and justice: Kittay’s work, informed by her experience as the mother of a daughter with severe cognitive disabilities, insists that political theory must account for persons who will never achieve the “independence” that liberalism presupposes.
Notable works
- Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency (1999)
- Learning from My Daughter: The Value and Care of Disabled Minds (2019)
Related
- Care Ethics — the tradition she contributes to
- Virginia Held — fellow care ethicist
- Joan Tronto — fellow political care ethicist
- Dependency — the concept she develops
- Care work — the labor she theorizes