A Vulnerable World: Heidegger on Humans and Finitude

The notion of vulnerability comes from the Late Latin vulnerabilis, derived from vulnerare “to wound,” which comes from vulner-, vulnus “wound.” As the Merriam-Webster dictionary suggests, it is probably akin to Latin vellere, “to pluck,” and Greek oulē, “wound.” The Latin noun vulnus refers primarily to bodily wounds and moral hurts or emotional damages, but it also signifies a blow, a cut, or a bite, as well as an arrow or a projectile. Standard definitions of “vulnerable” list two main meanings: 1: capable of being physically or emotionally wounded; 2: open to attack or damage: assailable (vulnerable to criticism). Even this cursory look at the etymology of the term makes clear that the thinking of vulnerability pivots on the understanding of how that which is vulnerable comes to be constituted: in its existence, identity, or self and thus also in its proper boundaries. Before one can speak of vulnerability, there needs to be a “something,” an “it”—a being or an entity—that is or can become vulnerable, with its boundaries compromised, violated, even destroyed. Vulnerability is concerned precisely with the permeability of such boundaries, their susceptibility to danger and violation. It is clear then that vulnerability suggests primarily a lack or absence, a degree of exposure that compromises the presumed integrity of whatever has become vulnerable. In this specific sense, vulnerability has a negative tenor, indicating a measure of impairment or damage to integrity—integrity that is taken as the initial or original indicator of the proper state in which a being would be in-vulnerable. This would mean that the notion of vulnerability is subtended by the idea of integrity: the condition of being whole, entire, or undiminished, taken as the proper state of existence of what, in principle, should be and remain within its assumed boundaries, proper or integral to itself, and thus invulnerable. I want to examine to what extent the very notion of vulnus, and thus of various forms of vulnerability, presupposes the idea of a being or an entity that becomes vulnerable precisely because it has a priori been conceived as existing and thus contained, whole, or undiminished within its proper “boundaries”: both bodily and moral, or rational.

A glance at the synonyms of vulnerable discloses the extent to which the term is indeed underpinned by an understanding of the relation between integrity or wholeness, on the one hand, and limit, perimeter, or boundary, on the other. Among the listed synonyms, one finds endangered, exposed, open, sensitive, subject (to), susceptible, and liable. Though the majority of the terms evoke negative connotations, two of these synonyms are potentially more ambiguous in their meaning, suggesting the possibility of a positive aspect to openness and sensitivity. While the other terms point unmistakably to the negativity of a threat, diminishment, or subjection, openness and sensitivity indicate a porosity or flexibility of boundaries, a degree of openness and perhaps even a welcome, not immediately threatened by the compromise of integrity. The ambivalence inherent in the term “openness” allows us to underscore the pivotal role played here by the notion of limit or boundary, as well as the double valence dependent on the perspective from which they are approached. Seen from the vantage point of integrity and interiority, the boundary is what guards and preserves the wholeness—the undiminished character of an entity protected against the outside. Yet viewed from the outside, the boundary is what can either prohibit and repel or, if it is porous, welcome by virtue of its intrinsic openness. However one might interpret these valences of vulnerability, what comes into focus here is that the term is determined by the key relation between inside and outside, the paradigm of relatedness which in modernity is cast in the strong and often rigid mould of the subject-object relation. In fact, one of the synonyms for vulnerable spells out this link, equating vulnerability to “being subject to.” To be able to say that someone or something is “subject to,” one already needs to think and operate within the perspective of the subject-object relation—that is, what is vulnerable needs to be conceived...