CONCLUSIONS: VULNERABILITY AND STRENGTH: A TIMEWORN PAIRING IN NEED OF RECONSIDERATION

Abstract

The notion of vulnerability is extremely broad and has been interpreted in a variety of ways by different disciplinary spheres. This multiplicity of meanings and usages certainly represents a resource and attests to the indisputable theoretical and practical relevance of this term and of the vocabulary that has developed around it. Reflections on vulnerability would acquire greater utility if they were aimed at reconfiguring the proposal-generating capacity of this notion, not so much with a view to replacing significant principles such as equality but rather by drawing attention to the fact that some existing political institutions and legal institutions are already implicitly based on vulnerability. In this case, the reflection would be directed at proposing a sort of overturning of the paradigm. Thanks to this alternative perspective, in fact, we would be able to recover the “classic” positioning of the notion of vulnerability: namely, a key element of political and legal thought by virtue of its being an intrinsic feature of all human beings and, as such, highly relevant for the establishment of political institutions and the production of legislation, which in turn makes it an implicit “assumption” in contractarian and utilitarian philosophies. This change in outlook would inescapably lead to a new re-consideration of the issue of violence/force from a contemporary perspective, and therein lies what I see as the true significance of vulnerability.