The central claim of this book is that the dichotomy between economic dependence and economic independence is completely inadequate for describing the political challenges faced by contemporary capitalist welfare states. The simplistic contrast between markets and states as sources of income renders invisible the relations of dependence established in our basic economic institutions such as the family, property, and money. This book is a work of political theory that attacks narrow conceptions of dependence and identifies distinct senses of dependence that (...) might allow political communities to make clearer decisions about the justice of our economic institutions and practices. Inheritance, for example, is as much a form of dependence as support by a welfare state, but these are never compared in debates about economic justice. This book begins the work of comparing forms of economic dependence, and argues that economic dependence is always an issue of both vulnerability and parasitism. It builds bridges between political theory and social science, and is of relevance to those concerned with social and economic justice in and beyond contemporary capitalist welfare states. (shrink)

According to luck egalitarianism, it is not unfair when people are disadvantaged by choices they are responsible for. This implies that those who are disadvantaged by choices that prevent disadvantage to others are not eligible for compensation. This is counterintuitive. We argue that the problem such cases pose for luck egalitarianism reveals an important distinction between responsibility for creating disadvantage and responsibility for distributing disadvantage which has hitherto been overlooked. We develop and defend a version of luck egalitarianism which only (...) holds people responsible for creating disadvantage. This revision enables luck egalitarianism to offer compensation to those who are disadvantaged by preventing disadvantage to others, like dependent caretakers, without compromising the responsibility–sensitivity at the heart of luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

According to luck egalitarianism, it is not unfair when people are disadvantaged by choices they are responsible for. This implies that those who are disadvantaged by choices that prevent disadvantage to others are not eligible for compensation. This is counterintuitive. We argue that the problem such cases pose for luck egalitarianism reveals an important distinction between responsibility for creating disadvantage and responsibility for distributing disadvantage which has hitherto been overlooked. We develop and defend a version of luck egalitarianism which only (...) holds people responsible for creating disadvantage. This revision enables luck egalitarianism to offer compensation to those who are disadvantaged by preventing disadvantage to others, like dependent caretakers, without compromising the responsibility–sensitivity at the heart of luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

Ethical decision making for pediatric populations is necessarily contextualized in a network of adult decision-makers, some of whom may be marginalized in complex systems of power, culture and gend...

Sophie Scott-Brown’s intellectual biography of Colin Ward does a superb job of putting Ward’s anarchism in its historical and political context. In so doing Scott-Brown arguably draws attention to how Ward’s pragmatic anarchism was dependent on post-war social democracy in the UK. This comment explores whether this makes Ward’s anarchism vulnerable in the following sense: that, as an anarchism, it cannot take sides in the struggle between social democracy and neo-liberalism even though its own prospects for success depend on (...) the strength of social democracy. Ward’s anarchism may be contrasted in this respect with libertarian/radical democratic socialisms (such as of Sheila Rowbotham and Stuart Hall) which envisage a simultaneous struggle both ‘for’ and ‘against’ the (social democratic) state. (shrink)

ABSTRACT People who are paid to provide basic care for others are frequently undervalued, exploited and expected to reach often unrealistic standards of care. I argue that appropriate social recognition, support and fair pay for people who provide care for those who are disabled, frail and aged, or suffering ill health that impedes their capacity to negotiate daily activities without support, depends on a reconsideration of the paradigm of the citizen or and moral agent. I argue that by drawing on (...) the ideas of human vulnerability and dependency as central to our personhood, a more realistic conception of selves, citizens and persons can be developed that better recognises the inevitability of human dependency and the social value of care work. I also indicate the significance of this vulnerability‐focussed view for ethical evaluation of the emotional aspects of care relationships. (shrink)

Theories of the liberal tradition have relied on independence as a norm of personhood. Feminist theorists such as Eva Kittay in Love's Labor have been instrumental in critiquing normative independence. I explore the role of corporeal vulnerability in Kittay's account of personhood, developing a comparison to the role it plays in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. Kittay's crucial contribution in Love's Labor is that once we acknowledge the facts of corporeal vulnerability, we must not only acknowledge but also affirm dependency (...) in a genuinely inclusive affirmation of personhood. While endorsing Kittay's “dependency critique,” I discover difficulties that beleaguer Kittay's development of new norms of personhood. I trace these to a dependency of Kittay's account on a crucial premise of the liberal model it resists. I argue that in order to affirm dependency in a manner that departs more thoroughly from the criticized aspects of liberal personhood, we must cease to position it in a dichotomy of power and vulnerability. I suggest that attending to the corporeality of vulnerability can aid us in developing the terms of a discourse affirming relational personhood while undermining that dichotomy. (shrink)

Do adult children have a particular duty, or set of duties, to their aging parents? What might the normative source and content of filial obligation be? This chapter examines Kant’s duty of beneficence in The Doctrine of Virtue and the Groundwork, suggesting that at its core, performance of filial duty occurs in response to the needs of aging parents. The duty of beneficence accounts for inevitable vulnerabilities that befall human rational beings and reveals moral agents as situated in communities of (...) dependence and mutual aid. Other accounts of filial obligation, such as those based on a notion of gratitude, virtue, or friendship, generate various difficulties and fail to adequately address and emphasize four morally significant features of the adult child/ aging parent relationship. First, the relationship between adult children and their aging parents is one of dependency created by the increasing frailty and need of those parents. Second, the obligations that adult children have to aging parents take place in the context of a relationship not voluntarily assumed, but not coerced. Third, given a cultural tendency toward paternalistic care of elderly individuals, the content of filial obligation should safeguard against such treatment. Fourth, because dependency relations between adult children and aging parents can involve an immense degree of sacrifice on the part of the caretaker, an acknowledgment of duties should be accompanied by a concurrent acknowledgment of the necessary limitation of duties. Addressing these four issues is essential in offering a coherent account of the normative source, content, nature, and scope of adult children’s duty to care for their aging parents. This essay demonstrates that the Kantian duty of beneficence, when functioning as the philosophical foundation of filial obligation, allows for ample light to be shed upon and for proper analysis to take place of these four issues. (shrink)

