American Research Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Philosophical inquiry is increasingly being confronted with conditions that challenge the assumptions underlying established ways of producing knowledge. Climate instability, armed conflict, political transformation, ecological disruption, and widening forms of social inequality raise questions not only about what philosophy should investigate, but also about how philosophical thinking itself should be practiced. This article examines the ethical responsibilities embedded in acts of thinking and writing by reconsidering philosophical inquiry through the perspectives of care and relationality. Drawing on Bruno Latour’s actor-network approach and María Puig de la Bellacasa’s account of matters of care, the discussion develops an understanding of thinking-with-care as a mode of inquiry that resists the image of the isolated and self-sufficient thinker. It also engages with the contributions of Joan C. Tronto and Donna J. Haraway to explore how responsibility emerges through relations among people, environments, institutions, technologies, and other forms of agency. Particular attention is given to the conditions of the Anthropocene, where human and nonhuman entanglements make detached intellectual positions increasingly difficult to sustain. The article considers whether philosophical writing can become more attentive to those whose experiences and agencies are frequently excluded from conventional academic frameworks. It argues that thinking with others and thinking for others can expand philosophy's social responsiveness without reducing ethical reflection to abstract principles. Ultimately, the article proposes that ethical philosophising must recognize its own situatedness within a complex web of relations and accept care, attentiveness, and shared responsibility as essential dimensions of intellectual practice.

Keywords: Care Ethics; Relational Inquiry; Thinking-With-Care; Actor-Network Theory; Distributed Agency; Philosophical Responsibility; Interconnectedness.