The Openness of Vulnerability and Resilience

A positive reconceptualization of vulnerability involves a number of levels of inquiry; arguably, a fundamental or, at least, central level is the phenomenology of vulnerability with which I am concerned in my paper. By drawing on existential phenomenology and by engaging with Pamela Sue Anderson’s positive account of vulnerability, I develop a phenomenological conception of vulnerability as “openness” and pursue it in new directions which connect it to the metaphysics and epistemology of vulnerability. This approach brings to the fore the possibility of resilience in the face of serious adversities which affect our lives, and draws some ethical implications in relation to this. I engage with recent work in the area of the phenomenology of illness to elaborate certain parts of the investigation.