We examine the short-term and long-term impact of bilateral agreements on migrant workers’ vulnerability during their employment in Israel. To do so, we developed the Vulnerability Index of Migrant Workers based on five dimensions: poor working conditions, poor living conditions, poor safety conditions, low wages, and dependence on migration costs. We focus on migrant workers arriving in Israel from two different countries, employed in two different sectors of the economy. Data was gathered through a survey conducted among workers (...) arriving from both countries before and after the implementation of the bilateral agreements. The study revealed that after the implementation of bilateral agreements, the working, living and safety conditions of migrant workers remained poor or even worsened. For Thai workers, there was a slight improvement in the working and living conditions in the short term after the bilateral agreement, but they worsened in the long run. The total Index of Vulnerability of both groups showed improvement due to the dramatic decrease in dependence on migration costs, despite the deterioration in some working and living conditions and the reduction in migrant workers’ relative wages. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the ethical responsibility of agents who find themselves in situations characterized by what I call the Individual Ethical Gap (IEG). Individual Ethical Gap situations are structured so as to rule out holding individuals responsible for their actions and omissions by virtue of the intentions behind or the consequences of their actions. I argue that, in IEG situations, individuals can nevertheless, depending on the circumstances, be held ethically responsible for their actions and omissions by virtue of (...) the conditions in which they find themselves operating. Individual Ethical Gap situations therefore give rise to what I call conditioned responsibility: responsibility stemming from the conditions in which one finds oneself enmeshed. This notion of an ethics stemming from conditions (rather than from consequences or intentions) gives rise to a particular form of vulnerability to error in our self- and other-ascriptions of ethical responsibility: a vulnerability in our ethical understanding. In the final section of the paper I use Pamela Sue Anderson’s discussion of vulnerability and of Kantian autonomy to show that this vulnerability arising from the conditioned aspect of our ethical responsibility need not be regarded as a threat to ethics but, on the contrary, as an element of belonging and of understanding that renders possible a more honest encounter with others and with the world. (shrink)

The contemporary industrialized global food system has sustained an onslaught of criticism from diverse parties—academic and popular, scientists and social justice advocates, activists and intellectuals—criticism that has only intensified in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Feminist voices have made substantial contributions to these critiques, calling attention to the cultural politics of food and health ; to the impact of the corporatization of agriculture on food quality, the environment, and the people of the Global South, especially women ; and (...) to the complicated relationship among cooking, eating, and gender, including how food.. (shrink)

To the conversation about relationships in education, this chapter contributes an exploration of the devaluation of dependency in the ′new fatherhood′ discourses that purport to reinvent familial relationships. Although ‘new fatherhood’ seems to promise a reconstruction of the domesticity paradigm that has positioned fathers as breadwinners and mothers as caretakers, it maintains the notion that families are self‐supporting entities and neglects the extensive interdependence involved in raising children. As a result, it cannot successfully overturn this paradigm and hampers our (...) ability to reimagine relationships along lines that would better serve parents’ and children's wellbeing. The chapter raises these issues through an exploration of ‘daddy‐daughter dances’, which manifest new fatherhood discourse as expressed in public schooling. Finally, it discusses Eva Feder Kittay's notion of ‘distributed dependency’ as a means of reimagining relationships along lines that recognise the interdependence of children and adult citizens, families and the society whose future they procure. (shrink)

Although ‘new fatherhood’ promises a reconstruction of the domesticity paradigm that positions fathers as breadwinners and mothers as caretakers, it maintains the notion that families are self-supporting entities and thereby neglects the extensive interdependence involved in raising children. As a result, it cannot successfully overturn this paradigm and hampers our ability to reimagine relationships along lines that would better serve parents' and children's wellbeing. This article raises these issues through an exploration of ‘daddy-daughter dances’, which manifest new fatherhood discourse (...) as expressed in public schooling. Although the dances are in some ways peculiarly American, they exemplify tensions and inconsistencies around father's involvement in child-raising that nag most contemporary Western societies. These tensions, the article contends, concern the distribution of public resources among families as well as within them. Drawing on Kittay's theorization of dependence and interdependence, the article argues that contemporary social reconfigurations demand a new reimagination of relationships that starts with the recognition of interdependencies. (shrink)

