This dissertation investigates the promise and peril of the concept of vulnerability in contemporary ethical and political thought. Many strands of modern Western thought castigate vulnerability as an embarrassment to the individual, an affront to the ideals of self-sufficiency and autonomy. Yet in the past half-century, several lines of argument have emerged that seek to reconsider vulnerability against these ideals, and their frequent encouragement of violence and domination. This dissertation takes up four recent projects of this kind in feminist philosophy and Christian theology, from Carol Gilligan, Adriana Cavarero, Judith Butler, and Sarah Coakley. Each of these authors seeks to recover vulnerability by recasting it as a starting point for ethical and political thought, an inescapable human condition from which we must determine our responsibilities instead of an unfortunate condition we have the responsibility to escape. I endorse their efforts to critique ideals of self-sufficiency and autonomy on these grounds, but argue that the critique should not over-emphasize vulnerability’s provision of ethical responsibility, particularly the responsibility to respond with care that Gilligan and Cavarero each promote. Ethical and political thought that wants to take vulnerability seriously must instead contend with its indeterminacy, I suggest, viewing it as a susceptibility to something as yet unrealized and thus a space of opportunity, action, and potential reconfiguration. To develop this claim, I turn to Judith Butler’s work on the indeterminacy of vulnerability in mourning, and then to Sarah Coakley’s account of the vulnerability of Christ and the example it provides for Christians in practices of contemplative prayer. The Christian cultivates vulnerability in these practices not to render God responsible to them, but to make space for an ongoing relationship with the divine that will develop in unknown and unknowable ways. I suggest that this conception of indeterminate vulnerability provides a productive model for secular considerations of the concept, correcting their emphasis on response by identifying the promise of ongoing vulnerability and the role it plays in relationships extending over time.
Bialek, Anna F.,
"Vulnerability and Its Power: Recognition, Response, and the Problem of Valorization"
(2015).
Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0HQ3XBR
