Abstract

This text aims to show how vulnerability is an essential feature of subjectivity. The fragility of existence is thematically addressed by accounting for phenomenology and psychopathology. In the first part, I will show how the Husserlian subject is anything but a pure and merely transcendental ego. Instead, I argue that a subject, immersed in and conditioned by factuality, emerges through discussions on the concept of “liminality” in his posthumous writings. In the second part, I will compare Husserl’s and Jaspers’ views—perspectives that compensate and enrich each other. According to Jaspers, “limit-situations” are characterized by inevitable antinomies that prevent a person from going on as usual. They are super-individual challenges intrinsic to existence, thus unavoidable. Furthermore, in his view, limit situations enlighten the paradoxical structure of existence and call for what has been named an existential turn up, i.e., to reach a higher level of self-awareness and depth of feeling in case the limit situation is mastered. The final aim is to show that ‘limit phenomena’ are intrinsic to human existence, which is nothing more than a continuous struggle (Streben). Such a vision of the subject can be useful in rethinking the notion of ‘well-being’, which today is anchored to an ideal of perfection devoid of all weakness. Accordingly, taking care of vulnerability becomes a moral and ontological imperative to be followed if we want to survive the “sea of suffering” that envelops us.