Clare Palmer has recently argued that most humans have special obligations to assist domesticated animals, because domestication creates vulnerable, dependent individuals, and most humans benefit from the institution of domestication. I argue that Palmer has given us no grounds for accepting this claim, and that one of the key premises in her argument for this claim is false. Next, I argue that voluntarism, which is the view that one acquires special obligations only by consenting to those obligations in some (...) way, offers a plausible explanation of the sorts of cases that motivate Palmer’s analysis. I conclude that voluntarism allows us to explain the prevalent intuition that special obligations to assist often obtain for domesticated animals, but rarely obtain for wild animals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant and the Ethics of Humility: A Story of Dependence, Corruption, and VirtueSharon Anderson-GoldJeanine Grenberg. Kant and the Ethics of Humility: A Story of Dependence, Corruption, and Virtue. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xi + 269 Cloth, $75.00In Kant and the Ethics of Humility, Jeanine Grenberg proposes to rehabilitate the virtue of humility. As she states in her introduction: "Humility is a curious virtue with a (...) checkered history." Humility, Grenberg notes, has suffered from both a lack of definitional clarity and a sustained attack on its status as a virtue. Why then even attempt a rehabilitation? And why attempt to rescue humility within the context of Kantian ethical theory, a theory that is generally viewed as virtue-light?The history of the virtue of humility is not an encouragement to this project of rehabilitation. Humility is a self-regarding state that stems from a valuation of the self against some external standard. The standards within religious traditions against which the self is to be measured have been divine or transcendent models of purity or (within secular traditions) social competitive models of comparison. As a consequence of such evaluations, humility has been associated with attitudes of meekness, inferiority, and even self-contempt. Such devaluations do not comport well with the emphasis on human equality characteristic of modern liberal ethical traditions, and they most certainly do not comport well with the Kantian notion of human dignity. Should not a Kantian then simply reject the whole tradition of humility as a virtue?Grenberg maintains quite the opposite position. She argues that the Kantian notion of human dignity requires the virtue of humility to find its proper bearings. Humility is then a prerequisite for the fulfillment of the entire range of duty, including our duties to others. Arguing that our natural and legitimate desire for happiness makes us vulnerable and dependent, Grenberg demonstrates how this dependence can corrupt and destabilize self-love through the internal conflict generated by the demands of the moral law. Without a proper measure of the value of the self provided by the commitment to the moral law, the individual is "primed" by this internal conflict to over-assert her rights in the competitive contexts that characterize our social condition. If one accepts that, within the Kantian corpus, self-love is the source of moral corruption, then whatever checks improper or undue self-love will also support moral development or the development of virtue in its various manifestations. [End Page 666]What can serve as this "check" on our innate propensity to self-love? Arguing that moral principles are neither transcendent nor derived from competitive social models, Grenberg demonstrates the internal consistency and connection of commitment to moral principle with humility understood as the achievement of the internal condition of proper valuation of the self in relation to duty. This internalized disposition is both the expression of a moral maxim and a settled character trait or virtue. In constructing her argument, Grenberg stresses the stabilizing function of the acceptance of the shared limitations and capacities that humans possess with respect to the development of virtue. Reviewing and rejecting a wide range of alternative conceptions of humility, Grenberg argues that the acceptance of a philosophical anthropology of shared limitations and capacities as a context for ethics makes possible the rehabilitation of humility because it supports our assessments of the equal moral worth of persons and does not force destabilizing models onto the evaluation of the self. Furthermore, duties to self derived from the proper measure of the value of the self generate a model for our recognition of our duties to others without generating the self-absorption that communitarian critics of Kantian ethics claim to be inevitable.In this "Story of Dependence, Corruption, and Virtue," as told by Grenberg, humility provides a meta-attitude or focal point for the development of the other virtues and thus a basis for the unity of the virtues. Humility, then, is no debilitating condition, but the close cousin of proper self-esteem. This is not an easy association to buy on the surface, but Grenberg has made a painstaking and plausible argument for a Kantian rehabilitation... (shrink)

SUSANNE UUSITALO,ANNA AXELIN | : Infants born to opioid-dependent women are typically admitted to neonatal intensive-care units for management of neonatal abstinence syndrome, and their treatment requires medical decision making. It is not only the infants’ vulnerability, in terms of their incompetence and medical condition, that is present in those circumstances, but also the mothers’ situational vulnerability, which arises with the possibility of their engagement in medical decision making regarding their infants. Vulnerability is a concept that (...) has often, if not always, been traced back to individuals. In this paper, we suggest that in some cases evaluations and attributions of vulnerability to either individuals or populations fall short of capturing all aspects of vulnerability. We ask whether this individual-based evaluation is sufficient for identifying all the vulnerabilities arising in the situation. Moreover, we suggest that the “unit” of vulnerability attribution, typically a person who is a likely target of harm and/or moral violations, should not simply be reduced to the individual. Rather, the unit should in some cases be seen as constituted by an entity that is interpersonal in nature. The kind of real vulnerability that we identify in this paper is inherently embedded in a dyadic relationship, and notions of vulnerability that decompose social relations into individuals run the risk of missing the vulnerability in question. We elaborate this kind vulnerability by discussing of role of opioid-dependent mothers in decision making about their infants’ treatment. | : Les nourrissons nés de femmes dépendantes aux opioïdes sont généralement admis dans des unités de soins intensifs néonatals pour la prise en charge du syndrome d’abstinence néonatale, et leur traitement nécessite une prise de décision médicale. Ce n’est pas seulement la vulnérabilité des nourrissons, en termes d’incompétence et de dépendance médicale, qui est présente dans ces circonstances, mais aussi la vulnérabilité situationnelle des mères, qui découle de la possibilité de leur participation à la prise de décision médicale concernant leurs enfants. La vulnérabilité est un concept qui a souvent, sinon toujours été relié à des individus. Dans cet article, nous suggérons que, dans certains cas, les évaluations et les attributions de vulnérabilité aux individus ou aux populations ne permettent pas de saisir tous les aspects de la vulnérabilité. Nous demandons si cette évaluation individuelle est suffisante pour identifier toutes les vulnérabilités qui apparaissent dans la situation. De plus, nous suggérons que l’« unité » d’attribution de la vulnérabilité, généralement une personne qui est une cible probable de dommages ou de violations morales, ne devrait pas simplement être réduite à l’individu. Au contraire, l’unité devrait dans certains cas être considérée comme une entité de nature interpersonnelle. Le type de vulnérabilité réelle que nous identifions dans cet article est intrinsèquement intégré dans une relation dyadique, et les notions de vulnérabilité qui décomposent les relations sociales en individus risquent de manquer la vulnérabilité en question. Nous développons ce type de vulnérabilité en discutant du rôle des mères dépendantes aux opioïdes dans la prise de décision concernant le traitement de leurs enfants. (shrink)

