Is it possible to justify requiring that I respond adequately to the other’s vulnerability? I contend that insofar as I value my own personal identity it is consistent to respond adequately to the vulnerability of the other. Part one provides a break down of vulnerability in terms of its fundamental indeterminacy. Part two illustrates how the ability to respond either adequately or inadequately to the other’s vulnerability is implied by the fundamental co-constitution of personal identity. I understand myself as a (...) self only insofar as I stand in relation to other selves that see me as a self. If the relationship between recognition and identity also holds for the other, my response to her vulnerability founds her identity as well. In part three the relationship developed in part two is employed to justify the obligation to respond adequately to the vulnerable other. If I value my own personal identity, then I require an adequate response from others, because that response plays an integral role in the foundation of my personal identity. The other cannot respond adequately to my vulnerability unless her own identity is assured. Only if I respond adequately to the vulnerability of the other will she be in a position to assure my identity. Therefore, I ought to respond adequately to the vulnerability of others if for no other reason than it puts the other in a position where she can assure the personal identity that I value. (shrink)

I begin with the assumption that a philosophically significant tension exists today in feminist philosophy of religion between those subjects who seek to become divine and those who seek their identity in mutual recognition. My critical engagement with the ambiguous assertions of Luce Irigaray seeks to demonstrate, one the one hand, that a woman needs to recognize her own identity but, on the other hand, that each subject whether male or female must struggle in relation to the other in order (...) to maintain realism about life and death. No one can avoid the recognition that we are each given life but each of us also dies. In addition, I raise a more general, philosophical problem for analytic philosophers who attempt to read Continental philosophy of religion: how should philosophers interpret deliberately ambiguous assertions? For example, what does Irigaray mean in asserting. 'Divinity is what we need to become free, autonomous, sovereign'? To find an answer, I turn to the distinctively French readings of the Hegelian struggle for recognition which have preoccupied Continental philosophers especially since the first half of the last century. I explore the struggle for mutual recognition between womrn and men who must face the reality of life and death in order to avoid the projection of their fear of mortality onto the other sex. This includes a critical look at Irigaray's account of subjectivity and divinity. I turn to the French philosopher Michèle Le Doeuff in order to shift the focus from divinity to intersubjectivity. I conclude that taking seriously the struggle for mutual recognition between subjects forces contemporary philosophers of religion to be realist in their living and dying. With this in mind, the lesson from the Continent for philosophy of religion is that we must not stop yearning for recognition. Indeed, we must event risk our autonomy/divinity in seeking to recognize intersubjectivity. (shrink)

There has been an exponential rise in use of the term vulnerability across a number of political and policy arenas, including child protection, sexual offences, poverty, development, care for the elderly, patient autonomy, globalisation, war, public health and ecology. Yet despite its increasing deployment, the exact meaning and parameters of this concept remain somewhat elusive. In this article, we explore the interaction of two very different strategies—one in which vulnerability is relied upon by those seeking improved social justice as a (...) mechanism by which to identify, problematise and compel state responses to a universal condition of precarious dependency, and the other in which it is used as a category of neo-liberal governance which legitimates state encroachment whilst constructing ‘vulnerable’ individuals as ‘risk-managers’ who must behave ‘responsibly’ in the face of disadvantage. We suggest that the co-existence of these divergent approaches highlights the fluidity and malleability of the concept of vulnerability. Using sex work as a specific case study, we explore the ways in which vulnerability bears multiple meanings, and has been used in recent times in the furtherance of moralistic and regressive agendas, which collude with, rather than challenge, state power. Without seeking to reject the label or normative import of vulnerability, we call, therefore, for a more circumspect approach to its usage, and a more critical evaluation of recent claims which hail it as a mechanism, preferable to the conventional use of equality paradigms, by which to secure progressive feminist outcomes. (shrink)

