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This article presents conceptual bridges that exist between the philosophy of G.W.F Hegel and a feminist ethics of care. To do so, it engages with Slavoj Žižek's contemporary reading of Hegel in concert with existing feminist interpretations of Hegel's thought. The goal of doing so is to demonstrate how both Žižek and a selection of critical feminist thinkers interpret Hegel's perspective on the nature of subjectivity, intersubjective relations and the relationship between the subject and the world it inhabits, in a way that can further our thinking on the feminist ethics of care as a relational and contextualist ethics that foregrounds vulnerability as a condition of existence. These readings of Hegel highlight the radical contingency of human subjectivity, as well as the relationship between human subjectivity and the external world, in a way that is compatible with the feminist ethics of care's emphasis on the particularity, fluidity, and interdependency of human relationships. I argue that this confrontation between care ethics and mainstream philosophy is valuable because it offers mutual contributions to both care ethics as a moral and political theory and the philosophy of Hegel and Žižek.

Politics in the neoliberal/modern/Western world is structured based upon the assumption that political subjects are atomistic and self-sufficient; these assumptions suppress and deny (inter) dependency, relationality and vulnerability. Yet, the rapid spread of COVID-19 has devastated many communities, drastically changed political and social life, and foregrounded the ways in which vulnerability is an inescapable fact of our existence. Drawing upon Žižek's reading of Lacan's notion of the 'real' and the ethics of care, we analyse the COVID-19 pandemic so as to argue that vulnerability must be understood as a fundamental political concept that merits ongoing attention in our political systems.