The ethics of care addresses aspects of the human condition that other moral theories overlook—our vulnerability to injury, inevitable dependencies, and ubiquitous needs. In the grip of these experiences, we require care from others to survive and flourish. The precarious nature of human existence represents a related experience, one less thoroughly explored within care ethics. Through examination of these occasions for care, this article offers two contributions: First, a map of the conceptual relations between care ethics’ four key concepts: (...) need, vulnerability, dependency, and precariousness. As a subset of these efforts, I investigate the relevance of precariousness and precarity for care ethics by asking what they require of caring relations that vulnerability does not. Second, a more precise articulation of care ethics’ normative foundations and accompanying elucidation of the alternative vision of moral responsibility care ethics advances. Examining need, vulnerability, dependency, and precariousness through the lenses of finitude and embodiment exposes two common forms of conflation: between precarity and vulnerability and between dependency and vulnerability. Analysis of the moral significance of the body as a site for care reveals a novel portrayal of the normative foundations of care ethics and the reasons why we care for one another ethically. (shrink)

The ethics of care addresses aspects of the human condition that other moral theories overlook—our vulnerability to injury, inevitable dependencies, and ubiquitous needs. In the grip of these experiences, we require care from others to survive and flourish. The precarious nature of human existence represents a related experience, one less thoroughly explored within care ethics. Through examination of these occasions for care, this article offers two contributions: First, a map of the conceptual relations between care ethics’ four key concepts: (...) need, vulnerability, dependency, and precariousness. As a subset of these efforts, I investigate the relevance of precariousness and precarity for care ethics by asking what they require of caring relations that vulnerability does not. Second, a more precise articulation of care ethics’ normative foundations and accompanying elucidation of the alternative vision of moral responsibility care ethics advances. Examining need, vulnerability, dependency, and precariousness through the lenses of finitude and embodiment exposes two common forms of conflation: between precarity and vulnerability and between dependency and vulnerability. Analysis of the moral significance of the body as a site for care reveals a novel portrayal of the normative foundations of care ethics and the reasons why we care for one another ethically. (shrink)

Consumer-targeted sleep tracking applications (STA) that run on mobile devices (e.g., smartphones) promise to be useful tools for the individual user. Assisted by built-in and/or external sensors, these apps can analyze sleep data and generate assessment reports for the user on their sleep duration and quality. However, STA also raise ethical questions, for example, on the autonomy of the sleeping person, or potential effects on third parties. Nevertheless, a specific ethical analysis of the use of these technologies is still missing (...) so far. The aim of the current analysis is to identify the characteristics of sleep tracking apps and to explore the specific ethical aspects associated with this form of self-tracking. Firstly, the field of mobile health applications was screened for STA to explore their typical functions and target user groups. Secondly, an ethical analysis was conducted focusing on the three ethical dimensions: (1) medicalization, (2) vulnerability, and (3) relationality. The analysis indicates that these three normative dimensions are decisive for assessing STA and that the ethical profile of this technology varies greatly depending on the respective user group. As the three dimensions medicalization, vulnerability, and relationality play a distinguishing role in the use of STA, they should be especially addressed in responsible development and implementation of STA. In addition, the analysis helps to evaluate the use of STA, in terms of different risks for specific user groups, the sensitive contexts of usage, and potential interference with the intimacy of third parties. (shrink)

Limited distribution phenomena related to negation and negative polarity are usually thought of in terms of affectivity where affective is understood as negative or downward entailing. In this paper I propose an analysis of affective contexts as nonveridical and treat negative polarity as a manifestation of the more general phenomenon of sensitivity to (non)veridicality (which is, I argue, what affective dependencies boil down to). Empirical support for this analysis will be provided by a detailed examination of affective dependencies in Greek, (...) but the distribution of any will also be shown to follow from (non)veridicality. (shrink)

Legislation for dementia care needs to be continually rethought, if the rights of older persons and other persons with dementia are to be addressed properly. We propose a theoretical framework for understanding vulnerability and dependency, which enables us to problematize the currently prevailing legal conception of adults as always able — irrespective of health or age — to act autonomously in their everyday lives. Such an approach gives rise to difficult dilemmas when persons with dementia are forced to make (...) decisions on their own about basic living conditions, such as housing and care, without decision-making support. In Sweden, for example, such matters are frequently left to the person him- or herself to decide, often without any assistance from social workers, and with family members serving as caregivers of last resort.Using vulnerability theory as the framework for our discussion, we argue that policymakers should not apply a group-oriented approach (based on factors like age, legal status, or mental capacity) to persons suffering from dementia. The needs of such individuals are as complex and varied as they themselves are. We discuss our findings from an interdisciplinary (law/social work) research project in which we examine the dilemma that social workers face when they are required, under the terms of the Swedish Social Services Act, to determine whether persons with dementia are to be granted support.We argue further that a cross-disciplinary approach — in which vulnerability theory furnishes the framework — opens up for new ways of understanding and developing social welfare law and practice. This, we believe, can help us better address the rights, interests, and needs of people with dementia, of their families, and of professionals in the social welfare system. Finally, many of the problems faced by ageing societies in general can be understood on the basis of such an approach. (shrink)

