ISBN : 9780199316656
The aim of this volume is to open up reflection on the nature of vulnerability, the responsibilities owed to the vulnerable, who bears these responsibilities, and how they are best fulfilled. In canvassing responses to these questions, the contributors engage with a range of ethical traditions and with issues in contemporary political philosophy and bioethics. Some essays in the volume explore the connections between vulnerability, autonomy, dignity, and justice. Other essays engage with a feminist ethics of care to articulate the relationship between vulnerability, dependence, and care. These theoretical approaches are complemented by detailed examination of vulnerability in specific contexts, including disability; responsibilities to children; intergenerational justice; and care of the elderly. The essays thus address fundamental questions concerning our moral duties to each other as individuals and as citizens. Contributing significantly to the development of an ethics of vulnerability, this volume opens up promising avenues for future research in feminist philosophy, moral and political philosophy, and bioethics.
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction: What Is Vulnerability and Why Does It Matter for Moral Theory?
Catriona Mackenzie, Wendy Rogers, Susan Dodds
Part I: Reflections on Vulnerability
1. The Importance of Relational Autonomy and Capabilities for an Ethics of Vulnerability
Catriona Mackenzie
2. Vulnerability and Bioethics
Wendy Rogers
3. The Role of Vulnerability in Kantian Ethics
Paul Formosa
4. Moral Vulnerability and the Task of Reparations
Margaret Urban Walker
5. Autonomy and Vulnerability Entwined
Joel Anderson
6. Being in Time: Ethics and Temporal Vulnerability
Janna Thompson
Part II: Vulnerability, Dependency and Care
7. Dependence, care and vulnerability
Susan Dodds
8. Disability and Vulnerability: on Bodies, Dependence and Power
Jackie Leach Scully
9. Moral Responsibility for Coerced Wrongdoing: the Case of Abused Women Who "Fail to Protect" Their Children
Marilyn Friedman
10. Parental Values and Children's Vulnerability
Mianna Lotz
11. Children, Vulnerability, and Emotional Harm
Amy Mullin
12. Vulnerability and Aging in the Context of Care
Rosemarie Tong