Macquarrie & Robinson: Fürsorge - solicitude

There is no good English equivalent for ‘Fürsorge  ’, which we shall usually translate by ‘solicitude’. The more literal ‘caring-for’ has the connotation of ‘being fond of’, which we do not   want here; ‘personal care’ suggests personal hygiene; ‘personal concern’ suggests one’s personal business or affairs. ‘Fürsorge’ is rather the kind of care which we find in ‘prenatal care’ or ‘taking care of the children’, or even the kind of care which is administered by welfare agencies. Indeed the word ‘Fürsorge’ is regularly used in contexts where we would speak of ‘welfare work’ or ‘social welfare’; this is the usage which Heidegger has in mind in his discussion of ‘Fürsorge’ as ‘a factical social arrangement’. (The etymological connection between ‘Sorge (‘care’), ‘Fürsorge’ (‘solicitude’), and ‘Besorgen (‘concern’), is entirely lost in our translation.)