Humanitarian assistance in conflicts sometimes undermines local coping strategies, reinforces wartime economies, and strengthens the existing power structures. This article argues that some victims of conflicts are made extremely vulnerable and uniquely dependent on humanitarian agencies. In this case, humanitarian agencies have a distinct obligation to assist them. This article considers one novel account that justifies the continued provision of aid to victims of conflicts and rejects the widespread view that aid should be withdrawn to avoid its negative impact. (...) This article presents the “Distinct Dependence Argument” to address the aid dependency predicament in conflicts. It explores the degree of vulnerability and dependence of victims of conflicts and evaluates humanitarian agencies’ causal responsibility in causing such vulnerability and dependency. (shrink)

This paper responds to Elijah Weber’s “Vulnerability, Dependence, and Special Obligations to Domesticated Animals: A Reply to Palmer”. Weber’s paper develops significant objections to the account of special obligations I developed in my book Animal Ethics in Context, in particular concerning our obligations to companion animals. In this book, I made wide-ranging claims about how we may acquire special obligations to animals, including being a beneficiary of an institution that creates vulnerable and dependent animals, and sharing in attitudes (...) that contribute to causing harms or to creating vulnerable animals. Weber finds these claims implausible, and offers an alternative, much narrower, voluntarist account, on which we only have special positive obligations if, in some way, we have agreed to them. In this paper, I defend, against Weber, a non-voluntarist account of at least some special obligations towards animals, and I respond to some of his more specific objections to my account. (shrink)

This essay shows that a sharp distinction between ethics and aesthetics is unfruitful for thinking about how to live well with technologies, and in particular for understanding and evaluating how we cope with human existential vulnerability, which is crucially mediated by the development and use of technologies such as electronic ICTs. It is argued that vulnerability coping is a matter of ethics and art: it requires developing a kind of art and techne in the sense that it always (...) involves technologies and specific styles of experiencing and dealing with vulnerability, which depend on social and cultural context. It is suggested that we try to find better, perhaps less modern styles of coping with our vulnerability, recognize limits to our attempts to “design” our new forms, and explore what kinds of technologies we need for this project. (shrink)

Kantian moral concepts concerning respect for human dignity have played a central role in articulating ethical guidelines for medical practice and research, and for articulating some central positions within bioethical debates more generally. The most common of these Kantian moral concepts is the obligation to respect the dignity of patients and of human research subjects as autonomous, self-determining individuals. This article describes Kant’s conceptual distinction between dignity and autonomy as values, and draws on the work of several contemporary Kantian philosophers (...) who employ the distinction to make sense of some common moral intuitions, feelings, and norms. Drawing on this work, the article argues that the conceptual distinction between dignity and autonomy as values is indispensable in the context of considering our obligations to those who are dependent and vulnerable. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Alasdair MacIntyre’sAfter Virtuehas made a significant impact within business ethics. This impact has centered upon applications of the virtues-goods-practices-institutions schema. In this article, I develop an extension of the practices-institutions schema, drawing upon MacIntyre’s later text,Dependent Rational Animals. Two key concepts drawn from this text are “networks of giving and receiving” and “the virtues of acknowledged dependence.” Networks of giving and receiving are non-calculative relationships that enable participants to cope with vulnerability. These relationships are sustained by the virtues (...) of acknowledged dependence, including just generosity,misericordia,and beneficence, virtues that direct participants to treat the needs of others as reasons for action. Drawing upon research in social network theory, I develop an example illustrating the application of these concepts within an organizational and interorganizational context. I then suggest a number of applications and research questions related to this extension of the practices-institutions schema. (shrink)

Does the fact that humans are vulnerable, needy and dependent beings play an important role in Kantian ethics? It is sometimes claimed that it cannot and does not. I argue that it can and does. I distinguish between broad (all persons are vulnerable) and narrow (only some persons are vulnerable) senses of vulnerability, and explain the role of vulnerability in both senses in Kantian ethics. The basis of this argument is to show that the core normative focus (...) of Kantian ethics is on the dignity that human beings have in virtue of their capacity for rational agency. This implies that the empirical conditions under which human beings can acquire, sustain, exercise, and develop their rational capacities are of core moral importance in Kantian ethics. This explains why human vulnerabilities, including the vulnerability of human bodies, are important in Kantian ethics, since rational capacities in human agents (and the bodies those rational capacities depend upon) are highly vulnerable in all persons (vulnerability in the broad sense) and especially vulnerable in some sub-groups of persons (vulnerability in the narrow sense). (shrink)

This unique volume explores what ethics has to offer the practicing physician, nurse, and allied health care worker. The authors introduce the basic vocabulary of ethics and present and discuss the most commonly used ethical theories, using case studies to illustrate how ethics work within the context of health care. Newcomers to the field will learn what ethics is all about and how it relates to the pragmatic concerns of the health care professional. Those who already have a working knowledge (...) of the field will find a new approach to ethical theory--personalism--which the authors believe can make the practical use of ethics more effective and reliable. (shrink)

