Wonder and Generosity: Their Role in Ethics and Politics

A compelling understanding of equality and difference in public life.

Wonder and Generosity provides a fresh account of how the passions of wonder—based on accepting others’ differences—and generosity—based on self-respect and mutual respect—can supplement each other to establish an ethics and politics of respect for sexual and cultural differences. Drawing on the work of both historical and contemporary thinkers, such as Descartes, Kant, Beauvoir, Arendt, Irigaray, and Derrida, Marguerite La Caze applies her theoretical framework to a range of contemporary political challenges, including asylum-seeker policies, justice for indigenous and other oppressed groups, debates over official apologies, gender equality, and responses to radical evil. La Caze’s book contributes to understanding the relationship between equality and difference in public life, the extent to which we must regard others as similar in the name of equality, and the extent to which we must acknowledge significant differences.

“This is a strong contribution to several fields and to the intersection between them. La Caze provides a compelling account of wonder and generosity as important categories for the development of an ethics and politics of difference.” — Fanny Söderbäck, coeditor of Undutiful Daughters: New Directions in Feminist Thought and Practice

Marguerite La Caze is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Queensland, Australia. She is the author of The Analytic Imaginary and the coauthor (with Damian Cox and Michael P. Levine) of Integrity and the Fragile Self.