Caring is a moral practice, i.e. a practice in which moral goods are realized. This is one of the critical insights of the ethics of care. The idea that goods are also sacrificed in caregiving, however, is less accepted or downright rejected. Starting off with real life stories, stories from literature and films, this book shows that caregiving entails sacrifices even to the extent of sacrificing the self.

This study argues that concepts surrounding care and sacrifice need to be revised and makes proposals for re-conceptualizing the subject’s identity, the intersubjective relation, the socio-political community, and the role of meaning. Using an interdisciplinary approach that draws upon the ethics of care, theology, phenomenology, political theory and hermeneutics, this book leads to a reappraisal of (self-)sacrifice as vital to understanding caring.