The COVID-19 disease has caused thousands of deaths worldwide and required the rapid and drastic adoption of various protective measures as main resources in the fight to reduce the spread of the disease. In the present study we aimed to identify socio cognitive factors that may influence adherence to protective measures toward COVID-19 in a Spanish sample. This longitudinal study analyzes the predictive value of perceived severity and vulnerability of infection, self-efficacy, direct exposure to the virus, and instrumental focused (...) coping style for adhering to infection protection behaviors during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also tests sex and age differences in these factors and changes over time. A two-wave longitudinal study was conducted in March and April 2020 starting the day after a strict national lockdown was decreed in Spain. A path analysis was used to test direct and indirect effects between vulnerability and the adherence to protective behaviors. Results suggest that individuals' perceived severity and vulnerability to COVID-19 and instrumental coping strategies are related to the use of more protective behaviors. This coping strategy mediates the effect of perceived vulnerability on engaging in protective behaviors, and this effect depends on direct exposure to COVID-19 and perceived self-efficacy moderators. Results suggest that recognizing one's own abilities to engage in instrumental actions may facilitate adherence to protective measures in people who had not been directly exposed to COVID-19. Therefore, adopting instrumental coping strategies to manage an individual's perceived vulnerability to infection may positively impact the adherence to protective behaviors, especially during the onset of an unexpected threat and when there is no prior direct experience with the situation. (shrink)

In every corner of the globe, natural hazards are ubiquitous and varied from every perspective. Atmospheric and weather conditions, geological movements and other recurrent disturbances would occur with or without the existence of humans on the planet. It is when these natural events cause catastrophic consequences for human populations that they become what we call Adisasters.@ The extent to which people are at risk under disaster conditions, irrespective of etiology, is dependent upon many factors, not the least of which (...) is Aill fortune@; simply being at the wrong place, at the wrong time. But sometimes people elect to live in communities where disaster risks are well known; and sometimes options are limited because of livelihood demands. But in almost all cases, biological and social factors can greatly increase vulnerability to the consequences of disaster. People with chronic illness or disability and people with limited economic or social resources are representative of populations who face exacerbated risk under a wide range of disaster scenarios. (shrink)

Subpart B of 45 Code of Federal Regulations Part 46 (CFR) identifies the criteria according to which research involving pregnant women, human fetuses, and neonates can be conducted ethically in the United States. As such, pregnant women and fetuses fall into a category requiring “additional protections,” often referred to as “vulnerable populations.” The CFR does not define vulnerability, but merely gives examples of vulnerable groups by pointing to different categories of potential research subjects needing additional protections. In this paper, (...) I assess critically the role of this categorization of pregnant women involved in research as “vulnerable,” both as separate entities and in combination with the fetuses they carry. In particular, I do three things: (1) demonstrate that pregnant women qua pregnancy are either not “vulnerable” according to any meaningful definition of that term or that such vulnerability is irrelevant to her status as a research participant; (2) argue that while a fetus may be vulnerable in terms of dependency, this categorization does not equate to the vulnerability of the pregnant woman; and (3) suggest that any vulnerability that appends to women is precisely the result of federal regulations and dubious public perceptions about pregnant women. I conclude by demonstrating how this erroneous characterization of pregnant women as “vulnerable” and its associated protections have not only impeded vital research for pregnant women and their fetuses, but have also negatively affected the inclusion of all women in clinical research. (shrink)

Whistleblowers are a vital means of protecting society because they provide information about serious wrongdoing. And yet, people who speak up can suffer. Even so, debates on whistleblowing focus on compelling employees to come forward, often overlooking the risk involved. Theoretical understanding of whistleblowers’ post-disclosure experience is weak because tangible and material impacts are poorly understood due partly to a lack of empirical detail on the financial costs of speaking out. To address this, we present findings from a novel empirical (...) study surveying whistleblowers. We demonstrate how whistleblowers who leave their role as a result of speaking out can lose both the financial and temporal resources necessary to redevelop their livelihoods post-disclosure. We also show how associated costs involving significant legal and health expenditure can rise. Based on these insights, our first contribution is to present a new conceptual framing of post-disclosure experiences, drawing on feminist theory, that emphasizes the bodily vulnerability of whistleblowers and their families. Our second contribution repositions whistleblowing as a form of labour defending against precarity, which involves new expenses, takes significant time, and often must be carried out with depleted income. Bringing forth the intersubjective aspect of the whistleblowing experience, our study shows how both the post-disclosure survival of whistleblowers, and their capacity to speak, depend on institutional supports or, in their absence, on personal networks. By reconceptualizing post-disclosure experiences in this way—as material, embodied and intersubjective—practical implications for whistleblower advocacy and policy emerge, alongside contributions to theoretical debates. Reversing typical formulations in business ethics, we turn extant debates on the ethical duty of employees to speak up against wrongdoing on their heads. We argue instead for a responsibility to protect whistleblowers exposed to vulnerability, a duty owed by those upon whose behalf they speak. (shrink)