Most punishment theories acknowledge neither the full extent of the harms which punishment risks, nor the caring practices which punishment entails. Consequently, I shall argue, punishment in most of its current conceptualizations is inconsistent with treating offenders as equals qua persons. The nature of criminal punishment, and of our interactions with offenders in punishment decision-making and delivery, risks causing harm to offenders. Harm is normalized when central to definitions of punishment, desensitizing us to unintended harms and obscuring caring practices. Offenders (...) may be partially silenced and excluded by mainstream criminal justice practices which limit interaction between offenders and practitioners. When we ignore significant harms, or silence and exclude, we treat others as passive non-subjects. This partially objectifies offenders, and is inconsistent with treatment as equals. Penal theories employing harm-centred and harm-normalizing definitions of punishment can provide few resources to help practitioners either avoid, or recognize and respond to, harms. Care ethics, by contrast, motivates the avoidance of harm, ongoing inclusive engagement, and respectful interaction with others. I argue that defining punishment without presupposing harm facilitates the identification of morally problematic harms, and recognition of caring practices. I offer a principled argument, and political and pragmatic supplementary arguments, for responding to offenders without intentional harm and with care. Principles drawn from care ethics can help to strengthen mainstream criminal practices by structuring decision-making and action. Bottom-up alternative criminal justice practices share some values with these proposed guiding principles, allowing a partial test of the principles. I consider examples of restorative justice practices, therapeutic jurisprudence, community justice and other problem-solving court practices, in addition to considering how well mainstream punishment practices measure up to these principles. My analysis illuminates the strengths and weaknesses of the principles, and how they might contribute to securing treatment as equals for offenders in mainstream practices. (shrink)

This paper is a survey of a number of women scholars who, during the last 20 years, have made extremely valuable contributions to the meanings and interpretations of the terms ‘violence,’ ‘vulnerability,’ and ‘precariousness.’ Each scholar has proposed in-depth insights that demonstrate that the terms they have examined can be reconfigured in more constructive and less definitive ways. In their respective pertinent observations, they have challenged the existing negative theories that associate violence with weakness and vulnerability with anger. Even though (...) there are critics who have found fault with these authors’ proposals, the impact of their studies has had revolutionary repercussions. (shrink)

Conflicts between bioethicists and disability theorists often arise over the permissibility of euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. Where mainstream bioethicists propose universalist guidelines that will direct action across a range of effectively disembodied situations, and take for granted that moral agency requires autonomy, feminist bioethicists demand a contextualisation of the circumstances under which moral decision making is conducted, and stress a more relational view of autonomy that does not require strict standards of independent agency. Nonetheless, neither traditional nor feminist perspectives (...) have fully engaged with the critique of disabled people that they are consistently subjected to discriminatory, even life-threatening, practice and policy in biomedical and health care. The paper revisits some of the issues that drive the often highly polarised debate between bioethicists and disability theorists around the question of end of life decisions involving disabled people. While many bioethicists have doubtless been indifferent to the difference that disability makes, I am also concerned that the very proper demand of disability activists and theorists to scrutinise all end of life decisions for signs of discrimination and even violence has segued into something damagingly restrictive that silences internal dissension and stifles external debate. Given that euthanasia and physician assisted suicide may be issues where conventional argument on either side will founder on deeply felt convictions, I make the radical move to speculate on an entirely different, quasi-Deleuzian, approach to the value of life in order to shake up entrenched positions, and begin to think differently. (shrink)

From the end of the seventeenth century to now well into the 21st, John Locke’s theory of personal identity has been foundational in the field of philosophy and psychology. Here we suggest that there are two fundamental threads intertwined in Lockean identity, the flux of perception-thought-action (i.e. continuity of consciousness) and memory. Using Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, and Bernard Steigler as guides we will see that these threads constitute a phenomenological self (l’ésprit), a lived experience of our identity that is (...) not only perhaps the most essential component of our humanity, but also the most threatened in today’s ongoing, commercial convergence of the real and the virtual in the “Age of Disruption”. (shrink)