This article examines the case of Insite, North America’s only supervised injection facility, to consider the relationship between dependence, relational autonomy, and vulnerability. At state-funded Insite, users inject illicit drugs under medical supervision. By conceiving of Insite as a health-care facility and addiction as disease, advocates evoke a shared sense of vulnerability among the nonusing public and users, garnering considerable support for the site. Through Insite, the state responds to vulnerability by reshaping the meaning of dependence and (...) conferring recognition upon users, in turn fostering users’ autonomy. However, the medicalized discourse surrounding Insite may obscure drug users’ vulnerabilities emerging not from “disease,” but from stigma and criminalization. Vulnerability analysis must emphasize not merely a naturalized conception of vulnerability, but the socially constructed nature of human beings’ experiences of vulnerability. (shrink)

Traditionally, philosophers have focused on whether and how emotions threaten autonomy, insofar as they lie outside the sphere of rational agency. That is, they have conceptualized emotional vulnerability as passivity. Second, they have considered how emotions are insensitive to rational judgment, focusing on cases in which emotions are dissonant or recalcitrant. Third, in recognizing the motivational force of emotions, philosophers have tracked their negative impact on rational deliberation. Indeed, emotions are often contrastive elements in rational deliberation. They appear to (...) defeat deliberative judgments about what to do, survive rational deliberation or preempt the very possibility of rational deliberation. But there are more interesting cases in which it is apparent that emotions bear a rather complicated relation to autonomy. Love and shame provide powerful examples of the ambivalences and complexities of such a relation. In analyzing such complexities, my aim is to present a case for appreciating various dimensions of vulnerability and, correspondingly, for exposing the importance of emotional vulnerability for agential autonomy. This view is rooted in a general account of agential autonomy marked by mutual respect and recognition of others, as a normative response to constitutive vulnerability, understood as the capacity to affect and be affected by others as well as by external agentive and non-agentive causes. (shrink)

BackgroundHealthcare is permeated by phenomena of vulnerability and their ethical significance. Nonetheless, application of this concept in healthcare ethics today is largely confined to clinical research. Approaches that further elaborate the concept in order to make it suitable for healthcare as a whole thus deserve renewed attention.MethodsConceptual analysis.ResultsTaking up the task to make the concept of vulnerability suitable for healthcare ethics as a whole involves two challenges. Firstly, starting from the concept as it used in research ethics, a (...) more detailed characterization and systematization of the different realms of human abilities and the various ways in which these realms contain vulnerability is to be established. Secondly, at the same time, the sought-after concept of vulnerability should avoid picturing the relation between healthcare recipient and provider as a relation between a dependent individual in need and another individual capable of providing all the help necessary. An adequate concept of vulnerability should enable one to understand when and in which respects care providers may be vulnerable as well. Philosophical accounts of vulnerability can help to meet both of these challenges.ConclusionsPhilosophical accounts of vulnerability can help to make the concept of vulnerability suitable for healthcare ethics as a whole. They come with a price, though. While the ethical role of vulnerability in medical ethics usually is to signify states of affairs that are to be diminished or overcome, philosophical accounts introduce forms of vulnerability that are regarded as valuable. Further analyzing and systematizing forms and degrees of vulnerability thus comprises the task to distinguish between amounts and types of vulnerability that can count as valuable, and amounts and types of vulnerability that are to be alleviated. (shrink)

Healthcare is permeated by phenomena of vulnerability and their ethical significance. Nonetheless, application of this concept in healthcare ethics today is largely confined to clinical research. Approaches that further elaborate the concept in order to make it suitable for healthcare as a whole thus deserve renewed attention. Conceptual analysis. Taking up the task to make the concept of vulnerability suitable for healthcare ethics as a whole involves two challenges. Firstly, starting from the concept as it used in research (...) ethics, a more detailed characterization and systematization of the different realms of human abilities and the various ways in which these realms contain vulnerability is to be established. Secondly, at the same time, the sought-after concept of vulnerability should avoid picturing the relation between healthcare recipient and provider as a relation between a dependent individual in need and another individual capable of providing all the help necessary. An adequate concept of vulnerability should enable one to understand when and in which respects care providers may be vulnerable as well. Philosophical accounts of vulnerability can help to meet both of these challenges. Philosophical accounts of vulnerability can help to make the concept of vulnerability suitable for healthcare ethics as a whole. They come with a price, though. While the ethical role of vulnerability in medical ethics usually is to signify states of affairs that are to be diminished or overcome, philosophical accounts introduce forms of vulnerability that are regarded as valuable. Further analyzing and systematizing forms and degrees of vulnerability thus comprises the task to distinguish between amounts and types of vulnerability that can count as valuable, and amounts and types of vulnerability that are to be alleviated. (shrink)

As concerns about violence, war, terrorism, sexuality, and embodiment have garnered attention in philosophy, the concept of vulnerability has become a shared reference point in these discussions. As a fundamental part of the human condition, vulnerability has significant ethical import: how one responds to vulnerability matters, whom one conceives as vulnerable and which criteria are used to make such demarcations matters, how one deals with one’s own vulnerability matters, and how one understands the meaning of (...) class='Hi'>vulnerability matters. Yet, the meaning of vulnerability is commonly taken for granted and it is assumed that vulnerability is almost exclusively negative, equated with weakness, dependency, powerlessness, deficiency, and passivity. This reductively negative view leads to problematic implications, imperiling ethical responsiveness to vulnerability, and so prevents the concept from possessing the normative value many theorists wish it to have. When vulnerability is regarded as weakness and, concomitantly, invulnerability is prized, attentiveness to one’s own vulnerability and ethical response to vulnerable others remain out of reach goals. Thus, this book critiques the ideal of invulnerability, analyzes the problems that arise from a negative view of vulnerability, and articulates in its stead a non-dualistic concept of vulnerability that can remedy these problems. (shrink)

Identifying which subjects are vulnerable, and implementing safeguards to protect them, is widely regarded as essential to clinical research. Commentators have endorsed a number of responses to these challenges and have thereby made significant progress in understanding vulnerability in clinical research. At the same time, this literature points to a central contradiction which calls into question its potential to protect vulnerable subjects in practice. Specifically, analysis suggests that all human subjects are vulnerable and vulnerability in clinical research is (...) comparative and context dependent, in the sense that individuals are vulnerable relative to others and in some contexts only. Yet, if everyone is vulnerable, there seems to be no point in citing the vulnerability of some individuals. Moreover, the conclusion that everyone is vulnerable seems inconsistent with the claims that vulnerability is comparative and context dependent, raising concern over whether it will be possible to develop a comprehensive account of vulnerability that is internally consistent. The solution to this dilemma lies in recognition of the fact that the practical significance of claims regarding vulnerability depends on the context in which they are used. The claims that appear to lead to the central contradiction are in fact accurate conclusions that follow from different uses of the term ‘vulnerability’. The present manuscript describes this ‘pragmatic’ approach to vulnerability in clinical research and considers its implications for ensuring that subjects receive appropriate protection. (shrink)

This African moral framework discusses distant poverty as human vulnerability. Contextually, if vulnerability means human frailty, relative to some opposing facts of life, and that poverty makes the human person frail, relative to some largely unrealized/unrealizable desirables without assistance, then distant poverty as human vulnerability invariably connects, significantly, with poor dependency: poor people are vulnerable as dependent on the assisting other. Some fundamental questions arise: 1) What is the ontology of distant poverty as human vulnerability? (...) 2) In what ways does the idea of poverty as human vulnerability essentially and morally connect with the idea of dependency? 3) Is the issue of addressing the problem of distant poverty as human vulnerability a question of perfect or imperfect moral duty or both? 4) In what ways do the perfect or imperfect moral duty connect to positive and negative moral duties? 5) What moral framework best accommodates, all things considered, moral duties? Considering these questions, this work advances that African ethics as character ethics, fundamentally serves as a better moral framework, compared to the Western ethics that has dominated the debates on addressing the questions for years. (shrink)

The French feminist philosopher Michèle Le Doeuff has taught us something about “the collectivity,” which she discovers in women’s struggle for access to the philosophical, but also about “the unknown” and “the unthought.” It is the unthought which will matter most to what I intend to say today about a fundamental ignorance on which speaker vulnerability is built. On International Women’s Day, it seems appropriate to speak about – or, at least, to evoke – the silencing which has been (...) imposed on women by an oppressive form of ignorance. My question is: how do our resounding voices as women – on 8 March 2016 – avoid what feminist philosophers have distinguished as wilful forms of silencing? Silencing exploits vulnerability; and speaker vulnerability is an exposure either to violence or affection, in its dependence on an audience. My response seeks to undo the silencing of women by transforming an ignorance of vulnerability into a distinctively ethical avowal. To see the significance of this undoing, we will consider how our contemporary global world reduces vulnerability to an openness to violence, ignoring what has been unthought: an openness to affection. A wilful ignorance of vulnerability develops not as a lack of knowledge but its disavowal – on which various forms of oppression are built. An active disavowal of thinking (the unthought) is the other side of a striving for invulnerability; and this striving is encouraged by a social world which remains ignorant of its own wounding, as well as its own potential for ethical relations in vulnerability. Like la mauvaise foi of the French existentialist, invulnerability is a form of self-deception; and those who claim it embrace ignorance of their own and others’ vulnerability too. (shrink)

The testimonies of men raped by men in Uganda indicate that the meaning of rape as an aggression that enforces the gendering of women as vulnerable and therefore dependent on men's protection needs to be reformulated to account for the fact that being raped transforms a man into a woman. In describing their humiliation, these men reveal that gendered masculinity is grounded in a flight from vulnerability that depends on the presence of vulnerable/rapeable victim bodies. Their words teach (...) us that as long as men's illicit identity as autonomous and invulnerable is illegitimately secured by stigmatizing vulnerability, heterosexual and male-male rape will be used to denigrate women and men alike. They indicate that the antidote to the scourge of rape lies in delegitimizing gender systems that victimize vulnerability and in creating cultural norms that recognize vulnerability as inherent in the interdependence and dignity of the human condition. (shrink)

Transhumanism is a challenging movement that invites us to rethink what defines humanity, including what we value and regret the most about our existence. Vulnerability is a key concept that require thorough philosophical scrutiny concerning transhumanist proposals. Vulnerability can refer to a universal condition of human life or, rather, to the specific exposure to certain harms due to particular situations. Even if we are all vulnerable in the first sense, there are also different sources and levels of (...) class='Hi'>vulnerability depending on concrete social circumstances. Recently, Michael Hauskeller argued about a fundamental incompatibility between transhumanism and vulnerability. He understands vulnerability as an existential category, linked to woundability and mortality. This idea is akin to ontological vulnerability, but it does not notice some important features of social vulnerability. On the other side, transhumanism is a complex and non-homogeneous movement. Here we distinguish between a strong and a weak version of transhumanism. We will propose that the salience of vulnerability is only diminished in the radical one, while a moderate version can reconcile vulnerability with human enhancement. Thus, vulnerability, a concept that has recently gained much importance as an anthropological category in contemporary ethics, is not necessarily at odds with any transhumanist project. (shrink)